Lake View

Larry Wolf, Lake View (2024)

Watercolor from a Zine

Larry Wolf, Rough Cut 1977/2024 Watercolor (2024)

Larry Wolf, Rough Cut 1977/2024, full sheet unfolded (2024)

Larry Wolf, Rough Cut 1977/2024, Risograph Mini-Zine (2024)

Bimbox Pop Up

Pop Up - Bimbox, Issue #2, Summer 1990

Bimbox, Issue #2, Summer 1990

Bimbox, Issue #2, Summer 1990

Bimbox, Issue #2, Summer 1990

Lesbian and Gay publications which are available only by purchase lose vision. They may be born of good intent and theory, but as cashflow increases, their lust for change turns into lust for profits. They become consumed in a wanton frenzy of narcissism, glamour, and greed. They quickly transform into the sort of institution they were against in the first place, thereby sabotaging the Revolution and ultimately doing more harm than good.

Magazines like The Advocate and Out/Look have but one mandate: to systematically render the entire international Lesbian and Gay population brain-dead. And sadly, their evil task has been remarkably successful, with but a few pockets of clone-immune individuals scattered across the planet. Only a handful of small "alternative" publications stand in the way of the complete labotomization of our culture. BIMBOX is one of those publications.

The question remains however, who? WHO PAYS FOR BIMBOX? The answer, my friend, is simple. The truth is, you have already paid for BIMBOX. We have all paid for it - dearly. We have paid for it in blood and we have paid for it in tears. Unrelenting pain is our credit limit, and we are cursed with interminable overdraft protection. We have wept and we have suffered and we have been scarred - scarred for life. We have been wounded, injured, and maimed, and we have died. We have all literally died of boredom. Oh yes, we have paid. The horrible, undeniable truth of the matter is: BIMBOX is paid for paid in full.

Bimbox, Issue #2, Summer 1990

With thanks to Gerber/Hart Library and Archive

Ginkgo

Larry Wolf - Ginkgo (2024)

What He Sees

Peter Nadas - Self Portrait with Rolleiflex (1963)

... not even photographers and personalities matter, only the pictures. / But then I want to know who I am among all these pictures. As though I had no choice but find the topographical sketch of my personality in others.

Peter Nadas in Kindred Spirits - Zielsverwant - Hungarian Photographers 1914 - 2003 (2003)

I was previously interested not in the moment of self-knowledge, not in my individuality, not in the peculiarity of my way of looking at things, but rather in the peculiarity that appears in the common, the individual formed in the perspective of the collective levels of consciousness. The individual version that appears in the monotony of the crowd. / Not the one-time thing, but the one-time thing that repeats and recurs, which the other person immediately recognizes as something of their own.

...

Their attention was not focused on objects, things and events, not on cameras, equipment or development techniques, but on images of pure intuition, which always wrote the light in their place or caused it to be written through them. 

...

… he prefers to see two-dimensional images and retains the narcissism later described by Ovid and Freud for a long time. Prefers to invent a bunch of things over time, looking at murals, wallpapers, photos, films and screens, just so his eyes don't have to constantly see three dimensions. For him, the two-dimensional images are not as painful and dramatic as spatial reality, such as the changeability of light and perspective over time.

... 

Painting, graphics and photography, just like pure observation, create a two-dimensional image of a multi-dimensional world. / The collective memory of humanity is based on these unmistakable, incorruptible images, the two-dimensional images of pure observation. / Not so with the dream image, which is inaccessible to others, but opens up the third dimension again in your very personal consciousness. Not accessible to reality, but to fantasy and illusion, which in turn stand outside the rules and autocracy of conventional vision. / But now he had suddenly or finally understood the reality of the world as an illusion. Aha, he said to himself, I must have known that the three dimensions were only the illusion of reality, but now I understand it too. I felt it. For now he understood how, driven by one and the same curiosity, he had always wanted to see behind everything.

Peter Nadas in Illuminating Details; An old photographer's farewell to analogue photography

 in Shadow Story ; Light History: Photographs (2021)
with thanks to the Ryerson and Burnham Libraries at the Art Institute Chicago

Twin Lens Cropped

Larry Wolf, Twin Lens Cropped (2024)

Larry Wolf, Twin Lens Cropped (2024)

Larry Wolf, Twin Lens Cropped (2024)

Larry Wolf, Twin Lens Cropped (2024)

Larry Wolf, Twin Lens Cropped (2024)

Arthur Rimbaud at 17 and 170

Larry Wolf, Two Portraits of Arthur Rimbaud at 17 by Etienne Carjat 1871
as seen through the pages in Wyatt Mason Rimbaud Complete 2002 (2024)

Patti Smith reminded me that yesterday, 20 October (1854), was Arthur Rimbaud's birthday. She recited a poem, I think her own translation, transcribed by me, with apologies for any errors.

My Bohemia

Fists in torn pockets, I departed.

My overcoat grew ideal too. 

I walked your night, oh muse,

And dreamed, oh what glorious love.

My only trousers had a hole.

Little Tom Thumb,

I dropped my dreaming rhymes,

My lodging was the great Bear Inn.

And in the sky my stars were rustling.

I listened seated by the road 

In soft September 

Where the dew was wine vigor on my face.

And in weird shadows rhyming

Plucked like lyres the laces of my martyred shoes,

One foot against my heart.