Category: scott sforza, wh producer

On the eve of the first presidential debate, I gank this photo, taken in March 1988:

The Claes Oldenburg sculpture, Crusoe Umbrella, on Nollen Plaza in Des Moines, Iowa, is surrounded by satellite dishes and equipment trucks beaming live video from the Iowa caucuses earlier this year. The demand for satellite video technology has gone far beyond television. (MUST CREDIT: Los Angeles Times Photo by Larry Davis)

You can buy this photo, in fact, for like $28. [ebay]

Maurice Berger has a fascinating post on the NY Times Lens blog about Malcolm X’s sophisticated use of the media, particularly photography, and particularly the antagonistic white/mainstream media, to reach out to potential black constituents.
Exhibit 1–actually and unfortunately, it’s the only photo in the post–is Robert Flora’s 1963 photo for UPI, the caption for which:

Malcolm X, the nation’s number two black Muslim leader, reads a story about the Muslims in a national magazine as he sits in court with other Muslims awaiting verdict of an all-white jury deliberating the face of 14 Muslims accused of criminal assault against Los Angeles police officers.

manages to mention Muslims four times in once sentence. Impressive.
As Berger notes,

The men in the picture are focused on articles about the Nation of Islam. The Life magazine story that engrosses Malcolm, for example, was typical of the derisive coverage of the Black Muslims in the mainstream press: “The White Devil’s Day Is Almost Over: Black Muslim’s Cry Grows Louder,” screams its headline.

It only proves Berger’s astute point to point it out, but Malcolm X is anything but engrossed; he’s holding the magazine up for the photographer. Even if he were able to read at that angle–he seems to actually be looking at the paper in the hands of the man to his left–a quick search of the actual LIFE Magazine article shows there is nothing to read. The other half of the spread is a full-page shot of Elijah Muhammad, by Gordon Parks. [The cover line for the feature reads, “A Negro Photographer Shoots From The Inside – THE BLACK MUSLIMS.”]

Which, it turns out the man to Malcolm’s right is also reading. Berger doesn’t mention the headline on the paper the guy behind is very much not reading: “Seven Unarmed Negroes Shot in Cold Blood by Los Angeles Police.”
Which turns out to be Muhammad Speaks, the NOI’s newspaper. The first Google result for it appears, perfectly, in Gordon Parks’ LIFE feature. Parks was following Malcolm at the trial. Which only underscores the newspaper’s–and eventually, the magazine’s–function as a prop, intended not [necessarily, nor not solely] for the jury, but for the photographers covering the trial.

If there’s any doubt of the paper’s message-within-a-photo, here are other shots by Parks, of Malcolm X selling the paper,

and holding it up at a Black Muslim speech in Harlem. [images via Gordon Parks Foundation]
I don’t know why it has literally never occurred to me, but Berger’s account of the vehemence and derision Malcolm X received from the white establishment, and the extraordinary calculation and discipline with which Malcolm carried and presented himself, and his unfailingly calm, cool, self-assured and buttoned-down image, really jumps out at me now. Especially when it’s coupled with the terms Muslims and Black Muslims, which get repeated in the press of the day with such divisive, alienating force.
As if that was the absolute worst, scariest thing you could call someone. In 1963. In 2012, meanwhile, it’s settled into a niche birther conspiracy.

Malcolm X as Visual Strategist [nyt lens blog]

It’s not like this hasn’t happened before. I remember one time, in the late 1990s, at the Stedelijk, being transfixed by a series of videos Gabriel Orozco had made. I was already very interested in his work for a while, but there was something about those videos.
Orozco had basically edited them in-camera while walking around New York and Amsterdam, and they had this wonderful, stream-of-perception-like quality, almost as close as you could get, it seemed, to the artist’s own visual experience.
It basically changed the way I see. He was making off-hand, formal connections between things. There were a lot of circles, for example. Cups, bicycle tires, stickers on windows, bar coasters, bubbles. And once the connection had been made, it became impossible not to think of Orozco every time I saw circles in the world. There was much in Gabriel’s early work that was similarly, quietly powerful in the way it awoke you [me] to nuances of seeing and understanding the world around you [me].
Which is not quite the point here, except that just as with Orozco and his circles, it’s now basically impossible for me to see a blur and not think of Gerhard Richter. And not wonder, for example, how awesome it might be as a painting.¹
Like–oh, I’ll just pick any random thing–a still from the damning video of Mitt Romney speaking unguarded Republican truthiness at a private fundraiser in Florida, which was shot and disseminated anonymously for weeks before Mother Jones picked it up today. And attempted to protect the video’s source–by blurring the footage. Except for Romney himself, whose face is unblurred, and the Corinthian capital behind him. Hey look, a circle.
¹ The answer, of course, is it’d look awesome. Just look at those colors. The different segments of the video have different blurs, too. I think this one’s especially velvety. Chinese Paint Mill certainly has their work cut out for them.

Ooh, the party conventions are coming, Sforzian Fashion Week, and the NYTimes’ advance team is reporting on the GOP advance team whose once-every-four-years job is to make the Republican candidate for president come across as a man of the people on TV. Here’s Jeremy Peters:

The campaign aides are determined to overcome perceptions that Mr. Romney is stiff, aloof and distant. So they have built one of the most intricate set pieces ever designed for a convention — a $2.5 million Frank Lloyd Wright-inspired theatrical stage. From its dark-wood finish to the brightly glowing high-resolution screens in the rafters that look like skylights, every aspect of the stage has been designed to convey warmth, approachability and openness.

Yes. OK.

This time, Samantha Stark reports in the Times video, the stage is now fronted by open, non-hierarchical stairs reaching down into the crowd. Which, yeah no, ask McCain, Bush, and Dole about that convention convention.

What is actually different is that the 13-screen video wall is now all asymmetrical and casual-like, with all the screens “framed in dark wood to give the feeling of looking into someone’s living room.”

Why, it’s practically a Sforzian frame cluster, a slightly enlarged version of the one the Romneys have on the grand piano at Lake Winni.

If you can see any FLW, please let me know, because all I can see in Edward Linsmier’s sexy still and video images is Herbert Bayer’s all-encompassing field of vision [above]. Maybe a Bauhaus reference is too heady [or foreign] for Romneyvolken to cop to. Or maybe they’re wary of acknowledging the importance of the fundamentally subjective viewing experience they’re trying to manipulate.

Except, oh wait, that’s the whole point of the show, the event, and the article: letting us know how it’ll be just you and me, America, TV-hangin’ living room to living room with our bestest, richest friends.

More than hang, though, Linsmier’s images of the set’s big, test-pattern-y bands of glowing color, stacked against each other like that, with silhouettes of roadies all around, make me want to paint. Crank out a whole $#)%ing frame cluster of to-scale paintings.

Stephen Prina meeting Olafur Eliasson at Liz Deschenes’ place, with a cameo by Jeremy Blake.

Romney Campaign works feverishly to project relaxed image [nyt]

This is awesome. Someone flew a banner over a Paul Ryan event in Lakewood, Colorado, carrying a @PaulRyanGosling-esque quote, “Hey Girl, Choose me, lose choice.” And though he didn’t know what it was, CNBC reporter @EamonJavers tweeted a photo of it.
We’re all Scott Sforzas now.
Banner Above Paul Ryan-Led Event: ‘Hey Girl, Choose Me, Lose Choice–P. Ryan’ [theatlantic via @alexismadrigal]