Benjamen Walker's Theory of Everything - It will always be hard

Episode Date: September 16, 2014

When the photographer Garry Winogrand died in 1984 he left behind hundreds of thousands of unpublished negatives and undeveloped rolls of film and a few out of print books that are still treasured by connoisseurs and photo book collectors today. It’s always bothered Leo Rubinfien that his friend Garry’s legacy is bound up with these hard to find books, for leo a much better way to appreciate the genius of Garry Winogrand is through his slideshows. Recently Leo Rubinfien got an opportunity to show the world the Garry Winogrand he knew and loved,  SFMOMA  invited him to guest curate a Winogrand show. The exhibit  took years to put together, and at the outset SFMOMA’s assistant curator of photography Erin O’toole was nervous, but she tells us why she is now in the cult of Winogrand too.  While your host was in Australia this summer he met up with one of his new favorite artists, the cartoonist Simon Hanselmann. Simon is one of the most compelling voices of his generation, but while his characters are all sex, drugs, and rock and roll Simon just works. Also we reminisce about the early days of the web with ToE regular Peter Choyce who believes he had one of the first ten blogs. Three reminders that being an artist will always be hard.    

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Episodes every other week at neverpo.st and wherever you find pods. You are listening to Benjamin Walker's Theory of Everything. This installment is called It Will Always Be Hard. When the photographer Gary Winogrand died in 1984, he left behind hundreds of thousands of unpublished negatives and undeveloped rolls of film, and a few out-of-print books that are still treasured by connoisseurs and photo book collectors today. There was a book on zoo animals called The Animals. There's a book on beautiful women called Women Are Beautiful. There was a book on the Fort Worth livestock show and rodeo called Stock Photographs. There was a book on public events of the 1960s, early 70s.

That one's called Public Relations, and it's probably one of the only books that you can find under $100, thanks to a recent MoMA reprinting. It's also one of my favorites because Gary Winogrand takes us backstage and shows us just how much of our world is constructed. Peace demonstrations, art parties, moon launch of Apollo 11, press conferences. That's Leo Rubenfein, photographer, writer, and now curator.

It's always bothered Leo that his friend Gary's legacy is bound up with these hard-to-find books. For Leo, a much better way to appreciate the genius of Gary Winogrand is through his slideshows, slideshows Gary would present at galleries, museums, and universities. The big slideshows that he gave would mix every kind of picture together, and they had this terrific, I always say, Whitmanian quality to them in that you saw an enormous cast of characters, big parade, the sailor, the businessman, the beauty, the ape, the cowboy, one after another after another, character after character,

and you felt when they were all mixed together, interspersed with each other that way, you felt like you were seeing the whole of American life march by you. It was an epic. A couple of years ago, Leo Rubenfein got an opportunity to show the world the Gary Winogrand that he knew and loved. SFMOMA invited him to guest curate a Winogrand exhibition, a show that's just wrapping up its tour around the country at the Met in New York City. The exhibit took a long time to put together, and at the outset, SFMOMA's assistant curator of photography, Aaron O'Toole, was nervous. I was interested in Winogrand, but I didn't really have a burning desire

to spend many years of my life researching him. He seemed to me to be somebody who had made some really great pictures, but the scope of the work was pretty limited. But once Leo showed Aaron the Winogrand that he knew images from the unpublished contact sheets and rolls of film, she joined the cult. I'm a complete convert,

and I feel that he's a much more important photographer than anybody, I would say, of my generation realized, because, you know, we didn't have the opportunity to see his slideshows that he presented. We didn't ever, you know, hear him speak. And so all we had were the records, the few books that existed, and that's how we would learn about who Winogrand was. And so going through the archive, speaking to his friends and family, and then seeing the incredible pictures that Leo discovered on the contact sheets

was a real revelation. Seeing it all laid out, I had this moment where I thought, oh, this is what he was after, and this is how he was seeing it, was in the aggregate, in this huge sweep of things. What's so interesting about him I think is that he doesn't try to impose a particular look on a place. He goes to a place and really tries to get a feel for it. So you know his New York pictures have a very different character than the

pictures that he took out west for example. You know New York pictures have a very different character than the pictures that he took out west, for example. He was reacting to what he was seeing there. And I think that he really captures in his work the sort of regional differences and the difference in the light and the street life in these different places. And so you get a real distinct feeling for the different parts of the country in his work. When I met with Erin just before the grand opening in San Francisco, she showed me one of her favorite winter grand images taken in 1964 in Aquarena Springs, Texas. It's a young woman swimming with a pig. You could do research and find out that they had these young women swimming with pigs

