4.21.13

 New York, NY January '13  Security guard at a museum.

 Brooklyn, NY  January '13  7th avenue Q/B stop.

 New York, February '13  This guy was making really convincing (and loud) bird-chirp sounds with a piece of scotch tape. He seemed happy and lost and very much like a child.
He said to me: "No job, no nothing..." I imagine him as a kid, somewhere in China, sitting out in a field being taught this trick by his Uncle or someone and how happy he must have been. I'm making this up, of course. He might be from Germany or Connecticut. Also, it's possible that he may have been forced, against his will, to join the local scotch-tape orchestra, you just never know about these things... but this sounds depressing to me. I don't think people should be forced to perform in a scotch-tape orchestra or any orchestra. 

2.19.13

Valencia, Spain December '12   

 New York, February '13          B train.

Randolph, Vt. October '12          Kitty.

2.15.13

Madrid, December '12   

 New York, January '13  I'm biking from now on. I was biking everywhere, then it got cold, now I  spend a lot of time on these metal rectangle things full of people doing what these people are doing, which is... not really that much.

 Randolph, Vt.  December '12   This is not the first time I've been photo- bombed by a goat... but this is the first time I've ever written the sentence "This is not the first time I've been photo- bombed by a Goat".

 Brooklyn, NY Fall '12    If you don't have much going on and you decide to come over to my house and stand with your face pressed against the kitchen window, and then look up every 3- 4 minutes, this is what you'll see: a satellite dish, a wire and an airplane approaching the runway at LaGuardia airport. I actually spent about an hour standing there looking up and waiting for planes to come by so I could take pictures of them. This was on a slow day. I know it's LaGuardia because I've been on a lot of those planes. I like looking down and seeing my building. Come over, you can check it out. This is my little gift to you. Can you pick up a coffee for me on the way? Cream. No sugar, just some cream. And an almond croissant.

 New York, January '12

Havana, December '11  Here is a prostitute who wouldn't take "no" for an answer... she kept trying to get me to go "drink rum" with her. Then, she offered to "hold" my camera for me, which was thoughtful of her but I explained it really wasn't that heavy and besides, I was kind of using it... but, when I started photographing her, we totally bonded and had a nice time. This is why I like to take pictures.

10.26.12

 Dhaka, Bangladesh  Oct. '12  The Hazaribagh leather tanning district is one of the world's largest suppliers of leather. There are tanneries as far as the eye can see. Conditions are poor with no effective environmental or labor regulations but, like most everyone I met in Dhaka, people are warm and open and very, very curious about relatively tall white guys. I'll be doing an edit and putting a gallery up about this place soon. I bought a couple of belts here, one with the grim reaper buckle on it and one with a bull on it, I think.

 Varanasi, India  Oct. '12  I don't know where to start writing about Varanasi. It was an education on so many levels. I'll write more... This is a cattle guy on the far shore of the Ganges where I enjoyed poking around. You wouldn't believe the things I found in the mud. Poke, poke...

Rio De Janeiro  Sept. '12   A monkey chase (see below).

 New York, Sept. '12  How is it September of 2012 already? How did that happen? It's cool outside. I miss summer.

 Havana, December '11  This Cuban dog is simultaneously up for "best tailored shirt worn by a canine" and "dog with shirt most in need of a dry cleaning" awards.

Rio De Janeiro, Brazil  Sept. '12   I got to Rio and went out for a walk. I walked maybe five blocks and saw a couple of people pointing and looking up. I asked what was up there, they said "macaco!" which, as it turns out, means "monkey!" I spent the next 45 minutes amidst a growing crowd of delighted Brazilians, pacing up and down the street, following this little monkey that had presumably escaped from it's owner's house. Several people tried to entice the monkey to come down with various bananas...

...which totally didn't work. Make a note of it: you can not get a frightened monkey to come down from a tree simply by holding a banana in the air. Eventually, the monkey skittered down a hallway and into a shop, where we think it must have lived- a happy ending and a really sweet first couple of hours in Rio.

