Eric Kroll's tale

I'm giving a lecture and slide show in San Francisco

2009-09-13T08:07:00.000-07:00

on Sept. 17th. http://www.asmpnorcal.org/drupal/?q=node/805
hope you all can make it. thanks
Eric

LA in July

2009-08-21T23:04:00.000-07:00

I'm in one of those places. I'm neither here nor there. No longer in LA and not fitting into Tucson. I was going to Dave and Ori's wedding and nothing was going to stop me. It was over 100 degrees in Tucson at 1 pm Tuesday July 28 when I stopped at Starbucks and bought coffee-something I no longer drink. Soon enough my cd player stopped playing from the intense heat crossing into California from Arizona. I made it to Chi Dynasty on Hillhurst for 10 pm dinner with Ruth Waytz. Stories exchanged then to a going away wine party for Hale, the singer and I ran into Eve Fowler, the photographer, then to 7th and Grand (a jazz bar) to meet Durmel and ran into Pedro who was on his way to do a skate board cross country tv show. Sitting in the middle of this band was Robert Vargas, artist, doing five minute charcoal sketches and did one of me.
Back to Ruth's to sleep.
Wednesday-Next morning breakfast with Al Teman and Leslie at the Town andCountry breakfast place in Sunset Junction then tried to sell some mid century modern furniture to LA Modern. A drink in Mousso and Frank's with Jon Schwartz who works one day a week at Larry Edmund's across the street. Over to Jonathan Brown's Lead Apron to see his newest sweet collection of rare photo books and my photos on his wall. Over to Pico to City Spa to meet Benedikt Taschen then to wa, sushi and Bistro at 1106 N. La Cienega. The food was other worldly. Not big portions but every bite was delicious and unique. After dropping Benedikt at the Chemposhere house I stopped in to see Dave and Ori THE NITE BEFORE THEY WERE TO MARRY. They looked good. a bit pre-occupied but calm and collected. I went home to Adrianna's new Hollywood digs around the corner from the 101 cafe. The place was old school Hollywood with cactus outside the entrance to her place. Nice to see her. Nice to see Iggy Poop, her chihuahua.
Thursday- coffee and danish at Gelson's then over to Beverly Hills to Dave's mom and grandmom's. They two ladies live in adjoining mansions. They are handsome women and were obviously enjoying Dave's day. Ori looked beautiful and Presley. Relatives had been asked to come before the ceremony for photos by the pool. Then into cars to the Beverly Hills court. The
judge was very cool and made the ceremony short. The mother and the grandmother were enjoying themselves and it was in contrast to how my parents and parents in law were when my ex wife and I had our first daughter by socialized medicine...the birth cost us $1. The recovery room had eight other mothers in it and both parents didn't understand why we didn't pay for a private room. (privelege). Then onto the Modrian for Asia de Cuba lunch (Ori and her sister Jackie) and then swimming and lounging about the pool and the bridal suite upstairs. (Dave and Ori had no intention of staying there and early on offered me the room). Ori was radiant..Dave tried to take a nap...someboday saw a Spice girl. Relatives and friends stopped by then most family members left and around 8:30 pm friends began to show up and we drank and talked and took photos in the lobby/bar. For some reason cupcakes were a big deal. Cupcakes in the bridal suite...cupcakes downstairs. Must be a new tradition. Finally Ori began to fade and shortly there after almosteveryone went home.
Leah, a friend and dancer with the Toledo group stayed as did Carlos and Lillian Batts and upstairs we made photos. Around 2 am those three went home and I got to get some sleep.
Friday- Met up with Amy Sampson, my student from CCA from 2007, and we lunched at Blossom on Main st. downtown and then we were joined, ironically enough, by Hugh Williams, my student from the mid eighties at ICP and School of Visual Arts. Then dinner at Pan E Vino with Adrianna and Elia Katz, who has grown a beard. We were surrounded by Hollywood mover shakers which was a good sign for the economy. Then with Adrianna , over to Ori and Dave's to download the photos I had taken at the wedding.
Saturday I drove Adrianna to the airport for a wedding she was attending in upstate New York. She let me stay at her place while she was gone.
Over to Jim Camp for farmer's market omelette in Silver Lake. Then to Carlos Batts to be filmed for a segment of a film he was making then to Lillian aka April Flores' work place then to lunch near the Hollywood Bowl. Dave and Ori had been telling me that they had been visiting the great gay photographer, David Hurles aka Old Reliable, at a hospital on Fountain. He had had a stroke and through the immense help of Dian Hanson, was recovering. That was a grand moment in my trip. He was rich in spirit and clearly loved the slurpy Dave and Ori brought him.Then I met Steve Diet Goedde at the Good Girl Dinette in Highland Park. We talked photography.
Sunday met Jim Camp and Raechel aka Tara Lynn Foxx for brunch at Little Dom's again on Hilhurst. At five Dave and Ori picked me up and we went for delicious dinner at Cynthia Patterson's somewhere in the hills above Pasadena. I went to use the bathroom and there were two magnificent self portraits by Ori. (psst...the strongest blog on the internet is Ori's aka Ashley Blue's blog. The photos Dave and Ori have made and are going to make should be the best work being done anywhere anytime.
Monday back on the road to Tucson with a stop at my nephew Adam's house in Phoenix.
LA for me is about taking photos. Tucson seems to be about music and performance. Humm.

Now

2009-07-22T22:47:00.000-07:00

Willa's father's day card.
The tarantulas are back, its over 100 degrees everyday, and I saw my first rattlesnake down the road from my house at dusk. My good friend Carl Hanni (Modmedia) is joining the Dylan/ Willie Nelson/Mellencamp tour because one of the groups he works with, the Wiyos, is opening the tour and he’s hopping on in New Jersey. The first morning in Brooklyn a subway woke him up and he knew he wasn’t in Tucson anymore. That’s how I feel about handsome young coiled rattlers…I know I’m not in Silver Lake anymore.
I lent Carl the use of one of my travelling trunks and he emailed me he found a 16” x20” color photo of Lystra crammed in the back compartment. I remembered the shot…she’s naked on the living room couch wearing a vintage brown riding helmet and sporting twin rows of long eyelashes along the sides of her otherwise shaven vagina lips. (a concept piece). “That would have given the baggage check crew a bump, yes?” Carl noted and removed it.
There is a group called the Parasol Project headquartered over on Park Avenue, skirting the barrio. On some Monday nites they invite a guest to show a recommended film. I saw Fellini’s Amicord one nite and short animation films by the Quaye brothers another nite. They also sponsored Atomic #10,“a fabulous mid-century pool-side art party extravaganza”.
Morrighan Clinco and Megan Amber Cox were the principle organizers and I joined in to do a short performance piece. The event was held at the Flamingo Hotel 1300 Stone in the old part of Tucson. The hotel was coming back from a seeder period of time and welcomed the many rock bands and art acts. I had little hope that what these two ladies thought would happen would actually happen but it DID. It was one of the best, most outrageous events I’ve ever been a part of from New York to Chicago to SF to LA Paris to Berlin. It rocked. Over 300 “dress to impress in your most glamourous 50s, 60s, 70s Kitschy wear!” guests and music everywhere. It was split level like a Miami Beach hotel and I set up my “lecture” to be given on the second floor so everyone would be looking UP. The following was typed out on a piece of paper and handed out to the guests as they arrived:
Mr. Rab Bit is pleased to announce his lecture “The Tits and Ass of Art” @ 8 pm On the Balcony. Special thanks to the Ravishing models Danielle Chilton, Sarah K. Smith, Jill Hadap and Kellie Keel. From the Collection of Eric Kroll.
I had resurrected my big black Bunny mask and wore shorts, a pressed white shirt and two different colored socks. I had a microphone and 5 women dressed in my vintage clothing collection each with two pieces of art (front and back) and as each woman came out of the dressing room they would strut and turn and I would say something about the art around their front and back- i.e. a Man Ray rope bound sculpture, a Vargas drawing of a young woman as a young enfant, Betty Paige with her two infamous Cheetahs on either side. After I gave my spiel the woman would descend the stairs into the crowds below. It was a Duchampian concept piece and I loved it. Perhaps it was a failure but I doubt it.
There were events and performances going on all over the hotel but I didn’t get very far because, after waiting for the art ladies to change, I went back in the room and there was this creature with eyes flashing and a body in constant motion. She looked like a street kid Capuchine (the actress) and she wanted to play dress up. She mumbled something about being only about her `looks’. I didn’t care. I just wanted to watch as she slipped into the infamous skintight Prada dress with the short zipper along one side. “Then what do I do?” Destany would ask everytime she put another outfit on. Sometimes a woman comes along that clicks with my camera. It happened with Arizona Alice years ago in Flagstaff where she stripped and with Jessica recently in LA and SF.
Destany, with the beads of sweat on her nose and brow. had the animal sexual beauty I see only sometimes. Now that I think about it, she and I going back and forth on the balcony, her crawling or strutting and sometimes part naked was the real Mr. Rab Bit show but I was obvious at the time. I was locked in to taking photos. I kept expecting her to evaporate. Occasionally various women came upstairs and invited her to come downstairs to dance. At one point she danced facing the crowd below like the girl at Woodstock dancing with abandonment above the masses. Then she was gone…the connection with me and my camera was severed. I saw her again that nite but she was gone. Later I noticed her hanging onto different guys and I remembered how she had mentioned she didn’t really like sex. Still later I went and photographed a bongo band with a Black Haitan sax player, Gerard, and she was one of three girls dancing with/for the band and there I could see her beautiful stripper moves and also remembered her saying how she had learned to manipulate men. I could see that. A couple of weeks later she was to come by but never showed.
Colleena Hake of Candelabra gallery was there at the entrance to the hotel greeting guests dressed in cactus. This woman really fascinates me. She teaches yoga, raises (alone) two teenage daughters, is a professional masseuse, artist and has a gallery. Oh and is a poet. Tucson is all about music (everyone is in at least 3 bands), Mexican food and poetry. At my friend Lila Arey's Candelabra opening there was live music and poetry and one of the poet's was Colleena and she was dressed in a shimmering blue dress and read her work from gigantic cue cards. I was impressed and then someone pointed out she has a master’s degree in performance art from a college in Prescott, AZ.
A couple days later Colleena and I went out to Gates Pass and I shot her among the cacti in her cactus outfit and then again the next evening at various taco stands around town.
I lost something when I moved to Tucson. My car. My daughter Willa felt it was time to get another one but I’ve never been like that. I am a loyalist and it was running superbly since I got it in 2001 and it died or was crushed just in from the three way stop sign at Cushing and Main on my way to lunch with Danny Vinik. A woman who didn’t have car insurance plowed right though the stop sign and in plain daylite obliterated a long deep connection I had. I had travelled many a mile in that car. Many a model had changed for life in that car or not at all. Shit. I’ve got a Honda Civic 2001 (same year as my Prism) and I hated that process of looking for a car. I hated it. Checking vin numbers and being horrified by autocheck. The first week of owning it I had to put in a new battery and starter. Life is grand…I know.
My daughter Willa is ten days up in Seattle with her boyfriend’s family…Leah is in Brooklyn having opened her first vintage clothing, music and art store called Old Made (www.oldmadestuff.com). So I’d appreciate it if everyone east of the Mississippi would go to 441 Metropolitan Ave Brooklyn, NY 11211 • 347-689-3922 and support my daughter Leah.
I have to announce the passing of a really cool person- Julius Schulman, the great architecture photographer. He always had a sparkle in his eye and a fantastic smile. He was very close to my friend Benedikt Taschen and years ago Benedikt took me to Julius’ house off Mulholland Drive. He was in his nineties then (and worked right up till he died last week at, I heard tell, $10,000 a day). I asked him, if by chance, he had known my father, Boris Kroll of Boris Kroll Fabrics. Back in the 50’s, 60’s Kroll had had a showroom on Beverly Blvd. Julius smiled, excused himself and was back with a fist full of 4x5 b&w negatives. “And I found them without a computer in less than five minutes”. And he had. He loved being around women and they seemed to enjoy his company too. I remember being impressed that he had travelled all the way to Lake Como for Benedikt’s marriage to Lauren at over ninety. He was cool.
When I text Destany that I was putting her photos in my blog she text back `Fuck yeah’. That warms my heart. So good bye to Julius Schulman and my simple black Prism, Nothing ever stays the same.
Except for my continual lack of money. Anyone that wants any photo I have ever taken or own can have it for below price. write me and attach the image you want and I'll find it and get it to you. kroll@well.com
I'm going back tomorrow to LA. Its been 6 long months and I miss it and my friends.

