Michelle, Alexis and Susan

Congrats to Rich being featured on Michelle 7 this month, for his photographs of the lovely Alexis on the pouffe cushion. Yes, yes I know folks have mixed opinions about Michelle 7 (and thank you Mr S for your frank and honest opinion…don’t hold back now, ya hear?! Better out than in, as they say) but I’m so darn proud of Rich when he’s featured anywhere. Michelle 7 is no exception.

On a slightly less contentious note, I’m delighted to say I’ve finally finished reading Susan Sontag’s On Photography.

"Heavy" doesn't remotely begin to describe it. If Art and Fear was the photographic equivalent of Jonathan Livingston Seagull (jump off a cliff and you'll find your inner artist) then On Photography is more like a compacted version of Introduction to Metaphysics (the cliff is irrelevant -"art is nothing more or less than various modes of stylized, dehumanized representation.") This book was so darned difficult that I read it three times just to make sure I understood it, dictionary clutched in my hot little paw because some of the words were beyond the comprehension of my pea-sized brain. In fact some of the words were beyond the Oxford English Dictionary too, so I didn’t feel quite such an idiot, and I could only glean their obscure arty meaning by sending my ten year old son on a laborious language hunt in the bowels of several internet dictionaries (it’s good for him.)

Rich says I’ve been hell to live with whilst I’ve been reading Sontag.
“God, you’re not reading that bloody book again are you?” has become an oft used phrase in our house over the last few months.

Truth be told, it really is a brilliant book. If you read it (and you should), it will expand your mind (mine was slightly reluctant to expand though…probably due to it recently being basted in garlic butter and deep-fried) and it will turn the way you think about photography on its head. It is a masterpiece…Susan wrote every single day, eight hours a day for five long years, in order to finish it. She wrote, she re-wrote and she re-wrote again. The result is a tour de force. No wonder she’s heralded as one of the greatest American intellectual thinkers of all time. The only problem is that our dear late Sue was not a happy lady. I don’t think the words “happy,” “fun” or “joy” were mentioned in that book, not once, so in my (admittedly very simple) opinion, she has excluded a consideration of one of the most fundamental reasons why people photograph: Because it makes them happy.

Anyway, 'nuff said about Susan. I feel like a dried out shrivelled old husk after reading that book three times (or maybe I’ve been looking in the mirror too much.) I have many, many more photography books to read, but alas I’m philosophied-out, so I’m following the recommendation of a good friend, getting a life and reading Erma Bombeck instead.

I predict less grumpy photographic rants and more insane rambling for a while. Who wants to be lucid anyway? As our dear Sue said, "Most people in this society who aren't actively mad are, at best, reformed or potential lunatics."

Quite.

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Alexis and the Pouffee Cushion