GONE CITY

Take Two Pictures

2016-08-02T18:21:00.000-05:00

The UK blog Arte Galeria recently invited me to contribute two of my favorite photographs, along with the context, stories and inspiration behind them, and they've published the images and words here. A big thank you to Arte Galeria for making this interesting experiment happen.

As you will see, I chose two pictures taken in El Salvador, a country about which I have extremely strong feelings. While my thoughts on that little country are not all happy, I do think they are honest and revealing.

Enjoy!

Plaza Garibaldi, Mexico City

2016-07-12T11:15:00.001-05:00

Workshop in Mexico City

2016-07-12T09:50:00.003-05:00

Info: jmmsevigny@gmail.com

Man with cart

2016-06-13T22:13:00.000-05:00

Waiter, Tepito, Mexico City

2016-06-02T09:31:00.000-05:00

New Orleans, Garden District

2016-06-02T09:28:00.001-05:00

San Salvador, downtown

2016-06-02T09:27:00.001-05:00

Woman sleeping, Plaza Garibaldi, Mexico City

2016-06-02T09:25:00.000-05:00

La Blanquita

2016-05-11T19:15:00.001-05:00

Many years ago in Northern Mexico I lived with a very old curandera, which is a Spanish word for a woman who cures with folk medicine, or pretends to, or who is just a witch, or even a con artist. It's a very loose, almost meaningless word. If your neighbor prayed to strange saints and used them to perform little miracles, you might say, "Well she's a curandera." But if you hated your neighbor, you'd call her a "bruja."

Blanquita, mother of two delinquent sons and a severe alcoholic, was somewhere in between. I was grateful she treated me like an adopted child because being her enemy might have gotten me killed. Instead, she maintains a room for me in her home to this day. In it is a bed and a single, blue, wooden chair, a framed picture of the Virgin on the seat illuminated by a single candle. I know this because I have gone back to visit from time to time.

It may be rude to judge people according to gossip but most of what they say about someone is true. It was said Blanquita helped her clients get rid of their problems by getting rid of people who caused them. Dozens of cops and prosecutors, among others, came to her for advice, and much like the New Orleans Voodoo queens of old, she was, people said, not beyond having someone's boss, cheating husband or enemy knocked off brutally. And of course, she charged a pretty peso for the service, which as far as her clients knew, was the result of black magic, bad karma or fate, which she manipulated through supernatural powers. That it was corrupt cops "fixing" the issues at hand was never revealed.

The cops had the wool pulled over their eyes, too, they said, and were an integral strand in Blanquita's strange web. She'd tell a narcotics officer, for example, that in order to resolve problem A, he had to kill person B as a sacrifice to La Santisima Muerte. The victim usually "needed" to be killed to resolve another client's problems. So it was a two birds kind of deal deal. One guy bites the dust and Blanquita gets paid twice. It must have been a complicated game but she played it well and got filthy rich.

How she manipulated people, but moreover, manipulated money and debt would have impressed Donald Trump. She never charged cash. She kept running tabs for people and ended every spiritual session saying, "You will pay me when you can. God bless you." And people kept coming back until they owed tens of thousands of dollars for everything from simple blessings and herb baths to offing stubborn ex-wives who refused to let fathers see their children.

Everything I mentioned about killings is hearsay. In other words, I heard people say it through the wall of my room. What I know is that everyone eventually had to pay. And Blanquita handled it with the finesse of a cobra.

The conversation normally went something like this:

"Mario. I've been helping you for almost eight years. I resolved the issue with that nasty slut that wanted to marry your son. I got you that job at the factory. I helped your wife get pregnant and now you have another wonderful child. I know you don't have anything close to the 20,000 dollars you owe me, and you know I don't do this for money. God has given me these powers. But I have to eat, too, and my spiritual work isn't making me rich. You've got that extra house down the street that's worth 10,000 dollars and maybe we could settle the debt by you signing it over to me. I could rent it out and maybe survive."

Out of sheer terror of Blanquita, a sense of honor regarding debt, or fear of the supernatural, dozens of people signed properties over to her. By the time I met her she owned nearly all of the houses in her mountaintop, desert slum and she had never held any other job.