Christ Is Risen...not Christ has risen

2009-04-12T21:47:00.000-07:00

I studied comparative religion at Bard and that was going to be my major and I did do my major paper at University of Colorado (Boulder) in the difference between Muslim and Christian break away churches in Africa but still, the Easter thing around here is complex for me.
Last nite around midnite below where highway 10 intersects with highway 19, I heard the firecrackers going off and turned to watch. The nearby explosion made me think of the orange blooming Ocotillo plants I see where I live. The branches look like the trailings as the explosion reaches its zenith and the color at the zenith of the explosion resemble the orange buds or flowers of the ocotillo. I turned back to what was going on in the ramada just in front of me. It was Saturday at the 49th st Yaqui Indian village and the deer dancer and the other supporting Indian dancers were beginning. I understand the draw of the deer dancer but I was attracted to the more subtle other things I witnessed over the past 6 days or so. The Indians down here do very specific things for forty days leading up to Easter.
I had been years earlier when my mom was still alive and it was my way of getting out of the house. But this time it took a bit to find anyone willing to go looking. The first time I brought Carl Hanni, my music friend and poet. It was during the day and he felt like a tourist and insisted on leaving...making me feel self conscious since I was being totally respectful and simply interested...simply fascinated. My camera was in the trunk...my imagination was in village.
The second time I went with Reese and by luck she had been to many Hopi and Zuni dances up north and was equally fascinated and self-conscious. nice.
Carl and I did go back several nights later and we again were the only gringos but we were readily accepted and comfortable to watch.
I was in a Good Friday exhibition at my friend Colleena's Candelabria Gallery on 7th st. She's a
wild thing with a hearing disability. There is a Tucson riddle...why are so many good looking young men sporting pencil thin mustaches...because Colleena lives here. She has a terrible time
reading my lips (my scraggily mustache) and I often have to go find a man with a pencil thin mustache...tell him what I want to tell Colleena and then ask him to tell her. (I remember working with the wonderful Korean video artist Nam June Paik and when the television would interview Paik they would run what he was saying at the bottom of the screen even though he was speaking English!) The exhibit was named "holy shit!" The Fallen Away Good Friday Show". My piece was three dimensional, somewhat in character to what I used to do and exhibit at the Stables Gallery in Taos, NM in 1969. La Bolsa de los Milagros was a free standing closet I bought at Target filled with body braces, neck braces and leg braces I had collected through the years. Colleena collaborated with me by finding photos of ordinary folk and pinning them to the inside of the closet. She lit it with amber lit (brillant). When Carl and I approached the gallery I mentioned to Carl I hoped someone would buy it. Carl asked how much I was asking and I said $1500. He blanched and asked "how long did it take to make"!! "A lifetime" I answered. It was a reference, as is everything. to the work of Marcel Duchamp and it directly came from me seeing the miracle chapels up in the Sangre de Christo Mts like Chimayo with its pit of miracle dirt. This is where the leg braces would be left with notes on the miracles of recovery.
When we arrived Colleena, looking wicked in one of my blue French Toast girls Catholic school uniforms, was excited I get to the back room. I passed the confessional (I think condoms were being passed out) and lots of art and entered the back room only to find Johnboy the Jesus on a slab, his body covered in food with several bottles of wine between his legs, and his hands, chest and feet covered in wounds and stigmatas. He was very animated and engaged in conversation with Death with his scythe. Later I saw photos of him pouring water from the faucet into a bottle of wine (turning water into wine).
Went back into the other room with my piece and sat with my artist friend Wayne Belger (he had 3 fine pieces in the show) and watched Jesus in his rakish cut loin cloth until
Carl and I left and went back out to the Yaqui. Please keep in mind its the full moon. Its seder and I'm watching this ritual that reminds me of a Shakespearean play like a production of the Tempest.
So as I was trying to get to...the deer dance is spectacular but its like the Grand Canyon for me or a cityscape. I can't take it in. I prefer the quieter stuff. Like the men completely shrouded in black and moving on the outsides of the procession. I've been told they keep a black cross in their mouthes all the days they are dancing and there are many days of dancing. Or the woman in the covered ramada that lay on the dirt wrapped in a blanket with just the top of her head showing. She was sleeping alone...no one near here. Over in the other half of the ramada the dancers and drummers and chanters were playing music and doing their ritual and she was sleeping on the dirt. very Krollish. very impressive.
Carl commended on how strange it was to go from one event...the Good Friday gallery exhibition with Johnboy the Jesus in a loin cloth bouncing about the gallery and this...a procession of feathered dancers or men all in black or Yaqui singing hymns and I thought about what I had seen several nites before in the Yaqui village where different Indian participants wore masks to represent different characters like the white man and would make little skits that represented the masks they were wearing and I thought actually Johnboy the Jesus was like one of the Yaqui Indians wearing a mask representing something I didn't understand.

ps my old and good friend Steve Bonge came and visited (he's head of the New York chapter of the Hell's Angels. and here is a photo I took of Oliver, the great guitarist with synthesizer that plays Friday and Saturday at the double L. And here's the back of Carl, hard at work spinning
vinyl at the Red Room on a Saturday nite.

Changes

2009-04-03T22:52:00.000-07:00

I think I hate that word. Tonight listening to Oscar over at the double L on southwest 4th avenue and speaking across the table, across the shrimp in garlic, to my new good friend Carl Hanni, I explained how in 1971 in my perfect 12th st Greenwich Village garret skylight apartment (that used to belong to Bruce Davidson) I was miserable and alone and it was raining and the woman, Soozie, had gone back to Santa Fe, NM where I had met her. I couldn't leave. I HAD to do New York. No matter the misery.
Well I kind of feel that now. My beautiful prison is in the foothills where the rich people live. It belonged to my mom and she gave it to me and its the cheapest place for me to be. I came to Tucson to organize, and maybe publish, all or some of the images I made over the last 3 years in Los Angeles and the thousands of images I made since the two Transformation of Gwen books (2001). So I'm behind. So I'm miserable. So...like Miles Davis, I hate to be alone. But like in 1971 I HAVE to do this. Because if I don't, no one else will.
So every nite I go through yet another cd of images I have never edited and I edit. I hope this doesn't happen again but in the 2000's when I was still living in SF, Greenery Press gave me a contract to do a book of images to be titled "Naughty and Nice". It would be candy for the imagination. It would be a small book that you'd keep next to the bed...no matter your preference. So I worked for months and got the book in on time then went back out and spent another month and half finding all the fucking model releases and i.d's THEN came an email from
the owner of the press saying she had lost one of her distributors and couldn't do the book! FUCK. It really effected my life. I had spent a lot of the last 6 months on something that bore
nothing. Particularly hard when I was co-raising two kids.
Anyway I hope this next year or twos work doesn't lead, in this economy, to the same `nothing'.
I spend a lot of time making new friends because I find that I need that as much as almost anything. The idea that I could work in a vacuum, alone, is not going to happen. I don't have the make-up for it. so Gibb, Peter, Karen, Carl, Gerry, Reese, Steve and Colleena help alot.
I miss my LA and SF friends (I was just in NYC so saw all those friends)
. Saw my daughters. Willa came and visited for a week over semester break and I saw Leah for her 25th birthday and my old friend Willard Morgan for his sixtieth. Can't see enough of them but pleased I got to see them.
I'm not shooting girlie and that I'm glad about. And Dave and Ori are supposed to come by in a week and then next month David, my painter friend thats been living in Mexico.
Man Ray called living in LA during the War his "beautiful prison". Now I've got mine.
(copyright Gerry Gomez)

ps. I'm still broke. still below the poverty level. still selling whatever I've got @ recession prices. so if a print by me or someone in my collection is affordable (it is) email me kroll@well.com and I'll send you a jpeg and you send me some money and I send you the image. peace and recovery.

I got what I paid for now

2009-01-17T00:32:00.000-08:00

It might have been 1953 when Man Ray and his wife Juliette left LA (after 10 years) to return to Paris. He had an art yard sale @ his apartment alone Vine. I wish I could have been there. He called LA "a beautiful prison". I don't feel that way. Not a prison. A stage perhaps but not a prison. I am moving to Tucson which I suspect will be my beautiful prison. I'm moving because I can't afford the rent in LA. I'm having my own art yard sale from Saturday January 17th thru January 20th. Those who know my number please call and stop buy. Photographs by me, Peter Basch, Bunny Yeager, and many others...art by Bill Ward, John Willie and others. @recession prices. if you want to come over please email me: kroll@well.com and I'll reply with the exact address and phone.
I live in Silver Lake area of LA, just east of Sunset Junction off Micheltornea. If you aren't around please tell your LA friends.

Last night at the Richard Prince opening I met an art icon...Irving Blum, subject of many Dennis Hopper photos from the 60's, co-director along with Walter Hopps at the Ferus Gallery, THE mid century LA modern art gallery. He was responsible for giving Andy Warhol his first Campbell Soup show. He put a lip around the gallery and leaned all 32 paintings on the lip. More than a year ago, in LA, I called what I thought was his gallery in New York... after 10 pm my time and I guess it rang through to his NYC apartment. He was a bit peeved I'd woke him up. None the less he listened while I asked a few late nite questions.

the best to you each morning

2008-12-26T21:38:00.000-08:00

Thanksgiving I was up in Oakland eating turkey with my close friends Lyn and Richard and there was a couple there and the girl wore glasses. Afterwards the host asked if I'd drive them back to the city. On the way across the bridge I asked if she had ever been photographed...

He he he... Hours later I dropped them off downtown.

I went to New York on a whim to see the current Richard Prince exhibit at the 24th st Gagosian
gallery. He had "appropriated" 3 of my photos in 2 of his paintings. I wanted to see. Nice. I felt honored. This painting sold for 2.5 million. the girl with the smoking skull tattoo was originally a photo of mine that appeared in SEX OBJECTS (1976 Addison House).
Last June I went to NYC for my opening at the Anna Kustera gallery and brought Molly D'Amour. This time I went alone and stayed 2 full days.

Just before New York I invited Ms. Carcinogen to come down and have her mouth sewn shut by
Rachel at Needle Pushers in Van Nuys.

Someone that was in San Francisco when I was in San Francisco and now my neighbor in Silver Lake is the fabulous Clint Catalyst. I have no idea what he does except exist. Beautiful cat. He wanted me to shoot his friend with him as demonic barber. We ended up shooting at nite in seedy downtown LA...my favorite backdrop. Special help from and therefore thanks to Durmel and Carmelo Sala.

I'm selling my R Crumb that he did when they filmed him for CRUMB in my studio back in NYC in the '90s. I used to photograph artists before I concentrated on girlie shots. I'd shoot Dondi or Futura or Keith Haring and ask them to draw in my journal. Here is Crumb drawing in my journal much to the disgust of Terry Zwykoff the director. Anyone want to own it and part with
3.5 thousand, can have it.

Every once in a while I feel good about how things are going that (economic ) day and I'll call up Al Teman or Jeremy MF Thompson and we'll go shoot a few holes. Jeremy is always a gentleman from tee to green.

