Day: March 1, 2014

George Forss was raised in the shadows and lived in the shadows, taking his photos in New York before there were vendors everywhere, peddling them on the streets, dodging police patrols. Some decades ago his great work was discovered and he came into the light – he was on the Today Show, interviewed by the BBC, in Time Magazine, hailed by the great photographers of the world, taken on by a classy art gallery.

After 911, and for many personal reasons, George returned to the shadows where he remained for many years He became loved in his community, running his gallery, playing in his weekly Recorder group, caring for his lover and brother, continuing to do his work. I think the shadows are where he is really most comfortable. His great works remained mostly locked up in boxes and drawers, filed away, recorded on discs, over time, seen less and less.

George never stopped loving his work or dreaming of publishing the photos he took, but I think he had given up on the idea, George accepts life, he does not fight with it much. I love George, as is obvious, he is not only brilliant but one of the gentlest and most thoughtful souls I have known. He talks to aliens regularly, writes books and mails them to his friends, posts manifestos on his blog, sells photos – he has never been completely forgotten,  takes one magnificent picture after another and celebrates creativity whenever and wherever it appears. “Art Saves Lives” is the slogan that hangs over his doorstep. I think it saved his.

George had many responsibilities in his life upstate, he settled into his gallery work, he understood the photographic masters were being pushed aside by the digital photography revolution, he accepted this with his usual grace. George does not mourn for the old days or fool himself into thinking everything in the past is better than everything in the present.

The Kickstarter project has been difficult for George, as it was for me. He is not used to asking other people for money, he has never done it before, as I never had. He could not grasp why so many strangers would rush to support his work when so many people in the art world had not. It was technically difficult for him to do on his prehistoric computer, if that is what it really is. The process of going online and putting the project together was confusing and frightening to him, he bravely struggled with it and submitted to it.

Today I went over to his gallery to take a photo of him on this important day – his $8,200 “The Way We Were” project was funded at 3 a.m., less than 24 hours after it went up and by afternoon, he was well over $10,000. We are dining together tonight to celebrate. We had talked about asking for $11,000 but we both thought it was too risky, we just didn’t know what would happen. His book will cost nearly $8,000 to publish.  On Kickstarter, you receive no money if the project is not fully funded, you can receive more if it is. He can use that money for his book “The Way We Were,” and now it looks as if he will have it and more. We both agreed to cancel the fund-raising evening we had planned to raise money for the project, it doesn’t seem right to either of us ask the people in the town for money when he is getting what he asked for online, and then some. Monday we are putting some posters up, people here can contribute if they wish.

If George gets still more money – I believe he will –  he will put it to good use. I begged him after this week to consider buying a new computer and to my astonishment, he said he is thinking about it. God is good.

This afternoon we put up another reward for “The Way We Were,” digital prints of his wonderful rural landscapes and still lifes – he calls it “New World” photos taken after he moved to Cambridge in the years after 911. People who pledge $200 or more can receive one of these photos, in color or black and white. George offered ten silver gelatin prints of his “Way We Were” photos for $500 and all were gone within hours. So the new reward of $200 has been added, so that there will be more incentives to contribute. After all, there are 29 days to go, and George does not expect to get too many opportunities like this.

George is grateful and in shock. And he is happy and excited, his work will live, it will be seen, he will get the book he has dreamed of for years, the circle times, it is his time to be in the light again.

I was so happy for him. I shook his hand this afternoon – George is not a hugger – and I put my hand on his shoulder. We were in his darkroom, the place where he is the most comfortable and at home.

“George,” I said, “you are out of the shadows again, you are into the light of the world, where you belong, it is your rightful place, you and your work.” He looked up at the lights, looked at my camera lens to see which one I was using, looked towards me, unusual when I have a camera. “I know, I know,” he said. “I never gave up on it, I just did not believe it could happen.”

I went over to George Forss’s gallery to congratulate him on sailing past the $10,000 mark on his Kickstarter project, and his companion, the artist Donna Wynbrandt was in the gallery. Donna leaned over and hugged Red and began singing love songs to him, he loved listening, I loved watching it.

Chester and King and the Carriage Horses Of New York  announced this week that it is time to rescue human beings from their lives in New York, remove them from the unnatural and cruel spaces they live in, and end the inhumane practice of allowing people to work.

“It is time,” say the horses, “to recognize that people need to be rescued from their lives in the city, they are piteous and dependent creatures. They are helpless to take care of themselves. Everywhere in New York, people are forced to live in cells, shackled to jobs they hate, working for inhumane corporate owners, eating awful food that makes them obese and sick.”

The horses are starting a new website – “Lots Of Gas: Getting Political For People” –  they have decided it’s time to end the many inhumane and abusive practices afflicting the people of New York City and find them loving adopted homes in the country, where they will live in wide open spaces, never have to work again, and will only have to eat and eliminate all day, as they were meant to do.

