The Big Picture in Japan

Last night, as my wife and I watched the mind- numbing videos of the destruction of Japan that seem to flow endlessly from CNN, I saw a devastatingly quiet series of still pictures showing people in a shelter looking at the lists posted of the missing, the found, the dead and the living.

And I thought, because I'm a photographer, this is incredible- I could actually take it in- moments, full of humanity, that told me more than the endless repetition of the same awful scenes, where one is shown everything and ultimately nothing.

So, if you are frustrated by the network coverage, and really want to see what's going on in a way that actually communicates what life is like in Japan at this time, please go to The Big Picture.

Incredible pictures, communicating tragedy, frustration, destruction of a way of life and also hope and the resilience of a nation.

A sampling of the photographs published by the Boston Globe on The Big Picture

Don't Eat the Brown Acid: Owsley is dead.

"Bear" with overrated guitarist Jerry Garcia

Seventy- six years old, a virtual recluse in the Australian Bush, he died in a car crash, survived by his wife, who was in the car with him, but not fatally injured.

To those who actually remember the so- called '60's, Augustus Owsley Stanley III, or Owsley as he was known popularly, was the last famous chemist on the planet. He was responsible for the first really clean illegal LSD.

LSD- 25 was invented sometime in 1938 by a Swiss chemist named Albert Hoffman, who worked for Sandoz Chemists in Basil, Switzerland. In 1943, Hoffman took acid and, essentially, liked what he saw, as did writer Aldous Huxley, among others.

Albert Hoffman, inventor of LSD -25

The Army famously experimented with the drug, as did a pair of Harvard professors, Timothy Leary and Richard Alpert. Harvard fired Leary and Alpert and the government took a beating on television's 60 Minutes for the experiments.

Owsley learned to synthesize the drug in 1965, and by 1967, it was illegal in this country.

But that, in many ways, is only the beginning of the story.

Owsley's acid became THE drug of the '60's, with terribly mixed results. In many ways it opened the doors to incredible bursts of creativity: Hendrix, the Beatles, R Crumb, Bob Dylan and others changed how we interpreted our own culture here in the West, and Ken Kesey's One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest was written on LSD.

However, the Grateful Dead and other mediocre (to say the least) groups rode the same wave. Peter Green, the gifted guitarist and founder of Fleetwood Mac was dosed by members of the Dead and never really recovered. To a certain type of person, LSD was the gateway to permanent psychosis. And Owsley's version, famously potent, opened up a lot of minds. Some, however, never closed again.

According to the New York Times obituary, Owsley believed that there was going to be a new Ice Age, and so moved to the Australian Bush where he lived out his days.

The Tragedy in Japan

Japan's Coastline February 27th, NASA Satellite Image

Japan's Coastline March 11, After the Tsunamai, NASA Satellite Image

The Japanese have a remarkable relationship with the physicality of their country. Their resilience in the face of physical disaster, whether man- made or natural, should be a model of behavior to all of us in the rest of the world.

In the wake of the earthquake and subsequent tidal wave that have killed over a thousand people, the images pouring from the tiny country have been overwhelming. Finally phone cameras are being used for something more than catching fatuous worthless celebrities partaking in fatuous stupid behavior.

Let us give our support to the people of Japan in whatever form we can, whether it's prayer, thoughts, aid or money. Let's keep them in our thoughts as they try to cope with this terrible disaster. Let us hope that the leaders of Japan handle this with much more intelligence and diligence than Washington did when Hurricane Katrina struck. No doubt they will.

The Day After

At exactly midnight, Ash Wednesday, the first day of Lent, police ride through the French Quarter in a ceremonial parade, clearing revelers from alchohol- drenched Bourbon Street.

Clean- up after Mardi Gras is very important: political careers rise and fall over who gets the clean-up contract. Trash collection in AGC is no laughing matter. The issue dogged former mayor Ray Nagin, and delighted the Times- Picayune, who had a field day with it.

Most of these photos are from the Pic, and are taken by Michael DeMocker, one of their fine staff photographers.

Happy Birthday, Will Eisner (March 6, 1917- January 3rd, 2005)

What a treat to open Google today and see this:

Yes, it's the great Will Eisner's 94th birthday, and Google felt it was important enough to give Mr. Eisner their special graphic treatment.

For those L by L readers not familiar with Will Eisner and his work (and I'm sure there are one or two, maybe), he was, along with Jack Kirby, Walt Kelly, Harvey Kurtzman and very few others, one of the finest purveyors of comic art and writing in the history of the medium. Words like influential, seminal and groundbreaking barely begin to describe Mr. Eisner's contributions. He was that good.

Most of his fame centers around his prewar creation The Spirit, which ran as an eight- page supplement in Sunday comic sections throughout the United States from 1940 until the mid 1950's.

A classic Spirit splash page

Eisner managed to tell fully developed stories week after week in only eight pages, utilizing progressive graphic techniques that showed the influence of the cinema (especially Orson Welles' Citizen Kane) in the storytelling, sound effects and the transitions from panel to panel. The Spirit usually began with a unique and eye- catching splash page, designed to draw the reader into the plot. The addition of beautiful and dangerous femme fatales, mysterious villains, lovable regulars and the working class invulnerabilty of the Spirit himself made for terrific Sunday reading.

The fact that The Spirit was published in newspapers rather than comics (along with several other features) gave the strip its unique quality. Everything happens fast in The Spirit.

Mr. Eisner was one of the rare artists who also excelled as a businessman, and after The Spirit's run he made a small fortune doing illustrations for a wide range of publications.

His comic work (or "sequential" work as he liked to call it) was rediscovered in the '60's and re-published in comic book form, which is how I first saw it. From the first story I saw, in a Harvey Comic anthology of classic Spirit strips, I was hooked. It was incredible work.

Mr, Eisner's life and times are the history of comics in this country. It makes for fascinating reading and I thoroughly recommend his website: http://www.willeisner.com/

The Art in the Snapshot

From the archives of "If Charlie Parker Was a Gunslinger...", this other- worldly  snapshot of Betty Grable:

Goodnight, Jane (June 21, 1921 – February 28, 2011)