I Hate Photography!

"Ballad of Solitude on Via Cavour #1", Rome, Italy, 2009. (Self-portrait in stairwell in hotel.)

Being in Rome is fabulous. Staying for 3 days is a mean tease.

The quote of the Photo Festival of Rome at the Palazzo delle Esposizioni is when Nan Goldin spoke and said,

"I hate photography." Very dead pan as if she had lost any personal affect and might possibly had been escorted to her chair in a strait jacket.

The same photography that put her on the map. The photo lovers who loved her for her disaster life and for documenting it, sat in the audience obedient and ready for the brazen stings of deep cut lashes upon their love for her. More for her known work as more a photo artist than as a multi-media artist.

Basically, she took a dump on her adoring public. Although, I did not make it to the end of her talk, I can imagine everyone applauded. We will always love the mother of "fuck you" photography? She might have well been a Nancy Spungen but without the super high IQ of 150-160.

I felt like Nan might piss on my head next...so, I left the auditorium and walked back to Via Cavour, got in my jammies and called it a night.

I spent most of my time in the hotel...and so, the following is my "Ballad of Solitude".

"Ballad of Solitude on Via Cavour #2", Rome, Italy, 2009. (Yummy colored faux velvet chairs at hotel on Via Cavour)

I would be wrong to say if I didn't have the same sentiments of despising photography like Nan. Some days and some days even more.

Why have you held me in your grasp photography? Am I your slave girl? Do you leave me forever hungry for more celluloid and pixels? What kind of delusions have you told me over the last twenty years? Is there any truth to the people I photograph if the shutter speed is some fast? Or is it what I want it to be a truth between the subject and myself?

Your, Juliana...well, she did one thing that was positive. She made it through her lecture, with a construction workers tag on pinned to her breast (they did not give me a formal one with my name as there was not one made) got up with a translator and instead, just did her talk in Italian to an audience of maybe 12 members of the audience. Great publicity, right? And yes, I felt so very important.

If anything, I was reacquainted with my love for Italy, reminded of the asinine bureaucracy, and my fantasy of living in Rome was reawakened.

No, I never made it or had the time to go to the Spanish steps. Returning to Jersey City was a bummer, a reminder of the lists of work to be done. And yet, I am very thankful for the dear friends around me--they really do stand behind me.

Non Vedo L'Ora=I Can't Wait!

"I'm flying on a jet plane.
Don't know when I'll be back again!"





I'm going to Bella Roma on Thursday evening. Up, up and away!

Here's why:

Juliana Beasley Lectures at Festival Internazionale di Roma

Host:	Zonettive
Type:	Music/Arts - Opening
Network:	Global

Date:	Sunday, May 31, 2009
Time:	5:00pm - 6:00pm
Location:	Palazzo delle Esposizioni
Street:	Via Nazionale, 194

Phone:	390670473528
Email:	info.za@palaexpo.it

Description

Juliana Beasley will lecture on the making and experiences gained during the six years of photographing in Rockaway Park in Queens, NYC.

Ms. Beasley will tell various anecdotes about her subjects and how she built intimate relationship with them book over the years for the book in progress entitled "Last Stop: Rockaway Park".


I am thrilled. Can't wait to be back in Rome. My first love. I haven't been to Italy since 1998 when I was en route to Albania. I haven't been to Rome since I thought at 24, I would live there and within a week, I would own a Vespa, have a great Italian boyfriend with coffee colored hair, a job in photo and a room in an apartment.

Well, Rome bit me in the ass! And I left went to Florence, then froze in a compartment of a train all the way to Vienna, lived with a sadomasochistic self-cutting artist named Richard whom I had met in Frankfurt. It was so cold that winter, his heat was so not working and I slept next to an open gas oven and obsessed about sticking my head in all the way to put me out of my misery. And then his Turkish fiancee showed up and that really changed the tone of things despite, the friend Marc who was addicted to opium and wanted to get us all high.

I finally left, met up with an NYU buddy, we had sex after drinking to much alcohol after dancing to music on a transiter radio until, we spent the rest of the night bowing over a shared Austrian toilet. The next day we got up early, got on a train down to Belgrade, photographed Serbian refugees from the north. I ate the worst pizza of my life, froze again and then in two days we left on a train back to Vienna. Everyone loved her in Belgrade. It seemed no one cared a rat's ass about me.


