The Works of Alan

Posted by the Friends of Alan and Alanworks Studio–

The November Awakening
Our Opinion with Photographer Alan Miller

Question: Why Obama?
Answer: Intelligent Change.

For me, this trip to the ballot box has come full circle. It started in what seems like several lifetimes ago. On very cold night, my late Father and I traveled to downtown Chicago to hear Robert F. Kennedy speak. This was my first political rally. The auditorium burned with the famous and uncomfortable Chicago winter dry heat that can chap your lips in a second. Sprawled out in front of us was a stage filled with “The Richard J. Daley Machine Democrats” as my Father pointed out the many notables.

To the right of the stage sat a skinny young man with a mop of hair and a smile that was too big for his face. He was Robert F. Kennedy.

After all these years I can’t recall Kennedy’s words, just a feeling and the impression he had left me. As my Father said, when it comes to public speakers and politicians, some have it and others don’t. All I can recall is, Robert F. Kennedy’s words caused a reaction in me. I was moved. Kennedy definitely had it.

Without any difficulty, those same impression’s rose in me after attending one of President Obama’s campaign rallies. I could see President Obama’s vision. I could see the spirit of Kennedy, of Lincoln, of King, of Malcolm and Mandela, and the many others who came before. Robert F. Kennedy could have easily said the words of President Obama, calling on our Better Angels and the change we need. Their spirit is of the same nature. We have waited a long time for this.

We have barely survived the Bush Administration and their downlinks. Bush’s approach to Government promoted and perfected policies of cruelty, injustice and intolerance on the United States citizenry and our Allies throughout the world over the past eight years.

Republican Senator McCain and Gov. Palin lost their Presidential bid due to their promotion of divisiveness and their vain attempt to create a fragmented world from their fragmented world viewpoint… without any wave of possibilities of liberty or creative expression unless McCain/Palin were in charge. Unity of the American people was not McCain/Palin’s theme.

McCain/Palin would have continued the last eight years of the Bush nightmare. Where once we had the freedom to object, think and live freely or in my case, lived within the arts as I thought fit, Bush replaced it with censorship and systems of surveillance coercing our conformity, submission or imprisonment. Remember the contrived story and national lie of Jessica Lynch launched from the oval office or the mishandling of Hurricane Katrina: only topped by the insanity of Dick Cheney’s One Percent Doctrine, to Abu Ghraid and Bush’s Guantanamo?

The difference between the Republican Neocon view and that of a free and enlighten Democratic society is that the Republican Neocon believe the American people are ignorant and the free flow of information to the American people must be controlled as the people themselves. The politically enlightened Democratic society must profess transparency in government with a free and open debate of the issues. The Republican Neocon uses ignorance to create a prescribed reality for a predicted outcome. In the Bush Administration, the keyword was fear and the outcome was simple. Control.

Lies lived from the Bush White House and McCain/Palin would have furthered Government control over the America people. Power over the people concedes nothing without a fight. Are the American people up to it? Were we ready to fight for our freedom and civil rights? Or would we allow them maintain control over us through our unwillingness to say - NO.

But how did the Bush’s Orwellian lexicon almost destroy dissent and free speech? Who is to blame? There are others who are more responsible than ourselves and they will be held accountable, but then, the truth be told, if you’re looking for the guilty we need only to look in the mirror.

I know why we did it. I know that we were afraid. Who wouldn’t be? War, terrorism and pandemics - there were a myriad of problems to conspire and corrupt our reason and to rob us of our common sense. Fear got the best of us and in our panic we turned to President Bush. Americans were forced fed - what colour is our terrorist alert today?

Bush turned out to be a President of monumental littleness, but at the time, he promised us order, he promised us peace and demanded only in return after 9/11 that we shop and our silent obedient consent. And in the first time in history the White House demanded the public never to question a sitting Wartime President as official policy. It didn’t matter that the Bush White House had compromised our civil liberties and that our phone calls were tapped. We allowed it.

The Karl Rove’s of the world didn’t want us to speak. Because truth will always retain it’s power, words are the pathway to meaning for those who listen to the annunciation of truth, and the truth is, there was something terribly wrong in our country. Bush and his minions had created an Imperial Presidency, and we let him.

The Republican Party had made the American viewpoint black and white, either with us or against us was Bush’s call to action. As President Bush campaigned during the last mid-term elections he said, “A vote for the Democrats is a vote for al Qaeda.” This from the player who had a leading role in the Republican’s Culture of Corruption play, forgoing the dynamics of intelligence and using fear as bait too prosecute his domestic and foreign policies.

The Republican Neocon repeated their call of “Why the public needs us,” but American’s were pushed too far. Many saw through Bush’s Government sponsored fear tactics, knowing, where there is Government sponsored fear baiting, there is no leadership. Bush has been the great pretender, but never a leader and the Republican Party lost in the mid-term elections.

President Obama is a true leader. President Obama is here to remind our country only of what has been forgotten. President Obama on one level, knowingly or unknowingly has become the Nelson Mandela of America by turning back the apartheid of thought that IS the legacy of President Bush. From the plains of Mandela’s Soweto, to the hilltops of our San Francisco, the cries of the people from both countries have been heard.

There is a call from the Obama Administration for Americans to be part of the American dialogue again. President Obama’s vision advocates fairness, justice and freedom that are more than just words, they are perspectives and are to be lived and acted upon by each American.

