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Twice this week, I was with different groups of "emerging" photographers (if you will) and talk wasn't centered around our chosen medium, but instead around comedy. Actually, discussion wasn't at all about comedy in general, but about just one comedian in particular, Louis CK (born Szekely). It seemed an odd coincidence, and I wondered aloud what this zeitgeist might be about. One photographer offered, "Well, it's like he does with comedy what we do with photography." I thought for a while about this, not having had the time to ask him to elaborate. It was nagging at me, and I finally figured out what he might have meant when, just a couple days later, I happened upon (zeitgeist? or mere serendipity?) Louie's Comedy Central special, "Hilarious". Perhaps we're reacting to  something about taking the mundane, the everyday crap of daily life, and making us notice it, making us realize that something we accept readily is not quite right, or not seen consciously enough. He is unafraid to take something we accept, turn it on its head, and show us how insane we are as a culture, or as partners in a relationship. He takes something everyday, and twists it, transforms it into something else, a statement, comedic poetry. Not unlike photography. It appears unfiltered, but that is part of the trick, the craft. And it's not pure comedy; it's mixed in with representations of his reality that are shocking, sad and depressing, also like good photography can do. One episode, "Country Drive" featured a too-long bit with him singing in the car to The Who. It was more like a piece of video art than a chapter in a tv show. The episode where he sees someone get hit by a car is viscerally shocking and upsetting to a viewer, and it made me uncomfortable, like I have felt when experiencing something tragic myself, or when looking at a great piece of art that is designed to do the same thing.

But why is this worth a blog post here? I remembered hearing that the comedian happens to be a photography enthusiast, and that he was sporting a Leica a couple of episodes ago on his FX show, "Louie". If you dig deeply into his website, you will even find a how-to post by him, touting prime lenses and explaining the pluses in shooting with manual equipment, analog, even. He doesn't say anything a profgessional photographer doesn't know, but he's nto speaking to us, but to the masses - the hordes of iPhone-photographers who couldn't calculate an f-stop from scratch to save their lives.  Ironically, the piece is from a 2-year old post from when he actually did a USO tour in Afghanistan, the trip that is recreated in the recent episode. The Leica he is carrying is no prop, but a bit of verisimilitude, actually. Read it here: http://www.louisck.net/2009/03/uso-tour-weblog-kuwait-iraq-af.html To see one of his bits about the failures of our society to appreciate the wonders of our contemporary world, known as "Everything's Amazing and Nobody's Happy": http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8r1CZTLk-Gk

I wonder which photographers he likes the best? A complicated, game-player with a wry sense of humor and sharp criticism, like Lee Friedlander or Garry Winogrand? A piercing portraitist, like Diane Arbus, whose subjects held a mirror to her own, complicated being? I'd say those are three pretty good guesses.

I came across a great new zine this week by the Dutch artist Erik van der Weijde while shopping around Dashwood Books.  Parking Lot. is a brilliant reproach on banality.  There is hardly anything more pedestrian than a parked car, let alone thirty-two of them, but van der Weijde's pictures are physical.  You can feel him leaning on and reaching over the hoods, peering, as his wide-angle lens engulfs the interiors and their surrounding lots.  The book has a strong and playful cadence, which is set up by its vertical orientation.  Seriality is abated by idiosyncrasy.  The perspectives are restless, and the occasional obstructions - a layer of snow covering the windshield, a sun reflector left in place overnight, a half-shut garage door - work to animate these idyll machines.  Every book I have seen by Van der Weijde is impeccably designed and produced; Parking Lot. is no exception.  It is bound with thin thread, and the high-contrast black and white images read and turn beautifully on the warm newsprint.       

For more info and other works by Erik van der Weijde visit: erikvanderweijde.com and 478ZINE

Last week I attended the panel discussion at Duke University, Artistic and Visual Responses to 9/11, with photographer Jonathan Hyman, artist and curator Pedro Lasch, and Professor of Visual Studies Gennifer Weisenberg. It was a refreshing reminder that in these momentous times (and throughout history) when our collective identity is in upheaval, artists take on a critical role in the community by doing what they do best—interpret, provoke, express, reflect. (The masterful Howard Zinn touches on this role of the artist in his book, Artists in Times of War).

The panel was held in conjunction with the exhibition Flesh and Metal, Bodies and Buildings, by photographer Jonathan Hyman and curated by Pedro Lasch. The photographs illustrate the "various ways Americans used signs and symbols to publicly grieve in the weeks and months following 9/11," and provoke an interesting exploration on the intersection of art and the vernacular, the spontaneous and the formalized, visual language and the collective identity.

Photographs by Jonathan Hyman

I remember everything about that day. This is unusual, because I usually have a terrible memory for bad things, negative childhood events. But I wasn't  a child ten years ago. I remember the phone call, the climing up onto our rooftop, the wondering why no one else was doing the same yet, instead staying safe inside their apartments. I remember the silence, and the sirens, the cargo shorts and crummy t-shirt I pulled on. Everyone talks about how beautiful and clear and sunny the day was; I remember that vividly, too. I remember distinctly the way the second tower fell, stright down, but tipped at a slight angle, and being shcoked, and unable to comprehend what I just saw. "A lot of people just died right there," Ben said. I remember looking at him, incredulously, and said, "Really?"

