Newsletter #144 - The Heat is On
Tell me, can you feel it?
The first week of summer 2024 brought an intense heatwave that affected over 100 million people in the US. These sweltering temperatures have made it incredibly hard to focus or do any type of physical labor. There is reporting that the US economy is losing billions in lost productivity. Count me in on that. I couldn’t do shit last week! Negative $520.31 on the US economy from this photography studio alone!
Well, I did do one thing. I prepared all of the Protect the Network zine orders.
We sold out of all 100 copies in less than three hours. Thank you to everyone who ordered one.
I shipped most of them out Tuesday (6/25). If you ordered one, you should be receiving it in a few days.
If you weren’t able to get a copy in time, don’t worry. Pablo and I are planning another version with entirely different photographs. We will be releasing it to coincide with the opening of the show “Protect the Network” at The Field Room on July 20th. There will be more information on how to visit this exhibition soon.
Speaking of the heat, I was thinking about how I might illustrate heat with photography and wondered if I have any photographs from my archive that conjure the feeling of what this past week felt like.
With the help of Google Photos (which I use to quickly search my archive by keywords; see Newsletter # 77 - An Email About Nothing), I searched for the word “heat.”
The app served me two different types of photographs: photographs of the sun and photographs of fire. This makes sense. The sun is hot. So is fire. Uh-oh…AI is smarter than most people realize. Is anyone talking about this?
Scrolling through my photographs, I was reminded of the 2023 Canadian wildfires and the smoke that blew over the Northeastern US last June, which created an eerie and ominous atmosphere for a few days.
At 12:09 PM on June 7, 2023, the smoke was so thick, I pointed my longest lens directly at the sun without a filter on. It was incredible. You could actually make out sun spots.
I made an edition of 111 copies of this print.
A photo editor at a major national print magazine saw some of my pictures on Instagram and asked to see a larger edit to potentially run one of my photographs. I gladly sent along a few, thinking if they ran one of my pictures, this could finally be my big break.
She wrote back and said she was looking for photos with people in them.
I wrote her back and said I didn’t have any photographs with people.
I never heard from her again.
See you next week!
Upcoming Exhibition
I will be exhibiting a grid of 100 photographs from the series “The River” at the Galli-Cuci Theater in Margaretveille, NY. This show will run from August 3 -18. This show is presented by The Catskill Water Discovery Center and will also include the work of Bernard Cohen, Andrew Jarret, Ashley Miles and Bing Wright.
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Zach Vitale needs to lay down.
Kristen Neufeld doesn’t mind the heat, but the humidity.
I received my copy of your zine and enjoyed it very much! I collect postcards from artists so appreciate the extras in the package!! Years ago I visited your studio in Williamsburg and we had a photo book sharing event with Jorg Colbert. I brought a book by Anne Geddes and we talked a lot about it. Do you remember that night?
I like these photographs but I do not like having Glenn Frey songs stuck in my head so I have mixed feelings about this newsletter.