Some of the images and (hopefully) some of the ideas in
this post may not be safe for work

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NOT SAFE FOR WORK: A MANIFESTO

…..black is the color, and none is the number,
I’ll tell it and think it and speak it and breathe it…..

Bob Dylan, A Hard Rain’s A-Gonna Fall

This first world, now, is not safe for work, but we do it anyway,
don’t we? Here we are: at war, at famine, at depression and hate
and our wit’s end. Mired in the human condition. Like nothing’s
happening. Our heads stuck in a hole.

But we feel safe at work.

What choice do we have, after all, but to work away? After
all, the things, the food, the shelter and the entertainment
we need, we crave, have to be paid for, right? So we buckle
under, bend over…..

We get up on Monday morning, drag our sorry asses to the
office and enter data, attend meetings, produce stuff, regulate
and have lunch at lunch time.

my office

And I’m guilty, at least as guilty as you, of not rising to the
occasion, to this occasion, this moment in our time.

Especially when it comes to photography.

The problem with photography, with being a photographer,
is that it’s good for showing what you’re looking at, but not
so good at really expressing how you feel.

Sure, you can glean a bit about what the photographer’s
thinking from a well thought-out portfolio. But it mostly
just seems so effete, so ineffectual, so fucking boring so
often. Where is the rage? Where is the horror? Where is
the guts of the matter?

April + Eric, smoke

I suppose I’m not talking to everyone here. I’m not talking
to those who want to revel in the beauty of this world (tho’
“beauty” is, for sure, in the eye of the beholder……but usually
only in the eye, hardly ever in the brain, in the guts). No, I’m not
talking to you. I’m not talking to those who prefer the sentimental.
(James Joyce defined “sentimentality” as “unearned emotion”.)

I’m talking to myself.

I want to see work that reflects our time. Not the time we think
we’re in, but the time we’re not aware enough to know we’re in.
I want to be punched in the gut and then, right after that, socked
in the head. I want incisiveness and feeling and reaction. I want
to know, and I want to know you know.

In other words, I want the impossible.

April + Eric, posture

A while ago Neil Young said that a song can no longer change the
world. Back in the 60’s there were songs that were rallying cries,
songs that motivated and changed people. These days…..not so
much.

And photographs are like songs.

Now, before you go and accuse me of being all nostalgic, of being
old, just let me say: Guilty as charged. But only up to a point. No,
I say to you that I’m reacting against nostalgia, that I’m wanting
more, new and the next thing in the pre-modern, modern, post-
modern continuum. Who knows what that will be.

My hope is that, like in many economic downturns, a new and more
vital art will flourish.

My hope is that people will transform, will transmogrify, and really
evoke (not just show) the lives we lead, the world we are in.

My hope is that I can, somehow, through my personal work, connect
to the real world, to feel it and to make you feel it, too.

But, as Robert Frank says: “Look out for hope”. “Hope” being a double
edged sword.

April + Eric, door

So…..not safe for work.

I’ll continue to be a slave to the grind, to be a functioning member of
society, a taxpayer. But, now more than ever, I want to use my free time
to subvert what I spend so much of my working day doing……propping
up the status quo.

Hypocritical? Yes. But I’ve always embraced contradictions.