Chicago Nanny Could Be The Next Walker Evans

This was a fascinating story that a friend forwarded to me about a Chicago nanny who took thousands of photographs on her day off and just may be one of the best street photographers of the 20th century.  Vivan Maier took care of children and was something of a modern day Mary Poppins but on her days off, she roamed the streets of the second city snapping some extraordinary B/W photos of mid-century life.

This story is really even more remarkable due to the fact that all of her work might never had been seen except for the accidental efforts of a young real estate agent who is now her biggest champion.  Watch this story from WTTW (Chicago's PBS affiliate) and discover the work of the woman who just may be the next Walker Evans.

JCM's Mattachine Party Goes Mainstream

There was a nice little write-up of one of downtown's semi-best kept secrets in the Times yesterday; John Cameron' Mitchell's MATTACHINE party at Julius.  For more than 40 years, Julius has been a mainstay of the West Village scene.  It was in fact the scene of one of the first gay rights protests when patrons there a few years before the Stonewall Riots demanded to be served when it was illegal to serve "homosexuals".

Anyway, JCM has spurred a revival of the joint with his monthly Thursday night party which attracts a very mixed crowd of artsy downtown types of all ages.  The wonderful thing about this party which didn't get mentioned is how it's a place where people actually have conversations, unlike most night spots where the music is too blaring to be heard.  Also, I've found that people at this party are very open and friendly, as opposed to the uptightness and stares often encountered at many NYC gay bars/nightclubs.

A friend of mine and Mattachine regular Tim Murphy, a New York magazine writer, put this piece together and it's a really lovely portrait of an unusual night out on the town and one that has been the saving grace of nightlife for me.  Like John, who's been in the 'hood 18 years, I too am an artistic survivor, living in the now-super fancy wilds of the West Village.  I've been in my apartment for just as long and, at a Christmas party this year and, as I told someone where I lived, they said "wow--you must be rich."  No...just lucky.  And older than I may seem :)

Sneak Peek at HALF-SHARE, A New Web Series

Back in October, I spent a lovely week out on Fire Island co-producing a new web series called HALF-SHARE. Written and directed by indie film hypenates Jesse Archer and Sean Hanley, this new comedy is about a lively house of gays in Fire Island Pines who welcome a newcomer for his first summer to the "Island of Lost Boys".  The script is a riot and I had a great time working on the show. The hilarious cast includes comic and UGLY BETTY alum Alec Mapa, Sam Pancake (currently featured on SHIT MY DAD SAYS) and Jack Plotnick (from GIRLS WILL BE GIRLS) along with adorable newcomer Kyle Spidle who plays the Pines newbie.

Jesse and Sean are currently just about finished editing and will be posting the show soon for a premiere in the New Year.  I will post updates and links when the show goes live so you can check it out.  In the meantime, Jesse recently posted a bunch of pictures from the production and there are more behind the scenes shots on the HALF-SHARE website too.  You can find me in a couple of the pics on set, lurking in the background and trying to keep everything on schedule.  Anyway, I look forward to sharing this fun new show with you in 2011....stay tuned!

The Blizzard of 2010 In 38 Seconds

New York was hit by a massive blizzard the day after Christmas with nearly two feet blanketing the city in less than 24 hours.  Unfortunately, or maybe fortunately, I missed all the excitement as I've been down in Maryland where we got barely a dusting from the storm.  But I've been reading all about it on the web.

There have been some great photos in the TIMES of the storm and it's aftereffects, the one above taken on a Sackett Street in Park Slope.  And there was a great time lapse video of the storm posted to Vimeo yesterday which, so far has gotten more than a million hits.  It's a fun and funny look at the blizzard, as the videomaker keeps trying to keep his clock above the rapidly accumulating snow.


December 2010 Blizzard Timelapse from Michael Black on Vimeo.

A Few Of My Favorite Christmas Things

I've been working on my iMovie skills lately so I put together a little video of a few of my favorite Christmas things.  It's a compilation of some of the pics I've taken over the past few holidays with my family.  Hope you enjoy it and have a great Christmas weekend! :)


A Few Of My Favorite Christmas Things from Brian Sloan on Vimeo.

Franklin Kameny, Age 85, Witnesses History

Yesterday, President Obama made good on his promise to repeal the ban on gays and lesbians serving in the US military.  It was not easy and the President deserves a great deal of credit for his persistence and tenacity in making this hateful policy history.  It was a landmark day for civil rights in this country.  And on hand to witness it, along with hundreds of servicemembers and activists was an 85 year old man that not many people took note of....Franklin Kameny.

If you don't know his name, you should as Kameny is one of the true founding fathers of the gay rights movement.  After being dishonorably discharged from the Army for being gay in the 1950s, he fought and argued his case all the way to the Supreme Court making his the first civil rights claim based on sexual orientation.  After losing, Kameny didn't give up. He staged some of the first protests and pickets for gay rights way back in the early 1960s.  Wearing his trademark white shirt and tie, Kameny's daring attempts to bring the discrimination against gays and lesbians to the nation's attention was bold given the times he was living in, when homosexuality was a crime in many states and homosexuals considered mentally deficient deviants.

