Henry Darger's Room

Henry Darger is the quintessential outsider artist. He grew up an orphan, escaped from the asylum for "feeble-minded boys" at age 16, led a mostly solitary life working as a janitor, and lived alone in a one-room apartment in Chicago for 40 years. Upon his death his landlord discovered that the tiny room contained more than 30,000 pages of manuscripts and several hundred watercolor paintings. Most of them comprise his most famous work, In the Realms of the Unreal, the story of the Vivian girls, seven sisters who assist a daring rebellion against an evil regime of child slavery.

What most people remember about the paintings is that the little girls have penises. I'm not a betting woman but if I had to put money on it I'd guess that Darger just never learned that girls don't look the same as boys. But I digress...the important thing is that he was a total unknown with an incredible secret life, spending decades writing and painting his life's work without another soul even realizing it.

I first heard his story about ten years ago, and became fairly engrossed in it. I was at first disappointed to learn that the In the Realms of the Unreal has not been published in full (although, quite frankly, how could one publish a 15,000+ page book--and more importantly, who would read it?) but did manage to find a volume excerpting sections of it at the Pratt Library, where I worked at the time.

Anyway...about a year ago I was in the PS1 book store and noticed this on the shelf. It was a little bit pricy but it was well worth the purchase. It's a beautiful little book of, yes, photos of Henry Darger's room, which his landlord has faithfully kept nearly just as it was when Darger died in 1973.

It starts with a series of black and white shots, taken in the 70s just after Darger's death. I like the inspiration wall on the right. Darger was obsessed with protecting children, which, knowing just a bit about his history in the asylum, seems pretty understandable.

Most of them were taken in 1999 and are in color, with this almost golden sepia tone to them. I love how his paints are still strewn out on the table, as if he might come back to them at any minute.

Some original manuscripts of Realms. Some of them were bound by the artist; the rest are tied with twine. I like the wallpaper covers with hand painted titles.

Darger loved children's books with girl protagonists. He owned 13 first edition copies of the Oz books.

Photos of little girls and religious images on the mantelpiece.

American Surfaces by Stephen Shore

In the early 70s, photographer Stephen Shore embarked on a series of cross-country road trips, documenting what he found along the way. These photographs, which are comprised mostly of images of meals, hotel rooms, and people he encountered, as well as decrepit-looking storefronts, are collected chronologically in American Surfaces.

Despite the banality of the subjects, the striking colors and composition transcend them beyond the typical vacation snapshot. The extremely saturated colors, coupled with the subjects themselves, remind me a lot of William Eggleston's work.

Weegee's New York

A few years ago I bought this book of Weegee's photographs of New York on a whim. I'm not sure why, not because his work isn't great, but because this is more of a postcard book than a nice photo book, which is probably what I should have held out for. (Maybe I'll upgrade one of these days.) Regardless, it contains some classic images.

Weegee was the pseudonym of a photographer working in the Lower East Side in the 30s and 40s, who got his name because he seemed to have an almost clairvoyant knowledge of when and where a crime, fire, or accident would occur, arriving on the scene mere minutes after anything had been reported to the authorities. His photographs largely depict the seedier side of life, of people in the back of a paddywagon, drunks, car wrecks, and murder victims.

He also photographed the upper crust, but in such a way as to convey a somewhat sinister or unflattering quality.

I love this one, of a cab and what I can only guess is part of a Macy's parade float--two otherwise innocuous elements, but together they look terrifying, like a giant monstrous hand is reaching down to grab the car, the driver desperately speeding away.

This of course is the best one by far. The bagel man coming out of the shadows, bringing the morning delivery. A beautiful sight (even though the lighting is a bit creepy).

We're Desperate: The Punk Rock Photography of Jim Jocoy

This is a collection of photographs of punks. Taken in the late 70s in San Francisco and Los Angeles, they serve as a great portrait of the era--the characters, the venues and hang-out spots, and the style. Or many styles, maybe. The great thing about punk in the late 70s (okay, not like I was actually there) was that there really were no rules, no cookie cutter music conventions, no uniforms. And so the looks are wildly different, totally original and outrageous, from thrift store duds to plastic bags to impeccable suits. I also love how the musicians and artists are given the same treatment as the fans--really, they were all fans. But unless you know them by sight, you can't tell Alice Bag or Tomata DuPlenty from the random chick with the zebra print coat (and maybe she was in a band too, who knows).

Another great thing about the book is how you get to glimpse into the bathrooms and dark graffiti-covered corners and alleyways of all the storied punk venues you see on flyers. Where else would you get to see those places?

I love the random flotsam on his shirt--the button, the photo attached with masking tape, the spraypainted circle, the bleach spots. It's like a little collage.

The mirrors do great things to these photos. It feels like a funhouse or something.

The legendary Claude Bessy.

How awesome is John Waters? It's kind of perfect that he's standing next to a toilet. (Maybe that's on purpose.)

So not all of the outfits in the book are anything you'd want to actually wear. W-T-F? (Note that I never use silly abbreviations like that. This is what this lady's get-up has done to me.)

P.S. Dave would like me to mention that this is technically his book.

