Patti Smith Land 250 (with Donkey Wednesday goodness)

Land 250 is published by the Fondation Cartier Pour L'Art Contemporain in Paris to accompany a big exhibit earlier this year.  It's a nice hefty volume with a sturdy, grippy cover and medium weight paper.  So, yes, it does feel good to hold. Between my public school French and Ms. Smith's crazy handwriting I managed to turn it into a learning experience.

But the photographs... the PHOTOGRAPHS are the thing.  They are two hundred fifty delicate black and white ones created with Polaroids by Patti Smith.  She started out with a Land 100 in the 70s but later got a Land 250, of which there is a photo in the book. She went back to shooting Polaroid after the death of her husband Fred Sonic Smith.

In her introduction she writes that, "The experience of taking Polaroids connects me with the moment.  They are souvenirs of a joyful solitude."

I felt it.  Time doesn't exist in these pictures. Fred waves back as he pauses before a door. 

Bye, Fred.

Most of these images come from Paris, where used to live in 1969.  French culture was always an influence in Patti: Rimbaud, Genet, Artaud and Baudelaire.  Brancussi,  Houdin, and Maupassant. Man Ray.  Man Ray.

In 69 Patti was sitting on the curb in Montparnasse writing in her notebook about Picasso.  She looked and saw a plaque.  The photograph is of a studio where Picasso worked.

There are the obligatory Robert Mapplethorpe photos: his hands and the tambourine he made for her, seen of the front of "Twelve."  I understand that Patti and he had a bizarre chemistry.  He just gives me the willies.  It's not his work.  I'm good with that.  But the guy starved a monkey to death in his apartment.

Several are shot in Montparnasse cemetery where one is surrounded by poets, philospher, writers, and artists.   They're all dead.  But they're all there.

There is one photo of Susan Sontag's grave on the morning after her funeral.  Patti went back to the graveside to take photos because Annie was too stricken to return.  She said the flowers looked fresh.

There's nothing stiller than a tombstone, but Jackson Pollock's monolith is still-- palpably, creepily still.

Her son, Jackson, has a tattoo of his father on his shoulder. 

For animal lovers I have included a passage and a photograph about a goat she encountered on a beach in Senegal.  The donkey, of asse, is from Namibia.  That's for me.  So is the monkey painting.

You'll recognize that painting of Leonardo's of those guys at that table.

But I bet that you didn't know that Virginia Woolf watched her mother die in a mirror, because she couldn't bear to watch her straight-on.  That pitted mirror is in there.

The Lenny Kaye portrait gave me a lump in my throat.  It wasn't anything special, just a guy in a chair.  But it is so warm.  And strangely spiritual.

In conclusion:  You should go to your library (type in your zipcode & Worldcat finds it) or independent bookstore and pick up a copy of Land 250.  Literally pick it up.  Remember, I said it feels good.  I also recommend the slide show at Lens Culture.  They also have text from the book.  It is a nice site.

 

april is the cruelest month etc. what remains?
brian jones bones, jim morrisons friend jimi hendrix
bandana. sweatband angel...

from Patti's poem "picasso laughing"

Asse, Namibia