I am Dead - Lou Reed (1947-2013)

"I am Dead" - At least that's what I thought this caption said under Lou Reed's portrait on the November 6, 2013 cover of Rolling Stone. I certainly would not have been surprised to find this to be his self-penned epitaph. The magazine was sitting in the display rack last week at my local Whole Foods supermarket (a place I doubt the drug-addled Reed would have ever set foot in, though I did hear rumors that he cleaned himself up in the past few years). When I pulled the magazine out of its holder, I was disappointed to see that what I thought was "I am Dead" were simply the words "Lou Reed" (as you can see in the photo below). That's just the way my mind works, I guess - death everywhere. Also the way Reed worked – he liked to disappoint.

Reed's Transformer album

Reed the rock star died on Oct. 27, 2013. Those unfamiliar with his fifty-years-worth of music (difficult to be unaware of his 1972 hit, Walk on the Wild Side, and his 60s band, the Velvet Underground) may know him best from his song Perfect Day (flip side of the Wild Side single, from his best-known album, Transformer), which has been airing for the past several months on network television as the soundtrack for Sony’s new PlayStation 4. It’s a fabulous pairing of music with video, I must say. Here are some lyrics from the song (and a link to the video):

Read it online

“Oh, it's such a perfect day
I'm glad I spend it with you
Oh, such a perfect day
You just keep me hanging on
You just keep me hanging on”

For most of his career, I hated the music Lou Reed created, but I never stopped giving him a chance. I would buy used copies of his latest CDs and hope for the best - he just kept me hanging on. Sweet Jane, a Velvets song he wrote, has been one of my mainstays on guitar for the past thirty years – just a wonderfully simple chord progression with lyrics about transvestites and oral sex. I went to see Reed once, back in 2003 at the Tower Theatre in Philly. I saw Patti Smith around the same time. They were both popular New York artists in the 70s and both have storied reputations and hit-and-miss musical careers. I had reservations about seeing them – I figured that based on their history and things I’ve read, there was a 50% chance they would suck.

Turned out that Patti Smith was over-the-top brilliant, and Reed, well, he sucked. All I remember is him doing a monotone delivery of Poe’s The Raven while the band stood by or droned on, I don’t remember which. It was less than brilliant. So now he’s gone. But Lou Reed won’t be remembered for anyone else’s lyrics. He‘ll be remembered for his own lyrics, and for the LOOK. Read the following obit and you’ll see what I mean. Of the Velvets and Reed in particular, the Philadelphia Weekly states (in the article, “In Memoriam: Lou Reed”):

They were drop-dead cool, and any indie rock band who’s ever copped the whole skinny black jeans, leather jackets and wrap-around shades look since owes Lou Reed (big time). They remain the absolute template–for better or worse–for a look and sound that’s been assimilated by everyone from David Bowie to Roxy Music, Patti Smith to Sonic Youth, the Jesus and Mary Chain to the Smiths. More recently, the Strokes’ entire shtick was plundered wholesale from Reed’s back catalog.

 

Ed Snyder's daughter Olivia, striking a Lou Reed pose

My four-year-old daughter even emulates Reed (though not consciously)! That look and that sound flew in the face of Top 40 pop music, which in 1972 was dominated by such mega-dreck as Sammy Davis Jr.’s The Candy Man and Robert John’s The Lion Sleeps Tonight. While the majority of the listening public was grooving to these fine ditties, 10,000 people went out and bought that first Velvets album. The seeds of punk rock were sewn that year. Philadelphia Weekly goes on to say, “To paraphrase the infamous old Brian Eno quote, the Velvet’s first album only sold 10,000 copies, but everyone who bought it formed a band.”

Back in the 70s, I along with all other Creem magazine readers, bought Reed’s Coney Island Baby, Sally Can’t Dance, and the big downer album, Berlin, expecting the same brilliance that he showed on Transformer (the album with Wild Side and Perfect Day). While his Rock ‘n’ Roll Animal album is arguably one of the best live rock performances ever recorded, he stumbled big time with Metal Machine Music ... In addition to the four albums of music Reed created with the Velvet Underground, he released twenty-two solo albums of new material in his long career.

 "Just a perfect day
problems all left alone
Weekenders on our own
it's such fun

Just a perfect day
you made me forget myself
I thought I was
someone else, someone good"

Those lyrics remind me of strolling through an old cemetery, forgetting my cares and woes. Reed wrote about death, and how to get there, a lot. Even when he tried to be uplifting, it still sounded like death. Finally, he reaped what he hath sewn. So you’re probably wondering where Lou Reed is buried. No one’s saying. Here's his entry on FindAGrave.com.