Once she tried to recruit me into her business, reasoning that a blonde, blue-eyed foreigner would seem otherworldly in Mexico and absolutely convincing. She said everyone who walks through her front door is suffering for love or money. Those are the only two problems in the world, she said. And if the problem is more complicated, money can solve it. If the issue is love the client will be crying. If it's money the client will show physical signs of anxiety. You pick the right problem and you've got them hooked for life.

She gave me other tips. Look for a wedding band. If there's no wedding band, look for a tan line where a wedding band used to be. And I saw her use that trick on a recently separated man. He walked in, she asked him to sit down and took his hands in hers. She looked into his eyes and said, "So how long have you been having .... this issue ... with your wife." There was something absolutely nasty about it. And something artful and brilliant, too.

I brushed off the invitation to join the world of supernatural fraud and eventually moved out of my room at her house, for which she never, ever charged me rent.

I never had any bad feelings toward her. She was a woman who was born poor. Poverty had turned her into a predator as it usually does.

Those wide-eyed victim-kids on the Save the Children ads may look sweet and deserving of a big hug. But being poor often turns otherwise good people into vicious, suffering, salivating, bleeding animals. I have known many of them. I have cared deeply for some. But having them for friends is as dumb as collecting rattlesnakes. I understood Blanquita and how she'd become what she was.I also knew she had fangs, venom and bad intentions.

Lacking any of those, the world might have killed her before she ever reached adulthood.

Hell has a name: El Salvador, part 1

2016-05-10T23:02:00.002-05:00

A few months ago, Edgar Romero, who runs a little bar in San Salvador called Fotocafe, along with his wife who receives grant money for "supporting causes for women," organized a panel discussion to discuss abuse against women. There were a half-dozen or so photographers on the panel, all men. Included were Oscar Machon, a notorious womanizer and bisexual who has sent pictures of his genitals to Victor Hugo Duenas. I don't suppose womanizing or homosexual sexting are crimes but Machon has a wife and two children.

Frederick Meza, formerly of El Faro, was on the board, too. The last time I saw Frederick he was secretly taking pictures of naked prostitutes at a drug house in downtown San Salvador and showing them off to his friends.

There are no noteworthy Salvadoran photographers and those who are allowed inside the circle clearly make for poor activists. The event was organized by men, funded by a woman sucking off the public tit, and included not one woman speaker. Not that there aren't female photographers in El Salvador. But in a country as small and unimportant as that one, even events meant to draw awareness to the problem of violence against women are organized by peeping toms, perverts, and men who cheat on their wives.

It's a small symptom of a bigger problem. Salvadorans live in the 18th Century. Most oppose any kind of abortion. The entire upper class, according to one member of that group, is addicted to cocaine. Drugs are sold over the counter like candy. Every newspaper is run by a political party and reporters happily tow the line for 400-600 dollars a month. Not even whores work that cheap.

The fact that El Salvador is fucked up is nothing new. From the 1932 massacre of indigenous people to the forced deportation of dark skinned citizens to Honduras, El Salvador's has always been a zero tolerance culture. The flip side is that everything is tolerated. After the war, both sides agreed to a peace agreement in which nobody could ever be accountable for anything. As a result, guerilla mercenary and cold-hearted killer Salvador Sanchez Ceren is the president and the opposition is handled by Tony Saca, like Oscar Machon, a closet homosexual. Saca's claim to fame is a series of get-tough operations against gangs. None of them worked. Gangs grew stronger in response to the crackdowns. By the time Saca left office, gangs were in charge.

I spent a few years in El Salvador taking pictures of downtown San Salvador, which is essentially a pile of ruins never repaired after a string of earthquakes. It's a sad place but a photogenic one. It's like Gary, Indiana with a few more people wandering around and a lot more drunks passed out on the street. Women are enslaved. Children are sold into prostitution. Bad people kill good people. And good people go to prison for no reason. Everyone is cheating on their husband or wife. And it's all quite acceptable. There are no honest people in El Salvador. There is no reason to go there, ever.

The international media has finally gotten around to investigating a string of extra-judicial murders of suspected gang members. This is the way business has always been done in the smallest country in Central America. Non-governmental organizations, most fronts for US and European intel, fly teenagers down to study the phenomenon of violence. No solutions are proposed. Married men keep frequenting the transvestite brothels downtown and pretending it's ok. Their wives look the other way. Women see sleeping with married men as totally acceptable. All women. Stealing is part of everyday business. Dishonor is a code of honor.

