LAWRENCE RUSS: Soul, Art, and Society
Come Celebrate My New Site-Launch by Viewing My New Site
My unhappiness with my website provider had grown ever since it was taken over by an outfit specializing in wedding mementos. Of course, the new owners assured us innocent client-lambs that the quality its website services would not slip, but would, rather, reach new heights. They announced a plan to create new templates that would […]
Wishing You a Wonderful Thanksgiving
I wish you all for thanksgiving what, in a sense, but only in a sense, we already have — a world of wonders. Or, rather, I wish that we would all enter into it more wholly. I wish that everyone, and certainly all photographers, knew and loved the following poem by Thomas Traherne (ca. 1636-1674). (Forgive me, Thomas, […]
Alligator Intellect
[The ink painting above, by Sengai, pictures a scene from the famous Zen koan in which the Zen teacher, Nan-ch’uan, tells his students that he will chop the kitten in half if none of them can say immediately whether reality is (a) objective or (b)subjective. This picture and the one at the end of this […]
THE ARCANE MACHINE – new book of photographs by L. Russ
What follows is the preface of a book that I’ve just had printed, featuring a fifteen-image photographic poem of mine, The Arcane Machine. The book is 10×10″, 34-pages long, including this preface, the photographs (with their titles on facing pages), and bio notes. It has a matte hard cover, and it can be ordered through my photography website, lawrenceruss.com , by […]
The Heroines’ Unpinned Hair
I don’t know how many “favorite” photographs I have, but I know that one of the frames in my sanctum of photographic love holds Imogen Cunningham’s “The Unmade Bed.” It’s clicheish to say that you could look at a particular artwork every day of your life and never grow bored with it. In fact, though, I can pretty […]
Irony and Fashion
Irony: don’t let yourself be controlled by it, particularly when you are not actually writing. In the moments when you are are, try to use it as one more means of getting at life. When irony is used as a pure instrument of thought, it is pure, and there is no need to be ashamed […]
The Terror of the Naked Critic – Part 2 of 2
Mr. Grundberg has credentials to burn, including years of writing reviews for The New York Times and various awards, including the prestigious Infinity Award from the International Center of Photography. Part of what made this case exceptional was that Grundberg was being called upon to judge a photographer who did not himself come packed in […]
The Terror of the Naked Critic – Part 1 of 2
The comic bit, on which there’ve been many variations,goes something like this: A Hollywood pitchman addresses a group of studio execs, exhorting them, “I’m tellin’ you this project is box office gold! It’s like Godzilla meets Terms of Endearment!” We’re supposed to smirk at the crassness of the agent’s tactic, at the “jurors’” implicit fear […]
The Frailty of Judges and Critics
Ever since caveman-times, no doubt, people have tended to huddle around communal fires for warmth, for mutual comfort, for survival. We would all like the support and good will of our fellows. But if we covet those things too much, we betray ourselves, we fear being too original or honest, we shun certain people or […]
Cast a Cold Eye on Acceptance, on Rejection. Artist, Pass By!
Okay, forgive me. I’ve “borrowed” and recast this title from the short poem that W.B. Yeats wrote for his tombstone: “Cast a cold eye / On life, on death. / Horseman, pass by!” You know, when you’ve been the greatest 20th-Century poet writing in English, there’s at least a decent chance that the epitaph you […]