Its funny how you figure no one sees your work but this week nerve.com asked if they could consider using this shot of` a girl in a box ' that I did at least 6 years ago and as far as i know, has never been published. Longevity...after a while the wrinkles get ironed out.

Betty Page died...long story ...too tired to tell.

My old friend, Alan Kaplan, also died. Surprise to me...not to him. He had had cancer but told no one. His muddy funeral began Christmas day in east LA and it brought me so down that I ended up dragging my friend Elia Katz (Alan introduced me to Elia 40 years ago) to The Wrestler. It reminded me of my tasty visits to Jumbos and my friendships with Emma, Kayla, Dylan, Maura, and other Tomei look alikes.

A lot of my friends are suffering this holiday season. Jerry from the Dirty Show, Carmelo up in Redwood City, Elvis on his couch in the valley, Jon in his bed in Santa Monica. May it b the best to you each morning this coming year and the same to all my friends like Jim visiting his folks in Phoenix, Hale in Lubbock, Adrianna in Napa, Felice in Santa Rosa, Jelvis in Manhattan, Nilsa in Manhattan, Susan Smith in Harlem, Bob and his family in Tribeca, Ruth and Coop who just fed me tonight, Jason working in his fine restaurant on sunset (the Locale), Joel on the ice in Rockefeller center, Numa and Francis up the street, Hugh Williams and his family, Dennis and Jane living on Masonic in San Francisco, Peter and Karen in Tucson along with Jackie and Jason, Steve and Liz over by the boardwalk, Dani and Bruce naked in Tulum, Ori and Dave a row behind me, Robert Chouraqui in Aix, Melanie in ashville, David and Leonora in Mexico, my nephews and neices Adam, Andrew, Zoe and Barbara, my sister Lisa in Florida and to my daughters Willa and Leah. And to Mickey Rourke.

Stephanie fell asleep and dreamt she was a beautiful blue bird about to fly but like a dream it made nonsense

2008-11-25T14:39:00.000-08:00

a Thanksgiving fairytale in images with a postscript tied to reality. special thanks to Sir Nik, Durmel ...the man in black...and Amanda.

postscript shot when she was older...b4 i knew her...a week b4 she dreamt. This time @ Deviant
out by LAX late @ nite one Saturday a month.

walkabout and moving on

2008-11-09T23:18:00.000-08:00

I'm moving by January 1, 2009 from this to this. I am tired of paying and not having RENT. I'm tired of borrowing from my friends. I'm moving to a fine house my dear mother left me in Tucson.

I have an expensive new alarm system. Every morning precisely at 8 am my cell phone rings. It’s the creditors. Rings then stops and minutes later the house phone rings. Consistency is important in a topsy turvy world. My landlord who lives in the attached house, leaves for work at exactly 2 pm and returns always after 10:30 pm. I can’t think of one thing I do consistently except wear different colored socks everyday.

Even before the bank called on the morning of November 4^th I got a text message from Susan Smith, my NYC artist model friend,

“Just voted, 2.5 hours on the line. Would have waited all day if I had to. An honor to vote for Obama in Harlem. Was quite the party for 7 am. Older Black woman in front of me went and got me tea, and refused to take my money. NY Times took pic of me on the line. People driving by honking and yelling `change’!! truly amazing!”

I went and voted early and found a crowd of every shape, size and color. It felt brilliant. I kept thinking/hoping decisive landslide. Went to Steve Diet Goedde’s election returns party and asked him to repeat his `jump-for-joy’ when CNN called victory for Obama. (Oh boy Obama). The text messages came all day and then … “Fuck Yeah!”…from my 24 yr old daughter, Leah and “I’m in class. DID WE WIN?”…from my 20 yr old, Willa.

Can one imagine what it would be like to start out your voting years with Obama President-elect rather than Nixon or Reagan. Now that is hope. I got thank yous from Felice and Numa…thanking me for going to Las Vegas for the weekend with Willa to get the early vote out and for the pro Obama emails I slapped together. Thank you Caroline Kennedy.

Willa suggested we go work on the Obama campaign so I got us a room for two nites high up in the Golden Nugget where I stayed previously with Helena. It has a slide that sends you through a live shark tank. Last time at 4 am I ran across a half dozen Elvis look alikes waiting for their

wives. I ran to the elevator...up the elevator...into the room...back down the elevator...and they were gone. This time we got up and followed directions to the Obama Vegas headquaters-a store front in a shopping mall between a mattress store and something else. A lot of dads with their daughters. The young Mexican American that ran it was articulate and as hip as he needed to be. The experience reminded me of going east coast with Willa to look at colleges. The best colleges had the best regular-guy speakers. he told us not to talk to press and dont blog. My wonderful daughter (chip off the old block) used to cell phone to make a brillant series of vids on youtube: ROAD TO SALVATION (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D5dWCKlki1Q), OBAMA MOMMA (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HEaf8qeR7-4&NR=1), and DAD STOPS FOR A CACTUS (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BDdLpi7paQ4&NR=1). We were assigned a house to go to to get our instructions. We went to an upper middle class white neighborhood and followed the signs to the back and there was a Palo Alto Sanford graduate African American...articulate etc. I think Willa liked him and within minutes had his cell and later was texting about this and that...During his rap the woman next to me brought up she had been brought up in the neighborhood we were to work and it was bad bad bad. We were to get out the early vote and get people to go down and register the last 2 days left of registration...He hadn't gotten any sleep and had been working with high school volunteers to put together the package we were given. The name and address with the way they had voted...a map with pencil dots to match the names on the list. I asked if he and I could do a pyscho drama of what might happen. He played me. I played the poor guy in a rundown trailer. Helpful...I guess. Off we went... The poor didn't really think about the election. The pro McCain (was that his name) people weren't polite and told us ...not asked us to leave. If the yard was clean they were leaning towards Obama...if there was a rabid or angry watch dog...they weren't home, weren't answering the door or none of the above... The only moment I felt we did anything was when we found this elderly gentlemen and he was guy and, I imagine, pleased to have someone to speak with...said he left voting to his wife and he didn't vote nor his son. I pointed at bright eyed Willa and said to please go down and register and bring his son and do it for her. I found a killer Mexican restaurant and spent time with Willa and Obama. As we left Vegas I felt it was worthwhileWilla.

A lot has happened since my last complete blog entry. Tucson with Jessica. Wow! From ‘I don’t have $3 dollars for the shuttle to the airport’ to me waking up from a nap three days later and finding her on a `walkabout’ like the Aborigine teenager in Nicholas Roeg’s 1971 `Walkabout’.

Two days earlier we stencil her back with `RAG DOLL’ and she laid in the sun and later wore low cut dresses.

I turned 62 out in Tucson and that morning tried to sneak in without paying at the Saguro National Park. It was 5:30 am and I noticed the sign said "62 years and older" lifetime entry $10. I had that so went in later and discovered that my lifetime membership was good for ANY National Park and included being able to bring in 3 others in my car. I did the 8 mile loop and found a road leading to Mica Trail and found a bbq area and when Jessica was with me we cooked out twice. She bitched about the bugs but the light, the place, and her creative spontaneity made it (andy) devine.

I returned to Bisbee, Az and stayed in the Mansion at the Stella Del airstream mobile home motel. I had been there twice before staying with Kayla in the smallest airstream where she wrapped me in saran wrap making my limbs into saguaro cacti. And Melanie in the El Dorado air stream making crime scene photos.

On the way down, just north of Sierra Vista there is a small

striptease house by the side of the road called “PIN UPS” with a fresco of a dancer below the sign. We stopped to take erotic fashion of Jessica in front. A young girl sat watching and I went over to her. She had shaved her eye brows and painted or tattooed them back on her face. I asked if I could take her portrait and she agreed but when she moved I noticed her inner arms were sliced with perhaps a razor. I asked if I could do a still life of her cut arms. Then as she moved I noticed she had done the same with the upper thighs of her shapely legs. I shot those also and later saw she had carved “Shame” into her thigh. She was a dancer…from Florida… working just north of nowhere.

I went back to San Francisco to get my gums whacked by Dr. Green and my haircut by Dagny. I fought with Jessica and spent time with my male friends. At one point over breakfast on Masonic with my fine photographer friend Dennis Letbetter I got a text from Miss Carcinogen, who I had met online through my oft absent friend and photographer (strong sexual images) Tommy Landon. She was on Haight and if I didn’t meet with her she was going home. She met us and we went up the street and shot at Dennis and Jane’s house. Elegant and intellectual (the house) I shot with a frenzy…I felt Miss C reminded me of a Hans Bellmer sculpture and Jane was there to be the butt I needed in the foreground (thanks Jane) and Dennis shot me shooting and sometimes grabbed the camera. At one point Miss C got a text… “blow him”. That buzzed around my adult mind as I shot and finally made up an excuse to take her upstairs. In the bathroom I did this and that and I asked about this and that and then she told me what she enjoyed and I choked her …not to kill her but to cut off the air from her lungs.

The thing I like about San Francsico is the friendships I have with men…Dennis Letbetter, Richard Taylor, Robert Flynt Johnson, Justin Giarla among several.

Nilsa from New York says my male friends have a gentleness absent from the women I know. Perhaps. (more tomorrow)

Men With Pigtails

2008-11-07T08:58:00.000-08:00

Now that we have a decent human being as President-elect of the United States (Obama, oh boy!)I can admit to being prejudice. I’ve never liked men with pigtails until, by circumstance, I befriended Durmel and like , American History X, familiarity evaporates prejudice. He’s the nicest guy. Now I have to work on my feelings about people that wear all black!

Me, Myself and Eye

2008-10-06T13:44:00.000-07:00

its all about Charlie Mingus. He was raised here in Watts area of LA in the twenties. So was Dexter Gordon, Chico Hamilton, and Eric Dolphy. When he'd put together his big bands he'd demand that they each blow his MIND. Do something explosive. I got permanently kicked out of Harvelle's by Seven who I don't think liked me. It was Walter's band and it was `Bongo Fury' Tuesday nites.
I didn't realize I'd miss going to hear Toledo on Sundays and Walter on Tuesdays as much as I began to miss that music and my four lady friends high kicking in-your-face. Then this past Friday after attending Deanna Templeton's photo opening @ New Image Art Gallery on Santa Monica blvd. in west Hollywood and finally meeting her husband skate boarder/photographer Ed Templeton, Durmel dragged me to a party @ 5th and Alemeda to raise money for the Killsonic Marching Gang. I was in a foul mood to begin with and the first bands made by mood worse. Over an hour later it began to drizzle in the courtyard where we were. As sometimes happens a few people talked to me like they knew me and one was PrincessFrank and after a bit I did remember him and even more so his vivacious blonde girlfriend. She was in Detroit getting tattooed but PrincessFrank was pulling in the troops. Twenty one musicians to be exact. More than five accordions, many brass instruments, drums, and an electric bull horn. Right from go...amazing. Tight and Mingus explosive and it rocked in my face for over an hour. Well worth seeing when they are in NYC later this month (check their myspace for date and locations).
I'm very close to Elia Katz, author of Armed Love since we crossed paths in the Sixties. We often dine at Jen's, Canters, or Pan e Vino or smoke cigars at the V Cut on Melrose. I knew he had written many tv scripts for Simon and Simon and Hillstreet Blues, and that he had filmed Polanski in Cannes years past discussing his bedroom follies but last week he suggested I park my car and come in. Once inside he handed me a finished 2 hour packaged DVD entitled ERIC KROLL A Photographer's Life. If you'd like to own this masterpiece click on this

http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=120313304000&ru=http%3A%2F%2Fshop.ebay.com%3A80%2F%3F_from%3DR40%26_trksid%3Dm38%26_nkw%3D120313304000%26_sacat%3DSee-All-Categories%26_fvi%3D1

Get the fuck out of here! We sat and watched it and I loved it. Raw and funky and I didn't have to do anything to have made this film in the exact non slick manner I like. This ain't no High D. But it shows the mad mad world that I like to populate. In that respect it is like Crumb. And its hot because I don't think any of the naked beauties took him seriously. The women, many of them r my friends, are completely relaxed and real. Bravo.
Watch JAMIE AND ALEX in Sexy Videos | View More Free Videos Online at Veoh.com
When I took Helena to Doug and Megan's wedding reception @ Enrico's in North Beach San Francisco she wore a low cut black dress and earings and a matching necklace she had made from crushed glass. She looked
even more exotic in her short hair she had cut herself.
When I went to visit Elyse one Sunday afternoon she was feeling ill. I brought her some lung tea I had bought from a Navaho at the Monday market in Kayenta, Arizona. She met me at the door in white cotton shorts from H&M. Nothing...nothing turns me on more than a woman in semi public in white cotton high-waisted panties or shorts. We did just a few strange and wonderful shots after brewing the tea. I asked about the art she was making at Santa Monica City College and she came out with a woven piece she had made. Also wonderful. Also very creative.
One night my photographer friend Liz Earls held a bbq at my friend Al Teman on the hill behind my house. Steve Diet Goedde invited two female friends, Monika and Yvette and I invited Sarah Peterson from Brooklyn. I got bored and suggested I shoot Monika and she put on the white Prada dress I brought and I asked her to sit in the long white porcelain sink in Al's bathroom then turned on the water. After a time Sarah came in mentioning the guy she had come with was all flipped out about her posing. She laid down in the water. What a trooper.

