I remember a while back discovering and really liking the work of Jeff Bark.  Particularly I remember loving his Woodpecker series.

I hadn’t looked at Jeff’s work in a while when a friend showed me some work by Mert and Marcus.  They do some really great stuff and I liked it right away. Looking through their work we came to their What Lies Beneath fashion story and, feeling like I’d seen it before, I spoke out about how I recognized it and liked it.

Thing is… as we looked through it, something didn’t seem right to me.  I didn’t like it as much as I remembered.  I did some further research and found that I was wrong. The thing is, as it turns out, I had never seen What Lies Beneath, but I had seen Woodpecker.

You see, What Lies Beneath basically is Woodpecker.  And Woodpecker came first.

Here are some visual aids:

Jeff Bark’s Woodpecker:

Mert and Marcus’ What Lies Beneath:

I wanted to do this post to open the discussion on what has gone on here.  I’m curious to hear peoples thoughts on this sort of appropriation.  Some people seem to think it’s just fine, happens all the time, etc.  Others are outraged, claiming Bark should sue.  I personally think Bark’s work is superior.

Where do you guys stand?

Things to consider:

Bark created this work years ago as fine art, producing and funding it all himself.  Mert and Marcus, I’m assuming here, got paid plenty well for their 46 page fashion story.  Bark himself has a fashion career.  The photo editor for Love magazine that hired Mert and Marcus had hired Bark in her past, so was obviously aware of Bark’s work.  Also, this isn’t the first time Mert and Marcus have been in the hot seat for appropriating the work of other photographers.

Also, I posted the images from What Lies Beneath with the Art Partner watermark on purpose.  Irony anyone?

Here’s a quick stop in to share a recent portrait session.  This is Karina.  She is a friend and a barnstormer.

We shot near my houseboat in the Richardson Bay when the tide was out.  When the tide’s out it leaves tide pools, mudponds and lots of mysterious underlife.  Karina was brave enough to venture into it.  Here are some shots from the day.

In anticipation of the 5th season of Mad Men I’m sharing with you my favorite monologue.

Some people think Pete Campbell is a psychopath, but I don’t think so.

(click the image, sorry for the ads)

Charlotte Gainsbourg “Heaven Can Wait” from Beck Hansen on Vimeo.

My good old buddy Megan Fenton production designed this video – hat’s off!  I really enjoyed it, both the video and the song.  Great stuff, making me want more and more to look into making short videos, music videos, etc.  Such a great medium.

In other Char-Gain news, have you guys seen Antichrist?

EAMES: The Architect and The Painter

I’m going to start this off and say I am in no way an expert on the subject of chairs, but rather a fan.  This is in no way a full study of chairs, not even close.  This is just a fly-by attempt to take a moment and appreciate these wonderful companions that support us throughout or lifetime.

I’ve always loved chairs.  They’re easy to love.  When I’m tired and sick of standing I love to sit in them.  I’ve been doing this for years and the formula has never disappointed.

Once, after a long night of standing in a music venue, a friend of mine sat in a chair and exclaimed the observational statement, “Aaah… sitting.”  A nearby stranger, also sitting, interjected, “Nothing like it.”, to which my friend responded, “What about laying down?”, which seemed to stump the stranger and put an end to their dialogue.  The two modes of being, sitting and laying down, though seemingly similar, can often be as different as the furniture that is designed to accommodate the respective actions.

John Kapel elaborates on the subject as quoted from the LACMA blog:

According to Kapel, a chair is a showpiece, one that is often positioned in a living room such that it can be appreciated from many different angles – unlike, say, a sofa, which typically sits against a wall. He also explained the complex geometry of a chair, its assortment of lines and angles that invite design innovation. And he made the point that, unlike, say, a table, a chair cradles the human body, and reflects our physicality.

John Kapel: California Design

Though I welcome all chairs I’ve become particularly fond of chairs from the Mid Century Modern, Danish Modern and Shaker varietals.  Here’s some awesome examples of great chairs by these designers: Hans Wegner, Harry Bertoia, Charles Eames, and Sam Maloof.

