ALEX PRAGER: PHOTOGRAPHER

I hope you're looking at this on a desktop because these photos won't look right if they're reproduced small. Most are by Alex Prager, one of the best contemporary photographers. That's my opinion, anyway. See if you agree.

The beach picture at the very top used models and was taken on a soundstage. Prager spares no expense to get the photos she wants. I read that she used 150 models for one of her shoots. 

Maybe she can afford to do that because her pictures are reproduced large and are sold alongside paintings in fine art galleries. 

Lots of people regard these pictures as paintings.

You can see that Prager was influenced by mid-century Hollywood films. This looks like a scene from "Marnie."

Finding the right model can make a big difference.

A car sinks in Prager's water and the event seems to have great significance. Seeing this makes me aware that my own life will be snuffed out and forgotten just like the car. It's hard to reconcile how important my own life is to me and how little it seems to matter to a vast and indifferent universe.

Veeeeery nice!

You can see a Hopper inluence. Or maybe someone like George Tooker, the guy who paints bleak pictures of subway crowds.

I'm not normally a fan of Bleak Minimalism (my term for it) but I'll make an exception for Prager.

Prager is said to have been influenced by photographer William Eggleston. That's his "Red Ceiling" photo above. Eggleston achieved highly saturated color by printing with a die transfer process.

Above, another Eggleston. His Kodachrome pictures had a great look but the ones I've seen were all taken outdoors. He should have moved inside. You need to be able to control the light to do this kind of thing right.

THE NATIONAL LAMPOON VS. MAD MAGAZINE

Until I saw a documentary on the subject at Steve's, it never occurred to me to compare the National Lampoon to Mad Magazine. After all, the two magazines were aimed at different audiences: Mad to high school kids and the Lampoon to college students and twenty-somethings. I liked both for different reasons, though Mad had already slipped into a rut by the time the Lampoon came out.

Later on, the Lampoon got in a rut as well but that didn't stop them from declaring war on Mad. Yes, war! They said Mad wasn't funny!

Well, I guess it wasn't by the time the Lampoon skewered them.

Yikes! NL's parody of Mad (above) was scathing. It drew blood! The Mad people must have had a bad day when they read it.

Mad took the criticism (above) to heart, however and, though it took years, eventually Mad adopted the Lampoon's adult, drug culture, dead baby joke, Republicans-Are-Mentally-Defective stance.

The problem was, that approach was obsolete by the time Mad adapted it.  Generation Y and the Millennials weren't averse to radical politics but they preferred to wrap it in a different kind of comedy.  

Mad lost its way. 

Since I'm a fan of the old Harvey Kurtzman Mad, I thought I'd mention a couple of things that magazine did right.

For one thing, Kutrzman's Mad (above) aimed for kids and adults alike. I'm not against cartoons for adults but the fact remains that kids form the core audience for cartooning and probably always will.  Deal them out and you deal out the future of your medium. You create a generational divide.

Also, Kurtzman's Mad put an emphasis on the unique artwork. The Lampoon was a writers magazine that used artists; Mad was an artists magazine that used writers. Too much of the Lampoon art was generic. 

Mad also had some first-rate artists in their best years, artists like Don Martin (above), Wally Wood and the young Jack Davis. The Lampoon had artists too, but they were mostly there to illustrate writers ideas. The writer was the star.

At the risk of stating the obvious, writers and artists see the world differently. If writers had conceived the Mad "Beautiful Girl" cover (above) they would have picked a specific target to make fun of...some female in the news who they thought deserving of ridicule. Mad artists like Basil Wolverton (above), on the other hand, seemed to prefer to make fun of the very idea of beauty. That's what artists do best.

Why that is, why cartoon art works best when addressing the human condition in general, I can't explain. Haw! I can already think of exceptions to what I just said, but for the sake of brevity I'll stick with my point.

SOME ANIMATION DRAWINGS

I just unearthed some of my old doodles and photos from a box in the garage. Some of these pictures are admittedly terrible and were never meant to be seen by anyone, but...what the heck...it's OK to blog about trivial things sometimes, isn't it?