in this spring outside of Austin for many years, but you don't need to know anything about the place, I should say, because it's just this magical moment. I love this picture because it's hysterical and it's also just so distinctly American. Nobody else would have a girl in a sort of flouncy bathing suit swimming with a pig. If you missed this incredible Gary Winogrand exhibition, you can still pick up the catalog, but do it soon before it, too,

becomes another unaffordable collectible. Sadly, though, one of my favorite things in the show isn't in the book. It's a letter from Gary's second wife, Judy Teller. Dear Gary, This is to set the record straight. Since you seem to have a great deal of difficulty keeping hard facts in mind as a basis for discussion, and also since you show no desire for rational discussion, maybe this will help you. As for my tone of voice, I've been trying for the last year and a half to discuss and resolve our differences in what has been, for at least a good part of the time, a normal tone of voice.

To no avail. I would like to have children. grandiose dreams, i.e. the big New Year's party in the big studio, the big money, gigantic success at money-making operations, etc., etc., etc., etc., etc., etc., followed by feeble attempts, or no attempts at all, to realize these dreams. I am now almost 28. The time I have to wait while you bumble is nearly exhausted. The question, moreover, is not whether you can make a large fortune. The question is whether you can make a decent living. Including the payment of my analyst bill. In our culture, men are expected to provide the women they marry with their necessities.

I would say it magnanimous on my part to be asking for this for a limited time. The time during which we might have and raise two children to school age. But my analyst bill is not even relevant at this point. What is extremely relevant is the money you owe the government in back taxes, your inability to pay rent on time, you constantly running out of money, your credit rating, and most of all, your flippant, irresponsible, nonsensical attitude towards these very real problems. I'll wait till the government catches up with me. Why should I pay them any money now? You seem incapable of exercising your mind in any cogent way.

This is a letter that's both funny and heartbreaking. But it's also a letter that's a lot easier for us to read in a vitrine in a fancy museum than it was for Gary to read on his kitchen table where Judy left it for him just before she left him in 1969. I was just in Australia. I got invited to the Melbourne Writers Festival to perform an original piece live for Radio National's Radio Hour. Our next producer comes via New York, where he produces a podcast called

Benjamin Walker's Theory of Everything. I also participated in a number of panel discussions and conversations about writing and sound. And at every single one of these, someone from the audience shot their hand up. First question, without fail, how does a podcaster make money? And I really tried to pretend like I wasn't bothered by this or that I have an answer. But I discovered that the only way to politely shut this down is to remind everyone that artists have always had a hard time with money and that they always will.

When I was done with all of my festival duties, I walked across Melbourne to visit one of my new favorite artists, the Australian cartoonist Simon Hanselman. He's no stranger to money trouble either, but lucky for him, he lives in a civilized country. I've been on Centrelink, that's the Australian dole, like government payment for years. Like, you know, I was a work-shy freeloader, but the entire time I was drawing, like, I saw it as an arts grant. Now, this kind of talk will always make a right-wing pro-minimum wage pundit turn blue in the face, but Simon's artwork grant really did pay off. A collection of his work just got published by Fantagraphics Books, and one of his stories called Jobs just got nominated for a prestigious comics award, the Ignatz.

And he's also now one of Vice's most popular cartoonists. And he's insanely prolific. I just work all day. That's the key. I just don't stop working. Most of Simon's stories feature Megan Mogg, a witch and a cat, and their friend-slash-roommate-slash-punching-bag, Owl. These three ne'er-do-wells take a lot of drugs, watch a lot of TV, and get into a lot of trouble,

especially when their insane friend Werewolf Jones is around. Simon clearly pours a lot of himself into his characters and his world, so I assume that he must lead a wild and crazy life himself, but that is not the case the man just works i mean in megan mogg their drug use and perpetual sitting around could be an analogy for my perpetual work because i'm just just non-stop just obsessed uh even before i had all these deadlines and you know real deadlines i was vomiting in bins and just... That's my classic line, vomiting in bins. I used to stay up all night drinking Red Bull

and go to work at the university bookstore the next day and just frequently vomiting in bins and just ruining myself. But I just had to get this work done for no one, for no reason, just for me. That's paid off. I have a work ethic or whatever. Simon's room is very Spartan. His bed just inches away from his work table. I feel like it's just two sides of the room. There's the books, the library, and there's the work side. That's it. And there's a bunch of crap plastered to the wall. Simon shows me some of the crap that's plastered to his wall. His hand-colored original drawings are beautiful. He doesn't use

