As of today, there are three publicly available chapters excerpted from Where Excuses Go to Die. Two are located here, and the latest, over at The Good Men Project, where I’ve been invited to contribute.
If you’re interested in getting air-dropped right into “Big Forehead” Ernie’s world of interstate Grand Theft Auto, check out:
For those unfamiliar with the Vivian Maier story, it’s a simple one that never changes. Vivian was a professional nanny who, in her off time, wandered around bad neighborhoods and metropolises snapping pictures of just about everyone from derelicts to fashionable women, cops, and lots of kids. Before she died in a Chicago nursing home in 2009, Maier had amassed over 120,000 images of strangers in streets, slums, and shadows. An extremely secretive woman, she never shared her activities, travels abroad, or any of her photos. With anyone. Not in fifty years of practicing street photography.
At the time of her passing, Maier was in possession of none of her work – not a single negative. This is to say, reel after reel of 8 and 16 mm film; personal writings and cassette tapes containing her voice recordings; personal observations on you-name-it; and seven hundred rolls of undeveloped color film. In 2007, it all had been forfeited to a storage company due to unpaid fees, for Vivian had begun this century almost destitute. She was powerless to stop the contents of the unit from being sold to a Chicago auction firm.
To those who knew her, or thought they did (namely, the grown children she’d cared for), she was a recluse, a hoarder, and a peculiar spirit. But to the many who now consider her one of the most prolific and talented street photographers in the history of the medium, she is an ambiguous monolith of isolation, genius, and resolve. Read more
We say, “Change happens” with some resolve. It’s an existential observation, no doubt emanating from the same place that allows us to accept tornado “seasons.” But when did we become a country that assigns blame to the winds of change?
And we have become such a country – my guess is out of fear. With so much of American life shifting historically; with so many institutions, customs, ethnic characteristics, “norms,” and belief-systems being updated (or at least challenged); and with so many fading voices, the reactionary distrust, anger, and gloom is almost palpable in many parts of our “United” States.
People everywhere are looking for someone or something to blame. I’m counting the minutes ‘til some lawyer accuses the Oklahoma sky of negligence. Read more
