Help Me Decide

which image am I exhibiting in FLORENCE

Hey there - you’re all wonderfully opinionated and I’m giving you a chance to weigh in.

I have a spot in a group show in Florence, Italy in November of this year.

I can’t decide between which of these images it will be.

Can you vote in the poll? I’m not saying I’ll go with the majority vote, but I am curious as to what readers think and why.

STIV BATORS

Here’s why I think I want to exhibit it:

This is a scan of a transparency that survived the ravages of Hurricane Sandy. I kept slides in plastic protector pages in binders. Those binders, unfortunately were in corrugated cardboard boxes on the floor of my storage unit. I know now to store everything in water proof boxes and to store those boxes on racks at least six inches off the ground - just like in food service! Hurricane Sandy gave me this art.¹

But, as Thea Wood reminded me, the image represents survival. The photo survived a hurricane’s flooding. I’ve survived a fire in my apartment complex (and also one in my 1979 apartment complex) and lived in the path of tornadoes that hit neighborhoods three streets away but missed me (three times!) I’ve survived cancer. Not exactly the four horsemen of the apocalypse but if you live long enough, you survive a bunch of ordeals. Stiv, the subject of the photo, died young at just 40. But his image, his music, his reputation, and his memory lives on.

And I think the further along I am in my chronological life, and in my so-called career as a photographer, I am ALL FOR showing mistakes, accidents, and imperfections. None of us were born fully formed, and we all make mistakes. That’s what makes us human, and now these imperfections also make a tacit statement against the aspects of AI that threaten human creativity.

THE CRAMPS

Like it or not, this image has become my signature. I ought to capitalize on that, eh?

This is for an immersive exhibition experience on the walls and ceiling of the Sottopassaggio, a 25-metre tunnel in Florence, Italy, and is expected to be seen by more than 50,000 people. My piece, together with other contemporary artists from around the world, will be seen alongside some of the greatest masterpieces in art history, because FLORENCE.

The reason I am choosing between punk images is that not only do I like juxtaposition - but punk is what I am known for². I often write that Caravaggio - my favorite of all painters - was a punk - but he is not considered a Florentine painter. However, the Uffizi Gallery holds a few Caravaggios. (click on links to see them):

The Bacchus

Two Male Heads (self portrait?)

The Sacrifice of Isaac

Vote here. The poll runs for 7 days:

If you have an opinion or supporting arguments for your vote, please explain in the comments.

Thank you!

1. From Wikipedia: “In the United States, Hurricane Sandy affected 24 states, including the entire eastern seaboard from Florida to Maine and west across the Appalachian Mountains to Michigan and Wisconsin, with particularly severe damage in New Jersey and New York. Its storm surge hit New York City on October 29, flooding streets, tunnels and subway lines and cutting power in and around the city.”

Laurie Anderson lived (and probably still does) in the same neighborhood where I had a storage facility. She stored all her performance things in her basement, which flooded. I had a ground floor storage space 2 blocks away from her. She made lemonade from this by recording LANDFALL with the Kronos Quartet. Her discussions about the hurricane and her loss helped me immensely through the loss of my own archival material. Her voice is so calm, and she is so reasonable.

In The Guardian, John Lewis wrote of the piece, “Throughout this musical journey, Anderson’s spoken-word interludes – stray meditations on random subjects – bob around like the flotsam and jetsam thrown up by the storm. By the end she is left examining a lifetime of wrecked possessions in her flooded basement. “All the things I’d carefully saved all my live, becoming nothing but junk,” she says, blankly. “And I thought: how beautiful. How magic. And how catastrophic.” Landfall, however, manages to eke some joy and inspiration from this grim tragedy.”

2. Except I classify myself as a documentary photographer - which frequently translates to either “journalist” or “street photographer,” all of which are equal from my point of view.