The cat here (above) is even bigger than the dog, which is a mistake, but then again...this isn't a storyboard...it's just a visual way of writing a script. Oops! I spotted a misspelling but hopefully you won't see it.

Here's a REALLY quick doodle from some other cartoon. The dog and the human walking him are going in different directions because I changed my idea in midstream and didn't bother to redraw.

I saved this because it made me realize that there's something surreal about walking in a world where everybody else is walking at the same time. Anyway,
nothing ever came of this because it would have required too much animation.

I don't know why this would interest anyone except my mother, but here's (above) a photo of me at work at Filmation way back in 1980.

Above, the same timid dog we saw in doodle form, a little later in the cartoon. Even squirrels push him around. Once again, this is a fragment of a visual script rather than a storyboard.

I love writing prose but scripts work best when they're drawn out rather than written. There is one drawback to that technique, though. You can unconsciously lose your feel for structure when the story's drawn. That's why it's useful for an artist to outline a story first with words, if only in bullet points.

SCOTT OF THE ANTARTIC

Last Sunday I saw a great documentary at Steve's house: a silent film documenting Scott's heartbreaking 1912 British expedition to the South Pole. 

The ship was the Terra Nova. Bad weather and unusually dense ice cost the expedition an extra 20 days during which significant amounts of coal and oil were lost.  

After landfall base camp #1 was established. The men took movies of themselves playing baseball with snowballs and chasing penguins. 

Land transport would be by dogsled, backed up by hardy Siberian ponies. Amundsen, a competing polar explorer, preferred to use dogs exclusively....a good choice, as it turned out.

The team had to wait for the weather to break before pushing inland.

Wilson, the expedition's artist, doctor, and zoologist, did this picture (above) of the setting sun.

A man was fell in a hole and was lost. Other holes and crevices devoured horses and dogs.

As they neared the Pole a second base camp was established and four men volunteered for the final push. There were no more dogs, They had to make it on foot, using nothing but their own strength to pull the sled. The weather turned hellish and every inch had to be fought for.

Eventually they made it, only to find Amundsen's Norwegian expedition had been there only a month before. Their disappointment as they gathered for this picture can only be imagined. Their faces are black from frost bite.

Was that when this picture (above) of Scott was taken?

The trip back to base camp was even more grueling than the trip to the Pole had been. A terrible blizzard made further movement impossible and a tent was pitched for the last time only eleven miles away from their target.

Captain Oates, feeling a bad leg made him a liability to the others, left the tent and was never seen again.

Eight months later, when the weather cleared, a party from the base camp found Scott and his remaining comrades dead in their tent. His journal lay beside him. Here's (above, abridged) the end of the final entry:

"Had we lived I should have had a tale to tell of the hardihood, endurance, and courage of my companions which would have stirred the heart of every Englishman. These rough notes and our dead bodies must tell the tale....It seems a pity but I do not think I can write more....For Gods Sake look after our people."

Scott and his men were buried under ice on the site of their tent.

After seeing the Scott film the following day I watched parts of Borman's film, "Excalibur." I was particularly moved by Wagner's funeral music, the image of the Lady of the Lake and of the Valkyries who stood watch over King Arthur's body on his trip to the afterlife.

I recalled the religious language used in adversity by some of Scott's men, and the thought occurred to me that religion is not a weak man's refuge, as Nietzsche believed....... It's the comfort of brave people who attempt very, very hard things.

HILLARY EXPRESSIONS

I'm not a fan of Hillary but she has an expressive face, and I envy her for that.

The last high profile politician like that was Richard Nixon. Boy, he was a photographer's dream. He took some really funny poses.

It didn't seem to hurt with the voters, not for a while anyway.

The problem with having an expressive face is that you have trouble concealing what you're thinking. A dark thought can percolate up to the surface REALLY fast.

Any inconvenience is magnified.

Politicians have to network a lot.

Hillary's developed a networking expression...a look of Satanic delight...

...which often devolves into a glassy stare.

Haw! Maybe someone offscreen passed gas...I'm not sure.

A world class "Who, me?" expression.

Hey, I have that book!