The horses have seen enough in their walks through the city,  they feel sorry for the people they see and wish to rescue them and give them the lives they ought to have. The horses felt a moral obligation to act, they said, because their lives are so much better than those of the city’s much abused and harried residents.

Millions of people in New York live in confined and ill-maintained boxes, say the horses,  they barely have room to turn around and no space to exercise, they are crowded on top of one another like ants. They get little time to relax and walk around in circles, as humans were meant to do.  Unlike the horses, human work days are not limited to nine hours, and they do not get five weeks of vacation a year guaranteed by law. When they get old and tired, say the horses, people are tossed out into the streets to fend for themselves. Some humans in New York, say the horses, even have to live on the streets, whereas every horse has a home.

And worse of all, say the horses, people in New York are actually worked for money! This must end.

People, say Chester and King,  are forced to work for cruel and inhuman masters who pay them little, lay them off and fire them at will, force them to work long hours in awful conditions. Unlike the horses, the people in the city have no free health care, they do not get to go to farms when they get old and retire, they have no guaranteed pensions or medical supervision. Their tiny apartments are not cleaned out every three hours and no one brings them fresh and clean food and water to eat three or four times a day. Most humans, say the horses, do not even have the cooling sprays that cover them in cooling mists in hot weather that every horse in New York has.

The horses are outraged, they say that the people of New York have to navigate dangerous traffic, breathe unhealthy fumes, and they say it is now obvious that New York is no longer safe for humans. They have not learned to walk slowly and safely in the streets as the horses have, 22 New Yorkers alone have been killed just this year in traffic, more than 15,000 injured in accidents last year alone. Since only one carriage horse has been killed in a traffic accident in the past 20 years (three since 1980), the horses feel it is time they stepped in and rescued the people of New York from their dangerous lives. It is time, say the horses, to stop the epidemic abuse of children, women and other residents of New York that occurs daily.

Since no carriage horse owner or driver has ever been convicted of abuse in 150 years, the horses feel a sense of urgency about getting political for people, ending their inhumane living conditions, their continuous and chronic abuse,  getting them out of New York City. The horses realize they are superior to people, they need to help them. The horses are considering building a series of “no-kill” people shelters where humans can be confined in small spaces for the rest of their lives so that no harm can ever come to them.

The horses say they plan to gather at every site where a human is killed, run over, hit by a bicycle, has a stroke or heart attack, or is murdered or beaten and take photos and chant: “The blood, the blood, the blood is on your hands,” or “For the people, it’s no fun! They are dropping, one by one! People baking in the sun, They are dropping one by one!

The centerpiece of the horse’s new campaign, say Chester and King, is to completely end the awful practice of making humans work and also to recognize that New York City is no longer compatible with human life.  Humans, they say, should be talking walks in the woods, living in special no-kill shelters and rural preserves, where they can never be asked to work or mingle with animals and they can live in the wild, as humans were  meant to do. Humans were meant to stand out in the sun and stare at mountains, (to eat and drop their waste) but never work. The horses say they need to begin raising money to give to political candidates who will work to end the cruel living conditions and abuse of humans in New York. The current political leadership, say the horses, doesn’t seem to care about the problems of people, they have been elected to only help animals, which seems a lot easier than helping people. Thanks but no thanks, say the horses, we are doing a lot better than you are. Clean your own closets!

“Lots Of Gas: Getting Political For Animals” is developing a mission statement for it’s new website:

“We need politicians that will end the practice of making people work long hours, denying them free health care, depriving them of real vacations and forcing them to drive, live and work in  crowded tall buildings, breathing unhealthy air, filled with exhaust, crammed into tiny rooms that are fire-traps and enslaved by greedy bosses who only care about money.”

What, ask the horses, could be more unnatural than for thousands of people to work all day in tall buildings with no fresh air or room to exercise? Perhaps, the horses suggest, some people could pull carriages in Central Park so they could get exercise and fresh air. People, they say, need to be banned from Central Park so there can be plenty of room for more trucks and cars and busses. And those inhumane apartments need to be torn down to make room for more condos for milionnaires, who the horses understand are never going to be banned from New York.

“Lots Of Gas: Getting Political For People” will begin by posting photos of all the people who are run over by trucks and busses, injured by  bicycles, beaten by spouses and thugs, exhausted by working endless hours for pitiful wages, drop dead on the streets or who die from lack of medical care they can’t afford.” Lots Of Gas proposes that once human beings are safely removed from New York – the horses guarantee that they have found a loving adopted home for every single person who is banned from New York City, all nine million – that each one will  go to safe and loving homes out in the wild, people are waiting with open arms to take them in and pay for their care for the rest of their lives. No human, guarantee the horses, will be permitted to go to any new home that will ask them or require them to work.