8.26.12

 Rockaway Beach Queens, NY August '12 Jen and Talice

 New York, August '12

There's a new gallery on my site called "What Happens in Vegas". I get mildly crazy when I spend time in Las Vegas... but I like that it provokes a strong reaction from myself and from most people I know. Usually, within a day or two of arriving, I start to feel restless, angry, judgmental. I think I'm better than everyone else. Then, I go eat some prime rib. So yummy. I never eat prime rib in New York or anywhere, really. I'm impressed by the lights, by the large shrimp... the desert landscapes that surround the city are strange and lovely. It's hands down the least moist place I've ever been. The  volume of water required to keep the golf courses grassy and the swimming pools wet must be staggering. Scientists predict Lake Meade will run dry by 2021. I can't imagine why anyone would go shopping in Vegas.
 I'm happy that ultimately the place holds no real power over me as it once did. All of this says more about me than it does about Vegas.
In Mumbai, there are "strip" clubs where the Women don't actually take off their clothes. The men "shower" the Women with money as they dance. The Women keep the dough. The subtext of this (for the Men) is: "I'm rich! Money means nothing to me! I do this all the time! I get so bored with all this money, what shall I do... ah, I'll throw my money on this dancing Lady...  She is dancing just for me! She will not come home with me! I will return tomorrow to throw more money on her!" No problem, everyone gets what they want. A few weeks ago, restless, I took an evening walk:      http://brianscott.photoshelter.com/gallery-list

  

8/10/12

 Tulum,  Mexico December '11    It breaks my heart every time I see a bearded child being chased by a pickup truck.

Brooklyn, NY  Spring '12   I spent a few hours hanging out and taking Sonny's picture at his ancient bar in Red Hook on the Brooklyn waterfront. The bar is called "Sonny's". It's a place he's run since the 80's (and that his family has run for much longer) that was once popular with dockworkers and, since there are no more docks, is now popular with people who do other things for a living, as well. The place features really great music and art. Sonny is a painter. We had a right nice time "shooting the shit", as they say...

Brooklyn, NY Spring '12   It's August and spring seems so far in the past. Here is Patrik. Patrik is a Swede and that's why he spells his name all funny. He's an accomplished photographer who's taken practically everyone's photo at some point, including yours.

8.4.12

Havana, December '12  At Chang Chang's house on the eve. of the San Lázaro procession.

Paris, July '12

Hurley, NY July '12  Moppy and Stella in a hole.

7.15.12

Woodstock, NY July '12  Jill swimming during a storm.

New York,  April '12

Here is one of the Blue Man Group ads that I shot this past May. the NY times just did an article on the campaign, you can read it here: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/07/16/business/media/am-i-blue-these-ads-answer-yes-campaign-spotlight.html?_r=2

7.8.12

           Hello! I'm off to France tonight (pronounced "Frants" in case you don't speak the language) to go to an opening at Espace Dupon in Paris  http://espace.dupon.com/  where the above photo will be exhibited. I was a winner in the PX3 photo competition this year for a series I shot in Cuba at the San Lázaro procession- the photo above was one from the winning series. The opening is Tuesday night. I'm going to hang out with my friends Jen and Amelie as well but mostly I plan on sitting by myself on a bench somewhere eating bread. How do the French make such good bread? Is it majick? If you live in Paris and see me, feel free to say "hello" but don't expect to understand my reply because my mouth will be full of bread. I got eating to do, is all...

You can see my entry and some other winners here: 

http://www.px3.fr/winners/cat_details.php?cat_name=Book%20Proposal%20(Series%20Only)&compName=PX3%202012&pro=student

 Two new galleries on my site: one is an ongoing project featuring my friend Sara and her parents Yolanda (who had a stroke) and Phil (who has dementia). Sara has been through a lot in caring for them, it's had a profound impact on her relationship with them both and I'm happy I've been able to document some of it. The other new gallery is ...

 a rabbit funeral. You can see them both here:
http://brianscott.photoshelter.com/gallery-list

7.1.12

Hey, I just stepped out for 6 months but I'm back. This photo was taken in Rajasthan. On this day I had decided to buy a new shirt. I was riding in a bicycle rickshaw and was vaguely cranky because my driver had duped me by taking me to a jive shirt shop on the other end of the city that sold scratchy, cheap shirts rather than to the shop I had asked to go to that a friend had recommended to me as the place to buy a really nice, soft shirt in Jaipur.

