Karen O 11/14/2019

Karen O texted me out of the blue 3 weeks ago to see if I would come photograph the Dangermouse show at King's Theatre..   which of course I say Hail Yeah !!!!   --I love photographing anything Karen is doing, and that show was beautiful.   and oh man Brian from Dangermouse is v handsome it made me shy.    Mostly took live show photos (some so crazy beautiful of Karen singing)... was hard to get my focus sometimes, the lighting changed from super dark to spotlights that made everything shine and twinkle and that's where I got the real good shots.   I'm working on the scans now, I need to send them stuff....


super busy at work and thanksgiving last week was amazing in nyc, my college-going (!!)  nieces Sage and Selma came down from Vermont and Ithaca and all stayed here in my room in Brooklyn.  We had dinner at Taylor and Wes's and the next day a big party at Oddeye Taylor's store that was closing the next day.   The store not the business... Oddeye reborn actually today !  but now only online without the pesky overhead of renting a store space.

Will post some Karen photos soon...  I just made the contact sheets, and still need to develop 1 roll of b/w.  --posting this so I will push myself to get it done after work tmrw.  !!   xo

here's 1 crappy neg scan from right before the show

and then one of me after the show after I ate one of my roommate Jeska's weed chocolates whooooopsy...  ;)'        

terrible contact sheet scans this time... gotta make real scans with color corrections.

today was super fun at work, Michael did a guest spot on At Home with Amy Sedaris (Amy is the best comedian ever, she kills me always... I'm a HUGE fan of her since forever).   It's the third time I've gotten to go to her show -so spoiled (Michael's done 3 guest spots).   I wish I was able to take real photos from being there, but could only take a couple of iPhone snaps.   anyways it's also good not to take photos and just watch (that's what everyone says you should say, but really I wanted to take photos obv.)     Michael was super funny and looked like a Gaultier sailor man, he had to read a poem... something that had to do with a character Janis,... "it was Janis"..    I think Paul Dinelo wrote it.  He was on Strangers with Candy as Jellineck... I love that guy too.  I have a photo of Michael on set but don't think I can/should put it in here until after that episode airs.   xx  12/3/2019  

Sunday at Sylvias

It's always so awesome going to Sylvias.   Sylvia Plachy the world famous photographer (I have to remind her that often because she is so blindly humble and more concerned about all the stray cats she takes care of out in the gardens).  Anyways,  first thing we do when I get there on Sunday mornings is just talk and laugh in the kitchen while we are making earl grey tea with a shitload of grated fresh ginger, that I usually grate after she peels them.   Elliot her husband (of now over 50 years) comes in and says hi and then I try my best to remember super bad dirty jokes so we can all laugh even more.  Or he tells me equally bad dirty jokes.  That's usually the first 20 minutes of every time I work w Sylvia.

I will almost always work on scanning 10-30 of her negatives and then tediously remove the dust from the scans using photoshop.  Then we go print from those or others she has picked out.   I am always pushing us to print from the darkrooms at the ICP because besides darkroom prints being massively better than inkjets,  ICP has the best b/w darkrooms I've ever used.   They even have self-rocking print washers, basically they offer the Rolls Royce of darkrooms.  (Anyways we can't print there since they are moving and closed for 4 months.  But as luck has it they are opening 2 blocks from where I work everyday and it's going to be so awesomely awesome).   It's also so much fun to print with Sylvia in the darkroom, she knows exactly what she's doing in the darkroom, and how to achieve it  --digital printing is confusing to her and I end up having to do all that.

How she edits is the best thing I have learned working for her.   I don't know exactly how to explain it but she puts so much of how she looks at everything into a way that explains what she wants explained.  Simple sounding but crazy hard to do. She just had a museum show in Budapest Hungary and I didn't realize until she told me but I had printed almost all of that show!  And she gave me credit for it too at the museum.  

Okay but this last Sunday, it got very cold suddenly in New York, so after earl grey tea we started by going out into the gardens to winterize 6 outside cat houses.  It was pretty in-depth because we had to  really insulate + rain/show proof them.  It was a really fun way to start the day, I love that shit so much.  And as always she is so appreciative it made me feel golden.    She's not a crazy cat lady, she just loves living things and I love that.    She only has one cat that lives inside, Millie.  Millie was a stray kitten who was terrified of all the other stray cats and ran inside Sylvia's house one day and has never left.   I think she was a kitten when I first started working w Sylvia 5 years ago so she's now probably around 6 or 7.

