A fine White House photographer.

Pete Souza was the White House photographer before the Gangster and his crew of grifters took over. It should be added that over 60 million American morons voted for Pig, not to mention several million Russkies. (In deference to his Slovenian Slut spouse, I have dropped the preposition). Those morons are unavailable for comment as they are busy praying the virus away.

The link will take you to a video where Souza explains his gear choices, but it’s the pictures he shows which really matter:

Click to go to the article.
You do not need an Instagram account.

As for Pig, it gives me zero pleasure to say “I told you so”.

Images for the ages.

While Lewis Hine is known as perhaps the greatest social conscience photographer of the past century, he was also there with his camera when the Empire State building was being built.

Every statistic about this skyscraper is nothing less than breathtaking.

Started a couple of days after the Black Tuesday stock market crash in 1929, it would be the world’s tallest building. Actual construction started on March 17, 1930 as the Great Depression was starting to rage. It was completed on April 11, 1931, with opening a few days later. Read that again. 102 floors in the center of Manhattan built in just 13 months in an era when the blue collar man was grateful for a job rather than for a handout. The site is that of the old Waldorf Astoria hotel which relocated uptown to Park Avenue, and Lewis Hine was there to record the construction process with unforgettable photographs.

When you visit it – and you should – do what I do when entering this Art Deco masterpiece. Get on your hands and knees on the green marbled floor of the lobby and run the tips of your fingers over the brass inlay strips separating the marble slabs. Perfection.

Arguably three key technologies made this building possible – structural steel (Andrew Carnegie, Henry Clay Frick and Bethlehem Steel), electric elevators (Elisha Otis) and air conditioning (Willis Carrier). This was an era when American companies used American resources and American immigrants to craft great things.

Everything about the Empire State building is nothing less than breathtaking but most breathtaking of all is its stunning beauty.

He got away with it.

The French ‘artist’ Marcel Duchamp (1887-1968) started it. He would exhibit common objects – toilet bowls, dinner plates, you name it – as ‘art’ and the fools passing as critics lauded him for his insights and originality. Duchamp was a fake and he new it. He must have got a good laugh at the expense of his critics. But his fakery did not make him rich. You see, he was French where art rules over income.

Andy Warhol (1928-87) saw Duchamp’s work and, being American, smelled profit. He crafted a mysterious image for himself and proceeded to paint ridiculous canvases of Campbell’s soup cans which now sell for $50 million and up. To my considerable disgust, Cornell University’s otherwise superb Johnson Museum of Art houses one of these pieces of garbage which should be immediately sold, the proceeds applied to reducing students’ fees – and maybe, you know, letting some more Americans into STEM classes?

Warhol’s crowning cinematic achievement? A static 24 hour reel of the Empire State Building. God alone knows what chemicals his audience was ingesting. People paid good American money to watch this tripe.

Proving that there’s one born every minute, a New York Times art writer falls for it and repeats all the utter nonsense written about this skillful grifter. You can read his nonsense by clicking the ‘art’ image below. Can you believe this crap? “Given the exponential influence of Warhol, it’s hard not to think about this show of his photographs as a historic template for our current Instagram moment, in which every commonplace detail of people’s lives is recorded and posted for an anonymous audience, and the ubiquitous “selfie,” an emblem of the endless lust for fame that replaces actual lived experience. What an odd and burdensome legacy for the pantheonic artist.” . Pantheonic? Yup.

Click the image to read nonsense.

Warhol was, indeed, the supreme fake, and laughed all the way to the bank with his fakery.

For more fun quotes from Pseuds’ Corner, click here.