Me and Walker Evans (1903-75) have more than in common an admiration for Lady Caroline Blackwell who was married to both (at different times) Lucien Freud then Robert Lowell, friends with Francis Bacon, lived the end of her life in Sag Harbor and I have read had an affair with Walker Evans. When she died in a fancy hotel room in Manhattan after receiving her friends over a two week period, Julian Sands (the English actor) lifted her body and brought it over to an open window so her spirit could split. Besides our mutual admiration for Lady Caroline, Walker Evans and I like pornography. I have my file on my desktop labelled "to do"....photos I want to
reference in my photographs. In The Last Years of Walker Evans, Jerry L. Thompson was interested in pornography and recommended Penthouse Forum around the time I was writing some of the letters and using my photos to illustrate the letters. "He had been born a triple Scorpio, he explained, an astrological configuration said to favor two sets of organs, the eyes and the genitals." humm. I'm a triple scorpion.
I also heard there was something kinky going on between Evans, Agee and a woman but I could have the players names wrong. I never met Evans but I met many of the other great ones. I walked Andre Kertesz around the block as his exhibit at Light Gallery was being hung by Harold Jones (Kertesz told me about shooting his distortion nudes). I met and corresponded with Ansel Adams, Berenice Abbott (l), and John Sex AND I got to show the photos that became my first book (Sex Objects) to Brassai when he was at the Martha Jackson gallery in NYC in 1975! He kept turning to Lou Stettner and asking (while looking at one of my portraits) "prostitutes?
I made these copies of my photos of these people with my Leica point and shoot. The original prints I copied aren't THIS bad.

This is the Richest time of My Life and I don't have a Dime

2008-09-24T11:44:00.000-07:00

There is an excellent video done by village Voice's NAKED CITY of an interview with me at my exhibition at the Anna Kustera Gallery with beautiful Molly D'Amour gyrating behind me. http://www.nakedcity.com/2008/06/eric_kroll_collecting_and_photographing_fetish.php

I will rattle on for a few minutes but then I have to stop to get ready to receive my old friend Cord Keller. We used to drink at the Bobern Tavern on 26th st. east of 6th avenue in the 80's in Manhattan. There was a gang of us guys and a few model girlfriends. Cord, Micheal Zebarth, and Ron Kurash who later married my x wife Lynka...We'd go out every nite to the Mudd Club and or Studio 54. The big event of the year was Halloween and I remember one maybe it was at Ed Caddy's loft on 27th st but there was nitros tanks and Cord came through the door in a white tighty white bathing suit and a surf board and a bucket of water and poured over himself and stood there dripping wet. I think I went as Big Fig and feared no one would recognize me in this green pair of tights and a green bag but when i sit the streets within minutes someone was yelling "Big F wiig". I remember more things that nite...going to Trax and seeing Belushi standing next to Ackrod dressed as Blues Brothers and going up to John B and saying something "hey remember me" (we had gone to CBGB's with Sam Bruskin and Paul Schrader. He looked at me like I was a big piece of shit and never stopped talking with Dan A. Got to love those Hollywood types.
The other moment that nite was going to a dinner on 2nd avenue near dawn and pissing next to a guy going to work and him looking at me with total disgust.
Anyway I've been traveling with Melanie King, the photographer and model. She read me some Charles Bukowski as we skirted the Dolores River from Grand Junction to Mesa Verde where I was a student archeologist before the dawn.
Recently we were at Stella Del, an airstream motel in Bisbee, arizona. Melanie is having an exhibition of her Appalachia photos at the gallery where I also show (Leadapron 505 N. roberstson. B. Hills).
I'm seeing Jessica whose 19 and that particular relationship has disturbed a lot of people but not her and me. I've never know anyone like her. No interest in anything. but smiles a lot. no ambition but brillant. I witnessed her memorizing in a second a long list of numbers. I have trouble with the alphebet. I asked my photog friend Dennis Ledbetter to do our portrait in 8x10. I had some ideas ...some concepts for the shot and he was cool enough to shoot one with my Leica point and shoot.
I sent out a mass email in support of Obama and it looks like I might have an exhibition in Amsterdam next year. A very prestigious publisher want to republish Sex Objects and richard Prince put one of my shots from Sex Objects on the side of his Camaro.
I had a bbq for Melanie and her husband, photographer Sanders McNew to celebrate Melanie's exhibition of her photographs at Leadapron .
At one point in the evening Sal announced "How come there are tons of beautiful women here and the prettiest is your daughter ". That was Willa. Leah's in Brooklyn and I miss her but she's angry at me. At some point in the evening Melanie shot Elyse with lighting from Sanders then I snapped one of the two. People were to wear masks but some ended up wearing (beautifully) some of the `heads' I've collected.
I
I'm also been hanging out with Helena whose cut her hair. Here we are at Cairen and Che's lingerie party in Santa Rosa. Melanie came with me and Gwen was there so some of past, some of my present. All three women got drunk. Helena sat next to me fascinated, watching Gwen dance on the stripper pole. Gwen used to go-go dance at Bondage A Go Go every Wednesday nite on 4th st in SF. This nite she won the best dressed and was wearing her tiara.
Ruth was angry at me but I don't think she is anymore. I'm angry at WRobert Angell and I have some new friends that live up the street. Al Teman, Leslie (rock and roll), Linda, Josh and Stephan. They have enriched my life overnight. He's a master dumpster diver and has all this cool shit and we're selling it. a hot rod photo album from t he 40's... an annual report of the holdings of Universal Studios in 1946. Can you imagine. Just before I left LA to drive to SF we stopped at Al's and did this shot in his bathroom. the etched glass is from the home of E. Rice Burroughs who wrote Tarzan.
And then there is Elyse. God she is beautiful. I saw her being beaten at a club off Hollywood Blvd. I told her she looked like Joey Heatherton...Melanie thought she reminded her of Jean Seberg. Again its her smile...which she displays when Sal inflicts pain pleasure on her. In the garage...at the bbq I threw for Melanie and Sanders she told me she likes bondage best of all. I suggested being bound in rope was one thing...being bound to someone is another. I know that sentence is deep for a bl0g but I have to post some shots and shower before Cord comes after 20 or so years.
peace and Obama

Yesterday i was driving south on 580 just having crossed the Oakland Bay bridge. There was little traffic and I was going 5 miles above the speed limit whatever that was. Suddenly, the SUV in front of me swerved left, crossed two lanes and hit the cement divide. As it was flipping over in mid air I thought about the election and how the legacy (in my 60 years) of Eisenhower, Nixon, Kennedy, Ford, Carter, Reagan,Bush 1, Clinton, Bush 2 (did I leave anyone out) has to change. I'd like to be able to vote for someone who wishes not at all to be President... an artist like Mike Bidlo or Eva Hesse, but she's dead. I'm not impressed with McCain for what he did in the Vietnam war. I'm old enough to remember what sensible people his and my age did. NOT GO TO WAR. at any cost. Like country Joe and the Fish said "I'd rather stay at home and screw your wife". So all this ra ra about McCain and his war record...no thanks.
My daughter Leah lived in Chicago when Obama was there and she has only good things to say about him. My daughter, Willa asked me to join her in Las Vegas in the beginning of October to canvas for Obama. I'm doing it with glee. All my good friends and others who thinks its hip or excusable NOT to vote. That their vote doesn't effect anything best look again at this photo because this is the car wreck the country has sustained since my lifetime.
I suspect everyone I send this to knows and feels the way I do but maybe you will turn around and send something to everyone you know so you can sleep at night.

Please don't vote for McCain. vote Obama

me

ps I saw Erin from the T0ledo Show in a production of Othello. And last Saturday I shot Doug and Megan's wedding up in Lafayette Park off Clay st in SF. And Jessica ten minutes after seeing this blog text me "I don't like it. I don't want to be part of it if ur going to make me look uggliest thanks though". You got to love youth. Then "Please just take me off". Then "There are 16 pictures of melanie and 8 of me. is that because shes half my weight or something." If one were to go to youtube and type in my name there is a vid done by Dave Naz of Jessica in the single leg leg brace crossing a very BUSY Laurel Canyon or put this in your browser: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YeQgQnZ7u-0
Jonathan Brown of Leadapron is trying to make me a living as an "artist" and sold recently a
small piece by David W. plus one of my photos. I came across some color and sent them to him along with the following remark from back then.

David Wojnarowicz and Mike Bildo in the 80's in NYC encouraged artists to put pieces in an abandoned pier on the westside of Manhattan at Canal Street. it was a protest against the fast rising prices of art. the art put in the pier would be destroyed by a wrecking crew. I shot there ofr about a year and shot often Wojnarowicz. A number of years later I would see David at the numerous memorials for our mutual friends that had died of AIDS. He was a speaker like Jesse Jackson. He would begin quietly but by the timie he was near done with his speech he'd b screaming it. something about how fucked the government was and slow to making funds available to people dying from the illness. He eventually died of AIDS as did Louis Frangella the Argentinan artist, Howie Montaug who ran many of the great 80's downtown clubs, and Peter Hujar the photographer, among many. I'm in the beginning of my sixties and several friends are dying ...of natural causes. Its the same and not the same. Reb Stout, Charles Martinelli, Eric Blauschild, Dave Stevens, and Wilma Wilcox (of course she was 90 plus yrs old). Nobody gets out alive. It may sound like I'm being morbid but I'm not. Just noting a passing

Coop and Ruth hold court every Thursday at Mousso and Frank's and since they r known for
beef and I don't eat it I go for the company. I brought Elyse and asked her to wear (2) short leg
braces. Several weeks ago Jessica wore a single leg leg brace. Audrey joined us and before going across the street to Broadners for Perversion the ladies changed outdoors on the top floor of the crazy parking lot that is decorated with shoes. Sometimes...very rarely something happens by accident that is incredible and real and fashion and fetish and LUSTFUL.

But by accident.

Sometime later, out with Durmel and Elyse we stopped for a burrito at the Burrito King on Avarado st (Tom Waits) and she was handcuffed with vintage kids hand cuffs but she managed.

`That Fucking Rocks’ or what i know about Bob Coulter

2008-06-11T00:35:00.000-07:00

Bob wants it dirty. The place. The girl. The atmosphere. Its all down and dirty and he claims not to care about `art’ but that is what his work is.