Another thing people talk about is that smell. The fire, the smoke. They say it is the same smell as an electrical fire. But different. I will never forget that. That smell is still in the ash I collected downtown and stowed in a Fuji NPH Pro-pack box; it was the only container I had in my bag. I remember entrusting my 120 film to the corner 1-hour-photo shop. I remember us taking the train into the city from Brooklyn later that day, the passengers sparse and silent. We wanted to get closer to what had happened, emotionally and physically, not further away. I can picture walking down Broadway to the border and running into an old friend. Jesus, he cut his long, long hair and is now a cop guarding the line. He looked dazed and distant, said his father had died the other day. We walked back up Broadway and got a slice of pizza at that crummy pizza joint on Broadway near NYU. I felt so guilty even doing that, knowing there were thousands who would never eat again. But we had to eat something. Then we passed Haagen Dazs - no, I recall feeling like that would not be the right thing at all to do. That night there were news reports of bomb threats at the Empire State Building, and I felt like the city was under seige. I remember the fear, and the confusion, and the not knowing. I looked out my window, and if you were in the exact right spot, you could see the Empire State peeking up through layers of rowhomes and buildings. I stared at it, as if I could keep it standing.

I remember, in the days and nights after, the dreams of many, many people, the nightmares, the imaginings of people's voices and faces, and the vision of many people walking together somewhere. When I would start to drift off, I would see strangers. Who were they? There was a man with a hot dog cart who I "saw", and conversations I thought I heard, but then they'd slip away. I don't believe in ghosts, but it felt like there were many people passing through, traveling somewhere. 

Then in the days and weeks after, there were the homemade flyers all over town, with all the faces and names of the lost. The city became another place, with a new geography. Transformed. Moving through it, walking block by block, it all just seemed different now. And there was that weekend soon after, when we had to go to a pre-planned family weekend in Vermont. The last place we wanted to be was anywhere outside of our city. I felt a magnet pulling me back. The deal was sealed in the B, when the proprietor confidently, insensitively said to us,  "Well, I never liked those buildings anyway." I was in shock. Anger and shock. I really should publish the name of the inn, so no one ever stays there again, but I will resist.

My story is probably like those of millions of other New Yorkers who were the lucky ones. Lucky to be alive, unharmed, and to have mundane memories of that day, and to not have great personal loss. So many of us felt so guilty about that. Today, we remember those who were lost in our great cities. Following is a list of exhibtions, screenings and collections (online or otherwise) that you can visit to do so, starting with an incredible message of hope and human triumph:

-There is a screening of Man On Wire, an amazing, moving documentary film about tightrope-walker Philippe Petit’s 45-minute walk between the Two Towers in 1974 at the Museum of the Moving Image

-The National September 11th Museum and Memorial at the WTC site downtown, which is just opening completely to the public now: http://www.911memorial.org/

-A slide show of the relics of 9/11, the things we saved, at the NYTimes: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/09/08/us/sept-11-reckoning/relics.html

-Also at the NYTimes, a collection of the audio from the FAA's reactions to what wasunbelievabley unfolding: http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2011/09/08/nyregion/911-tapes.html

-In the actual office building of the Times, in the lobby, is a show of the photographs which appeared in the newspaper and Sunday Magazine: http://www.nytgalleryofreflection.com/index.html#exhibit

-A show at the Yale Art Gallery in New Haven, CT, which focuses on artists' personal responses to the tragedy: http://www.yaledailynews.com/news/2011/sep/08/curating-911/

Uma Historia de Violencia/A History of Violence, an exhibition of photographs by Portuguese photographer Martim Ramos is currently on view at KGaleria in Lisbon, Portugal. 

The project is Ramos' exploration of the "level of violence in our lives that goes unnoticed." In most of the photographs violence is represented by the purposeful and generally destructive modification of a physical image, as embodied by a red censorship bar, or scribbles over faces. In viewing the photographs, we simultaneously see the image before us and, in our mind's eye, the original (or in the case of the man with the black eye, we want to see his face unmarred). Ramos uses this tension between what is and what should have been to probe our feelings towards violence and trauma—fascination? aversion? nostalgia? What is it about a photograph's history that reflects our own violent tendencies?

Ramos is a member of [kameraphoto], a photography collective based in Lisbon, Portugal. The thirteen members of [kameraphoto] exhibit work in solo and group shows at the KGaleria gallery in Lisbon, contribute to collective projects (the most recent and ambitious being A Diary of a Republic, a photographic survey of Portuguese life), and conduct workshops. [kameraphoto] also offers printing services and a small photobook store (I had my eye on this little gem which combines the photographs of Sandra Rocha and the poetry of Lisbon's beloved poet Pessoa).

All photographs courtesy the artist