References and Final Thoughts:

PS4 ‘Perfect Day’ Commercial Gets New Meaning in Light of Lou Reed’s Tragic Passing
In Memoriam: Lou Reed 
Lou Reed on FindAGrave
Nov. 6, 2013 issue of Rolling Stone  
Embrace and Repel: Lou Reed's Chart History

Andy Warhol and Cemetery Photography

I’m taking a break from the deep philosophical and historically riveting cemetery-related blogs I’ve been writing. This one’s just a throwaway. I’m only thinking of you, dear reader. The intensity of all that revelation is far too much for the human mind to bear on a constant basis. No doubt you’ve already achieve Satori (Buddhist enlightenment) from reading The Cemetery Traveler. Were I to continue at this pace, you would most certainly reach Nirvana, and then there would be no reason for you to go on living. And we just can’t have that. I can’t handle the responsibility.

That said, I wouldn't have had the following experience if I didn't do cemetery photography. So here I am, gallery-sitting, staring at an empty gallery with about fifty pieces of artwork on the wall. Well, empty except for me and the artwork. And the cat. Potential customers are not about to leave their air-conditioned homes and come out in this Saturday afternoon heat for sparkling water and cheese doodles. 

For this month-long show entitled “Then and Now,” at Philadelphia’s DaVinci Art Alliance, each member is expected to sit the gallery for a few hours. Two of the fifty pieces in the show are my photographs, the ones you see below. Though only five of the fifty pieces are photos, no one's complaining – photographs are acceptable art here at DaVinci. The management has a fabulous all-inclusive philosophy, which allows up-and-coming artists (working in all media) to get public exposure. Granted, this is easier for private galleries to do than it is for commercial ones, as the continued existence of the former is driven by grants while that of the latter is driven by sales.

My rationale for submitting these two pieces under the theme “Then and Now” initially brought to mind an Andy Warhol quote: “Art is what you can get away with.” But a little pondering made them fit rather nicely:



“Then” is 1956, when the city of Philadelphia tore up Monument Cemetery so that Temple University could build a parking lot – thousands of headstones were dumped into the Delaware River to be used as riprap. (Link)

 

“Now” is Philadelphia’s Mt. Moriah Cemetery, abandoned and currently in danger of a similar fate. (Link)

Nico, the gallery cat, wanders in after the first hour and strangely starts to jump up the wall at the skull. Most of the other work in the exhibit is less morbid than mine. As the only three people to appear during my shift wander around at hour deux, I think of this great line a friend once came up with. You say it as you peer thoughtfully at any piece of art work, when you want to sound like you know what you’re talking about. You say, “It’s strangely sexual, yet somehow it reminds me of death…” Applies to anything and everything.

Deb Miller, Ray, and Ed

And speaking of everything, I had a very serendipitous encounter at the opening reception for this show a few weeks ago. I noticed this guy wearing a tee shirt with a Warhol-type design of Edie Sedgwick (one of Warhol’s actresses in his films). I asked him what that was all about, as I didn’t remember Warhol having made such a silk-screen design. He told me that when he and his wife were going through the Warhol archives doing research for a book with Billy Name (Andy’s photographer during the “Factory” period), they happened on the design and so they made a tee-shirt graphic with it. Huh, THAT’S pretty awesome. And why does it say “BILLY NAME” in black hand-written Sharpie letters under the design? “Because he signed it,” was his response.

Okay, now I’m totally confused yet wildly impressed. I was about to ask why he had such access to the Warhol archives but I thought I’d be prying, so I said, “I bought a copy of the Billy Name book some years ago when he was at a local book store signing copies.” He said, “Rizzoli BookStore on Walnut.” That’s odd, why would he remember that? Was he some sort of Superfan? I mean, that was 1994, for god’s sake – sixteen years ago! Then he added, “My wife wrote that book with Billy.” I said, kind of stupidly, “Who’s your wife?” “Deb Miller,” he replied,” the president of DaVinci Art Alliance. She’s over there. Let me introduce you.”

Turns out Dr. Miller is an art historian, professor, and author. I feel like a total doofus, as Ray, her husband, tells her I have her book. Which I have never even opened, as I had purchased it as a gift for my brother. Other than the fact that I was familiar with Name’s work as the “Factory Fotographer” (meaning he documented all the goings-on of the Warhol “Superstars”), I really didn’t know much about him. I did tell her I would borrow the book and read it, which I did soon after. People associate Andy Warhol with photography mainly from his Polaroid photos of celebrities, but he actually spent much more time behind a Super-8 movie camera as director and cinematographer of dozens of his own movies. He assigned the task of documenting the stars and sets to Billy Name, having given him a Pentax 35mm camera (which is the camera I started with, coincidentally, back in 1976). 

