Category: NFN

Believe me, Berlin Mitte (the former East), my home for a long time, is the place of unfashionable fashion – of people who really believe it: That fashion is made on the street, by the young crowd that reinvents itself every day. Perhaps London is a little like that. But right now, these kids run around Berlin. And of course they are artists, what else? So the camera is at hand, and the genuinely cool, fresh, and amusing quasi-fashion shots end up in low-key, underground magazines. All of Berlin, of course, is ‘underground’. So everyone reads it, and there is a real reality for the fashion world outside of the established magazines such as Vogue or “W”.

The kids that I have in mind do not inhabit the world of Vogue, not at all. So there is, in fact, no reality to the ‘real world’ of the big fashion magazines. But they have quite as keen a sense for what looks cool as the most sophisticated fashion editor. Maybe more so. Would they show their friends, who populate their photos, in genuinely unbecoming ways? Do they think that they can make fashion without *devoting their life* to inventing these styles? No!

I’m not sure what they would have to say about some adult from the established world of photography doing a watered down version (by not using professional models, make-up, etc.) of what they do on an extremely sophisticated visual level. I guess they would wonder why these adults think that inventing anti-fashion can be done in a week. Rather condescending, they might think. And a little sad, that even the tiniest slice of momentary fame seems to make anyone forget the eternal truth that *whatever you want to do well is going to be difficult*!

So, here’s my little contribution to this week’s photo-debate: Why not have a little respect for those who actually are masters in anti-fashion photography? Why side with the world of Vogue, or “W”, and act like they don’t exist (so that one’s own non-Vogueish photos are, presumably, oh so different)?

I’ve long been fascinated by the dynamics of job interviews, first in the miserable position of the applicant, and then in the, as it turned out, equally miserable position of ‘decision-maker’.

I have this theory that, in any such interview, things are clear after about three minutes. At that point, the applicant should know whether she or he will ever get this job (most likely, ‘no’, because the interviewer is a jerk, and perhaps ‘yes’, because he is another kind of jerk, the kind which falls for some of one’s apparently attractive attributes). Simultaneously, the attentive interviewer knows what the ‘this-is-not-going-away’ type of problem of the candidate is going to be, if she or he gets the job. Inevitably, there is some tiny premonition. And it seems like it is an eternal law that, no matter how tiny the premonition, the actual realization of the problem is going to be rather manifest (as in: late for work *every* single day, or: relentlessly flirtatious, or: pathologically undecided, etc.).

Therefore, minute # 4 and following are basically a waste of time.

Hence I sometimes wonder if a carefully crafted online questionnaire could be of great use to make the process more efficient. That way one could just forget about the microscopic analysis of the polished cv and the euphemistic letters of recommendation. One would simply know beforehand if setting up an interview is worth it. The questionnaire for example could start like this:

“Question 1: Your second grade teacher is being interviewed by CNN on your untimely death. Not all circumstances are clear yet, but you had started a cult that in the end had close to a 1000 members. Until one day, ordered by you, they all killed themselves in an act of “revolutionary suicide” by drinking grape Flavor Aid mixed with cyanide and Valium, with you being among the slain.

What will your second grade teacher say?”

I asked a friend what he thought of this, implying that if *my* school teachers were asked this kind of question, they’d probably just say: “We always knew”. Of course, to pass my own test, I’d have to come up with something more imaginative. Or maybe not. As the friend cleverly pointed out, in the real interviews on CNN the answer almost always is: “We cannot understand it! He always was such a nice, calm and polite guy…”. Either way, a dozen more questions along those lines, and one would have a telling profile (and, incidentally, the questionnaire would also reveal a thing or two about the one who came up with it in the first place…).

Strange things are going to happen to you if you read too many art blogs. When I woke up this morning, this is what I remembered from a dream I had:

I am walking down the Westside of Manhattan. Or was it the Potsdamer Platz? Everybody in sight has a beard and is hunched behind his large format camera, importantly taking very innovative pictures of empty parking lots, gymnasiums and other predominantly drab scenery. There are also a few female photographers, and they mostly take pictures of themselves, or of homeless people (who in turn take pictures of them), or their girlfriends, or what seem to be their relatives. I go to the Supermarket to buy some water, but the cashier is occupied with adjusting her camera and photographing price tags. Walking home, the doormen (behind their cameras) ignore me. I read up on some blogs, and all the people I just saw have already posted their images. Others have not posted images, but their views on politics, the arts, their dogs, digestion… just about everything, and always extremely insightful. There is also some poetry. The only blogs that are not by photographers are by gallery owners, easily to be recognized by being even more insightful. Suddenly I feel terrified: Is there a world outside this? Who is paying taxes? Who is making laws, who executes them? Who is doing the editing? Who can count to five on his own, without making a poem out of it (or a painting)? That’s when I woke up, stumbling to my computer…

Speaking of poems, here’s one for the suffering artist (by Charles Bukowski, I’m sure he wouldn’t mind):

”
something

I’m out of matches.
the springs in my couch
are broken.
they stole my footlocker.
they stole my oil painting of
two pink eyes.
my car broke down.
eels climb my bathroom walls.
my love is broken.
but the stockmarket went up
today.

”