One time in LA he was gleeful. He’s always gleeful unless he is pissed. He wanted me to meet him at a motel along Hollywood Blvd. He told me to get over there. That the bed which was orange, was shaped like a heart. Sketchy place. I kept thinking about the furry orange fleas that were probably in every piece of funky furniture in the place and he was staying there… besides shooting! He was laughing and telling me how sketchy the place was. I had my back to the wall and ready to defend myself against the verom.

When he shoots he shoots wide angle and he’s close to his subject which is usually the privates of some tough girl. I watched him shoot my neighbor Adrianne Nicole (I had set it up realizing that this was a match made in heaven). He kept showing me what he was getting. Poontang and later Adrianna thanked me. She got how beautiful this cat is. Adrianna told me how she once hesitated shooting with another friend of mine…after all, it didn’t involve money and she wasn’t going to get fucked, so why do it. I knew `why’ because Bob Coulter finds that danger zone that is so provocative to the male adult audience.

This is the second annual visit Bob has made to LA since I have lived here and this time, over Chinese food on Beverly, he was excited to show me the new work. He explained, and I could see, that he was making more dramatic shots. A darkside…lower light. He uses one strobe…a vivitar on a stand and lets the lite that is in the room balance or rather not balance, with it. Often there is a pronounced light from one side. Its filthy pussy Dragnet. And I know he is giggling sitting on the floor a foot from a girl’s twat also set on the floor. Brilliant. Totally unique. I told him when I started taking `girlie’ photos I was frightened of a girl’s pussy and wouldn’t shoot it. He told me he never was frightened of it.

He was in the music business and got tired of being mistreated and decided to do a porn site on the internet. He knew nothing about web design and learned it…at first acquiring `content’. After a short while, he realized he was buying bad shit so bought a camera and learned to take photos. His site crazybabe.com has a lot of models set in rooms of lust and funky desire. The way he shoots them, the attitude he gets from his modeols gives me the feeling that if I was left alone in the room with any one of his models, they would give me the `snake eye’ and no amount of Viagra would squelch the humiliation and joy I might feel.

The amazing thing is he gets kicked out of these sleazy motels in New York or in LA. He told me of one on Times Square that had no lock on the door and the neon outside the window spelled “Chic” and the “ken” disappeared below the crusty window. He was laughing when he told this story.

I like to think of myself as `hip’ but like the Ari Marcoupolis, Todd Hido and I gave a lecture at CCA, I realized I wasn’t so hip…just eccentric and out of the norm. When it was Ari’s turn to talk he began by relating how the first time he was offered grass he said “why not”. First time a girl wanted to have sex, he said “why not”. First time a boy wanted to have sex, he said “why not”. I’m just not that hip. I know that.

Same with Bob Coulter. I know there are girl models that will respond to Bob (photographically) because he is down and these same women will look at my approach and think (maybe they are right) I am totally square…though that isn’t the word they would use.

But what he gets ,because these girls realize that this is cool shit …is amazing. Stoya with blue hair and the weirdiest pubic hair style on the planet, is a total turn on. I met this \woman at a Dave Naz book signing at Book Soup for a book I had written the butchered intro for and she stopped me in my tracks. She was handsomely dressed and looked like a young Goddard wife, Anna Karina. I walked up to her and to be polite asked if she did porn. She smiled and said “anal”. That was it. My heart was taken but unfortunately so was my bank account. She had just signed with an agency and wouldn’t/couldn’t shoot for the glory of art BUT Bob got her a couple of times before the gate was closed. I was stuck on this idea that `didn’t every beauty want to be a part of Kroll art’. I mumbled something in my email to Stoya about the importance of me shooting with her. What a dumb ass (me). She is of that set that responds well to down and dirty ....not slightly surreal mixed up fucked up art. Must be an age thing. Or attitude thing.

Anyway…his beautiful wife Elise is a chef and when I was last in New York, Bob and I met in Chinatown and went to a spectacular Chinese fish restaurant she recommended facing the Williamsburg bridge. We walked back through Soho remembering the Mudd Club. He remarked about working with Richard Kern, Richard Hell, and Joey Arias back in the day. Now he works with big breasted women with legs wide shut by the wide angle lens. He’s a beautiful cat but I might have already written that. He makes his living off crazybabe.com and well he should. He has two books published by Goliath – Crazy Babe (2005), Bad Girls Hotel (2005).

I brought him to Harvelles to witness the Toledo show and he was with me when the owner again tossed me out after midnight. Bob called him an asshole. I didn’t argue. We talked about the drummer. “He rocks”…, Bob said and he knows. We went over to Swingers on Lincoln and ate and talked.

He wants to do a book on his shots of LA women. He is thinking of moving his family (he has a daughter) to LA.

My gain, if I don’t get kicked out of Jollyweird.

I have an exhibit opening June 6^th in Madhattan at the Anna Kunstera on west 21 st. Put your glad rags back on and come join me.

I asked Adrianna Nicole to explain the difference between shooting with me and shooting with Bob Colter.

“I don’t have to wear make-up for Eric. Bob has more interest in make-up…dark heavy eye make-up…kind of rock star.

Bob’s email says `This is a for trade shoot. There is no money exchange. This is a trade-for-content’ shoot.

Eric, on the other hand, on the other hand, thinks he’s only required to pay $100 once which, in turn, gives him the right to shoot me for the rest of my life! (slight exaggeration)

Eric and Bob both love trashy things. Bob…the motels…Eric the taste…like girls in adult diapers.

Bob has a bigboy camera and fusses with lights.

Eric ..sometimes an underwater point and shoot.

I have had the pleasure of spending a little time with highly evolved people…George Romero, the film maker, Russell Means, the Sioux Indian activist, and now Bob.

Hold The Phone

2008-05-13T09:57:00.000-07:00

Nate and the cat

One is supposed to let them go. Love ‘em then it’s their life and IT IS Leah’s life (Leah and Finnegan at the Two Gallants show at El Rey in my town). I get to watch it when I’m in San Francisco. She lives with a pack of girls (Leah (hates this shot of her) and Finnegan at the El Rey)and a stray guy. There was Jesse until they broke up then got back together then he went to see his folks in Boston and hasn’t come back yet or maybe the two will end up together ( listening to Dagny explain her ipod to Leah, Jesse and Ivy at a local cheap Indian restaurant) in Brooklyn in April.

There seems to be a migration from the Bay area to the Hudson River delta (New York City and its surrounding boroughs). Back and forth. They all went to high school at the Convent of the Sacred Heart, Gateway, Urban, or Stuart Hall with a stop in at rehab or therapy boarding school or public school or no school at all. Music (Leah and Molly roommate and member of The Songs For Moms at the El Rey just before or after Molly went on stage) is the glue…and so are boys but its plainly a girl’s wirld (Leah (she hates this shot), Ivy (gone to NYC and Finnegan on her way to summer Russia).

Young and gay or semi gay or thinking about going gay seems popular.

I’m Leah’s dad so when I sleep in her room and walk to the kitchen or bathroom, I don’t hear fucking noises in the hallway. One of the books I edited for TASCHEN is without its cover and a permanent fixture in the bathroom as our the half dozen toilet paper cores that are in a metal can labeled “recycling” and NO toilet paper unless I buy it.

There was a pack of naked male playing cards lining the bathroom wall just below eye level neatly stuck to the wall side by side but they are gone.

Jesse had the “livingroom”, a misnomer since there was a shopping cart and little else in the space off the kitchen. Leah got help and dumped the cart on the street the nite I came over. There is an ornate divan (?) with no front legs attached. The unattached feet lay at the foot (pun) of the single person couch.

When its bedtime which isn’t particularly late and follows a dvd rental, residents and guests divvy up the beds. Each core resident has a room but there is a lot of sharing. Leah sleeps in Molly’s bed because she’s gone camping on her birthday (Good Golly Miss Molly by the Little Richards…Alana Payoli on mike). Nate sleeps next to Finnegan in Finnegan’s bed. The morning I left, I found Leah and Finnegan sleeping on the floor of the “livingroom” with the stray cat Leah had found the day before, noozed between them. A one-eared, mangy, flea bitten, skinny-as-a-rail taby.

Two nites before, when the cat first came into the house, it was decided…it had fleas. Nate and Leah went over to Safeway while I watched the cat. Then into the bathtub as Leah sprayed a section of said cat as Nate tenderly flicked away the fleeing fleas. Tender loving care. Both lost and found.

The next morning, after coffee at the Red Café on Mission street(French toast $3.99) I drove up to Pt. Reyes and Marshall (growing by the side of the road)to see the sea which I never did see and friends which I did see. Green conscious, house overlooking wetlands, a bit too white and staid for my tastes. The area reminds me of Santa Fe, New Mexico. No edge. No noticeable failure (there is no success like failure-B. Dylan). “Success” as destination is boring.

Anyway…I was out in the garden and being shown a tiny plant or bush that was protected by wire mesh when she told me the plant had been eaten by, she assumed incorrectly, by deer. Suddenly, she eyed the true culprit…a snail! But before I could register the situation, she took the

wire protection hood off the wounded plant, dislodged the BIG snail…mumbled something about justifying what she was about to do and as I bent forward to get a closer look at the villanous snail she stumped it…crushing its’ shell…saying in exact words I don’t remember…that it was an “introduced” species and wasn’t natural to the bio something. Therefore her logic and logic of the local green group was `it didn’t belong’.

I was shocked…shell shocked. Leah rescues a mangy street cat…my friend crushes to death a snail that basically didn’t have papers.

I thought of the illegal Mexicans. They don’t bother me. Neither did the snail. I remember when Libby walked out of my life or Felice and Sam, or was it David, reminded me that change is the best thing that can happen in one’s life. Introduce living alone…introduce a new relationship…bring in a new species…rock the fucking boat! When Adam met Eve did one say to the other…”I was here first…”

I drove back down to Silver Lake stopping in Gilroy to buy garlic and a few early Aretha Franklin albums for $2 each.

The next afternoon I called Leah and she sounded dragged. What’s up I asked. She had been robbed at gunpoint in front of her apartment just off Mission.

She got off the bus at Cortland at around ten thirty pm and no one was on the street and no one was home and Jesse, her Boston bound boyfriend was talking to her on her cell and as she approached her door she saw a shadow move and a guy came up behind her and shoved her into her metal gate and stuck a gun to her head. He took her cell phone (there is no justice), her tip money and something else (I can’t recall).

No one had bothered to put on the porch lite…Jesse (I always liked him) figured something was fucked and called the cops from Boston and they were at the door in San Francisco in five minutes. Nothing was recovered. Leah flirted with the AT&T guy and got a phone within hours promising she’d date him. I’m sending her a few bucks and she got away physically unhurt.

Later, over the phone, I tried to say something about disadvantage blah blah and she said she wasn’t siding with her assailant. He had taken the tips she had earned and scared the shit out of her. End of story.

Ps I could say something about how dumb Blue Cross of CA is but everyone that has anything to do with those no brains nose it. First I sent in my 1242 and they cashed my check for 242 and then cancelled my policy though I finally got them to admit I had sent in the full amount AND they cashed the check for 242. Then yesterday I got on the phone with Nancy ext. 61664 and gave her my debit card for $1,016.38 to make up for the amount of my original check. This morning I went online and Nancy had taken out from my account $1242 overdrawing me by $125 fucking dollars. Naturally I couldn’t get Nancy this lovely morning but instead got Loupe at extension 37488 and after half hour of blind conversation I figured she was lupe and asked her if she thought hell was in her future and the future of everyone else that works with Blue Cross. I’m going 4 a walk. I hope I don’t get caught in a snowy avalanche along Sunset Blvd. which has about as much chance of happening as getting a logical answer from my health insurance.

