George Pitts
Photographer
Tell us a bit about yourself:
Working artist, photographer, writer, teacher, devout enthusiast of the Arts and Humanities: Painting, Literature, Philosophy, Critical Essays, Poetry, Music, Dance, Avant-garde Theater, Cinema.
What do you make?
I make photographs. I write essays on artists, photographers, Film directors, and musicians, so far. I write poetry with seriousness and big imaginative leaps.
Where else on the web can we find you?
I have Photography galleries at nerve.com
I have a solo show at: tablebrothers.com“Exhibitions/The Woman Next Door."
My work was selected for American Photography Annuals 16, 18-21, 23-24 (2009 edition). www.ai-ap.com
The New Erotic Photography (Taschen Books)
S Magazine pictorial: “Good Morning and Goodbye” and essay on photographer Leigh Ledare, “Solomon At The Mount”
Model Mayhem
What did you dream about last night?
I dreamt of the most satisfying synthesis of qualities that a photograph can have.
What inspires you?
1. Examples of discerning, passionate, or remarkable works of art
2. In photography, Women of differing natures, and lifestyles
inspire me.
3. The fruits of Meditation
4. Research: whether in long-term intervals studying material in behalf of making an art work; or in the moment during the taxing and pleasurable activity of taking photographs.
6. Frenchness in the visual texture and the sensuality of an image; the audacity of American inventiveness; the alliance of beauty and compositional emptiness in certain forms of Asian art; the totemic/shamanistic/and decorative will in certain forms of African Art.
7. The sheer beauty of Black and White Film; the lighting demands of Color photography.
Where do you live and what do you like about it?
I live in Brooklyn, and I like its relative ordinariness and collection of communities.
What is your biggest fear?
Poor health, inattention during a heightened moment of creativity.
Name a few of your favorite movies \ books \ websites \ bands:
Cinema:
Vertigo
The Bitter Tears of Petra Von Kant
Inside (France, starring Beatrice Dalle)
The Silence
La Belle Noiseuse
The Last Mistress
Suspiria
Flower And Snake
Camille
Lips Of Blood
Inland Empire
Chelsea Girls
The Long Goodbye
Identification Of A Woman
Oh Woe Is Me
Fuego
That Obscure Object Of Desire
Chinatown
Ticket Of No Return
The Story of Marie and Julien
Anatomy Of Hell
Exterminating Angels
Cure (Japan)
Books
Madame Bovary by Gustave Flaubert
Under The Sign Of Saturn by Susan Sontag
Absalom, Absalom! by William Faulkner
Nightwood by Djuna Barnes
The Collected Poems of Wallace Stevens
Hanna Schygulla (Schirmer Mosel pub.)
Atlas by Gerhard Richter
Image Archive by Ulrike Ottinger
Closed Contact by Jenny Saville and Glen Luchford
Guilty by Georges Bataille
Painting or Photography books on: Cy Twombly, Balthus, Jenny Saville, Manet, Courbet, Picasso, Roni Horn, Helmut Newton, Guy Bourdin, Philip-Lorca diCorcia, Nobuyoshi Araki, Watteau, Seiichi Furuya, Louise Bourgeois, Anselm Kiefer. Carlo Mollino, John Singer Sargent, Hans Bellmer, Rainer Werner Fassbinder, Boris Mikhailov.
The writing styles of: Joan Didion, Peter Handke, Marcel Proust, Samuel Beckett, John Ashbery, Wallace Stevens, Ludwig Wittgenstein, Leonard Cohen, Paul Valery, Raymond Roussel, Jane Bowles, Anne Carson, Hilton Als, Shakespeare, William Faulkner, William Wordsworth, Marguerite Duras, Georges Bataille, Pierre Klossowski, David Foster Wallace.
Favorite Literary figures (for the way they looked, dressed, and who they were): Shelley, Virginia Woolf, Romaine Brooks, Djuna Barnes.
Bands:
Roxy Music
Miles Davis
Scott Walker
Francoiz Breut
Come (featuring Thalia Zedek).
David Bowie
Leonard Cohen
The Supremes
Tindersticks
Of Montreal (“Skeletal Lamping” and “The Past Is A Grotesque Animal”)
PJ Harvey
Richard Strauss
Alban Berg
Nick Cave And The Bad Seeds
What are you really good at? What are you really bad at:
I'm good at: entertaining myself
I'm bad at: being idle
What is your favorite thing to eat?
Life itself, however indigestible at times.
How would you like to be remembered?
I'm not sure we have control over that.
What is the most embarrassing thing that ever happened to you?
Any questionnaire
Anything else you would like to say:
Kindness and critical toughness are alluring qualities.