the heros of my youth are gone...RIP leonard nimoy

Peter Wijninga said:
Eugene Smith had his moments of brilliance and these were interlocked with a life of extreme substance abuse, the wreckage of relationships and the abandonment of children, and, in then end, the premature destruction of his body: all in the name of his art.

I have have a lot of his work and when I think of Eugene Smith, I also think of Canadian classical pianist Glenn Gould, an artist who burst onto the international scene with his Goldberg Variations and then defied all that was expected of him and, as Smith died at a young age.

I don't think their lives can be ''emulated''. At best we can enjoy the work they shared.
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Peter,

I am well aware of Gene's self destruction towards the end of his life. The things I want to emulate are being a great shooter as well as a printer.

I have lost many a friend who were brilliant artists who passed too early. I inquired with Luis who spent a lot of time with Gene during the time of "The Jazz Loft" and inquired why Gene became disillusioned with life after having been so celabrated.

Being a passionate person I kinda understood through Luis the artistic despair and the inward disturbance that happened when what Gene thought was his best work was rejected. The other side of the coin is that Gene wanted total control over his work and this mitigated the rejection.

Decades ago I had to make a decision to either commodify my work to get a gallery in Soho when I was a painter, or going my way working a day job and doing my art just only for me. It is kinda maddening, and I lost too many friends who eventually self destructed a lot like Gene along the way. I think I'm past all that now.

Cal
 
Ya, he and brother had a very odd beginning into film making since he started off as a clinical psychologist.

For me, his seminal work was "Salesman" which I still think Mamet stole most of "Glengarry Glen Ross" from. During the class I took form him he was asked what ever happened to the subjects he shot (such the Eddie's from Gray Gardens) and it nice to hear he was still in touch with many of them (this was 1997).

Calzone said:
Filmtwit,

I am still fond of "Grey Gardens." Decades ago I went to a screening and attended a discussion with Albert. He was a very interesting man, very-very humble.

Cal
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filmtwit said:
Ya, he and brother had a very odd beginning into film making since he started off as a clinical psychologist.

For me, his seminal work was "Salesman" which I still think Mamet stole most of "Glengarry Glen Ross" from. During the class I took form him he was asked what ever happened to the subjects he shot (such the Eddie's from Gray Gardens) and it nice to hear he was still in touch with many of them (this was 1997).
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Filmtwit,

Perhaps it was 1998-1999 for me. I kinda remember taking "Maggie" to the screening/discussion and "Maggie" now kinda reminds me that we have been together for 16 or 17 years (I forget). LOL.

One thing I learned from Albert is to be patient with your subjects so they have the opportunity to "reveal themselves." I could really see how Albert's personality promoted this.

Interesting to note how fresh are my memories of his persona.

Cal
 
Gene had a reputation for being difficult to work with, with uncompromising professional and ethical standards. A vision of his work that he himself wanted total control over in print. Not print, but magazine layout print. He was beaten badly by employees of Chisso during his photographing of Minamata. Smith claimed that his vocation was "..to do nothing less than record, by word and photograph, the human condition." An enormous undertaking by any standard.

I saw Smith a couple of years before his first stroke. He was still with Aileen then. Quite a moving lecture and presentation.
 
kbg32 said:
Gene had a reputation for being difficult to work with, with uncompromising professional and ethical standards. A vision of his work that he himself wanted total control over in print. Not print, but magazine layout print. He was beaten badly by employees of Chisso during his photographing of Minamata. Smith claimed that his vocation was "..to do nothing less than record, by word and photograph, the human condition." An enormous undertaking by any standard.

I saw Smith a couple of years before his first stroke. He was still with Aileen then. Quite a moving lecture and presentation.
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Keith,

Luis mentions that beating he took, but my research suggests that it was his work involving Pittsburg and the level of control you mentioned as far as the editing and editorial contol that threw Gene over the edge.

Way back in the eighties when I was a painter, an art dealer named Ivan Karp on West Broadway was interested in my work. Ivan Karp had worked for Leo Castelli and broke off on his own to open his own gallery called O.K. Harris.

Ivan Karp said come back when you have more when I showed him some slides of my paintings. At that time I was use to rejection, and I already knew the art world was a closed society that didn't really include me. I took Mr. Karp's response as being a polite rejection, but he must of known that I did not take his comment to show him more work seriously.

"When I said I like your work I meant it, he said. "Please come back when you have more," Mr Karp said.

When I went back I got further afirmation that my work was good, but Mr Karp suggested that I had too many ideas, and if I wanted to be commercially sucsessful that I would have to comodify my work and limit the exicution of my ideas.

I kinda quit making art for others after that to avoid the artistic despair, yet I kept pounding away in the arts. I've performed off-off Broadway and at the Joseph Papp Public Theater; I got a MFA in creative writing and got on a shortlist to attend Breadloaf Writers' conference if someone cancelled; the Editor of the Hudson Review liked one of my stories and wanted to publish it, but it got shelved by a Review Board. Anyways if I would have gotten to attend Breadloaf or if I would have gotten published in the Hudson Review I'm pretty sure today my life would be different because closed doors would have beened opened. Funny thing is when I gave up on painting galleries started calling me because of old slides left at "Artist's Space."

I kinda know why many of my creative friends sooner or later destroyed themselves. They lived their lives the only way they could: passionately. At this point, artistically, the only person I need to impress is myself. FTW.

Cal

POSTSCRIPT: I forgot that I was also a semifinalist in an "America's Best Screenwriting Competition." This was about a decade before I got my MFA in creative writing. Anyways the string second place/runner up finishes in the visual arts, performing arts, and the literary arts is like year after year getting nominated for a grand prize but never winning the Emmy, Tony, Golden Globe, Pulitzer...
 
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