And the horses have a good plan for replacing people. As people leave, they will be replaced by eco-friendly vintage human-style robots who can work around the clock, do not require food or shelter, will not pollute the environment, do not mind the toxic fumes filling the city, do not need vacations or medical supervision. The robots will look like human beings of the 1800’s, tall, lean, ruddy complexioned, as if they were going to gyms every day.  Even though the robots do not need food, they are all programmed to be vegans. Everyone will love them, say the horses, especially the tourists, who will never know the difference or care. Just think, say the horses, how global warming will be helped by the absence of nine million humans and all their vehicles and traffic from the streets of New York.

“It’s a win-win for everybody,” says King and Chester. “People will never have to be subjected to the cruelty of work again, they will all find loving adopted homes, and the eco-friendly robots will replace all of the poor souls that lived so unnaturally and dangerously in those tiny cells. Nobody loses.”

The horses say the expect it will be a long, hard, fight. “The greedy corporations who own humans will not easily accede to seeing them banned, letting them go, living lives free of abuse. But we will never give up.”

“The photographs of George Forss confirm the notion that true genius will emerge against the greatest odds.”

— Gordon Parks

George Forss reached his Kickstarter funding goal at 3:00 a.m. Saturday, about 14 hours after “The Way We Were” project was launched on kickstarter.com. George asked for $8,200 to publish a collection of his photographs of New York City, taken before the tragedy of 911. This morning, he had raised $9,000 with 29 more days of funding to go.

I woke George up this morning with the news – George is quite astonished by the very idea of crowdsourcing, he doesn’t quite believe it. “This only happens in dreams,” he said. “This Kickstarter thing is amazing.”

More important, he is beginning to believe what I have been telling him for a few years, that his work is not passe, it is timely and powerful. “People do want my pictures,” he said, “Kickstarter eliminates the middle-man, people get to decide for themselves what they like.” They call it crowdsourcing, but I prefer the term democratic funding. People get to support the art they like, not the art they are told by critics and galleries to like.

For artists like George, Kickstarter is another chance, a needed chance. The bulk of the contributors came from bedlamfarm.com – thank you – but a growing percentage of pledges, about $2,000 so far, have come from within Kickstarter, people there are finding George’s project and looking at his photos and pledging support. He has 29 more days to go, I am going to launch my own campaign if there’s enough money and urge him to consider buying a new computer rather than building one out of salvaged parts from garbage cans and ancient things donated by friends.

This follows by just a few days Maria’s successful project “Reclaiming Vintage Hankies,” which also was funded rapidly and still has 22 more days to go. Maria, like George, does not promote herself much, I love supporting both of them, they are so deserving and creative. Maria was seeking $4,000, she has received $4,490 so far. You can still contribute to her wonderful work here. Artists are under great pressure in America, the government has slashed its funding for the arts, and times are hard for many people. It’s time ordinary people got to help shape the world of art.  Kickstarter shows us that people do care about the arts, and do want to support art works.

George has an unusual view of the world, he usually credits aliens with bringing him good news, this morning he was grateful to the many people who rushed to support his work and his very timely and powerful project. I think George bought into the idea that he was over, that the digital photography revolution, the collapse of the Twin Towers and his own humility meant his great work was being forgotten, that he was being left behind. George is a humble man, but his creative ego is healthy, and I predict this amazing experience will spawn a whole new body of brilliant photography. He has never stopped taking wonderful photographs.

George is a generous soul, he keeps offering to share the Kickstarter money with me. This will not happen, I told him, he owes me nothing, he can move again to occupy his rightful place in the world, and go forward to do more brilliant work, which he will. George is excited about coming to both Bedlam Farm Open Houses, where he will be available to shoot portraits of people.

I can’t say enough about my blog. “You have the sweetest people on  your blog,” George told me this morning. He thinks the blog is so powerful that it must be driven by the mysterious forces of the universe. Maybe so, the blog is my mother, it nurtures and provides and encourages.

You have shown him that this is not so, that genius triumphs against the great odds, that love is pure and powerful. This one is for love, for the good and wonderful people on my blog, for aliens for sure, and for genius. Congratulations, George, you have earned every penny and deserve even more. Tonight, we are taking George and Donna out to dinner to celebrate his amazing first day of funding, and the new and democratic world of the Internet.

This funding will change George’s life, he will use every penny of it well, and I can say that any additional contributions will be valued and used as well. George and I are meeting this afternoon to see if there are any additional rewards he might think of to make use of the 29 funding days he has left. If you have not yet pledged and wish to, you can do so easily here.

Thank you, thank you, thank you.