If you were wondering what to get me for my birthday, it’s the Eames’ Herman Miller Lounge Chair in black leather, a wool knit sweater, and a pipe.

I’ll also take the Seville chair and ottoman if you’ve got a little cash left over.  Thanks!

78 versions of Bertoia, found in Cuba

I was fortunate enough in December to be commissioned to create two images for Report On Business Magazine out of Toronto.  The article is about investing and how our human instincts can sometimes lead us to make poor decisions.

In this first image our businessman ties himself down to his investments even though there’s an oncoming storm in the background. Much like Odysseus ties himself to the mast of his ship as they sail past the sirens our businessman has tied himself up to prevent himself from panicking and running away when he’s in the thick of the storm.

In the second image we see our businessman beat and torn but still alive and still holding on to his investments.

The moral?  Don’t sell your stocks just because it’s looking bad out there!    Oh, and go ahead and apply this symbolism to anything: friendship, relationships, careers, etc.

Lindsay Paige is a former bandmate of mine and Justin Fantl’s (see Or, the Whale for further reading) and when she asked if I could help her out with some images for her new musical project of course I was happy to oblige.  Around that time I had been spending a lot of time up in West Marin I had noticed a moss and seaweed covered swing dangling off a tree into the water of Tomales Bay.  I knew the two would serve well together.

As before, a big thanks to Key Dude and former Or, the Whaler Jesse Semler.

The Keyhole

Hope Portraits

Hope

Grief

Dusk

Dawn

So the story goes like this:  E.J. Bellocq was born in 1873 and died in 1949.  When the people who clean up after dead people were cleaning up his place they found 89 glass plate negatives of portraits of prostitutes from the sweet-old-anything-goes red light district of New Orleans called Storyville all taken around 1912.  Lee Friedlander salvaged the work, printed it through the traditional processes of the time and promoted it.  No one really knows much about E.J. Bellocq and luckily for us these amazing portraits were preserved.  Perhaps one’s life purpose is unclear until 45 years after you die people find your prostitute photos.  Could happen to any of us!    Enjoy.

In all earnestness I completely love these photographs as a voyeuristic view into an otherwise unseen world.  There are books of the work and the Lee Friedlander prints can be seen at the Fraenkel Gallery in S.F. The above text was basically paraphrased from their site, so thanks!

The already much talked about ’Unhate” campaign from Italian clothes makers United Colors of Benetton has turned into (well what would you expect?) a big mess, but even though/and because they’ve had to retract some of their ads they are getting plenty of press from these images.

Unless you live under a rock or don’t have the internet (how are you here?) or just don’t pay attention to anything at all then you’ve probably already seen these/heard about these but I wanted to repost them on the BH for two reasons: 1) just in case you hadn’t seen them and 2) because I wanted to look at these images not through the lens of “Benetton-does-it-again-with-advertising-scandal” or “look-at-these-moving-images-as-comments-on-the-state-of-the-world” but rather “Look how awesome Photoshop is!”.

Seriously though – I was really excited to see well executed conceptual image making with photography and photoshop at the heart of such a huge world debate.  Huzzah! to Benetton for coming up with this ad, I really do think it’s moving, challenging and a champion of peace.  That being said I also wanted to take a second and give a little appreciation for the power of the photoshopped image.

On a personal level –  though my work is very different than this campaign I do feel a connection to these images if for no other reason than the fact that I’m moved by images I know to be untrue and/or falsified – something I hope for from viewers of my work.

I’ve included the images below – they’ve gotten tons of press and were completely successful in all terms of what you’d want from an advertising campaign.  The conceptual strength and impact of the images will probably be remembered for quite a while, but I just wanted to make sure that *Photoshop got at least one place where it can walk away with it’s due credit.

*When I say “Photoshop” I’m using it both as a noun for the software and as a verb for the artistic medium, as in ‘to Photoshop something”.