 I bought a scratchy shirt and had agreed to visit the shirt salesman's home village someday up near Delhi to meet his family and have dinner when on the way back, instead of being returned to my hotel I was taken, against my wishes, on a tour of historic Jaipur. The old man who was driving had stalked me outside my building for two days. He knew instinctively what I know and what the shirt salesman knew: I'm a sucker. Be persistent and eventually I'll buy a scratchy shirt and take a goddamned tour of the city in your squeaky rickshaw. 

 The ego can be the most insidious thing, don't you think? I'm in india for the first time, riding in a bicycle rickshaw for the first time through some of the most insanely crowded and chaotic streets I've seen. My driver is is an elderly man who is pedaling like a drunk teenager, flying around cows, people, cars... It's really fun. I'm in India... but in the back of my mind, I still have a saggy diaper over the scratchy shirt: somehow, a part of my brain actually believes that achieving my goal of purchasing a shirt- a soft shirt- is the most important thing going on in my life at the moment. But the truth is less obvious and goes something like this: I'm alone in a new place, I can't scratch my ass without thirty people staring and smiling and I'm a little scared and defensive because I haven't figured out how to buy a candy bar with confidence yet and I don't want to be taken advantage of... and as I see this, I'm suddenly relaxed and actually smiling at myself. Then, up ahead, I see an elephant walking down the street. I've never seen an elephant walking down any street anywhere, ever.  It's the largest living creature I've ever seen and it's just strolling down the street with everyone else, as if on it's way to buy cigarettes. It pulls out into the passing lane and reveals these two guys pushing a car and I take the picture. It's not a great photo but it's sweet and the timing is good- but what I really like about it is this: It reminds me of how happy I was riding around with that old Man that afternoon and how I had been reminded of my first rule when traveling (and when living, in general): Don't have a rigid agenda, be open- and say yes to (almost) everything, even if it  means letting other people have their way... and A few days ago, I got an email from National Geographic telling me they're considering running this photo in their magazine in the "Your Shot" section, which somehow makes sense.

June, '12  Ania at JFK

 June, '12   Las Vegas has some things and doesn't have other things. Two of the things it does have are pillows and decent water pressure, as documented above. I was in Vegas working on a Blue Man appearance at the Electric Daisy Carnival electronic music festival out in the desert. By the time I took this photo, a coup had taken place at the hotel where the majority of portly, jolly and good natured guests had been slaughtered for meat by wasted, semi nude teens and twenty- somethings who's actual goal for the weekend was to go as ape-shit as possible and to keep going ape-shit until it was no longer possible. I was finding refuge in my room, waiting for my lobby call and taking pictures of pillows as a result. The flip side: riding on one of the best amusement park rides ever at the carnival at dusk that took us up 60 feet and swung us down and back up at high speed for 5 minutes with glowing lights and fire below, the vegas skyline in the distance, purple-blue sunset behind the mountains.

3.5.12

 Harlem, NY October '11

 Delancey St, NY Winter '12

My subway entrance, 7th Avenue Q/B, Brooklyn.

11.30.11

  Brooklyn, NY  Nov. '11

New York, Freedom Tower (Ground Zero) Fall, '11

 Jaipur, India  Feb. '11

10.31.11

 I woke up from a dream yesterday at 4 a.m. because I had just been broken up with by a make- believe Girlfriend that my subconscious had created for me. I had never met her before, of course- but I really, really liked her. Guess what my subconscious had her say to me. It had her say this: "You and I just never really connected... everything was just so... even sex, the sex was just so... painful..."  

