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Author: mkriegh

02-2021

This has been a consequential week. It is the first time in American History that there has not been a peaceful transfer of power. Instead we had an insurrection and an effort by conservative Republicans to argue the results should be overturned. A small number of Republicans resisted. A rash on my torso was of primary personal concern. Also of political importance is the Democratic victory in the two Senate runoff seats in Georgia. Readings in Simone de Beauvoir's The Second Sex continue. de Beauvoir writes about the place of woman in primitive and agricultural societies which give her an esteemed place because of her fertility. She also details the more recent opportunity for woman to take her place alongside men in the industrial world, as the work depends less and less on brute strength which always favored men. She also discusses the myth of woman and its role in stereotyping and subjugating her. … 02-2021

WK 09-2021

This week... i continued my reading of The Second Sex... i am on the chapter on motherhood, the demands child bearing and child rearing place on women, societal attitudes towards abortion, the stake that men have (or don't have) in home and family... de Beauvoir paints a bleak picture of the marriage enterprise as currently constituted, as it too often "diminishes man" and "destroys woman"... much has changed since the book was written, the roles of men and women have grown more equal even if still unbalanced, and it is in a well balanced relationship that men and women can be most successful together, as family, as man, as woman... several examples of gender fluidity came to my attention this week... in particular fashion designer Richard Tischi argues that society should respect a range of gender concepts within what is though of as male... his current men's collection for Burberry features male and female models... my Iwachu cast iron omelette pan arrived this week, i began to produce omelettes that did not stick so i am on to refining my technique and i have decide to keep an omelette diary... an article on leather fetish fashion caught my attention because it is fetish fashion for women, designed by a woman and photographed by a woman... the sexy presentation of model and fetish fashion is very sexy and while produced by the female gaze, certainly attracts my male gaze, so i wonder where if falls in the world of objectification of women and whether there are feminist concerns... increasingly i am coming to the conclusion that there is a broad range of how men and women present themselves and the main thing is not to insist an narrow definitions of what is appropriate or attractive or beautiful... gender expression is ideally fluid... because i am developing a series of Mt. Beacon views, i researched Hokusai's 36 views of Mt. Fuji, and remembered Jeff Wall's "A Sudden Gust of Wind, (after Hokusai)" image and include it alongside Hokusai's original "A Sudden Gust of Wind" below... … WK 09-2021

01-2021

As the year came to a close I finished reading Kate Soper's Post-Growth Living, an argument retooling consumer society which is correct in its aspirations though I am not optimistic that those aspirations can be achieved. I began reading The Second Sex, by Simone de Beauvoir. I have been interested in the situation of women in photography, women as subject, women as photographers, women as curators and critics. I find the Second Sex is grounding me in the gender social issues swirling around the participation and representation of women in photographic enterprise. The Republican party seems to be on track to oppose the certification of the election, though they don't have the numbers to prevail. The photography of Rebecca Norris Webb caught my attention. … 01-2021

Week 47

Week 47, in which 45 continues to wreck the system, I read Rumi, I discover Josiah Willard Gibbs. … Week 47

Signs of the Times

At the beginning of the pandemic I began photographing the impromptu signage that people, institutions and businesses in Beacon, NY created and posted to be in touch with one another, encourage one another, inform one another. This is a selection of those signs. … Signs of the Times

Week 46

s Kelly Anne Conway famously said, facts don't matter, what people believe matters. The most glaring moment of truth ever spoken by a political operative in my opinion. And lest some of us get too high up on our superior adhesion to science and facts, the secular, scientific, fact based world we view as the foundations of our citizenship, is no less a belief system in many respects. … Week 46

Week 45

Photographs, journal entries, image poem from the 45th week of the year in which Joseph R. Biden is elected president of the United States of America. … Week 45