This 230-plus-year American experiment has reached for the optimistic words of a young visionary named Obama. Hopefully, Bush and his Republican Neocon’s will quietly drift into the history books as a failed chapter, filed under another attempt of a Government to control the masses through fear by a few individuals seeking self-enrichment.

I look forward to a reinvigorated post-partisan spirit uniting the country, overcoming our domestic civil liberties crises and healing friendships with our Allies overseas. There is much work to be done, but unlike the past, we are all part of the dialogue now. We have a voice. Once again, returning to: We The People.

I am sure that Robert F. Kennedy would be proud of America today.

Vida La Rasa

The words of Paul Bender, David Lloyd, Ann Kelly and Alan Miller.
Posted by the Friends of Alan Miller and Alanworks Studio–

Through sponsorship of The Guild and The United Artists of New York, Alan Miller has launched a nationwide lecture series exploring the fundamental causations of conflicts in contemporary society, by the simple act of photographic artists recording all phases of the human drama.

We can gather through understanding of the human spirit that prehistoric tribes carried the same talents that exist today. A blacken stick was pulled from the fire and was used to create marks on a cave wall, the skin, or to attempt to create an understanding of the cosmos. Thus began the record of recorded images. But by creating this simple act, a division between those with vision and those without was established. It also gave rise to the power of images whose survival through time can still impact our current society.

“I believe it is true to say,” stated Alan, “that the power of an image through photography creates ripples beyond anyone’s comprehension.” “I would hazard a guess that the world would trade every portrait ever painted depicting “the Christ” for one photograph of him. When disaster strikes, after the family is secure, people rush in to collect the family photographs because “they are irreplaceable.” Be it so, it is extraordinary to myself and the photographic community of artists throughout the United States that document the many phases of the human drama, should be shaken by the ire of modern day anti-culturalists.”

The world is not governed by the precepts of the Disney Corporation, but in today’s world, rightwing extremist as well as law enforcement act as if it is. It is a very well defined group of people who have established themselves as anti-culturalists.

Currently, when photographer Annie Liebowitz created the exquisite of portrait of Miley Cyrus which reflected an 18th century portrait, and Cyrus who is under contract with Disney for the billion dollar franchise Hanna Montana, the anti-culturalists were shocked.

We are happy to note that the same people were not in control when the Venus of Willendorf was discovered. The Venus of Willendorf is an icon of Paleolithic art from the Gravettian period (c.28, 000 - 19,000 BC) that depicts a short naked female that was originally painted red and is considered a mother goddess and/or fertility icon for young women. This priceless relic would be considered pornographic by the anti-culturalists and would have been destroyed if they had their way. This artifact is one of the oldest surviving icons in the world and thankfully resides at the Naturhistorisches Museum in Vienna and away from Americans.

Abusus non tollit usus, “the abuse of a thing should not take away the use of a thing,” and yes, there are people who create evil through imagery, yet in the landmark case of the 1990 State of Ohio vs. photographer Robert Mapplethorpe, established that life exists before the lens of a camera regardless of the disagreement of the anti-culturalists.

Seven Mapplethorpe photographs were put on trial in Cincinnati Ohio in 1990 and were defended successfully by art scholar’s Janet Kardon and Jacquelynn Baas, directors of the University Art Museum at Berkeley. They interpreted the Mapplethorpe’s images out of fundamental literalness into a formalist analysis as art understandable to the mythic “Average American”.

The 1990 Mapplethorpe case in Cincinnati was the first such prosecution of an art gallery in U.S. history. On April 7, 1990, the Contemporary Arts Center and its director, Dennis Barrie, were charged with pandering obscenity and the use of a minor in nude materials in a suit fueled by the “National Council Against Pornography” and its Cincinnati connection “Citizens for Community Values.” The indictment cited, out of the Mapplethorpe photographs in The Perfect Moment, two portraits, one of a boy nude (”Jesse McBride, 1976″) and one of a girl with her genitals exposed (”Honey, 1976″), and five other photographs depicting typical late 1970s homoerotic or sadomasochistic images. The jury declared Mapplethorpe’s work was valid and serious art thus ending the trial on October 5, 1990. This trial and its findings have acted as a legal cornerstone for photographers who have been charged by society for violating a constant flow of illogical morality laws.

Alan Miller is a serious artist, and in late spring of 2008 his studio and home were raided under the same pretext. This raid was not just a clear and identifiable violation of fundamental rights, but a direct attack on artistic freedom and pursuits of all serious photographers throughout the United States.

The legacy of our Founding Fathers gave us the Constitution and the freedoms in which we live by. George Bush and the anti-culturalists have given us The Constriction, a one-size-fits-all vision of the future coupled with enacted laws that gives sweeping powers to police forces as they transform into paramilitary units that rage into the private lives of the very citizenry they are charged to protect.

Yet Alan’s lecture series are about hope. At this moment the creations may be under attack, but the creators will always survive. The work of photographers, like all artists, will outlive their critics and will have a direct impact on our culture. Michelangelo (1475 - 1564) and his aesthetic vision of the Sistine Chapel are brought to mind. During the Reformation, the duly elected band of political anti-culturalist painted over parts of Michelangelo’s vision in order to bring his enlightened work in line to the sensibilities of the day.

But like all political illusionist from Reformationist to George Bush, images created by artists with vision will always outlive the politicians, and on a happy note, the Sistine Chapel has recently been restored to Michelangelo’s original grandeur.

Viva La Rasa

Posted by the Friends of Photographer Alan Miller