A Horny Toad By The Side Of The Road

2008-05-06T07:21:00.000-07:00

A Horny Toad By The Side Of The Road

Travels with two only girl childs plus two more after they flew home

I should have known trouble when I saw and heard it. I was dozing in my ‘01 Prism (black Chevy prison) while Molly D’Amour finished her second set with the Sunday Toledo show in downtown Santa Monica, California when suddenly a big man lurched out of Harvelle followed by his two equally big fellows. His arms were reaching for the heavens flailing and his body was wiggling strangely from side to side like he was enjoying something but also rejecting it. “BITCH!” he screamed to the sky. He said it three times in varying modulation and fell backwards onto the sidewalk. I went back asleep only to awake to see him beached across the street, again on his back, again screaming and his friends trying to raise the dead. “Leave me…leave me here….the BITCH”.

I decided to forget the bastard where he lay and went back inside the club. It’s a different set, the second set at Harvelle’s. Its impossible to distinguish the crowd from the performers. It was a pack of people around the queen bee, Toledo. It moved when he moved and pretty much everyone was dancing and again reaching for the heavens but those inside were smiling. From somewhere I heard Toledo say “I leave it to Walter.”

And there was the saxophone player in the band at the mast head. At the end of the stage wailing…screaming beautifully with his horn…bopping…his eyes smiling and it was a tight rhythm, a driven beat and it was the end of the night…the climax if you will. No other band member was insight. The stage was empty except for their instruments and the instrument called Walter was wailing that hard beat. I’m not allowed to take photos but there are only so many moments I can enjoy with only my eyes. Out came the camera. I was going to freeze this bopping moment and I did.

An hour later…3 am…beautiful Molly D’Amour had her check and we were on our way from the furthest point west of the Mississippi River to Tucson, Arizona. But first a stop for Dylan Dray, a beauty I had met in a darken clown room along Hollywood blvd. She turned out to be a friend of Molly’s and a fellow freak for fashion and the three of us were doing a road trip to my house in Tucson. I had promised them vintage stores like they could only imagine and they followed me blindly (dutifully) down the highway.

There are men that say that I am the luckiest man in the world. Perhaps. Growing up in Westchester my parents had an all glass pool house (used in Ferris Bueller's Day Off) and below a dressing room for the boys and a dressing room for the girls. I used to fantacize about the girl's dressing room. How could I get in there. How could I unlock that private area. The I saw 'Blow Up' by Antonioni and it became obvious...become a photographer of women.

There are women that look at my photographs and comment that I keep growing older and the women stay the same age. Perhaps.

My first shock was when I learned Molly was an only child. My second shock was learning that Dylan was an only child. Brillantly at 5 am I asked the desk clerk for 2 rooms. I wasn't sleeping in the same room with that. Naturally I had thought we would drive all nite and arrive at the hot tubs in Tonapah at daybreak. I was a day off. The girls needed their beauty sleep and off they went as the clerk reminded me that the check out time was still noon.

We played cowboys and Indians the next morning as I kept telling the girl clerk that it was that time of the month and the girls needed an extended check out. Keep in mind that I had stayed awake in the hotel jacuzzi till after dawn. I like the dawn and I like to know there is dawn surrounding all the shit in my car. It was so packed with costumes and tequila that when Dylan was in the back left hand corner I could only hear her.

We finally got back on the road at 1:30 pm and stopped for gas. There was a huge semi filled with bleating cows on their way to slaughter and Molly got out to commune with these fecal covered bison. Dylan also got out. I stayed in the car and watched. Suddenly one of them took a crap and it splattered out the air hole all down the front of the girls. Needless to say the girls we shocked, horrified and lifting their shit covered clothes away from their bodies, they scampered to the girls room to wash off. Naturally I followed them in and the trucker girl coming out of the stall was none too happy. What's Love's got to do with it.

This reminded me of the time, circa 1980, with my wife, Lynka, we were traversing lower Florida and stopped at a funky roadside zoo (they no longer exist) and went inside. Beautiful blonde centerfold Lynka stood in front of the one of the last Everglades black panthers as it paced back and forth pausing to eye her when suddenly he stopped and lifted his leg and out from the cage came a steam of pee...all over my wife! Not the photojournalist I am now, I didn't get any of the stream of panther pee on film. Perhaps her reaction is somewhere in my files but I doubt it and anyway part of my divorce agreement is I can't publish any shot of her unless she agrees in writing and this is a blog...not a...

I have my regular stops like the stages of the Cross along the Appian Way. I begin with mid century modern shopping in Palm Springs but for this trip the timing was wrong. Next the cafe in Desert Center after one climbs out of Indigo. I've been shooting there for years. The former owner of the town thought tourists would stop if he brought in palm trees. He set them in a circle and they promptly died. Its worth a giggle unless you were one of those palm trees that dried up and died.

Next comes beautiful Blythe with its cowboy poker room on Main street and the Horny Toad Bar owned by Mrs. Blythe. Under normal circumstances I like to sojourn in Blythe as I did recently with Heather. She dressed and we went and lost a c note at the poker table but the cowboys loved her and let me take funky Avedon shots with my Leica digital point and shoot.

"I Pick It?". A portrait of Robert Chouraqui's '08 visit

2008-04-30T14:20:00.000-07:00

Smooth talker...Fast walker

Robert Chouraqui walks with determination...tilting his head only so slightly. His eyes dart around the room or across the prairie like a bird...registering the pixels fast but differently then most. He has been my friend since Paris in the mid seventies. Or visiting me in NYC and now for the second year, an extended April visit in LA.
I feel as Man Ray must have felt when he first came to Paris and Duchamp took him from the boat in Le Havre to a cafe and there Man met the surrealists. I feel as though I am hanging with Philippe Soupault or Paul Eluard. It is a (downtown LA with Numa and me) a different rthymn.
His day job is landing planes. Here on vacation in LA, he maps out shooting women. 25 women in 20 days. The models must land correctly and on time and then take off and they do.
His voice is very sexy and I listen to it with joy but he is hardly an explorer. When I visited him in Aix en Provence in July last summer he had never visited Cezanne's atelier a mile away. I registered his frustration as I stopped at every thrift store and vintage clothing store and junk shop from Phoenix to Palm Springs and soaked in the hot tubs in Tonaphah and ate seafood in Palm Springs. I have my spots and I'll drag roadkill to where I want to go if I need to. On the way to the airport he told me several times he would think to himself "what is this shit he looks for in these dumpy stores...then he remember the Johnny Cash early Columbia records I found for 50 cents or the early Sarah Vaughn. Its just not his thing to explore.

“May I Pick You” Robert Chouraqui said. I'll translate. It means "can I have it". I knew he covetted the popicle maker of a half dozen plastic forms I had bought at Ikea so I gave it to him.

I can hear my old friend, Robert Chouraqui, breathing rhythmically in the next room. I woke from having to gage the distance of the three shots I heard. These weren’t random drive-by shots. There was no loud crack, crack, crack. Not blocks away. Houses away. The three shots had gone into something soft.

I have always had and kept friendships of the same sex…even when I was in grade school. Some are across town and some are gone. Robert breathes like he is whispering something. I miss Nash Glynn, my New Jersey friend that rode a horse across central Africa buying tribal art and screwing very young tribal girls. He disappeared from my life but lived another 20 years, when I had my first kid. I remember him calling me from the downtown NYC baths, screaming into the phone how great this bath house was …you could put your hard cock through a hole and get the greatest blowjob. “You got to come on down here!”, he’d insist and I wouldn’t. I’m all about `pov’ and that had no “point of view”. This was in the seventies in New York and us “artists and models” would glide over to Studio 54 or the Mudd Club or both if the evening called for it. I had a loft on 29^th st I shared with Libby and people would end up there to get high or make dinner and Nash came in one evening, drunk, and unzipped his fly and laid his large sausage down on my desk, sort of like Piss Gums from one of S. Clay Wilson’s comics. One by one people left the room. I knew what he was doing. He was challenging our sense of what was `hip’. I should have cut it off and put it in a jar and then I’d still have some of Nash around. But I didn’t.

Robert has the sexiest voice in all of America. He rolls his “r’s” and his face lights up and his eyes dance in his head. He tells me we are brothers…that people call him the “Eric Kroll of Europe”. That’s good. Then I am the French Robert Chouraqui.

He is an obsessive photographer. He surfs the web looking for women to shoot and has a type. Slightly skinny…heavily tattoed. A “suicide girl”. Strange photography. (chromegirl)Last year leaving Peter and Karen’s house in Tucson we had a car full of models and I was too drunk to drive…or at least everyone in the car thought I was too drunk to drive. That left me in the backseat with Willow from the internet and Robert from France. I was running my hands all over her body and whispering sweet drunken nothings in her left ear when SUDDENLY I ran into a third hand where the sun never shines and it was Robert and we locked eyes and giggled as I asked her, did she mind that we were trafficing on her flesh and she explained that she was used to being mauled (by jerks?)…she was a stripper. An hour later I was being tucked into bed by Lystra, who I still shoot (I shot her last nite). The girls went out until noon the next day as the men lay prone dreaming of a second reality.

Naturally, the models love Robert. What is there not to like. He does glamorous photographs of fetish. (Dylan Dray)(Erlinda) (Heather) (Kristina) (Molly D'Amour)(Natalie Minx ...its her birthday today and its Lillian's birthday 2)(SaraLiz)(Miss L)

Too fantastic for my tastes but he knows his light and its his shot not mine. And anyway I like it when he shoots in my backyard (Molly D'Amour) or in my garage (Heather).The women end up looking spectacular. (www.robertchouraqui.com)He scours the internet and makes arrangements and last year shot 41 sessions in less than 2 weeks while visiting me in LA! Already this visit, he is knocking off women (shooting women) like a kid uses his forefinger to flick spit balls from the ledge. Some of the ladies he shoots I've pimped out to him like my neighbor Adrianne (at Blossum on 4th and Main)Nicole. He ended up shooting her at Coop's studio. Coop is a struggling artist who stays Cooped up in the Bowery...I mean the Brewery. He is the best damn documentarian of our friends taking photos of pussy (models).

(My philosophy is to live the life and have a camera around to record the decisive moment when American porn actress crosses paths with French cowboy in the noire.)

And I introduced him to tattoo artist and piercer, Raechel
who I took to bondage camp last summer.

It wasn't all about photography. There were moments of relaxation like the time we went and visited 3 fingered Scotland Bob, photographer who lives in seedy downtown LA. He is a real photographer. Ektachrome and eggs is all that would be in his frig if he had a frig. He sleeps on the floor and shoots your head like it was a landscape if you aren't toooo dolled up. Or shoots downtown in the most peculiar (best) way. He's old school. he's off shooting a wedding in large format as though no one has thought of 35mm let alone digital. He is the best damn four fingered Scotsmans photographer in downtown LA ( at present).

Its ten after five in the morning and Robert is also now awake and checking his email.

He’s in aviation and arranges a safe ballet with big silver airplanes and then photographs women on weekends and then once a year comes to America and shoots.

I could never understand why he didn’t shoot more like me. Why the studio…why the glamorous lighting. Why not more reality. I overheard him explain to someone how he was head of security in the late 1960s and early 70s for underground groups that broke up Fascist meetings in Paris. In this same period he and 3 others from Marseilles travelled to the ROUNDHOUSE in London to study the light show then brought it back to St. Tropez and performed it at the Voom Voom club. Serges Gainsbourg and his wife, Jane Birkin. A shot of gin for himself and one shot of gin for the overhead projector in order to project the correct blobs on the wall.

This explains his elaborate studio lighting. Like an art director becoming a photographer, he wanted his raw material for the light show to be a certain way, so he began to shoot girls. “Some of us were involved in 1967 and 68 with the Trotskites, extreme-left (LIGUE COMMUNISTE) group in the French MAI-68 in MARSEILLES and before the summer 68 we all decided to prepare agitation actions with slides-and-sound. So during end 1967 and 1968 we became the VISUAL support team for many meetings in MARSEILLES and also in PARIS especially for campaigns against the bombardment in VIETNAM and against the fascists extreme-right groups.
This activity gave us a taste for strong visuals (high contrast black and white photos) and through this activity we began to learn by ourselves photography, mainly with the purpose at this time to be able to reproduce some press drawings and press photos on slides. We continued later this political activity in parallel of the LIGHTSHOW for pop groups and concerts and we used our technique for many big meetings.”