So, a couple of things: I was in a great mood when I got up because I got to experience a rush of gratitude at realizing that no one had actually said those words to me- and I also was happy because I have respect for my subconscious these days. If I'm in need of some ego deflation and I'm not getting it from the outside world, my brain steps in, creates a lovely girlfriend from previously stored data and has her dump me in a not-so-gentle way and then lets me off the hook by waking me out of a dead sleep, as if to say "smarten up, Buster... next time it could be for reals. We can kill a few housepets tomorrow night, as well... or make you have the tropical fish dream again." As for my make- believe ex Girlfriend, I just want to say briefly: "Tammy (I'll call you Tammy, if that's ok), I really enjoyed our time together. I don't remember much about our relationship but I'm sure it was nice, with some sweet moments. The last 11 or 12 seconds were hard for me but I appreciate your honesty and really wish you well in future fake relationships. Don't let the (dream) door hit you in your (make- believe) hind- quarters on the way out." Which brings me to the very next thought I had after ending things with Tammy and regaining consciousness: the Occupy Wall Street protests. 

Here is a *slideshow of my photographs from the last couple- o' weeks of my hanging out down there. I will try to say this "in a nutshell", as they say. OWS is now a movement. It was a protest but mere protests are easy to stop with indifference or pepper spray and batons. 

Few people really appreciate or enjoy extremism. I've learned in recent years that for me, extremism is a drag. It's irritating, it's violent, it begets more extremism and ends, usually, in a very sloppy, bloody mess with very few people the better as a result and with many people missing body parts, or worse. I've spent a fair amount of time down around lower Manhattan over the last year- when Osama was killed and during a couple of 9/11 anniversaries. I avoided OWS for two weeks because of these past experiences. What I saw and photographed during these past events went something like this: A heavily guarded media event on the inside and a vaguely startling collection of anarchists, conspiracy theorists, fundamentalist religious people, communists, tourists and zealous patriots on the periphery, all being stiffly directed here and there by a tense and heavily armed police force... and lots and lots of t-shirt sales. I got the impression that everyone had an explanation for 9/11, terrorism, whatever- and that everyone had a solution. Their solution. There was an unpleasant edginess, even with the quiet ones who stood silently behind intricately hand- drawn signs, what with so many people jockying to co-opt the tragedies of the planet and spit them back out in such a way as to promote their own world views and agendas. During the 9/11 memorial, I hardly thought about the victims. I left, edited a few photos and put them away and haven't looked at them since. 

 The slideshow I've made is trying to make a point about what I've seen so far at OWS. Some of the media and much of the political machine has been doing it's best to portray the OWS movement as simply a "protest"- a rag- tag group of extremist, bored or privileged radicals and frustrated, unemployed recent college graduates who are pissed off, jealous, lazy. What I've found is that that's actually an assessment that's either based in ignorance, fantasy or a deliberate attempt to discredit what is happening with OWS. Those elements must certainly exist but they alone could never sustain something like what OWS has become- and at this point they're outnumbered by the "regular" people. When a protest starts to resonate with the middle, lower and even some of the upper classes- with Fathers, Mothers, Siblings, Neighbors, Children and Grandparents- that, like it or not, is called a "Movement". Have a looky-poo!

* please go to this url for a much higher resolution version:

http://youtu.be/bZmPK_Fc0XY

 NY, Oct. '11  East River Ferry. This boat ride easily ranks in the top five scariest ferry boat rides I've taken in the last year.

