Kevin Klipfel - Sha La La, Man
Intro from the book: Sha La la, Man by James V. Martin
1. Silence. Cough. “People peopling.” Silence. Cough.
Dead air, an unpressed mute button, questionable internet lingo. Not exactly the picture of good radio. And yet, the three minutes that followed as I approached Buffalo on I-190 N---before the broadcast turned into static---were the most compelling of the trip from Michigan to New Jersey to Buffalo and back. Why? Not because the DJ was especially entertaining, but because he was so clearly not. A regular person being regular on the radio and talking about regular people being regular people too was so refreshing that it felt like a revelation.
The prohibition against dead air and the requirement of hyper-professionalism on radio are insistences of a corporatized media who see momentary lulls or minor misspeakings as dangerous opportunities for consumers to be lost. The phonily posed, oversaturated, extensively-edited photography we’ve grown accustomed to is also encouraged by an era in which many capture images in order to develop their “personal brand” or to “influence” by shilling false signifiers of wealth---what Basquiat might’ve called “Gold Wood”---to their followers. But why should ordinary people accept these commercially-dictated standards and demand or even value slickness?
The photographs in this collection remind us that things weren’t always that way and that they needn’t remain that way now. They seem to suggest that if we can see the present as being at one with a past that was more of a home for people peopling, some of its apparent inauthenticity may be redeemed. And the photography means this “seeing” literally: because the images were mostly taken with cheap, disposable film cameras and aren’t color-corrected, they look like images taken this way always have---the viewer often can’t clearly tell who took which pictures when and for what reason.
But they bring us back to a time when kids got excited by birthday cakes decorated with freehand drawings of Mr. T or simple, felt Yankees pennants, when people took pictures not for “content” but to have fun with their new toy cameras, and when these images went no further than family photo albums. They also bring us to see a present where the same ideals can reign and where there are still places for the beauty of the ordinary to reveal itself. There’s Scime’s neighborhood sausage shop, where you can get your meatballs if you call far enough in advance; you can stop by Kelly’s Korner, where one day the beef on weck may still be available after 5:00pm; and you can still find families getting together just to make Nana’s braciole, mortadella sandwiches, and cannoli.
These places and activities may seem quaint, but they can be revelatory too. It’d be wise to take the implicit advice of these images and tune into them before they fade away.
2. Old family photos, hand-written recipes, trash cans somewhere in Manhattan.
You might think, “Too personal, illegible, amateurish.” But can these images (and images like them) make the case for themselves as good art? The question, “What is art?”---pretentious, inconsequential, tedious---is maybe the paradigm of a bad question. And yet, when it’s made concrete by the actions and interventions of artists, answers to it constitute the history of art’s progress. What is being contributed to that process here?
It’s true that these photographs are unusually personal. But the highly personal can be shareable in surprising ways too. I was tuned in to the radio approaching Buffalo on I-190 N, in part, because I knew I’d be writing the introduction to this book and because I wanted to see if I could get to know some of its images and their author better by making the stop. While sitting in Kelly’s Korner finding out that not all wings are created equal, I also discovered the excitement of entering into a shared and meaningful past with an old friend who’s 2,500 miles away. The images in the collection generally invite the viewer to do the same.
That these photographs are personal, even intimate, can’t be denied. But they generalize: if you’re of a certain age or from a certain part of the country, many of them look like they’re pulled from your own life. I can see myself sitting at the table in the collection’s opening image excited by the $5 my great-grandfather always snuck into my hand when he shook it. You can, I’m sure, find in the collection more than one image that you can imaginatively and emotionally enter into too. If the art here can make your heart bat la chamade because it excites some past hopes and loves or joys or drums up the electrifying possibilities represented by New York City and the Chelsea, that’s no mere Gold Wood: it’s something to hold onto.
