Jan Deen was our “go to“ photographer at the Odyssey Theatre for so many shows, and for so many years. He didn’t just do “wideshots” of the stage, or of groups of actors, but has an incredible “eye” for turning clusters of characters into expertly composed and intimate glimpses of a production, conveying the real “feeling“ of performances. His was a unique vision for us, and we miss it. Ron Sossi, Artistic Director Dark Stages2-DARK STAGES the era’s end
Notes/Folios
67 posts
> Secret Honor: Phillip Baker Hall is Nixon. [/caption] Recall when we thought Nixon was a “Bad President”? What the world has for we who strive to evolve and be enlightened today is a mass psycopathology led by criminals who do not qualify as “crook” The atmosphere is called climate change that we have created and we need many more of us to act against the results of this frequency of destruction and mendacity. Cheyenne, Clint Walker.
Ouspensky1931 A NEW MODEL OF THE UNIVERSE, Photo: The Actors Gang MEINKAMPF
The quality of the Jan Deen Phototheatre images is superb I only tell you this because it appears that no one knows anymore what is what? Is this a threatening image? What does the red brick background mean? Is it horror or are you trying to tell us something? Are we being blasted by a frequency that has modified our ability to respond in a human fashion. Law and Order–what’s that?
photo history of dance and theatre[/caption]
Artaud–The Theatre and its Double
There is a direct link between people we will meet and recurring subjects we choose to photograph. A Subject must ultimately become symbol, alive in formal structure. Esthetics are material– not simply abstract ideas. Passion is a critical element to felt alchemy of imagery. Photographers Interest in photographic event generates intensity. I call this “The touch” that is as important as vision to powerful photography. Without personal involvement, we have a Dead Document of patterns –the product of mechanical man. jd
January 6 2022 Another day waiting to see what mass media would do with contrived “American Insurrection” and Plague stories, only to find I could not sleep. A series of “sincere” new faces among familiar war mongers discuss THE END OF DEMOCRACY, but inverting or switching players and blame. Actual recall fades into fragmented unwitnessed events, while the gift of intuition or sense for THE RING OF TRUTH is but servant to repetition of narrative presented as obvious “objective history” enforcing acceptance of presumed sense. Another murder is mere mental suicide. To this mix is now added a refined digital image manipulation of sensory brainwashed lexicon. We see our identity on the screen in sublimated , distorted or lost undefined emotional content. In fact it is a constant attack on the human central nervous system inducing more voluntary self torture. Obsessive irritation has successfully replaced […]
Athena Massey in Black light, day glowing in the struggle against hazy memory
>This collection of photographs is designed to reflect an historic period of live performance in a unique location and era. The medium is primarily 35mm film and begins in 1971 with my first full page international publication in DANCE MAGAZINE edited by William Como based in New York City. My particular education is unique in that I had recently began studying classical ballet in Hollywood , then photographing dance. Soon Shakespeare plays at Thad Taylors West Hollywood Globe Playhouse were being published in print media theatre critics reviews. My background includes years of apprentice to successful photographers in major advertising promotions for Chrysler, Cadillac, Corvette and other mainstream commercial work. My university training was in philosophy and art history. The language and views implied by this work is NOT a revisionist effort intended to create a false perspective or incorporate pseudo philosophy as the current […]
THREE DECADES IN FINE PHOTOGRAPHY OF HOLLYWOOD *DANCE *THEATRE & *PERFORMANCE ART (Robbie’s Romance is on the Brinke) BRINKE STEVENS,”SCREAM QUEEN”
SHOWTIME IN CUBA: Your A-K is O-K with us!
George Romero–King of Zombies/ jan’s 40th with Jim Beinke & Andrew(effects masters)– Justin Tanner Zombie Attack at Cast Theatre (Midnight in Hollywood)– George Romero Land of the Dead Premiere, Las Vegas.
Lemora 1973 Cheryl(Rainbeaux) Smith
The whole GOSPEL MYTHOLOGY has been very greatly altered. We can consider many ideas from Greek and Latin as well as Church-Slavonic or Aramaic texts that were translated in Russian, English, French, and Italian and gain insight into the failure of translator. By this means we can view how many modern assumptions have become absurd and religion has taken on falsehoods over time. We fail now to even value sense impressions as evidence of what is true, since the narrative is created and fed to the masses in the game of “making history” for consumption,consensus and censor approval. Perhaps the success of superhero genre films addresses a need to experience the authentic behind the illusion and the extraordinary images contain more potency and TRUTH VALUE than the programmed words of experience that has been deliberately falsely edited into a media technology of pseudo-sensorium ?
