Re: no subject
outtakes from a life in photographs
Anti-War Rally, Washington Square Park, NYC, 2003. Photo by Cary Conover
check out this article, mark murrmann and teddy p discuss the garry winogrand retrospective opening this week at sf moma. ted got to hang out with him in la and they discuss that too. lots of never before published photos.
http://www.motherjones.com/media/2013/03/photography-garry-winogrand-sfmoma-retrospective
winogrand was and is one of my all time favorites. i was lucky to have photo teachers turn me onto his work at a young age. if you ever opened a hamburger eyes magazine and were like, “where did these dudes hi-jack this wild style from?” well now you know..
read the discussion, check out some photos, then come to the moma with me this weekend and feel the power..
(via ignatz)
Foo Fighters, Roseland Ballroom, New York City, 2000
Photo by Cary Conover
This was the first concert I ever went to in NYC. Details of how it all came about are fuzzy: I was asked to go by a girl I had met on a roof party several weeks earlier (it was the roof of the building I lived in at the time, 9&11 Stanton Street). She was the sister of girl who was also at the party, who was a friend of my friend who lived in Chicago at the time. At any rate, it wasn’t so much a date as much it was an extra ticket that I agreed to buy. I remember that Queens of the Stone Age was the opening act. About the only song of theirs I recognized was “The Lost Art of Keeping a Secret” It was at the Roseland Ballroom and I remember being able to walk around the perimeter fairly easily. Foo Fighters came on and they were great of course. I remember a comment Grohl made, about how it was his umpteenth time playing there. The one musical moment that stood out was the extended preamble to the guitar solo on “Stacked Actors” where Grohl literally went out on a ledge and was climbing around the venue’s perimeter overhang. This concert, and its early mark on my impressionable eyes and ears, is probably why I like the Foo Fighters so much.
Chelsea Welch, the US waitress who was fired after she posted a picture of a tip receipt on Reddit, wrote for us:
I was a waitress at Applebee’s restaurant in Saint Louis. I was fired Wednesday for posting a picture on Reddit.com of a note a customer left on a bill. I posted it on the web as a light-hearted joke.
This didn’t even happen at my table. The note was left for another server, who allowed me to take a picture of it at the end of the night.
Someone had scribbled on the receipt, “I give God 10%. Why do you get 18?”
I assumed the customer’s signature was illegible, but I quickly started receiving messages containing Facebook profile links and websites, asking me to confirm the identity of the customer. I refused to confirm any of them, and all were incorrect.
I worked with the Reddit moderators to remove any personal information. I wanted to protect the identity of both my fellow server and the customer. I had no intention of starting a witch-hunt or hurting anyone.
Now I’ve been fired.
The person who wrote the note came across an article about it, called the Applebee’s location, and demanded everyone be fired — me, the server who allowed me to take the picture, the manager on duty at the time, the manager not on duty at the time, everyone. It seems I was fired not because Applebee’s was represented poorly, not because I did anything illegal or against company policy, but because I embarrassed this person.
In light of the situation, I would like to make a statement on behalf of wait staff everywhere: We make $3.50 an hour. Most of my paychecks are less than pocket change because I have to pay taxes on the tips I make.
After sharing my tips with hosts, bussers, and bartenders, I make less than $9 an hour on average, before taxes. I am expected to skip bathroom breaks if we are busy. I go hungry all day if I have several busy tables to work. I am expected to work until 1:30am and then come in again at 10:30am to open the restaurant.
I have worked 12-hour double shifts without a chance to even sit down. I am expected to portray a canned personality that has been found to be least offensive to the greatest amount of people. And I am expected to do all of this, every day, and receive change, or even nothing, in return. After all that, I can be fired for “embarrassing” someone, who directly insults his or her server on religious grounds.
In this economy, $3.50 an hour doesn’t cut it. I can’t pay half my bills. Like many, I would love to see a reasonable, non-tip-dependent wage system for service workers like they have in other countries. But the system being flawed is not an excuse for not paying for services rendered.
I need tips to pay my bills. All waiters do. We spend an hour or more of our time befriending you, making you laugh, getting to know you, and making your dining experience the best it can be. We work hard. We care. We deserve to be paid for that.