Years later, he left for cowtown 25 miles northwest of Phoenix, to shoot 30 women alongside 30 other photographers against various western tableaux!

I’d rather stay (Robert at work in my house in Tucson) and make dirty pictures with my new muse Riley who turns 20 today! Or feed the havilinas that rush through my Tucson cactus yard. Or wake Molly or wake Robert. Its all dawn's early light to me.

eating red berries.

Go find Robert on myspace.com/Chouraqui_photographer

as Nana found Robert. Precious and alluring, this Italian 18 year old has a list of photographers she intends to shoot with and a schedule. Last week Gilles Berquet, Robert in April…perhaps me this summer in Europe or here in LA. I get nervous around women that schedule photographers. I can feel used.

Beautiful French Luh (luhmodel.com) last July in Paris approached me in a Cave on rue Saint Sabin and said I was going to photograph her and within minutes she was sitting on my face and Didier Carre was taking the photo. I explained to carrot haired six foot Luh that the photo I needed to take was not what I got that nite and so for days we were together. I brought her to Serqes Jacques, Lise Safarti, Roy Stuart and she brought me to Romaine Slocum and Yann Minh. It was a rich and wonderful relationship and I was beginning to think I had a French girlfriend in Paris. I kept telling her I hadn’t gotten the shot I would need for my next book. Mornings at the flea market, afternoon playing chess in Luxembourg gardens, wine at sunset at the hotel Amelot (the concierge called me over and whispered I wasn’t allowed to bring prostitutes to my room. I explained these were hardly prostitutes but (expensive) models!). I felt something for her (I easily fall in love). How naïve. Just as I left for Rome I told Luh I had gotten the shot I needed. On my way back to Paris I was anxious voir ma Luh. “I can only meet you for a drink…I have to see this film director that is only in town tonight”. But what about love! She politely reminded me we were on different life schedules. That she wanted to know many and I wanted to be serious avec un.

Un dur retour d’experience.

Beware of beautiful 18 year olds with schedules.

ps I am exhausted from Robert's (down the steet from Harvelle's with Mo and Numa) visit. It's my fault. I have a Jones for playing host and drag my guest to every LA moment (Master Liam's Lyar. I like to point out. In the end I'm not working. I'm hosting. I was glad to see him go. 2 b alone is divine. "hell is other people"...Jean Paul Satre. Till the summer adieu Robert.

I just received an email from robert entitled BACK IN CHEESE COUNTRY:
back home
good flight with women the age of young@heart but they did not even sing
thanks a hundred time for yoursuperb hospitaly of every moment (despite all the FUCK!!!)
kisses to you and around you
Robert

I will translate. the fine bar store in sunset junction was playing young@heart "mostly live" and he made me a copy and I played it and Adrianna, Robert, Gia, Tommy and the unborn child of the two loved this cd. 80 yr olds singing "I will survive" and other important numbers. We ended up going to c it. I am a New York screamer and I scream "FUCK" with bravado when I am confronted by the fucking insanity of the computer world. I slammed my fist into its side (my laptop) and it sent me strange messages from Picasso for a week so rather than denting it again I scream FUCK!

ERIN Is Smoking In The Alley

2008-04-18T14:38:00.000-07:00

I don’t know why and he doesn’t bother to explain himself but once again the owner told someone to tell me I couldn’t take photographs at Harvelle's during the Toledo show. Later I asked him and he went stone faced. Humm. Is it that I bring people every (fucking) week I’m in town to his club? Does he think I make money from my blog? He didn’t strike me as stupid. Is it because I am Jewish. I doubt it. There is no evidence of profiling at Harvelles. Maybe its like the guy that can suck his own cock. Asked why he did and he answered "because I can".

Anyway…I didn’t say a word and watched the show. There was a fifth girl and she (literally) flipped over Toledo.

I went out back between the sets to smoke my cigar and out came Erin, the only blonde amongst the 5 dancers, and when not dancing with Toledo is “a fry cook in a dive bar”. She didn’t light a cigarette but instead started to dance. These girls can’t dance enough. Beautiful. Monica, the new girl, joined her. There is more then one way to skin a cat and I was getting my shots and obeying the (owner) law.

I wondered two things. Was Erin dancing because I was shooting? No, she kept on dancing after I shut off my strobe.

Was she wearing underwear under that short dress? This I never found out and it wasn’t any of my business anyway.

I’ve seen another one of the cabaret dancers, Leah, (not my daughter) break out spontaneously and do the `Monkey’ when there was no sound at all.

It must be in their blood.

Molly Threw A Chair And Everyone Missed The Point

2008-04-11T15:14:00.000-07:00

Its hard to explain Molly in words because she is all about action. with her eyes, with her smile, with the way she moves. She told me she danced in the LA Opera and I went with Carmelo and saw a tree dance in Don Giaovanni. But I know her from the Toledo show and from a studio in the Valley and from my house when she comes to try on clothes. She is a good example of violence and art. I digress. I am an old friend of Fakir Musafar, the publisher of `Body Play', the husband of Cleo, the great teacher of sm, and the only person that ever corresponded with John Willie. When Fakir suspends himself from hocks through his chest he dances and meditates till the hocks break free. It is soulful and out-of-body. Mark Jury and his brother made the outdoor documentary on his sun dance. This was back in the 70's. In June this year, through my friend Liam, I watched 30 something IceMan at the Vanguard on Hollywood Blvd. get hung by hocks in his front, in his back and along his legs. He got up into the air and kicked violently, v i o l e n t l y, until the hocks were gone from his bloody body. there was no quiet mediatation. I didn't understand it. I was used to seeing the experience be contemplative. This was viseral.
Molly dances cabaret at Harvelles for the Toledo show in much the same way IceMan does suspension. With a vengenance. it is brillant on her as she looks at you, then through you, then pushes you out of the way and hangs from a rafter. Its sexual and aggressive and the only real way to dance the dance of Toledo's music. Last Sunday she threw one of the chairs...with a rush and her best friend and fellow dancer Leah (not my daughter thought she threw it toooooooooooooo hard. I understood. and later Leah responded with the best solo I have seen her do.
I have photographed many women in my short life and a few 100 stand out and Molly is one of them. Naturally I feel I can not capture what it is she is but I enjoy trying.
If you are lucky and are passing the Casbah at 4 pm she will be there with Dylan. Yes Dylan. I don't want to be late. fortunately for me I live down the street and can grab my camera and be here before this hits cyberspace.

New York Could Kill Me

2008-04-07T11:05:00.000-07:00

When I was younger I thought you had to be at least 35 years old to do NYC. I was born there and went back to live there when I was 25 and stayed till I was 49. The math, nor the chooses, never computed.

Now when I go back I can’t stay long. Otherwise it would kill me.

My Leica d-lux 3 has sent me back to street reportage violently. Everything I see I want to shoot. A lot of it are stranger beauties that if I point my lens at (NYC), might scream.

In 1980 I went around the country and lived on the road for a year with my new and only bride, Lynka. I shot 800 rolls of b&w film and I got so sick of someone I wanted to shoot asking, “why do you want to take my picture”.

Twenty eight years fucking later I hear it now. Now I say “no reason. I just want to take your picture.” In the past I’d make something up. I work for Der Spiegel (which I did), I work for New York Times (which I did)…I work for Harper’s Bazaar (which I didn’t).

But its dangerous now. On both sides. I saw a girl on the LL line waiting for the subway and the way she crossed her legs standing there intrigued me. I want to shoot body language of young women.Like the way Mindy crosses her legs and sits smoking between sets at Harvelle's on the Rhodona beach Pier. Anyway I had to sneak the shot of the subway girlunder low light. Suck. But what was I to say to her without her tossing me politely into an oncoming across town subway. “hi I did the book Sex Objects”. That won’t work. “Hi, I did the book ‘Fetish Girls’". I mean, just her nose was visible outside her down parker. Maybe she was 13 like at Carlos’ bbq. I could have said to the nose that "I edited Neil Leifer’s baseball book. Perhaps you’ve seen it". She couldn’t own it. Three months after it came out it sells for $700!

“Oh yes I own two copies…I love baseball photos”. I don’t think so.

I entered the same subway car and sat across from her and when she sat down and removed her hoody she was strikingly beautiful. Ethnic or Eskimo or ….but again I could imagine her fright as I stumbled and mumbled “Hi I’m Eric Kroll and no I don’t want to fuck you…at least not on the subway”.

Anyway…NYC would have killed me if I had stayed longer. I’m like a grandparent visiting their grandchildren. All my many friends kept asking why I was in their town. “To visit friends and see art”, I said. They looked at me incredulously. No book. No book project. No editing. No assignment. No nO No.

I ate fabulous food…shot sex pictures and portraits of beautiful women and visited old friends and went to the White Columns and saw Vince Alioti’s Male collection of art. Its all one world. The curator of White Columns on 13^th st is Matthew Higgs who put me in a CCA exhibit with Todd Hido and others. I met him through Richard Kern who I had brunch with at Orlin café along st. mark’s with his wife, Martynka, who is a photographer and writer and told me dirty little secrets about the aging photographer David Hamilton. Richard seemed like Richard with his Man Ray smile (actually its Lee Miller’s lips across the sky) and the way one can see him process a thought. He goes away in his mind for a moment and then comes back having gotten it and says “Oh yeah”, nodding his head.

I had Hannah meet me at the White Columns. She’s a friend of my daughter Leah’s and someone I have coveted BUT unfortunately she is becoming more and more conservative or at least that is what she tells me as I make advances across the table at Florent’s my most favorite 24 hour French downtown (Westside below 14^th) restaurant. I met Florent in the 80’s when he lived below or above William Coupon, the infamous Mudd club photographer. Florent’s is closing. I have been involved in some great and memorable scenes including snorting heroin in the boys or girls room…I can’t recall which with Whitney and Lynn and coming out of the bathroom and as we returned to our table Whitney passed a tall Black man wearing a spagehetti white t-shirt and not knowing him, she screeched “I love hairy armpits” and grabbed this stranger’s arm and lifted his arm and licked his armpit. Ah, the ‘80s. A different appetite. That was a night! In the cab, after we were asked to leave the restaurant, one of these two beauties screamed at the teenage transvestite hookers along 14^th st something improper and the next thing I see is a straight edge razor blade enter the open cab window and circle the empty space looking for flesh to slice. I remember casually ducking since we were so fucked up. Later that nite as the crack of dawn was appearing over the east river, with Lynn perched delicately on my bare thigh and Whitney blurry-eyed, propped against the bedroom wall, she let out a loud and violent FART! “Got to go” said Lynn as she dressed staggered out the door.

But I digress. New York would kill me if I stayed past the five days I did. Somewhere between the “Night of 1000 Gowns” shot at the Marriot on Times Square for my dear friend Veronica Vera (Mapplethorpe shot her being eaten out in b&w) for her “Miss Vera’s Finishing School For Boys Who Want To Be Girls” and shooting 3 dominatrix in American Apprael gold outfits at the “Nutcracker Suite After Hours” in the east 30s, I lost my health. I tried to get it back last night while shooting the Toledo show in Santa Monica, drinking with Adrianna Nicole and my nephew Adam, but alas I go to see my doctor at 4 this pm.

In and Out with the three sisters

2008-03-23T11:54:00.000-07:00

Carlos Batts had his movie party at Safari Sam's the other nite and I ended up in the backseat with Numa and in the front was Adrianna and Beatrice. The boys plus one...and the girls plus the token musician in the early morning lite. Beatrice, the photographer, spoke to Numa, the artist. Adrianna the actress spoke to Ori, the artist, actress, writer. I was there to observe and record as the three water signs cut a new asshole in the nite. Later we fed at the in and out burger on sunset and then retired to Jumbos to oogle the pole girls and throw dollars to a good cause.