a computer. But I'm more surprised at the scale he draws at. The A4, which you don't have in America. You have weird different paper in America. It really, you're like the last holdout. Like, just join A4. Like, come on. I get Simon to read through a few pages from his story jobs this is the one that netted him the ignatz nomination and it's also the story that i came out here to talk to him about basically his character owl has secured a manager job at the sexy camping store and he's enlisted his friends meg and mog and werewolf j, to work with him. But when he wakes up in the morning, he's alone, so he rushes to the store. So Al's arrived at the camping store. He's deathly afraid that Meg and Mog won't be there because they've absconded during

the night, but they are there. They've been to the American Apparel and bought some fake speed so they can stay up. Mog's really into actually working because he finds it surreal um they're unpacking boxes there's some classy flip-flops with uh thong clad bikini girls on them which is real actually i worked at a camping store in the uk called blacks and their actual campaign was the outdoors just got sexy and they had flip-flops with bikini girls on them it was a yeah it was a terrible terrible job I actually quit I anyway Al's arrived Megan Mogg are at the store they've got the sexy flip-flops

Al's talking to the boss he comes out Al's the manager he's being shown around the store here are the boots, blah, blah, blah. And they reach the kitchenette, and lo and behold, there's Werewolf Jones, trousers around his ankles, just ramming this butt plug into his posterior. The premise of the store is that it's a sexy camping store, so Werewolf Jones naturally assumed that he should ramp things up and wear a butt plug. Why not? It's supposed to be sexy. But as Al points out, mainstream sexy, not ass play sexy.

I realise this might sound more obscene than funny, especially if you're not familiar with Simon's work, but trust me, it is very, very funny. Mostly because Werewolf Jones is genuinely confused. In fact, he's incensed to discover how anti-sexy the sexy camping store actually is. What? I thought this place was supposed to be sexy. Simon's characters may not be cut out for mainstream sexy or mainstream jobs, but there's something really advanced going on in this story. In all of his work, actually.

In a way, it's sort of one big battle. Simon Hanselman versus mainstream culture. Well, Ask Play Sexy is the mainstream in a way. Like, sex is getting weird. My money is definitely on Simon. People ask, play sexy, it's the mainstream in a way, like sex is getting weird. My money is definitely on Simon. I have an Italian agent and we've been discussing a European animated series, just very tentative talks but maybe the Europeans would be up for something a little bit sexier.

I'm lucky I'm working within the realm of comics where anything goes and nobody cares. It's pretty well documented. I was the second guy on the Internet. It was Al Gore, and he was doing crazy stuff. Groups, alts, I never went there. I actually made one of the first webpages. It was updated daily. PeterChoice.com, all the news you need to know about me, updated daily. Before the word blog entered the parlance of the web,

I was one of the first blogs. It had to have been one of the first ten blogs. Actually, I'm pretty sure that PeterChoice.com was not one of the first blogs, but my friend Peter undeniably did his part to make that pre-social media web such a magical and wonderful place to visit. Listening to him reminisce makes me extremely nostalgic for that brief moment when anything and everything was possible. First webpages like mine used to be free of a format.

They were all different. You would click on one picture and not know where you would go. It was supposed to be like a funhouse. And it was a loose structure, but it kept getting bigger and bigger, and then I had to rename things because I didn't think of putting it in this tidy little archive thing, like 1998 stories, 1997 stories. I just put them together in stories about death, stories where I get in trouble. I was really just writing stuff that

would just come pouring out of me. I had to get all of this stuff out. And I was getting a lot of hits. One of my best features, most popular one, was called Nightmare in the FM. It was my personal story about how I got fired from this radio station. Back in the old days, I would get fired from all these jobs, and I had nothing to do but feel bad about it and about myself. But here I was empowered, and it was a new form of media. So if you are rotten to someone, someone can put up a webpage. I was one of the first guys to do that. But, you know, I didn't want it to look like the revenge site.

What I wanted to do was be a voice in the new media. I actually used to think, when I was riding my bike around town that I'd better go home and update my web because I bet everyone's reading it right now. I bet everyone in these houses is watching peterschoice.com. I had sections on my website, like my, oh, it was called

The Dark Truth, My Life Story, and I'd always add to it, subtract from it. It kind of was a big thorn inside of my family because everybody read it. There was a page I put up about the death of my father, and I wanted to put a picture of him in his open casket. I thought it was a good picture, but the only time I actually followed someone's advice,

my Aunt Betty told me not to, so I didn't. I just put the picture of the closed casket. My father, actually, he was a brilliant man. We kids didn't know this, but he worked on cellular technology in the 50s, basically inventing the cell phone. But he couldn't talk into an answering machine. He was a total luddite about new products and things. So he was a contradiction.