  Randolph, Vt. October, '11  Kitty and "Joe",  pt. 2

10.3.11

 Tunbridge World's Fair, Vermont Sept. '11 The Tunbridge World's Fair takes place in rural Vermont  every fall and has hardly changed in almost 140 years. I love it. I hadn't been there since I was a little kid and all I could remember about it were some teams of oxen, apparently competing against each other by pulling blocks of granite, some very large vegetables, chickens in a barn and bikers- which turns out to be accurate... but this time in Tunbridge I saw that there were also pig races, which made me feel confused. It was just very... I thought they would be funny- actually, I don't really want to write about that right now.
Ok, listen- I had a little break and I feel like I can write something about the pigs now- not directly, but I'll just give you this: When I was a senior in high school, we had a class picnic during our graduation week, attended by ourselves and the school faculty. We were allowed to drink back then because Vermont was the last state to change the drinking age and most of us had been "grandfathered" in- so we were partying at Lake Champagne (a body of water in my town that looks nothing like the larger, more majestic Lake Champlain. Lake Champlain, in the northwestern part of the state, is the 6th largest lake in the U.S. Lake Champagne is a pond in a campground/trailer park. The only thing the two really have in common is that if you jump into one, then jump into the other, you'll get wet both times). At some point, after several beers and hot dogs, a small-ish group of us decided it was time to take some revenge, veiled as lighthearted shenanigans, on some of the faculty whom we had harbored resentments against over the years. I think we splashed some water on the science teacher, maybe put some pie on someone else... it was good fun. I don't remember if we consciously chose to save Mr. Duffy for last (real name Mr. Kilduff but I'll just call him Mr. Duffy here) but by the time we got to our endomorphic guidance counselor (who kept a couple of goats on his front lawn so he didn't have to mow... he also refused to let me take typing class because it interfered with a required home economics credit or something- I'm typing with three fingers at this moment, still, after all these years) the energy had become  more aggressive and a bit surly. Everyone was still having a reasonably good time, I think, but the smiles were a bit more severe, more purposeful on our side- more hesitant and questioning on theirs.  I remember Mr. Duffy backing away from us slowly with a stiff grimace on his face that seemed to say "I'd like to take this opportunity to... to just apologize if I... if you'll just... no... I don't want you to do that...". As we seized him, knocked him down, grabbed his arms and legs and began dragging him to the water's edge, he started to struggle as if we were about to hurl him into a volcano. It was disturbing.  There was something about his humorless state of panic and the way he gasped and groaned, twisting and convulsing to free himself, that I found depressing. It was such a shocking character break for a guy I'd only ever seen sitting behind a desk. I had a moment of pity and almost let him go... but by this point the group conscience far outweighed my own  and we threw his ass into the pond.
Later, I drove (under the influence of canned beer) with two female friends to my house in the village. I was covered in mud and decided to jump in the shower. I had come to within what I now believe to have been seconds of convincing one of my female companions to take off her clothes and join me in the shower when I heard my Dad's car on the gravel as he arrived home early from work.
I still wonder sometimes what it would have meant for me, for her, for all of us- if my Father had caught his naked, teenage son in his shower with someone else's naked, teenage daughter. 
My Dad would be obligated to tell her family. My Mom would be deeply hurt. There would be shame, guilt, remorse, lengthy punishments and restrictions, probably the school would be involved, there would be meetings, councils, tribunals, seminars, sentences, lost trust, news vans. A Priest would want to speak to us both (separately- I would never be allowed to see her, or any female, again). She likely would be beaten, sent away- but rather than go, she would hang herself dead. I would to this day be learning to cope with the repercussions of my self- centeredness and irresponsibility.
I hope this helps to illuminate my feelings about the pig races somehow. Try to make it up to the Tunbridge fair sometime, though.

Bethel, VT.  Post- Irene

New York, Sept. '11

 Randolph, VT. ? '10    I like these horses.

 Randolph, VT. Sept. '11  I'm only partially ashamed to admit that, as a young person, I had a running feud with the family that lived in this house. I had a feud with the family- not an individual family member but the entire household. They were called the Andersons. They hated me and I hated them. I don't remember why. The house was at the foot of the hill I lived on, so I had to walk past it twice a day. Once, I pushed one of the Anderson kids to the ground. I don't remember why, probably because I was in a feud with his family. A few days later I was walking home and I saw the Andersons all gathered in the yard, staring and grinning in my direction. Then I saw the biggest Anderson boy- much bigger than me- a giant, really- crossing the street, coming at me like a baseball player in a home- run trot. He pushed me down in the ditch and the Anderson family cheered. Man, that was weird.

 Sao Paulo, Brazil Aug. '11