I can’t be the only person who’s secretly happy that the ’80s’ are starting to come back… Maybe it has something to do with the fact that my brain hadn’t fully developed during that decacde to experience it in all its glory.

Elizabeth Heyert

I vaguely remember seeing this project on the Southern Baptist practice of dressing up their dead in elaborate outfits special to the deceased a few years ago, but I didn’t see how striking the portraits are til I saw them in print recently in a feature in a back issue of a magazine called Guilt and Pleasure. The magazine was in a pile of discount books in a random mom and pop bookstore in Oakland that happened to be next to the magazine shop where a heavy metal book release party was happening (guess which one I was going to?). The cover is worth posting in and of itself. Unfortunately they seem to no longer be with us, ironically, having gone out on the Death Issue in ’08.

Hopefully the bookstore doesn’t get sucked into the death vortex too, because the proprietor is everything you would hope an eccentric bookstore owner is. He chatted me up about having book releases there once I put out my own book. (Put out my own book? What! I can do that these days!) Despite the generally harmless vibe that all aging skinny bookworms give off (my future minus the skinny? I plan to eat a lot of pizza…), I got the completely unfounded but distinct impression that he would not shy away from the whip and the ball gag. Ahem, excuse me, now I’m digressing, but I had to throw that color in there. How else to live up to the title of the mag?

It is a fight with your notion of what you need. What you need and what you get is not the same. You need something, you want something, and you get something else. So it is the joining of the will and the means that counts.

-Louise Bourgeois

PES strikes again!

Rachel Cox

The most interesting eye in the whole bunch for me was Rachel Cox. Her main project concerned her grandmother’s recent diagnosis of Alzheimer’s. But mostly, I just like the energy of her photos.

Eduardo Rivera

The couple of projects I remember most distinctly were the more personal ones. Eduardo Rivera photographs his family and his town.

Brian Rosa made an audio recording of a bus tour given by Creative City Limits, a research network for “reassessing place of creativity in urban economic growth,” and UCL Urban Laboratory, a teaching initiative on urban topics. “The itinerary focused on the history of redevelopment in various boroughs of the East End, particularly relating to critiques of current Olympic regeneration schemes.”

Seemed appropriate in light of the upcoming London Olympics. Danny Boyle is artistic director of the opening ceremony – I’m unsure of what to think. Trainspotting, 28 Days Later or Slumdog Millionaire as a metric?

A long exposure while clicking through Facebook pictures, no less.

William Knipscher