Maybe one tiny thing … with so so many different subtopics whirling together, I would try to relate the begining and the end of the essay so you get some sort of visual “clamp”. To take away the feeling of a random order – IF you want this kind of thing. I personally often prefer it – albeit sometimes the feeling of randomness is important to the subject. Maybe you feel this is the case here?

I do not know if I should congratulate you on being published here, or BURN on having your publish here :)

Perhaps I am a bit contrary at times in the hope of getting a well-reasoned rebuttal? Or maybe I’m just pissed off about something else and it works out that way? Hard to say for sure. But it’s a good thing when you or Bob or whoever does such a fine job of explaining your point of view. I know it’s those kind of exchanges that turn a lot of people off on comments, but it’s the more argumentative threads where I see the most truly enlightening insights. Outside of the photos themselves, of course.

Anyhoo, if jimmyb’s still checking in, I too hope you continue to comment here. If you let it, burn will help you become a much better photographer, no matter your starting point. And you can help us become better photographers as well.

Just a word of support. Hang tough.

For whatever that’s worth.

Happy Xmas.

just for the record, i NEVER said you were wrong nor that churches in a story on the hood were not predictable…i did say their predictability made no difference to me just as the predictability of a dead body in a war essay would not bother me either..predictability of content has nothing to do with the value of the art imo…in any case, please note that in every comment i made i might have been asking you to at least look at something from a different perspective, but at the same time totally respecting your right to view it any way you want..and i did say several times that what you are expecting from photography is not what i am expecting…but again, no right or wrong to it….hope it is clear this time…

Merry Christmas Michael…and looking forward to our meeting in January…

cheers, david

Good light, Jimmyb,

Mike.

Imants, fell asleep on the couch just after i wrote the comment for David….will try again tonight, sorry ;)

Don’t forget The Autobiography of Malcolm X.

email coming (about your pa and this year)…just writing something for the christmas post….haven’t forgotten ur emails…give me 2 hrs….:)))

christmas card sung me a smile….

i promise, time we skype…u want to skype tonight?…send me an email…i should be done in 1 hr writing this post for david…

bb

ok, i’ll wade in :))…’cause i didn’t go to sleep last night, and have been madly running around town trying to get ready for the trip (24 hrs) and to finish a writing shit, only to find tonight that i don’t have enough film for my trip, so tomorrow, back down to pick up some film and pack and then off…and i’m in a damn sweet mood, tired, but electric….been listening Kanye’s My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy which absolutely drops large….i’d thought LCd’s album was the vinly of the year….but god damn, that is a major righteous souring mad lick….i want both of you guys to listen…anyway, more about that at the end here…

so, here goes:

First Up, Mw:

Michael, I would NEVER say you were ‘wrong’ about your ideas or your reaction…there is no right/wrong to view a piece of work, no way to carve out 1 meaning, 1 story from a body of work that plays both to the strengths and contradictions of a story….the inherent contradictions in Danny’s piece is the same contradictions and confusions that exist in that community and that is not cliche….but more importantly, i value (and need) your bomb throwing, if for nothing else, to get my juices ribbed ;)….you are a smart cat, with thoughtful and often penetrating questions, even if sometimes they appear to be deliberately contrarian ;)…but, that’s the ripeness we need, to pick up the sticks and bones to toss against a wall in order to think and to, ultimately, feel one’s way through the heart of a piece….so, i’m always game when your questioning…as long as those questions come from a place that hopes for a honing of insight, or rather, for rumination that opens something else….so, i never meant to write ‘we’ were right, you were wrong, only that i think i wish you to take the next radical step: to question into rightness ;))….so keep it up, and i’ll try to offer an response, here goes:

CHURCHES. HERE…they MUST be part of this work, not because it’s cliche to show folk praying in a community riffed by sorrow, or because that is the typical paint swabbed on the African American community, but because it has important thematic resonance. This story is about both Death (kids, boys, men, dying, mom’s suffering) and life. If you’re going to do a story on folk being shot, show the funerals, then you must show the fullness and importance of that: that these folk are in church not only to bury but also to console and come together…Even if the church weren’t historically such an important part of the community (which it sure is, always has been), this essay would still necessitate churches, because they ARE PART of that city experience, just as the graffiti and zoo suits and broken homes and bottles of fifties and forlorn mattresses….cars exposed, prom celebrations: it is the detail and the detritus….the church here is both an important narrative component (funerals and liturgy, song and psalm) but also for verisimilitude. Now, i agree, that the community aint just about baptist churches, but about mosques and 7th days and and lutherans and RC’s and Mennonites, etc….but, you see, danny isn’t making a visual claim for denomination, but rather about prayer, service, song, community…sure, those pics are in mosque, their christian, but the deeper take on those images is that their houses of worship and houses that haven’t been eroded, but are rather supports….so, they MUST be here, because of the face that churches, or rather, houses of worship, serve the community, are a part of the community, just as b-ball courts and empty lots and corner parties and pawn shops and beauty salons and corner stores…they’re there, they must be a part…but they also serve as spiritual posts for this essay: points of reflection and points of hope, points of community that make this essay, and make that community, not solopsistic and death-kneeled, but the opposite: still filled with light of living….burying the kids and going back for solace and hope and to move beyond….now, an essay on the diversity of the houses of workshop in the community would be another topic (a buddy Omar S, a great photographer, a muslim has done a great body of work on the african-american muslim community in nyc, post 911) but that is not THIS essay….again, i just want to say, or rather, suggest, that I think you’re asking Danny’s essay to be all encompassing, it is not and it cannot be…we must approach it for what it is….and while, you may think/feel (a reasonable thought) that church images are obvious, well…Go Tell it on the Mountain ;))….know what i mean….it must be here…shit, i’ve criticized the shit out of essays that deal with detroit and violence and show funerals but never deal with the important healing and community power of those houses….as i told Justin M, there is just no way to get around shooting the community without dealing with his, for historical and contemporary reasons….a place where a killer and the mourner, ironically, can (and do) come together….THAT is critical to understand and to appreciate here…

As for Harlem…well, i know a bit about harlem…one of my closest friends was from harlem, spent some time there and no, not in the places you name or what others associate…shit, to me, harlem means 2 things: running up there as a kid and then going to visit my friend’s hood and family….as i wrote here a couple of years back (road trips?), he was later gunned down off of Strivers Row….told dah the story, told rufus the story on top of david’s loft….i don’t associate Absynnians Baptist with Harlem as the only church, rather i associate that the way i dont associate the Met with THE nyc….it’s a landmark, historical, tours, history, but, anyone that has spent time there knows that there are 100′s of churches there and the folk that speak of Abyssinian seem to be the visitors….in danny’s essay, it’s just simpler….it’s about showing, detailing…make sense?….i think danny’s essay is an evocation and not a journalistic approach, just as justin’s essay was about yielding spirits, channeling, not necessary describing…make sense?….

Imants: :)….invisible man, necessary reading….that book and baldwin and zora neale hurston opened my eyes, not to what i didn’t know, but to what is possible….but than again, my dad gave me Cleaver’s Soul on Ice for my 16th birthday…and i’m a fucking white guy….

ok, so enough about crit, can i share a song instead….

here is Kanye’s Monster….it, to me, is exactly part of what this is about….and i just ask you get through it….get to the last 1 minute and that ending…and that says all…the full complexity and brilliance of that song….and what that says and stands for and ends with….and that song, is for me, a way to cadence this work…

listen to this song…and after the end, which comes after all that shit, tell me it aint so…

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ona42jz8w0k

no right, wrong…just ways to get home….

peace and love…

booging out of here soon…

b