After visiting Miriam in the hospital when she was on bed rest a few weeks back, I was thrilled to get a chance to see her, Steven and the newest additions to the extended family – Chella and Grey. They are awfully cute, if still awfully tiny. Sam seemed to enjoy seeing them – but may have bonded more with the dog, Freddie. More photos here.
CNNd – it’s where all the cool kids hang out. And today, that included Sam and Amy. As you can see above, Sam helps out Lauren Golus in ad operations. I tell ya, that kid is a natural. More pics here in the photo gallery.
I’m here for meetings this week, training Cartoon Network staff for a project launching later this summer. It is summer as of today (hoo-ah for the solstice), and the weather is lovely. Supposed to become rainy into the weekend, but I’m sure Sam and Amy (who are joining me tomorrow) will have a great time anwyway. Took advantage of the nice evening to walk off dinner (from China Grill) and visit the brand-spanking new Apple store near Central Park. That cube is darn impressive. Coolest thing – 30″ Cinema Display. Lamest thing – no machines running Boot Camp. ‘Still beta” said the hipster store attendant. Come on guys!
I’ll have to find a way to see this show when I’m in NYC in a few weeks. The International Center of Photography is holidng a retrospective exhibit of over 100 images by the official photographer of Murder, Inc – Arthur Felig, aka Weegee. The New York Times has a good review (registration required) of the show and the history of the archetypal spot-news photgrapher who often arrived at the scene of a homicide before the NYPD in the 40s and 50s, and whose work has been printed by a good friend of my brother, Sid Kaplan – one of the last masters of the black-and-white print in the world. Most of these images have never been seen before. The Times does, I believe, get one thing wrong. They suggest he took the name ‘Weegee’ to mimic the future-telling power of the Oujia board. I’d always heard that the name came from his time spent as a gopher in a photo lab early in his career, when a printer would yell for the ‘Squeegee!’ – and in would run Arthur to clear excess water from the just-washed prints – so his name became the onomatopoeiaic ‘Weegee’. Either way, it’s a great story of a unique character.
I love this particular image, as it’s very similar to a photo I took back in the early 90s in Savannah at the scene of a multiple homicide. In that image (which I’ll have to scan one day), a father is covering his son’s eyes as the bodies are removed from a car – that image took first place in spot news that year for the state, and is one of my favorite, though not so cheerful images from my photojournalism career. Like Weegee, photojournalists of today step from scenes of society’s highbrow to horrendous settings of pain and anguish in an instant – and the best ones capture something close to what Felig captured years ago.