A safety inspector at Avianca named Salvador Campos drinks on the job. His father is a loan shark who has dirty business ties to the Mara Salvatrucha. He spends most of his time at the Tres Rosas strip bar in Santa Tecla. The gang recently robbed him of a hotel and a car wash he owned as he was trying to flee the country, leaving his family behind. A typical Salvadoran.

I have left El Salvador. I feel no pity for the bastards and whores stuck down there. A few of them don't deserve to live in a hell hole. But most of them do. I'm never going back to that shit hole. It's a violent country, no because of gangs, but because the people, everyday people, are fucked up beyond repair.

My favorite Instagrammers. Part 2: @man_in_jail_back

2016-05-04T21:50:00.000-05:00

I only know a few things about @Man_in_jail_back. I know he's in prison. I know that prison is in France. And I know his pictures make me think of a Jean Genet novel, if Jean Genet had focused on the boredom of prison rather than the glamour of queer criminality. What I don't know is what he did to get locked up, what his real name might be, or when he's getting out. In our correspondence, he's kind and grateful for any likes I give him.

Most of these pictures are gritty, black and white shots. It seems like there are hundreds of them, some of them very, very good. You never see the sky. But you can feel the monotony of prison life. Men shave. Men smoke. Men pose for photographs. There are empty cell blocks and lots of bars.

Me and "man," met on Instagram after he liked some of my pictures. It's fascinating that cell phones have allowed prisoners all over the world to document their own lives deprived of liberty. This is important work and I'm surprised nobody's done a documentary on @man_in_jail_back.

Art has always existed in prison. Prison photography has always been a complicated affair but cell phone cameras have made it possible. I'm glad that prisoners remain hopeful enough about the world that they can find reason to photograph it for the rest of us.

My favorite Instagrammers. Part 1: @6x666x aka Johnny B.

2016-04-26T09:49:00.000-05:00

I'm all over Instagram these days. I don't care what "pro" photographers tell you. If you're not using Instagram, a hell of a lot of people aren't seeing your work. These are five of my favorite Instagram accounts, in no particular order. In general, they're freaky, outside the lines, but well worth following. I'll be featuring one a week. You can find me, meanwhile, at @sevignychrome.

The first is Johnny B. or @6x666x - The best photographers in New Orleans are not white and don't sell their work in the French Quarter. Apologies to you French Market types making endless black and white photographs of Jazz funerals. There's a huge city outside the French Quarter and it's a fascinating, gritty, vibrant place. You want to see the Upper Ninth Ward like a resident? Or drunken, high, tattooed craziness in Hollybrook or even NY? Check out Johnny B.

French Quarter

2016-04-16T11:54:00.000-05:00

For daily pictures from New Orleans and beyond, follow me on Instagram:

@sevignychrome

New Orleans

2016-04-16T11:20:00.000-05:00

More at my Web site

One-on-one photo walks in New Orleans

2016-03-30T08:35:00.000-05:00

Good news if you're in the Crescent City. Starting this weekend I'll be offering one-on-one photo walks through the French Quarter, Treme, or wherever you want to go. This is an opportunity to focus on not only taking pictures but identifying your strong traits as a photographer and maximizing them, while clearing up some of your doubts. I guarantee a three-hour walk, talking and taking pictures with me will make you a better photographer. For $50 you've got everything to gain. You set the time. You set the date. Contact me at jmmsevigny@gmail.com.

This is going to be fun.

Tweeting in the age of the algorithm

2016-03-30T08:05:00.000-05:00

I use Twitter heavily. If Twitter was tobacco, I'd be a three-pack-a-day smoker.

Before Twitter ditched real-time timelines in favor of showing you "what you want to see first," I made a lot of contacts with that little blue bird, sold a lot of photographs, and got a lot of retweets. Now, not so much. I'm not abandoning Twitter yet but I am wrestling with how to make it work for me again.

Of course, you can opt out of the algorithmic feed. Here's how to do that. But will my followers opt out? Just because I use a chronological timeline doesn't mean my 32,000 followers see what I tweet when I tweet it. Or see it at all for that matter. When I tweet a really strong photograph that's previously been heavily retweeted, but I don't even get a "like," I know the Twitter battlefield has changed.

So rather than a how-to-make-Twitter-make-you-famous article, call this a journal entry on my efforts to get around the Evil Algorithm. Because I haven't yet succeeded. But I'll share a combination of things I've tried, things I've observed, and things I am still trying.