But, now in 2009, I have a purpose. I see myself doing a jig, playing the real hee-haw American, charming them beyond the Lawrence Welk shows of my childhood. And then, I will fall into a beautiful opera in Italian about Rockaway Park and all will applaud as if I was far better than Ms. Boil. I will be the personification of the native New Yorker. Just like the song, I'll brake out into the hustle. Every so, often I will say something in English with a strong Italian accent.


On my off hours between interviews and ice cold cappuccinos, I'll sit on the Spanish Steps, write in my journal and wonder why so many men lean on their motorcylcles and scratch their balls through their jeans.

Thank You Mr. Siskind! You Make Me Feel Like a Native New Yorker!

Friday I received the great news!

"Paddy and Seamus", Rockaway Park, NYC, 2003.

"Glamorous Isabelle", Rockaway Park, NYC, 2006.

I am a one of the six recipients for the Aaron Siskind Individual Fellowships of 2009.

The other photographer celebs are:

Eric Gottesman, Cambridge, MA
Deana Lawson, Brooklyn, NY
Andrew Miksys, Seattle, WA
Oliver Nowak, Elmhurst, NY
Lori Waselchuk, Baton Rouge, LA

Fab! 3 women in there! Thumbs up...up women photo folk like that!

Hurrah, Rockaway Park!

The sweet kindness of my friends and sister are credited for their support and seeing me through the good and bad. Of course, I would not have received this grant without the openness and grace of the people who I met over the years in the Rockaways.

Thank you Mr. Siskind for leaving behind your legacy of generosity, your love of NYC and you inspirational works.

This money will really help me during this difficult time. I am ready to finish this story but not without a sadness in my heart that still rests upon the NYC beach facing the Atlantic Ocean. The pubs like the now defunct Palm Gardens and the Kerry Hill are as indelible as all the people I met there over the years and those whom died there over the last six, seven years.

Now for the a bottle of orange soda!

Juliana Get's Out of the House With Bryce Gruber

"The Inner Sanctum #1", 40/40 Club, NYC, 2009.

"Very Important #1", 40/40 Club, NYC, 2009.

Dear Bryce,

Thanks for inviting me out to the ultra VIP 40 40 Club! I had a blast! Yes, I, Juliana Beasley entered the inner sanctum of the possibly only Mod decorated sports club in the universe. Alas, I got through the locks of heavy gates, walking pass the gargantuan bodies of guards to the nether kingdoms.

I stood at the entrance of the 40 40 Club, as we had arranged. A text message came through...she would be out in a moment to gather me. Five minutes later, a delicate white hand appeared out of the vault door and I hear, "Juliana?". With one heel out the door, bracing herself with the other heel inside the door, she grabs my hand. She dwarfs me and I feel like a child dangling from a mother with a mission. She is 16 years my minor.

"Waiting on Line #1", 40/40 Club, NYC, 2009.

Bryce passes me a fluorescent orange hospital band as we march through an eager plebeian crowd into the first room. Ready to snap and roll, three line deep rows of paparazzi sit center stage, gazing upon a bright white foam core backdrop covered in logos. All cameras are in vertical position meeting the guidelines of Getty and other agencies who might shun my horizontals and squelch my files in virtual garbage cans.

She directs me to my spot, off to the side, on a diagonal. This is where I am to stand and capture the terrible glare of beaming lights upon my lens. I need the freedom to move and mingle, I feel like I am standing in a block of cement.

Between bright lights and darker interiors, the exposure choices promise to be difficult for anyone who veers away from the door mat posing as red carpet imprinted with the soil of past and present posers, shakers, love makers, and sudden flash of the real deal celebrity. I can not tell the difference between who matters, who does not. I have two channels on my t.v. The bent rabbit ears and the coming of digital only will leave me to my permanent place of pleasant disengagement.

"Manager #1", 40/40 Club, NYC, 2009.

"Posing #1", 40/40 Club, NYC, 2009."

Bryce is the kind of girl you want to be friends with. She's fresh faced, beautiful, friendly and ballsy without the appendages.

"Bryce and Friends", 40/40 Club, NYC, 2009. Bryce is on far right.

...and also, the girl I never would have gotten to be friends with because she was in the cool group and I wasn't. In fact, she has about 3K plus friends more that I have on FACEBOOK. It is so large that even my DSL service will not allow me to crack into it.

I met Bryce, the bright-eyed young woman, the CEO, maxi Leader of Intensity Global and website entrepreneur of a Luxury Spot on her birthday....Bryce was it 25?