I am trying to stand up for all of us who work for just a few dollars an hour at places like Applebee’s. Whether a chain steakhouse or a black-tie establishment, tipping is not optional. It is how we get paid.
I posted a picture to make people laugh, but now I want to make a serious point: Things like this happen to servers all the time. People seem to think that the easiest way to save money on a night out is to skip the tip.
I can’t understand why I was fired over this. I was well liked and respected at Applebee’s. My sales were high, my managers had no problems with me, and I was even hoping to move up to management soon. When I posted this, I didn’t represent Applebee’s in a bad light. In fact, I didn’t represent them at all.
I did my best to protect the identity of all parties involved. I didn’t break any specific guidelines in the company handbook – I checked. But because this person got embarrassed that their selfishness was made public, Applebee’s has made it clear that they would rather lose a dedicated employee than an angry customer. That’s a policy I can’t understand.
I am equally baffled about how a religious tithe is in any way related to paying for services at a restaurant. I can understand why someone could be upset with an automatic gratuity. However, it’s a plainly stated Applebee’s policy that a tip is added automatically for parties over eight like the one this customer was part of. I cannot control that kind of tip; it’s done by the computer that the orders are put into. I’ve been stiffed on tips before, but this is the first time I’ve seen the “Big Man” used as reasoning.
Obviously the person who wrote this note wanted it seen by someone. It’s strange that now that the audience is wider than just the server, the person is ashamed.
I have no agenda here. I seek no revenge against the note writer. I have no interest in exposing their identity, and, at this point, I’m not even sure I want my job back. I was just trying to make a joke, but I came home unemployed.
I’ve been waiting tables to save up some money so I could finally go to college, so I could get an education that would qualify me for a job that doesn’t force me to sell my personality for pocket change.
ETA her last 2 paragraphsWhile this story has garnered immense media attention, my story is not uncommon. Bad tips and harsh notes are all part of the job. People get fired to keep customers happy every day.
As this story has gotten popular, I’ve received inquiries as to where people can send money to support me. As a broke kid trying to get into college, it’s certainly appealing, but I’d really rather you make a difference to your next server. I’d rather you keep that money and that generosity for the next time you eat out.
Deuteronomy 15:7 — If there is a poor man among your brothers in any of the towns of the land that the LORD your God is giving you, do not be hardhearted or tightfisted toward your poor brother.
Proverbs 17:5 — He who mocks the poor shows contempt for their Maker; whoever gloats over disaster will not go unpunished.
Proverbs 14:31 — He who oppresses the poor shows contempt for their Maker, but whoever is kind to the needy honors God.
(via truth-has-a-liberal-bias)
Somehow this picture of Joel Meyerowitz got flipped. You can see from looking at the details of his Leica.
I screen-grabbed the image from the following link. A smaller version of this video is playing 6,000 NYC taxis soon.
Spilled Milk
Seems like forever ago one of Julian’s milk bottles leaked in his stroller’s undercarriage, forming a pool of milk that soaked my stowed camera. I remember thinking how milk is a fairly innocuous liquid, and how glad I was that it wasn’t some sort of sweet, juice-type drink. At any rate, the roll was victim to the spill and this is one of the results.
Last month I began my third year in Wichita. Over the holidays I finished up all my 2012 scanning and have been mulling over my photographic output over the past two years (or lack thereof). But this post is not to make excuses for any shortcomings (self acknowledged or otherwise), or really to announce that I plan to do anything differently in 2013.
I suppose what I have acknowledged is a slightly different realization regarding shooting the occasional film picture. Because that’s exactly what it is anymore: occasional (one roll every three months, tops). This more protracted trajectory means that when I look at a scan of Julian, the circumstances of the image are almost always indecipherable to me in hindsight. The guideposts of the Julian pictures are his haircuts.
Kids grow fast. And so I when I look at my Julian pictures I get this overwhelming sensation of disbelief that I was ever a parent to a child that young. Anymore, it’s as if I’m unable to shoot anything but pictures of Julian. And for now, for me, that’s perfectly fine.
Far from ideal, but a vast improvement.
