May 30, 2015
@carlwooley and @justine4good in a @tisbooks design meeting. #tisbooks #thisissausage
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@carlwooley and @justine4good in a @tisbooks design meeting. #tisbooks #thisissausage
Lecture Recap: Mark Steinmetz at Pratt
On Wednesday night at Pratt, Mark Steinmetz delivered what he called a “confused lecture,” because he was “sorting out” a lot of different stuff. This was all to the audience’s benefit as he showed a good number of previously unseen (or rarely seen) photographs, some from his very earliest days of serious picture-making at age 22 in Los Angeles, often in the company of Garry Winogrand. In relation to that time, he said that he considered talent (generally, not just his) to be “working and figuring it (photography) out.”
In addition to those pictures, we saw two distinct bodies of work: one on little league baseball (The Players, soon to be published by Nazraeli), and one on summer camps. Steinmetz mentioned Charles Schultz’s “Peanuts” comic strip as an influence, particularly with reference to the disappointment of losing a baseball game. A friend mentioned that he’d never heard so much laughter in a photography talk, and indeed Steinmetz’s pictures can be quite funny. But it’s that kind of Charlie Brown humor that sweetly masks the ache of just being alive. Or at least that’s what I’ve sort of always taken away from Steinmetz’s books.
Per usual, Steinmetz avoided talk of theory or issues in favor of lovely insights like this: One must “cultivate the ability to receive. Not to be fixed with your ideas. To be open.” For more on Steinmetz and this topic, check out our essay “On cultivation.”
And be sure to take a look at the video of the talk, which was sponsored by the Pratt Photo League. It doesn’t appear to be online yet, but here’s the main page for their terrific lecture series.
Have you ever wanted to collaborate and make shit with some of your bestfriends? I'm lucky enough to say that I am doing just that. Tim Carpenter, Carl Wooley, J Carrier, and I started something called, This is Sausage - a place where ideas are discussed and where art is made. Please keep your eyes peeled for our debut books coming out this spring, but in the meantime, go to www.thisissausage.com to check out the essays and other content we will be providing you from time to time. much love. -nelson #ThisIsSausage #TISBooks