left brain: Dash Snow

Which Restaurants I Love

NYC
* Per Se * Pastis * Schillers Liquor Bar * Casa Mono * Babbo * Del Posto * WD50 * Tabla * Morimoto * Buddhakan * Gotham Grill * Vynl * The Spotted Pig * Bouchon Bakery * Tia Pol * Artisinal * Cubano Cafe * db Bistro Modern * Saul * Quality Meats * Jewel Bako * Bar Americaine * Isabella's * Bamboo 52 * Bouley Bakery * Public * Bouley * Boquiera * Blue Ribbon Sushi *

What I've Watched

At the Cinema:
Constant Gardener * Junebug * Green Street Hooligans * Capote * Hellbent * Jarhead * Harry Potter and the Goblet * The Lion, The Witch, and the Wardrobe * Brokeback Mountain * Munich * Syriana * The New World * Spirit of the Beehive * Failure to Launch * Tsotsi * V for Vendetta * Thank You For Smoking * United 93 * The DaVinci Code * XMen III * Russian Dolls * Favela Rising * Nacho Libre * Superman * Devil Wears Prada ** Time to Leave * Little Miss Sunshine * Miami Vice * Quinceanera * Half Nelson * Another Gay Movie * Poster Boy * Le Petit Lieutenant * Man Push Cart * Science of Sleep * A Guide to Recognizing Your Saints * The Queen * Paprika * The Departed * Shortbus * Marie Antoinette * Pan Labyrinth * Babel * The Prestige * Death of a President * Borat * Fast Food Nation * Candy * Volver * Casino Royale * Deja Vu * Stranger than Fiction * Days of Glory * Apocalypto * Curse of the Golden Flower * Children of Men * Miss Potter * Tears of the Black Tiger * Notes on a Scandal * Reno 911 * Zodiac * Last King of Scotland * 300
From Netflix:
Oldboy * Alias * ChungKing Express * Requiem for a Dream * OC Season 2 * Coach Carter * Crash * Sex and Lucia * Lemony Snicket * It's All Gone Pete Tong * Love Actually * Fever Pitch * Interview with a Vampire * The Real Cancun *Lords of Dogtown * Fantastic Four * Criminal * Willy Wonka * Fridaa * Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance * About a Boy * Rebel without a Cause * The Edukators * 3 Dancing Slaves * Dot the I * Royal Tennenbaums * 2046 * March of the Penguins * Into the Blue * Oliver Twist * Beautiful Thing * Memoirs for a Geisha * The War Within * Spun * Young Gods * A Lot Like Love * Inked * Family Stone * Kontroll * Delicatessen * Footballer's Wives * Transamerica * Jesus is Magic * Firewall * King Kong * Hostel * Layer Cake * She's the Man * 5 x 2 * Lost, Season 1, 2 * Brick * Little Manhattan * The Comeback * Veronica Mars * Looking for Comedy in the Muslim World * Before the Fall * Summer Camp * Entourage, Season 1 * Everything is Illuminated * Madame Sata * Weeds * Sympathy for Mrs. Vengeance * Art School Confidential * City of Men, Season 1, 2 * L'Enfant * Stick It * Dorian Blues * Goal * Manhattan * Lower City * Strangers with Candy * Guys and Balls * Tristan & Isolde * Irreversible * CRAZY * I Stand Alone * Three Extremes * Red Dragon * Hard Candy * Running with Scissors * Boixe Maoi * Napolean Dynamite * The Covenant * FlyBoys * Ma Mere * Naked * Sin City * Hukkle *

I came across an artist today who is in the Whitney Biennial. The HUGE art event that looks at the best/hottest American artists of the last year. A photographer. He lives/works in NYC. He goes by the name of Dash Snow, which I guess could be his real name. He has had his romps through many sex-crazed drug-induced out of control orgy nights. He has been through extreme addictions with all kinds of substances. "By the age of 16 he was doing so much blow he often woke up unable to remember the previous evening." He has seen and photographed seriously god awful things. Many of which turn out to bloody.

The only thing that tremendously cares the hell out of me from all of those sentences is that he was born in 1981. The year I was. I haven't seen his show but as I said I stumbled across his name when looking at the Whitney's website (which got hacked into while I was on it, hysterically enough) and have to admit that I love his seriousness, his vulgarity, his in your face topics and imagery, his overt sexuality, his obscure beauty of the realness. They remind me of a much straighter, much harder to stomach version of Wolfgang Tillmans.

The Whitney says,
DASH SNOW, Born 1981, New York, New York; lives in New York, New York
A boy shows off his magnum of Veuve Clicquot for the camera; a naked couple poses in a hotel room; a dog looks up from scavenging in the trash: Dash Snow's Polaroid photographs document his own life in New York's Lower East Side, a vie bohème that, in its excess, verges on the surreal. Like Ryan McGinley or Nan Goldin, who have also chronicled the downtown Manhattan scene, Snow takes a romantic approach and participates completely in the moments he documents, which ensures that his photographs do not collapse into voyeurism. In addition, he often contextualizes the photographs by showing them alongside large-scale installations that include found objects, newspaper clippings, and videos.

All images found here or on Google are his. You can view them more of them here. Or I have posted two more which are extreme in nature so you have to follow the jump to see them.