Bryce is just a nice person. I don't know her and although, I cannot confirm with the 3K friends on FACEBOOK would say the same, I would assume they might venture to say the same thing. One thing, I can say for sure is that the evening I met first met her, she was not surrounded in the cushion of models and ass lickers. As it seemed, she was in the company of sincere friends.

The Luxury Spot CEO and employees are described to be "fun-loving, posh New Yorkers with a penchant for better living." I would unfortunately never enter the realms of this inner circle. My place is a mess, I can be morose, yet positively excitable and my nails are filthy. I lack the skills of daily feminine hygiene and simple care. At best, I have some expensive hair products for my problem hair and I eat spinach and red cabbage almost every day.

"Luxury Rental", 40/40 Club, NYC, 2009.

So, what could a top woman like Bryce do for the femme in me? Could the Luxury Spot offer me a personal hygiene assistant for at least 2 months free or until I could catch on to daily self-nurturing and beautifying schedule?

"Sidelines #1", 40/40 Club, NYC, 2009.

Back at club 40/40, I finally make it through the the multi-layers of bodyguards, opening one Ukrainian egg doll after the next until finally, the last bodyguard throws up his hands. He let's me and all the other stragglers and late-comers enter into the final destination. I have arrived... to what looks like a basement rec room. People stand either looking down at their text messages or glaring around at the room, trying to spot anyone, oh, just if only one celebrity or the likes of one celebrity who can calm their disenchanted hearts.

"Boys in the Rec Room", 40/40 Club, NYC, 2009.

Random Photos From the Rockaways, 2009.

"Boy Waiting for School Bus", Rockaways, 2009.

"Red Couch", inside a home in the projects of Far Rockaways, 2008.

"No Trespassing", outside a crack house in Rockaway Park, 2008.

Juliana is On The Boat Baby!

This might get the feeling right! I'm on a boat baby! Please click here to get to the You Tube page for a fun and exciting ride.

If you read this before Monday or Tuesday next week...hee, hee...just wait!

Here I am alone, happy as my dog Howard, sitting in a lounge chair looking outside the window like an old woman watching the urban action from above. Occasionally, a dog and his human companion will walk by and Howard will turn and spin and bark in madness...death to anyone who intrudes "his" territory.

I look around and my desk is scattered with papers, my bedroom floor disheveled in a mixture of winter and summer clothes. Transition.

In the break of a storm...I just need to hold onto the boat baby. And pass through another stretch of chaos before a couple of weeks might settle into the realm of routine and the peace of morning coffees at 5:00 am.

For now, it picking up pieces and putting them back where I think they belong. But, really who knows for sure?

Putting away my toys and amassing and compiling a to do list from all the scribbled notes on envelopes, yellow legal pads, and organizers meant to make me more organized. I consider all that is terrifying about the future seemingly planned out to perfection. But, that list always gets curtailed by someone or something that pops their messy heads in the way of certainty. And then again, I'm back in this never ending cycle of putting things back together again. This is what the Buddhists call Samsara. This is what I call a pain in the ass.

No sillies not the perfume!

Or what my mother would have called a "shit kicker".

I wish Edward Gorey could draw a picture of the irony and insane quality of my life, of all of our lives. I would have to ask him,

"Can I be the ballerina from the "Gilded Bat" steady on one toe and yet utterly bored?"

And then I would place it over my bed, replacing my original copy of the ever hopeful "Paper Moon" poster--tough little Tatum and the wheeler dealer Daddy, Ryan sitting in the crook of the moon.(a joyful surprise of winning the Oscar. Please follow "Tatum" link to see this awesome and sickly cute clip.

Winner of 1973 Oscars! I was 6 and in love.

Not tonight. I'm up on the mountain. I'm on the boat, baby!

Shen Wei's Limited Book Edition!

Dear Shen!

I have been a very naughty girl. I promised to post this as I admire your work. This insane lifestyle took me away from my bloggies doodies. I look around and everyone makes it seem so easy...just like you.

Xo, Juliana

Everyone! Let it be known that Shen Wei's fabulous work entitled "Almost Naked" is now a premier limited book edition. Entitled the same name for which his series of images of strangers he approaches and asks to photograph them in the nude or just simply intimately. His secret for convincing the most unlikely of subjects is his own.

The edition has a series of unbound 25 images settled into a wooden box...can this act get even classier? Wow, there is even a certificate of authenticity. This is a charmer from days past when things were made with the best ingredients.

Get in there and make it before the 218 edition is a thing of the past.