THE DANCE has it all! The human can become the subject and object of art. Movement in itself is the appropriate language to communicate energies beyond formal imitation and documentation . . . Let us discuss what that in fact means. Twentieth Century Philosophers concluded that we evolve with our Language –small mouth movements are not enough. Movement IS ESSENCE, does not lie– Everything presented here is sourced from film and work ideas were often born in the darkroom, where photography offered many hidden pleasures. There are differences among photographers in their ” learning process” — to dance is quite distinct yet related to imaging movement and is perhaps the most focused and direct vocabulary possible. To be instructed by a dancer can in fact intertwine and one who does not study movement with their own body learns pose and line from his subjects willingness […]
PHOTO: “And I say YOU ARE MR. PINK.” Lawrence Tierney RESERVOIR DOGS IT WAS 1975 IN HOLLYWOOD AND I WENT TO SEE A DEAR ACTRESS FRIEND, MADY MAGUIRE, IN HOSPITAL. SHE WAS STRUCK BY AN AUTO IN THE CROSSWALK BUT FORTUNATELY WAS RECOVERING. Moments after my arriving, a distinguished bearded man in faded jeans and levi shirt greeted Mady and she smiled saying “My Centaurs have arrived right on time.” My perspective was about to explode. The man was film producer and writer Robert Sabaroff. Original Star Trek among credits. Prior to becoming writer, Sabaroff was recruited by CIA. We met later and he showed me the Rembrandt etching of Faust conjuring in his laboratory. A few additional lines and new faces and figures began to appear. The conjurer image reversed of the old Magus was itself a conjuring disk. The Masters included esoteric knowledge […]
CELEBRATING THE HOLLYWOOD FEMME FATALES ERA: DOUBLE ISSUE COVER AND TWO CENTERFOLDS BY JDPHOTO FOR SISTER PUBLICATION OF THE ORIGINAL BEHIND THE SCENES “CINEFANTASTIQUE”– DEDICATED TO SCI FI, HORROR, AND FANTASY. It is clearly the end of an era, if we are to give mass psychosis credit for “trending” and propagating the distortions of ideas that Art Forms find purpose in expressing. A campaign of disinformation for undefined political purpose overtaking public attention by the unstudied cliche oriented mass media cannot under any circumstance be confused with a dedication to TRUTH, even if not the metaphysical definition. ACCURACY in recall and refinement might be the better term for a vibrant presentation of concept, even if as form of NOSTALGIA FOR A PERIOD OF CHARACTERISATION, i.e. the strong woman of action. Let us not confuse a whining and complaining popular image of abused female for a […]
THERE IS A STRUGGLE FOR A FORM OF COMMUNICATION TO MOVE FORWARD AND GET PAST A ” MORTAL” STRUGGLE FOR A “CHINESE VIRUS” CURE WHILE IGNORING OTHER FORMS OF TOXICITY, ELECTION FRAUDS AND POLITICAL INCOMPETENCE, CORPORATE THEFT, AND MEDIA DISINFORMATION. WE ARE CONFLICTED BECAUSE WE KNOW WE MUST EMBRACE A NAZI STYLE VISION IN A DISGUISED FORM USING SO CALLED MIND CONTROL, CONTINUE A PROCESS OF MASS MURDER EUGENICS UNDER PRETEXT OF SOME IRRATIONAL RACISM, MILITARISM, OR OTHER OUTDATED CATEGORIES OF ORGANIC SELF DESTRUCTIVE BEHAVIORISM. HOW DO WE FIND AND FACE USEFUL FACTS OF CONTINUING SELF CREATED HORRORS? WE PRETEND TO BE HUMANIST, PROJECT OUR FAULTS ON “THE OTHER” WHILE MISLABELING ISSUES OF OUR SPECIES FAILURE ? FEW ELDERS RECOGNISE THIS ILLUSION OF DELUDED PRIORITIES AS OUR HOMELAND. OUR MATERIALISM AND ANCIENT RELIGIOUS SACRIFICES HAVE BECOME MERE VIDEO GAMES WITHOUT A PAYOFF. OUR HYPOCRISY HAS […]
LORD DAVID CECIL Why should we feel that the experience given us by accomplished works of art, whatever their subject matter, is agreeable; but also precious and illuminating? Surely the answer is to be found in the fact that the soul is born instinctively desiring order , harmony, beauty, but finds herself in a world disorderly, dissonant, and in great part ugly. In consequence, she is forever unsatisfied. photos: jan deen 1975 Cecile Wilson, Panaieff dance studio, Stuttgart Ballet. Lynda Marx, Marinaccio studio, American Ballet Theatre.
