Ann Rand had the fountainhead, i have the crack head. The story of an architectural photographer that, whenever he sets up a shot, two crack ‘hos show up and one bends over and moons, thus destroying the shot. It’s an ironic story since all a man wants to do is serve his architecture clients, instead he’s flung into the New York art world where he becomes an instant celebrity for his famous set-up work called architectural mooning, praised extensively in the ny times especially in the article “Children of Architectural Darkness: How RealStill Subverts the Staid World of Architectural Photography.” The denial on RealStill’s part that he is not a set-up photographer, let alone, an art photographer, has only contributed to the mystique surrounding the strange works by RealStill. Whatever is true, by focusing on ruined but grand architecture with his mooning collaborators, he produces a strong depiction of architectural objects while calling into question the nature of such endeavors, indeed, the very foundation of what architectural photography means in a post industrial world of fictive imagery.
The prostitue who mooned me was arrested a minute after i took a number of these shots. If the police thought that they didn’t want the city in this sort of depiction than they arrested the wrong person. I was only aggravated that i had shown up 15 minutes too late to avoid the shadow that shrouds the young lady with the sense of humor.
Getting back to the shot – it’s the Clinton Elk’s Club in Newark, my timing was off due to traffic in the Holland Tunnel from Brooklyn.
But her timing was really off, badly.