1) The time of day you Tweet no longer matters much. When I first open Twitter, having already opted out of the timeline changes, I see things that were tweeted five hours ago, three seconds ago, and 14 minutes ago in that order. Or in some other wacky order.

Tuesdays still seem to be the best days for all kinds of social networking, including Twitter. Fridays still seem to suck. I still try to tweet relatively early in the day, say 10 a.m. eastern time, figuring that whatever I put out there will have a good six hours of peak time (that is, "work time," when people ironically pay most attention to social media accounts) to filter through the algorithm. Oddly enough, I'm seeing things get liked (far more often than retweeted) days after I post them. Your experience may be different.

2) All the old rules to optimizing tweets are more important than ever. Use mind-grabbing text, a photograph, and a link in every tweet. Use a hashtag or two. Think about keywords. Know your audience. Know your mission. Be interesting. Forbes has an old article on that stuff here.

3) Regarding the content of a tweet "Fine art for sale," with a photograph of a bridge over a lovely river attached beneath it is a pretty weak way to find buyers or even retweeters. Try something novel like, "Hot, oily Asian girls love my photographs. You will too." Unless you're selling Bibles. In which case you might try "Bored, wet, Christian housewives who show it ALL are buying up my art." OK. Both those examples are juvenile (and entertaining) but to get attention you need to spice things up. It's even more important now.

4) Ask people to retweet you. Likes are worthless because nobody sees what the people they follow "like." Retweets are gold. Stick an "RT" at the end of important tweets. Better yet, ask people, in private messages, if they'd be willing to retweet something you're about to post. I often do. And just as often, I retweet things for other people. It's no guarantee you'll get seen but without actually doing theoretical math, I figure a retweet doubles the probability of any given person seeing what I post. Or something? In any case, it expands the number of people who might see what you post.

5) The number of followers you have may or may not help. Logically, it would. Buying followers definitely won't. A hundred thousand followers with no profile pics who have tweeted twice and have between two and six people following them might impress your grandmother or people who don't know about accounts built mostly on the backs of ghost accounts but it does nothing to get your tweets seen. I have never paid for followers and I have 35,000 of them, with a few annoying, fake ones in there who have latched onto my account. But I know people with 5,000 followers who get lot more retweets than I do.

Keep trying. I'll do the same. Maybe we can come up with a solution. Because Twitter is not going back to its old format. In the meantime, follow me at @John_Sevigny and retweet everything I post.

New Web site

2016-03-25T22:47:00.003-05:00

Scrolling through the history of Gone City is more fun than trying to catch a greased pig in July. But for people who'd like to see all of my work in one place, I've launched this brand new Web site. Take a look. Stay awhile. Browse through its lovely pages absolutely free of charge. Add it to your list of bookmarks. Share it with your favorite aunt (she'll love it). In the meantime, enjoy this recent photograph taken in New Orleans.

One-way: Chicago

2016-03-25T22:28:00.000-05:00

New Orleans exhibition of new work: Dark Arts

2016-03-13T18:08:00.000-05:00

Sculptor Grey Cross of New Orleans, mixed media artist Rosie Hartmann of Milwaukee, WI, and myself have put together a show that delves into what lies in between the light and the dark. The event will be held at YaYa Studios in New Orleans. There will be only one chance to see this show on March 18th from 7-10pm. I'll be traveling to the Crescent City for this one, and if I can find a place to stay, spending some time there.

The event will include art, wine bar by FNBMG, Hors d'oeuvre by Refuel Cafe, live painting and Special Guest, Poppy Z Brite showing art work for the first time. Expect to find hard topics, bright colors and deep emotions.

The Darkness and The Light
March 18, 2016
7-10pm
YaYa Arts Center
3322 Lasalle Street
New Orleans, LA 70152

Here's a map so you won't get lost.

St. Patrick's Day, Chicago

2016-03-13T18:02:00.000-05:00

This Friday, Waukesha, WI: Ghosts I've known

2016-03-01T11:50:00.002-06:00

Chicago in winter

2016-03-01T10:35:00.000-06:00

Stars

2016-03-01T10:33:00.002-06:00

Another from Georgia

2016-02-16T00:18:00.000-06:00

Near Americus, Georgia

2016-02-15T23:48:00.000-06:00