We Continue to FORGET WHO WE WERE–
IMAGEs: Henry, Serial Killer Cover Theatre Magazine/interview jan deen Milton Berle–father of Golden era live TV variety show. Taxi & Limo Magazine Covers, Las Vegas. Program center-pages for 1971 Lester Wilson $600 & A Mule, first history Black music/dance,Huntington Hartford theatre.
content/uploads/2014/09/Gods-Country.jpg”> According to Berkeley, there is no real difference between riding a horse and thinking about riding a horse–indeed physical and mental phenomena are mixed in a most complex manner. Brentano distinguished mental phenomenon as being “directed at an object” and will “include an object intentionally within themselves.” INTENTIONALLY consciousness focuses like a searchlight beam. We expand our aesthetic Idea of Light as emanating from the being as did medieval theologians. We shall begin our effort where Brentano left off and Husserl begins. We do not seek a true science as did Galileo, nor suggest Doubting Everything, as did Descartes. Like a true philosopher, a thoughtful inspired photographer’s basic instrument is not logic; it is observation. Greatness as a photographic artist is a function of often expressing a unique angle of view, having the technique and sensitivity to refine and elevate a subject for one’s […]
Tennessee Williams, Southern Gothic master
Even now my powers are loftier, clearer; I glow, as drunk with new-made wine: New strength and heart to meet the world incite me, The woe of earth, the bliss of earth, invite me, And though the shock of storms may smite me, No crash of shipwreck shall have power to fright me I feel thy presence, Spirit I invoke! Reveal thyself! Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe IMAGE:Havel’s Temptation, Royal Shakespeare, Stratford-on-Avon Thad Taylor’s Globe Playhouse. Hollywood, CA.
I am told by A I mystery voices that despite not having posted anything new in some fifty odd years, I have been protected from 10,973 spam comments on my public website. After giving away all my spillover footnotes, suffering a relapse from my erudite memory failure, I am yet insulted by a Digital Social medium of mass communication in not meeting community standards, whatever that could mean. I have learned that I am probably not a suitable subject for a group passion to invert and to crush language itself. I am fine with that. Why I remain “a person of interest” to those who make sport of disturbing those who have done little more than rubbed elbows with the greats and returned into the shadows of hidden meaning is of little consequence. I am told as I age I am even more irritating than […]
Rarely do we see mention of Howard Hughes as a Giant Icon of Hollywood Success beyond anything that we consider Stardom. Dita on a different scale recreated her form of a burlesque synthesizing Hollywood Pinup with Live Performance that broke with cliche by her individualistic artistry. Beyond glamour and sexual projection lies a realm of significant mystery and power that creates Magical Archetypes. Boys in the Backroom.
The Dismember Ensemble and Tamarind Theatre in Hollywood introduces the 1987 LA Festival audience to director Aaron Osborne. Learn how LSD helped create the first and original Sixties Conspiracy theory when the FBI sets traps to seduce and capture innocent tourists visiting Vegas. Hookers and Hallucinations will melt your mind. Who could ask for more?
An Image conjuring the presence of mystery in Archaic Intelligence opens a case for new evaluations of so called primitive pre=history today, unexpectedly evoked by subtext in a dance photo from 1971. A 35mm negative is lost in a dance studio arson fire but not before it appears full page in Dance Magazine and continues to capture attention. The image begins to take on history of its own. The dancers portrayed are David and Helen Adhar. Egyptian born David appeared in De Milles films and Helen was a standin partner for Astaire. Both dancing difficult roles in their sixties. The choreography wins a Drama Critics Circle Award in Hollywood and becomes a life size signature icon for Gene Marinaccio, genius master of The Dance of great influence to many dancers. The photograph resonates, and lives.