There were surprisingly few mentions of Kameny's presence in national articles today about the signing ceremony.  But only one, Washington's nightlife mag MetroWeekly, actually got a quote from him and it was a good one: "I didn't think I'd live to see it." Frankly, I doubted it myself at times this year.  But finally "it's done," as Obama said slapping the table as he put down his presidential pen.  And now that we can fight and die equally for our country, you can bet the chorus of voices who will want to live and love equally will continue to grow.  How wonderful would it be for Franklin Kameny to see marriage equality in his lifetime?

Cute Guys Shoot Some Amazing Trick Shots

I was tooling around on one of my favorite local blogs, Bowery Boogie, when I came across the video of a trio of guys shooting some amazing trick shots on the basketball courts of Manhattan.  They made the video a couple years ago, soon after settling in on the Lower East Side all the way from Australia.

On first glance you'd think this has to be all EFX'd out.  But it is real. As the boys confess, they didn't have any money for CGI in their DIY effort.  However, they probably did have some time  and they were unclear when asked how many takes these shots took.  Ah....the magic of editing.   But still a fun little clip.  And a cute group of guys too.

Sneak Preview Of The High Line Part Two

Over the weekend, the NY Times ran a preview of the newest section of the High Line, slated to open this spring.  The next stretch, from 20th to 30th Street, runs through a less chic area of town than the Meat Packing District, through West Chelsea and up to the Hudson Rail Yards.  In the future, there are plans to "Meat Pack" this area too, with a huge deck over the tracks and massive/fancy real estate development.  But for now, it's still a last bastion of semi-grungy, industrial ol' New York.....with a beautiful new park running down the middle.  Coming soon in 2011...

The Furor Grows Over Censorship At The Smithsonian

A couple weeks ago, I posted about the removal of a work of art from the Smithsonian's groundbreaking exhibit about gender identity, Hide/Seek.  After criticism from the Catholic League and Weeper of the House John Boehner, the Portrait Gallery caved and removed a video by artist/activist David Wojnaorwociz called "Fire In My Belly", which showed ants on a cross as an analogy to his AIDS diagnosis.  The artist died in 1992.

Since then, the furor has only grown.  And rightly so.  This sort of censorship by the Smithsonian is totally unacceptable behavior by a national cultural institution and more like something one would expect in the old Soviet Union.  The repercussions of this disastrous decision continue to grow.  Last week, Canadian artist AA Bronson asked to have his work, a stunning wall-sized photo of the artist's partner a few minutes after his death from AIDS, removed from the exhibit.  This piece is easily one of the most powerful in the exhibit and its loss would be devastating.  Currently, it's not clear if the artist has the right to remove it as the piece is on loan from a Canadian museum.  But his request, sent directly to the head of the museum, makes it clear how strongly artists believe that this act of censorship cannot stand.

Meanwhile, here in New York, there was a previously scheduled panel with the exhibit's curators Jonathan Katz and David Ward at the NY Public Library on Wednesday.  Though they publicly stated that the museums' action were "abhorrent", the curators tried to keep the focus on the fact that it's still a landmark show for the Smithsonian and that there are 104 other works worthy of discussion.  However, the audience was not having it.  In the Q/A, they were asked angry and pointed questions and there were even attempts to start a chant to restore the works.  This weekend, there was also street protest here in NYC which drew hundreds of people angered by the situation.  They marched up the Museum Mile to the Smithsonians' Cooper-Hewitt Museum demanding the video be restored.  There was also a protest in Washington last week where people gathered in front of the Portrait Gallery wearing masks of the artist and projecting the video onto the building's facade.

From all this activity, it's clear that this issue is not going away and that the Smithsonian has to address this crisis.  Of course, their initial action was taken because their bottom line was threatened by Boehner's veiled threat that the funding of the museum could be at stake.  Unfortunately, the real financial threat could come from elsewhere.  The Warhol Foundation has threatened to cancel it's funding of the museum and other donors are considering doing the same.  The Smithsonian must take a stronger stand against this sort of "artistic bullying".  Their future depends on it.

The 270 Movies of 2010 In Less Than Seven Minutes

This is a very clever and very tightly edited homage to all the feature films of 2010.  270 to be exact.  It's an amazing compilation and nicely put together.  Which sorta makes me wonder...where is this guy when the Academy Awards put together all those boring clip montages that have a tendency to grind the proceedings to a halt?  They should really hire this dude because he is a miracle worker.  Seriously.  He has made a definitely below average year in cinema look much better than it was. Sure...it helps that he leans heavily on INCEPTION and THE SOCIAL NETWORK for some of his footage, dipping repeatedly into those wells of genius.  But still, it's a remarkable piece of work.  And if you can name all these films, you are a bigger film maniac than I.