I pulled these from a conact sheet in 2016, again so fun to see the contact sheet.  I had gone to see Radiohead at Madison Sq Garden the night before.  All this makes me so glad I moved to nyc 8 years ago.  xo

Well, I'm back

Now a hundred years later (bc i'm old like that) I'm coming back on here and will try to be current.   au courant Francine ...    2019! almost 2020.

   anyways i live in nyc now 8+ years and taking pictures all the fukkn time, showing basically nobody -- so that's the motivation of this blog  -stay current by showing current work  -but also throw in so much from the past since it's all mostly un-shown work. 

i've spent the last 5 years really archiving all of my films/ contact sheets (and I have a lot since, remember? i'm now ancient).   I love getting into contact sheet k-holes. I think I may change my entire website to crops from contact sheets and then work on making those selects into real photographs you can feel & touch.

 okay gunna just start throwing stuff out now. xo david   ps:


oh! and looks like it's not even a current!  jeezus.. oh well.  I decided to start with the last screenshot I just made.   And.. --i'm still currently working with michael full time, so that part is Au courant.  Francine.  (that's from john waters polyester, divine makes me pee my pants forever, love you divine ..one).


This is from the last r.e.m. tour, 2005 in a dressing room right after Michael finished shaving his head before the concert and I loved the chandelier (of course michael stipe has a chandelier in his dressing room. Damn, europe is so cool that way).  I was Michael's personal assistant on all of the r.e.m. tours 2001-2008 is how I always get these shots of him.

  

I'm going to show parts from each contact sheet when I post on here because they are the best story tellers of what happens in one roll of film.   This one shows a cute one of my xbf mike sleeping, must be in holland.    rolleiflex is such a beaut camera.  so dusty the photos i know but this was when I was first starting to archive and didn't really pay attention to so much dust on the outside of the plastic sleeves when i began scanning them.  the negs are clean i swear!   somehow the dust works tho.

gunna hit the sack now, i'm working w Sylvia tmrw.  She is my secret favorite sunday morning job (more about that later;)  xo    

Mudpie

This is Muddy, well,,,, actually his name is Mudpie. I loved this old fella so much & he passed away earlier this year of natural old age while under me & mikes care. We spoiled him so much & I've really been missing him lately but i'm just happy i got to spend time with him. he was pretty much the nicest dog in the world aside from my vinny. He even has the same beauty mark on his cheek as me.

Mudpie is buried on vashon island in my friend Kim's yard with his ugly doll, and there is a beautiful lilac tree planted above where he lies... his family was Toby & his 2 boys, and me and Mike too.... xoxo Muddy.





Here he is with Subpop recording artist Sara Cahone , i took her promo photos & muddy came along with us... such a lovey guy.

And in the snow telling me that it is time to go play,,, 2007

Ocean Shores, Washington: Tiny Vipers fotoshoot

Tiny Vipers is a beautiful band on SubPop label here in Seattle, and is actually one person, Jesy Fortino. I photographed for her last album and we work so great together,,,, she's from the northwest like me, and we both have a great respect for the beauty of washington state --and also we seem to love the unexplainable spooky part of it that even david lynch draws upon.

Her newest album with SubPop is "Life on Earth" it's coming out next month, i heard it already and it's beautiful.











We took these photos last month [April] in Ocean Shores, Washington. Jesy, her boyfriend Chris (thanks Chris for all your help), & me drove directly onto the beach -for about a mile in crazy wind & hard rain hoping to make a bonfire. i was prepared to take the photos sitting in the car with Jesy in the rain with a shitty bonfire when all of a sudden the rain stopped & we all three made a killer bonfire. These were also natural light and the ones with all the sparks Chris made with a shovel and they were like 4 second exposures. I used my Rollieflex and Leica with i think Kodak Portra 800 color film.

Also, we had to reshoot for some promo fotos and i took these here in the old west seattle christian school where they rent out to artists now. i love how jesy sometime looks like patti smith when she was a youngin'.




Her first album "Hands across the Void" on SupPop we photographed in North Bend Washington, this was in 2007, we borrowed a red lantern from a thrift shop & the one dress she owns,,, and took the photos at dusk all around North Bend, WA in natural light. i got so lucky in my exposures since i was using my old rolleiflex & 320T slide film that had expired in 2005. But they turned out so beautiful & somehow even the 2 second exposures were rich. I wish they still made that film... i wish i had the other shots from this but my old hard drive bit it & i got to fix that.




This one was with my Leica and the awesome old agfa ultra 100 film, i love and miss this film.

Annie Marie Musselman, Finding Trust @ Alice Austen

nycccc with annie & josh to see her photo show opening at Alice Austen House May 16th,,, we stayed 4 nights at the chelsea hotel in a room with 3 beds, me, annie, josh, kevin, hannah, amy, & bill. i'm going to skip the part where we had a key partay...

so proud of annie, her show is so beautiful. she's a poet of a photographer, and the whole time also "the" Lucille Ball of photographers,,,, you know i love lucy.



here she is with sunshine eyes Paul who currated the show:




and this is annie and her dad, Harry, before we took off to nyc, they be west seattle like me:




and more photographs from annie's show at alice austen house:

Annamay and her dog, "Baby Girl"