Gia starting to show

2008-03-23T11:41:00.000-07:00

nose piercings... forget about. pregnant in a tight way. make-up artist. I fell in love...ok maybe its lust. in any case i really like her husband Tommy. and they expect a boy named Sue, no I mean, Cash. we did some cotton panty cross word puzzle face sitting then met Carlos and Lillian for pizza up the street. Gia is eating 4 2. Gia, almost a mom, is becoming shy and felt wierd wearing the gold catsuit to eat pizza in and when she stood up to go pee the room stopped. I asked Lillian to take my Leica and point and shoot and she did. Lillian is the best photographer without a camera I know.

A Friend Has Passed. He was Fine. Super Fine and when he was Rebecca H. Heels he had a big COCK

2008-03-20T12:55:00.000-07:00

I'm really sad but really glad to have known Reb Stout who on Fridays became Rebecca H. Heels. He was bigger than life with a BiG cock and a toy train set running though his Garden Grove home. He had dusty dogs that lay in the dust in the back yard. And gigantic aquariums and the finest paper collection of vintage porn. He was a former merchant marine and a dude in a t-shirt. Dian Hanson told me he was particularly masculine because of his time spent as a transvestite. I'm probably not saying what she said right. i only know he was a friend and got lung cancer and licked it then didn't lick it. Like sometimes happens, nobody bothered to tell me. I went back to my life after he seemed to have recovered and got busy and didn't call. and then the phone was disconnected and I knew.
I met him through my NY friendship with Veronica Vera, my former model and Mapplethorpe's former model, writer and fabulous woman just above 14th st. and Annie Sprinkle. We would spend a lot of time together in the 80's and parts of the 90s.
Reb was working for Mistress Antionette of Versatile Fashions and on Fridays he would become a she but an extraordinary she. Big Big tits, bad blonde wig (I don't think he thought it was bad), very high heels, a corset and someone sometimes to suck his hammer. He discovered many big breasted beauties including Persphone and Dita. He had every inch of his home covered in girlie photos and illustrations. They were in cheap frames in his kitchen and I was always pleased to see some of my work up there on the kitchen wall. He had album after album of 4 x6 prints he had bought or traded for or made. He had John Willie, he made the vhs tape documentary on Bill Ward. He was in every issue of Reflections magazine (obscure and filled with people who have become ini icons of our generation). I shot him for Leg Show when Dian Hanson was there and he gave me/ swapped me vintage extreme heels I had to sell when I moved to LA. He had hundreds of high heels. He was Rebecca H. Heels. He had a long affair with
Vanessa Del Rio. The rumor had it that the mafia didn't like them being a couple. they were losing too much money so that indicated the two had to break up...a modern romeo and juliet. In the later part of his short life he had what seemed like dozens of websites and when I stopped by after Saturday golf he'd be at his computer.
He was, for me, in the inner circle...like what the Beatles had. Only a few of us experienced trying to make a living from our kink. His had his, mine was mine and we shared the years and crazy wonderful experiences only those that dare play those games.
I remember bringing a now famous publisher friend to his house and how horrified he was at the state of Reb Stout. I never felt that way.
See ya Reb...See you in the funny papers.

Prince Poppycock In My Backyard

2008-03-19T12:07:00.000-07:00

Two sub New Year's Eve's ago (several days before new year's eve) i went to a party a friend of Amy's was giving. very psycheldelic (sp). I did cocaine in a plastic green bathroom. I hadn't done much cocaine since studio 54 days and it was stupid then and 4 me stupid in the green bathroom with little pools for snorting cocaine. Amy has several names and dances beautifully at Jumbos, my club 54 now that i'm 61. we were there to celebrate the performance artist, Kitty Diggins' birthday. I have no idea if that is her real name. after doing the cocaine I retired to the kitchen where there was a fine perade of people for me to admire. After a time Prince Poppycock came in with his date or dates. He was so theatrical I forget the woman he was with. I approached him to photograph him and we both promptly forgot about that idea. Until i saw him at Robert Flutie's extravangza at Bordello on 1st street several weeks ago. He was performing and I was eyeing Liam's wife, Little Bit and conversing with a rubberized Christine Kessler. Howard was no wear to be found and the camera I was using couldn't/wouldn't focus. somehow, days later, I was in Poppycock's apartment photographing him becoming Poppycock. Once Prince Poppycock became Prince Poppycock we drove a short distance to my home and I did these photos in my cement garden. He is beautiful. I asked him to sing some opera. Here is Prince Poppycock singing some opera in my backyard garden. I doubt that's his real name but it doesn't matter...does it.

V Day '08. 29 Palms Inn

2008-03-19T04:48:00.000-07:00

separate beds and she slept in. i built a fire in the adobe fireplace and waited until she woke up to open her valentine's kit from BIG LOTS. Then we went for a swim in the pool...well she went for a swim. We met someone even older than me who gave me only his first name...Robert. His wife said he was very very close to Andy Warhola.

where I go to church on Sunday- the Toledo Show

2008-03-18T10:07:00.000-07:00

I'm not particularly religious but I do believe in consistency and if I am in town I take the 101 s to the 110 s to the 10 west then get off on 4th st exit, go right, then proceed to Harvelles's ( a NITEclub) which is a few blocks on the left (neon sign next to a cigar store). I'm planted by 9:15pm at the end of the bar furthest from th door ($10). The Toledo Show. After a bit the lights go out except for what is behind the curtain then Sebastian on trumpet or Alex on double sax begins to play behind the blue curtlain and then comes the HAND of Toledo. The rest is history of some of the finest hit-the-floor and dance music and performance I have ever seen. The sermon begins and lasts past last call. Of course there are the 4 women...some of which have already walked all over my heart and the rest simply push me out of th way. because that is the dance. it is integrated with the muscle music of Toledo. it is slam dancing cabaret. it is today in the fact that it is in your face and you are part of the show and this is Toledo and this is the musicians including the fine singer Maliki (sp) and it goes and goes and till the second show is done.
There is the back area where we smoke and flirt and talk and wait till the music starts again. the second show is rougher and compliments the the heat of the first show. and if you look closely you can see Leah, not my daughter, Erin, blonde and smiling, Molly, vixen and when she goes freelance on the floor the sweat appears on everyman's forehead because somehow it feels like she is locking eyes on you. That she wants you in the best and dirtiest way. and Mindy, the young Sophia Loren who is know is a dancer even when she's wearing her (short) black and white robe.
I don't like to leave church till the sermon is over ... after 1 am, sometimes 2 am, sometimes 3a then sometimes to Swingers where recently I got the handsomest play under the table from my dancing partner in her glad rags, I have had since junior high. I recommend it and please tell Cevin, the owner, you heard it from me.

"My Mother Always Insisted I Make Tasteful Photographs...and I am"

2008-03-18T00:31:00.000-07:00

I am doing a portfolio of 15 images with Chez Higgins in Paris. My friend Eric and his wife have a daughter named Lea and I have one named Leah. His office is his small but cool bkstore under a staircase (if my memory serves me). It is filled with jewels. rare books by my friends Romaine Slocum and Gilles Berquet and others. His portfolios are an edition of 30 copies. in slip case. anyway, I had this mind and I felt that the manner in which Dave Naz and Ori live...I felt I had built a $100,000 set. Instead we moved some shit around and presto it was perfect. I kept biting the inside of Ori's inner thigh and she would yelp and Dave would look annoyed. Like I have always said ...I don't want to make sensible photos or easy photos. I enjoy the edge and coming face to pussy with Ori's panty covered pussy was edge. everyone was cool including Boo, their dog, but I wanted to bite and Ori didn't like that so I stopped.
They are a treasure chest of talent because they are so NOW, and normal in a very unique way and on the surface it all looks normal but it isn't.
In one of these shots Ori is reading from "SITTING on the male" manual 6 by "Jonathan Lee" Ske Publishing with an Illinois address.
Tonight I watched with brillant porn star Adrianna Nicole, Jean- Luc Godard's "Breathless" starring Jean Seberg (hard-on) and Jean Paul Belmondo. screen play by Truffaut. b&w 1960.
I want to take this certain girl to lunch and then give her 100 dollars to pose while we eat. It will reek of prostitution...yet there are women who won't pose unless it helps to pay the rent. sometimes taking photographs makes me feel like a John.

Golden Ori with a Flavin on the side

2008-03-14T18:33:00.000-07:00

Danny Lyons says he knows he's getting the shots he wants when he gets kicked out of wherever he is shooting. I get kicked out repeatedly. My favorite hotel Majestic on Gough in sf...kicked out after years of taking lucivious photos I get told I can never come back the nite I shot 4 bound girdle women while being filmed by German Vox tv. I've been kicked out of Vichy hot springs for making too much noise- Sarah was a screamer plus she ripped the priceless quilt with her high high heel. I had shot Dan Flavin and his neon art back in the 80's in Bridge Hampton Long Island at the DIA Foundation. he was quiet and plump. So I knew what to expect at the LAMOCA and asked Ori aka Ashley Blue to wear this gold catsuit I had bought along Hollywood Blvd. She was magnificent and I kept being asked to stop my photography so I'd go to the next room and get asked to stop my photography and the next and the next. worth it. its the photo after all.

Mindy Dances the week away

2008-03-14T17:19:00.000-07:00

I found Mindy in my livingroom trying on rubber for a scene I had to do for the film Micheal Simmons' American Fetish. She reminded me of a young Sophia Loren. When she smiled it took me to another place. She said she was a dancer for the Toledo show twice a week. Sunday in Santa Monica on 4th st. and Thursday nite on the pier in Redondo. The 4 dancers dance like punk rockers smashing into the customers...into the walls. The energy is explosive and reflects the music of Toledo. I go religiously to the Toledo show on Sundays. It is my meditation. the band rocks. sebasian on trumpet. Maleki singing next to Toledo.

Matisyahu and Terry Richardson face the dying sun

2008-03-14T17:11:00.000-07:00

for 12 hours I waited impatiently for Shabbat to end so that I could do my portrait of the Orthodox Jewish rapper Matisyahu. Me and 50,000 kids were in the Florida Everglades to hear music. Well, 50,000 minus one which was me. I was there for other reasons which included Matisyahu. Finally, at 7 pm Shabbat was officially over but then I watched Matis walk away and into his trailer. I waited more. I knew he had to prepare for his rock concert at 8pm. Suddenly the door opened and out came Matis wearing a green cap that made him look like he had borrowed it from a young Fidel Castro. I was about to approach him when he disappeared again. This time to my amazement I noticed his 6 ft plus frame climbing the latter at the back of the bus! What! Is he going to go on the top of the bus and proclaim something/anything looking like a young Woody Allen in the movie 'Bananas'. No ...he got to the roof and began to scramble along till he settled against a storage pod and stared into the sun. Below young disciples and friends scrambled getting ready for the concert. No one noticed or cared if they did notice, but to me, I saw clear as the day i was born...the Maxell ads for their new speakers ...the "Blown-Away-Guy" ad campaign of the 70s! I asked the bearded media man next to me if I could borrow his tripod and began taking photos. Then all I could think about was the week before watching my friend Terry Richardson (genius) photo our mutual model friend Betcee May(strikingly beautiful) on the lawn next to the kidney shaped pool in Bel Aire. Terry wanted her backlit by the dying sun and, instead of an RV rock bus storage pod, used one of his young assistants to steady himself while he shot.

It's a strange and wonderful world supported by the sun as I could plainly sea.

Eric

my bedroom

2007-11-23T18:10:00.000-08:00

That's Jeanelle's leg in a boot of mine I bought in Pigalle Paris in July. I met her at a vintage goth party in Silver Lake. her boyfriend was one of the dj's. The photo in the back is by Dean Loomis a Life magazine photographer. She was eventually eaten by the animals she was performing with.