looking thru lebowitz's a photogs life, which is about a qauter hollywood, a qauter politicos, and half family snap shots, i realised that what lebowitz does best (ie gaudy, campy, self impt, ego ridden shit that requires costumes and cranes and a crew of 12) is worthwhile, that elegance and a sort of surface, reductive beauty, while hated or ignored by photo critics, has something going for it, even if it isnt kinky...i cant think of a photog who is a better flatterer of those in power, and of the state, and so in her best work, she is a court painter in the most classical sense of that term, and well court paniters are needed.

the political work is grainy, and behind the scenes, but badly composed, exhausting, and w/o focus (ie its blurry, grainy, and the eye has no place to settle. the campaign photos of clinton,et. al do not seem to be about the location, or where they are or about the history, or anything like that, they seem to be about recording the fact that lebowitz has the ultimate in access, she has a monstrous ego, and the most fascinating photos of the clinton campaign, was that for a person who was so photogenic, and who placed himself in the camera lens for everything and everyone (think of him on the cover of esquire, with his legs spread, the invitation of phallic obsession) these were the only photos that ignored his charisma, they proved that it was possible to make a boring photo of the man, his grotesquries, and his luridness the ultimate flash, its like making a bad photo of elvis, or james brown--& if i wasnt convinced that she was (is) a woman that requires a retinue, and isnt interested in the thinking as much as the action, i could say things about the dispersion of punctum, or the body poltic, or the clever deconstructing of her personae as a court photog and his persoane as americas great satyr, and how this was a clever refusal, or at least an analytical extension or something like that, but it just bad picture taking (which is frustrating, because her hollywood pictures are v. visually clever and have an instinctual animal hunger that hides under the staid convention of vanity fair and vogue work)

which brings me to the shots of susan, her parents, etc. it requires a whole bunch of back story. susan and annie as a couple was weird, the intelletual and the instinctual, the cold european and the worshipper of american excess, the woman who wrote for so long about the difficulties of photography, and didnt seem to like it v. much, and the person who made her living making some of the most shallow work ever. they broke up, got together, had kids (one named susan, and i keep thinking of the suragacy could be an extension of both of their professional lives), and then one left for a younger woman, annie was hurt. the book's photos are polysemic, are they to record the family, to place sontag as part of the extended lebowitz clan, the black and whtie, fairly ehremtic, and lonely photos of annies mothers and sisters, with or without sontag, suggest an oddly matriachal envolping, one that sontag seems to resist, and the more candid photos seem to be about control and humilation. they are too intimate to be interesting, and when you see photos (a sieres of 6 or 7) of sontag in paris at new years, in teh back of a limo, or in a group of family, all dressed as teddy bears, its bizzare, and almsot uncontextazible, and i cannot think of anything, except, this is to make the angualr, difficult, knife like analysis of sontag into a soft friendly thing, the fuck you scowl that she manages while doing this, ruptures the image. the photos of sontag dying, you take photos of the dead, for medical or religious photos, they make a reliqury of her dying, and also become autopsies, the thing is, that you would figure pictures of anyone dying, or snapshots in general, have a sort of universal feeling, and so the popularity of found photographs is that the stories are unnessceary--but knowing more and more about these two women, one thinks this is a violation of sontag, this is annie saying, i outlived the bitch or my photos have value, or that i can make you as iconic and famous as brad pitt, splayed on a motel room bed...i can own you, this image of you becomes a lebowitz, and is not a sontag--that wrestling of private signifers versus public audience is soemthing that we have tried to figure out, since taking pictures started, and the ethics of what to shoot where, become centered if you trust the audience (arbus' photos of the famous, of blaze star or james brown, for example, are so intimate, and so broken, because they are v. much abuot the quiet before the fury starts, and the two drag queens in the back of the cab by goldin, do the opposite, for similar results) but lebowitz doesnt knwo how to frame a snap shot, hasnt taken a snapshot in her life, so the sheen and the pretty that we expect of her fails to emerge, and it looks like we are staring on something improper (victorian morturary photography, comes to mind)--maybe it also has a resonance with the market---all of the questions sontag raised about image making, documentary, art, etc, that continue to remain unresolved, and the impherablity of the media, etc, have been hidden, because when someone pays 5m for something, it is art, no matter what the philosophers said, and the art critics, who dont like lebowitz spend time on how she is just a commerical photog, playing the hi/lo game for the same reasons--this book seems to be an act of revenge, and ironically, it works to continue sontags ideas about what photos mean, more then lebowitz glam of hollywood exchanges.
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