Image: Walton Goggins in Ars Erotica/ Discovery of an Art Form: In September of 1971 my first full page photo was published in Dance Magazine. It was like a sudden religious revelation. The event changed all priorities from commercial to aesthetic decisions The photo credit became valued more than payment. Then there was watching my first web press run for a magazine I helped create: the endless roll of paper becoming uncut pages, the mechanical movements speeding sounds of press, the smell of ink. Standards were being established compelling choice of subject matter which then influenced the people I would meet. A path opened . A kind of language was forming as my vocabulary of performance and print media became clearer giving me criteria. I now see the process as acquiring personal style from thought to materialization. We need others with open minded […]
Susan Sontag and Marshall McLuhan have less influence on todays scene than a Steampunk Comic version of a Hemingway novel. In fact, use of the cellphone as camera and communication devices has changed users behavior and habits so radically as to render most themes of aesthetics laughingly lofty. irrelevant to the everyday practice of compulsive image capture. Even the long ago inspired aim of democratic access by Kodak snapshot simplicity has failed to foretell the documentational power of pixel rituals religious fervor. This potent combination of Cell eye viewing, photo shop software, and Internet post to social media is an all consuming activity akin to eating and sleeping, with many yet undiscovered implications and possible futures for our species. Shaky cellimage replaces the broadcast quality eye of the pro. But first, let me introduce myself by that quaint title well earned of photographer, and […]
Hey, I am just reacting to events by viewing websites with too many ignorant commentators who think they have earned a point of view in a mindscape of mechanical babble that is posing as communication. Sitting outside America, looks like Smartphone Device applications replace sex toy, fashion, and automobile design fetishes. An increasingly despotic Unreality Industry sells Comic Characters and Super gadgets that acquire Intellectual Social Status with what reads as universal brainwashing agenda for expendable eaters. Accept this blind mode of collective insincerity over the search for authentic thought and there is only positioning and process. Many seem to now love best SELFIES, elevating arms-length photodigisnaps to greater variations of vanity by electronic egoism. To Go Viral or accumulate friends and followers on Social Media is an individual’s validation and gratification. The cell eye view is the experience. This sense of wasting time […]
. . .youth, strength, genius, thoughts, achievements, simple hearts–all die . . . No matter.” Joseph Conrad, “Youth” credits Willy , photo by Stephan Jammer 2014 Alba, portrait in Slimnic, Romania, by Jammer 2014 Alba and Jan by Romanian Artist Crina, 2014 In the Backyard where the Cherry Tree dies Rich soil is flooded from falling pain Wears its Black Widow mourning veils GhostSage, lavender and rose Nothing grows. The harvest is this bitter view Memory crushed to mulch. ReBirth declines to attend a futile celebration Choked on false failed aspiration. These cycles of wonder are green vacancy now Inverted inward from the weight of tired ancient horses Dragging their bleeding bone plow. The love buried there Seeming like crying children Howls a Chorus of Canine night teeth. Jan Deen Slimnic Romania June 2015 […]
THE THEATRICAL PORTRAIT On one level– we are collecting archetypal imagery. Humanity as a deck of cards consisting of unique but recognizable moments from a staged event. Drakula Tyrannus World Premiere at Thad Taylor’s Globe of the historic Vlad.Tepes. Incommunicado dramatizes the event of the great poet Ezra Pound suffering prison for expressing unpopular verbiage during World War 2. Monsoon Christmas, soldiers confined in barracks during a tireless rain showing strain and stress of strength seeking action, frustration explodes in misdirected violence among themselves, reveals personal and universal human weakness. The portrait format of the theatrical style image is used for a greater intimacy and maximum emotional impact of the actor performing in character.. TOP ROW: Text as Poetry: Salome Jens is the poet Ann Sexton. Suzanne Farrell, Ballerina as American superstar. George Romero: King of the Zombie genre.
Some of us find comfort in Knowing Our Place, having a sense of where we stand in the contribution of our life energies, our creativity, our reflected recognition in a cultural context to higher values of our species. Live performance played a significant role in my life, despite little active participation as performer, but more often in ballet and acting classes, coffee shop conversations with unique talents, enjoying my access to rehearsals, backstage, movie sets, and a lifetime of loving film and its related processes, and of course, reading. I admit there was a hidden desire to produce and direct film that remains unfulfilled. My job description was to help sell tickets –but to me it was mastery of craft. Refining the work was my way to serve a Conscious Humanity. Maybe that’s too Ouspensky for you, but there it is. Three decades of […]
We all wonder what the hell is happening? We divide the information swarm into mainstream media, which Marshall McLuhan linked to the rear view mirror on an automobile, memes–again mostly recycled Cliche/Archetype regurgitation, and conspiracy theories which are dismissed by most as insane due to the discomfort level such observations invoke, and other unreliable sources. Some of us wonder why maintaining a form of delicate dedication to “darlings”, i.e. illusions firmly attached to personal perceptual sensory translation filter, is not noticed when, for example, this feeding frenzy freezes, like program software virus crash, and spews dysfunctional data on a mass scale. We miss Great Artists like Rachel Rosenthal who told us the truth whatever the cost.