La Jetee by Chris Marker

Chris Marker’s film La Jetee is comprised of a series of still images, shot in gorgeous grainy black and white, accompanied with voiceover narration. So it seems only fitting that it has been adapted into a book.

Humanity has been wiped out by a nuclear holocaust. “The victors,” as they are called, have established some kind of underground penal colony, and have begun conducting time travel experiments using the prisoners as guinea pigs, in hopes of gaining information about the source of the catastrophe, and ultimately to change the course of history. One man in particular is chosen for his strong mental image of the peacetime world—he has been haunted by a childhood memory, in which he witnessed a man die—the logic being that “if [he] were able to conceive or to dream another time, perhaps [he] would be able to live in it.”

The book looks amazing*, and the story is thrilling and philosophically complex. Part photo book, part homage to the film, part science fiction novella with a pretty complicated time paradox—you really can't go wrong.

*Although it's admittedly hard to tell from the glare in these scans.

The Complete Untitled Film Stills by Cindy Sherman

This very nice hardcover book collects all 69 photographs in Cindy Sherman's "Untitled Film Stills," a series of images designed to look like stills from imaginary movies. Sherman dons wigs, makeup, and costumes--and she really does an impressive job of disguising herself--creating invented worlds that one can really envision being out of some forgotten noir film or B-movie. I love the grainy quality of the stock, made to resemble the cheap 50-cent publicity photos of the day.

I always like to imagine the plots of the "movies"--a troubled Hollywood starlet on a bender? Having an affair at some secret seaside hideaway?

This woman is either being stalked or followed by a private eye. Or maybe she's on her way to deliver a mysterious package (ransom money?). I could go on.

Many of them almost recall a particular style of film. For some reason this one reminds me of early Woody Allen movies.

This one evokes for me the British "kitchen sink" dramas of the 60s.


There's a Hitchcock blonde if I ever saw one.

Portfolio by Robert Frank

When Robert Frank came to New York from Zurich in 1947, he brought along a portfolio of 40 photos to help him find work. Steidl recently reissued a facsimile version of Frank's early portfolio, which contains some of his earliest photographs as well as the work of others that he had retouched.

It comes in this plain white envelope.

And then inside is this slim volume. I love the cover.

The images represent Swiss life, both rural and urban, landscapes and people. While the photographs aren't nearly as incredible as those of Frank's later ouevre, the book is an interesting artifact representing the inception of the career of a legend.

Snowmen by David Lynch

In honor of this snowy New Year's Day, this is a small book of photographs by David Lynch, better known for such films as Eraserhead, Blue Velvet, Mulholland Drive, and so on.

As you can tell from his decidedly minimalist introduction, it is a series of black and white photos Lynch took of his old neighborhood in Boise, Idaho, of snowmen in various stages of melting, exploring the strange and alien quality these fairly commonplace sights take on.

This one, limbless and with torso severed from its lower extremities, is a great specimen. Misshapen, almost deformed-looking, and yet still smiling--something a bit unsettling about it.


And this one, faceless, and yet with well-defined shoulders (almost stump-like) and legs.

In all, it's a pretty short book and most of the text is in French, but it's worth getting if you like David Lynch, or weird photographs of snowmen. Or better yet, both.

John Waters: Change of Life

I just went to the John Waters Christmas Show on Friday, so I thought I'd take a look back at Change of Life, which was published in conjunction with an exhibit at the New Museum of Contemporary Art about five years ago.

It originally had a dust jacket with the title on it but I liked the one underneath so much better that I threw the regular cover away. The image correlates to a series of photographs in the book.

Most of the exhibit consisted of these montages of photographs that Waters took of his television, juxtaposing various movie stills in one long strip, in a way creating a new film. Pictured above are sections of "Mental" and "Grace Kelly's Elbows."

"Puke in the Cinema" is a great one. What else would you expect from "the prince of puke"?

Also featured in the exhibit were various artifacts from Waters' collection, such as these vintage books. He actually made reference to books starting with "I" in the Christmas show—in fact, he went on to discuss how books are the best gift you can give, and that if someone gives you a book for Christmas you should reward them sexually. Which strikes me as an incredible marketing platform for the holiday gift-buying season. So Mr. Waters, as an employee of a book publishing company, I propose that next year you develop this idea into a full-fledged advertising campaign. I'm kind of serious. It would be far more interesting than the usual crap we come up with. 

Moving along...

More from his collection. The toy electric chair is pretty incredible.

Some vintage candies from his collection. I wonder why dingle berries never caught on...

And finally, perhaps the best part of the show was the screening of Waters' earliest films in constant rotation. I got to see Hag in a Black Leather Jacket, Roman Candles, and Eat Your Makeup, three films that I will probably never have a chance to see again (at the Christmas show Waters was asked by an audience member if he would ever release them; he said no). Eat Your Makeup, pictured above, is the best of the three—it features a young Divine as Jackie Kennedy, part of a reenactment of the Kennedy assassination.

Now I need to go watch some John Waters movies. I wish I owned a copy of Female Trouble—it'd be a nice addition to the holiday viewing I've been doing. Nice girls don't wear cha cha heels!