Our conversation ended with a discussion of Pittsburgh’s fabulous Warhol Museum and finally The Factory, and the interesting description of it by Patti Smith in her book, Just Kids (about her life with photographer Robert Mapplethorpe). To my surprise, neither Ray nor Debra had gotten to read it so I promised to loan it to them (and I later delivered). I was kind of surprised to have so much in common with a pair of total strangers. Small world, but I wouldn’t want to paint it.

When I finally got my hands on my brother's copy of the book, Billy Name – Stills from the Warhol Films, I was pleasantly surprised to find that both Billy Name and Deb Miller had signed it. Why was I surprised? I mean, I was there, wasn’t I? Well, no. This is one of the things I was uncomfortable talking with Ray and Deb about – I told them I bought the book at the signing, but I didn’t tell them I wasn’t actually there!


The reason the book (which is intensely researched and fabulously written, by the way) stands out in my mind is because when I found out when the signing was to take place, I knew I would be out of town. I wanted to get a signed copy for my brother as a Christmas present. So I went to Rizzoli’s (which is no longer there), bought a copy, and asked the manager if he could please get it signed for me. He graciously agreed. I really was bummed not to be there, but such is life. My burning question to him a week later when I picked up the book was, “What was the crowd like?” His reply? “A lot of chains and black leather.”

The DaVinci Art Alliance is hosting an upcoming juried exhibit, “Warholized,” which I plan to enter. Awards judges will be Madalen and James Warhola, Andy’s niece and nephew. Always something to look forward to. I may enter something like the collage you see at the beginning of this article, which I made about five years ago from my photograph of a cemetery statue.

Further Readings:

 DaVinci Art Alliance, Philadelphia

‘Factory Girl’ part two as seen through the eyes of an historian,' by Deb Miller, PhD.

The Watery Remains of Monument Cemetery

Hell Hounnds of the Abandoned Cemetery

Hercules and the Best Cemetery Statues

Its certainly great fun exploring a new (to you) cemetery looking for unusual statues to photograph, but have you ever given up trying to find that elusive statue you heard was in a particular cemetery? Or maybe you just spent hours scouting around a graveyard you'd never been to, and you're wondering if you missed a particularly interesting monument? One method I've discovered to help me find unusual statuary in cemeteries is to ask the groundskeepers where their favorite statue is!

The first time this occurred was back in 2003, in Greenmount Cemetery in Baltimore. I was photographing with my friend Krista and we saw a worker loading a riding mower onto the back of his truck. One of us asked him, "What's your favorite statue here?" The guy got so excited he jumped into his pickup truck and said "Follow me!" As I’m writing this, I can’t recall which of us can take the credit for thinking to ask, which is odd because-to paraphrase Mark Twain-my memory’s so good I can remember things whether they happened or not.

The groundskeeper drove to the back of the cemetery and stopped at a three-foot-high white marble statue of a child. He got out of his truck, proudly showed us the statue said, "I call her 'Little Red Riding Hood!'" We were extremely grateful and spent the next half hour just shooting this unique sculpture.

Over the decade I’ve been photographing cemetery statuary, this image remains my favorite. It graces the banner on my StoneAngels.net website and is featured on my business card. It is one of my best selling photographs, and has turned out to be the most enigmatic.

Obviously, its not Little Red Riding Hood. The androgynous child is covered in a full animal skin (a bear? a lion?) and is holding what appears to be a shaleighleigh. The only thing the caretaker knew about the statue was that it graced the deceased man’s home (the person whose grave on which the statue stands). The man liked the statue so much that he requested it be placed on his grave.

Whenever I exhibit the photograph, people ask me what the statue represents. While I know the ‘stories behind the stone’ for much of my work, this one has eluded me. People have offered explanations, the most plausible one coming from an historian who saw it in one of my shows and said, “Oh, that’s Hercules as a child.” According to Greek mythology, Hercules did kill a lion and wear its skin, but he didn’t do this as a child.

Gallery curators expect you to title your work, but I have a difficult time with this image, since I really don’t know its meaning. I’d prefer not to title any work, really, as it forces a frame of reference on the viewer, beyond which they see nothing else. A title defines it for them. I’d rather leave a photograph open to interpretation, even one as seemingly plain and simple as this one. I like to think of the photographic image I created as being singular, and ultimately unknowable, much like ourselves. I’ve made the statue more abstract, in a sense, by photographing it out of its familiar context and giving it a new identity (through  the angle of view, the lighting, the dark background).
 
I like to think those of us who photograph cemetery statuary in a creative manner imbue the artistic philosophy described by the musician Patti Smith (in her book Just Kids, Ecco, 2010):

"It is said that children do not distinguish between living and inanimate objects; I believe they do. A child imparts a doll or tin soldier with magical life-breath. The artist animates his work as the child animates his toys."

Links:
Read more about Patti Smith and Hercules