So when the computers started to just be the only thing that they would talk about in the early 90s, about what's coming, what's happening there, I decided I had to get behind the new media because of my father. When I met somebody, I would go over to the nearest computer. By then, they were everywhere in the library, wherever you were. And I'd type in peterchoice.com, and they'd be so impressed. But I didn't know. I didn't know how to do these tabs, search functions.

And I was always beating my head against the big monitor because of the help function. The help, I could never put in my question, like, where did the page go? Do you remember that about the web in the early days? There was no way to hit the back button. It just disappeared. And, you know, I tried. I knew I couldn't learn. It was all about inviting the proper people over, paying people even to help me. But everybody that really knew the stuff, the stuff where the internet was growing into what it is now with the webpages being totally with video and interactive stuff, they kept that a secret to themselves. It was like a secret. It's not in anyone's interest to help you make a great site. I would go to the library after I spent 20 hours updating and making new pieces,

and it would be wrong. Remember that? You would look at the page on another computer, and it would come in all fuzzy and weird and upside down, and that would drive me mad. That's when I first started to go crazy. And as an artist, I was so embarrassed because that's not what I wanted it to look like. And that's the way it is now.

If you go to that waybackmachine.com, it's in fragments. I was lucky that I was able to upload audio because someone came over one day and we put some pieces up that were very good. Me yelling on other radio host shows. But it was frustrating for me because every time I sat down at that computer, every day I turn it on and there's something new I couldn't figure out. I couldn't just sit there doing what I know and getting to the creative process. The creative process I was really good at, telling the story, telling real funny stories, telling wicked stories,

challenging people, challenging the status quo, doing my politics, trying to be inspirational. And I also posted, like, nude pictures. Remember I had the nude gallery? I was trying not to be too esoteric, but things were pretty much written like song lyrics, stanzas. I wasn't writing like a newspaper reporter or the way that they write now straight ahead. I was trying a style of my own that was different than the way I spoke, a little different than the way I spoke on the air, but a similar aesthetic I wanted to translate to this new media. And I had this theory, this theory that these embarrassing things that I used to not tell people, if it's embarrassing, put it right about it. So I thought I was being cathartic.

I thought I was working through my problems. I was being my own psychologist. I think I was a little afraid of the interactive part. I would post emails that were negative, and I would look for them. There weren't that many. But I didn't want people to have free access because I was fighting with so many people. I didn't want a message board that was just calling me all sorts of names. But now I'm thinking about it. I put myself out there. No one could have exposed me. It's like the David Letterman thing. I was coming clean about things people

didn't even want to know about. It was too much information. PeterChoice.com lasted until I moved to Los Angeles. And when I moved to Los Angeles, I had so many new things to write about. I was on the set. I was on movies. I'd never been in movies and TV shows. However, I had to stop it then because somebody got fired from Deadwood by just posting on a public site some kind of gossip. And I realized that I didn't want to screw things up with my new Hollywood thing. Also, it was never celebrity-geared. I don't care about celebrities other than myself. I was making myself a celebrity.

That's why I was making myself a celebrity. That's why I was doing it. My website ended on a day that I didn't know would end. It was just the day they cut me off because I wasn't paying the bills to West Coast. And the last day was about how I was depressed, miserable, I can't find a job. And I was actually using the webpage like a tin cup. Can somebody, like I must have many fans, maybe someone will send me money. So it ends on a really bad note, but I'm not proud. It wasn't a great page.

Out of all the pages I made that were so nice and so clever, the Wayback Machine has that page. So besides the sad landing page, what do you hope that they will think you were trying to do when they come across PeterChoice.com in the future? I was trying to be an artist. Someone asked me the other day, what's your occupation? I just say artist, not actor. Then you sound like a retard.

You have been listening to Benjamin Walker's Theory of Everything. This installment is called It Will Always Be Hard. Voices you heard on the program this week, Aaron O'Toole, Leo Rubenfein, Simon Hanselman, and TOE regular Peter Choice.

Special thanks to Kara Oler for reading the Gary Winogrand letter. The program was produced and edited by myself, mostly in airports and train stations around the world. But I promise you, dear listener, that I am now back home in New York City. The tour's over, and I am hard at work on kicking off the next season. So do stay tuned.

toe.prx.org is where you can find the archive and sign up for the newsletter, and it's also the best place to follow along. It is, of course, also here where you can subscribe to the TOE podcast, which I bet you've already done. So now you should just tell some of your friends about it. It's like what my kindergarten teacher always used to tell me. Don't be a hoarder, be a sharer

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