THE LITERARY CRITICISM OF MARSHALL MCLUHAN, 1969: Modern technology is itself mainly a product of art. It is explicitly the rival of the primitive artist. For it has been the prime characteristic of science and philosophy since Newton and Kant, that they seek to control the world rather than to understand it. We can, they say, control by magical formula what necessarily eludes our understanding or comprehension. The artist was always a magician in this sense. But the civilized artist has differed from the primitive artist in seeking to arrest the flux of existence in order that the mind may be united with that which is permanent in existence. Whereas the modern artist has used his factive or creative intelligence to manipulate matter and experience into a pattern which could arrest the mind in the presence of a particular aspect of existence, the modern […]
AMERICAN STRIPPER/ JD 97 Red bikini white and blue College girl and Actress too. Its an urge, this urge to merge The urge to merge with young Dramaturge. Your class, your wit, your flawless style The X-tasy behind your smile. You take the stage. You own the dump. Then show the boys resplendent rump. They have the urge. The urge for you, Miss Dramaturge. You writhe, you prance, you grind, you roll Slide upside down on a long chrome pole. Dollars fly. Men scream en masse— You caress their faces with your ass. Bold breathless urge for sweet Dramaturge. High Houdini Queen of Kundalini Barroom dances in her string bikini Your act conjures ghosts of Fellini Back from the dead to immortalize Your glance into our camera eyes. We are the urge. The urge to merge. Urge to Emerge […]
Previously unseen dance photos joined a collection of my classic published photography at a wonderful site in a portfolio called Dance Phototheatre. Mostly from the seventies and eighties in Los Angeles the photographs interface style with personal memory. Dancer Mary Miller also added a Gene Marinaccio tribute. The great dance photographer Donald Bradburn passed recently and I see no tribute? RIP Don. As I now live in Eastern Europe I am unable to make direct contact with any non responding party involved. Fred Strickler joined with Don Hewitt to make an effort at creating the Dance History project of Southern California. I had hope that my presentation of thirty images would serve in a small but concise form to represent love for theatrical photography in evoking collective memory of brilliant unique talents that too often go unrecognized . I am quite unhappy with […]
Yog -Sothoth knows the gate. Yog-Sothoth is the gate. Yog-Sothoth is the key and the guardian of the gate. Past, present, future, all are one in Yog-Sothoth. He knows where the Old Ones broke through of old, and where They shall break through again. He knows where They have trod earth’s fields, and where They still tread them, and why no one can behold Them as They tread. –H.P. Lovecraft, “The Dunwich Horror”
“Buddhism,” reveals Tan Teik Beng, “teaches the existence of Hungry Ghosts. The Chinese call these ghosts “Kwei” and believe that it is they who give an enormous amount of trouble to human beings . . .” Kwei seek vengeance, as those spirits who died suddenly and violently but were neglected. PHOTO: Lisa Wolpe as “Hamlet”. Since no military or government official, corporate CEO. international bankster, Cartel Captain or Mogul– soulless monsters disguised as mild mannered media darlings– is stepping forth to claim responsibility or presenting authentic data to we helpless uninformed humans, I suggest we befriend these Hungry Ghosts this New Year. This alternative effort offers hope for our future salvation from untried dimensions of causality. True understanding is the only possible path toward cure for major ills that plague our poor population and fatally depletes our planet. Ask the little […]
The subtle Black Magic behind the gross Acts of Annihilation from Mass Events like Nine Eleven is our discovery that Collective Criminal Great Lie has been already factored into the Operation. Each Crude Conspiracy proves the Perpetrators correct in their assumptions of mass behavior and ineffective response. As a demonstration of overwhelming power — ongoing unspeakable acts prove those claiming to be the awakened are not in fact practitioners of The Good– while those who are truly aware that the practice of ethical behavior is imperative for human evolution and manifestations of spirit move in dubious manner. We wait in doubt to renew the legacy of the poet, artist, genius- scientist, saint, and heretic–the Domain of the Philosopher King and The Great Work. Media promotes Mass Murder and Corporate Greed in its blatant forms inducing continuous daily shock to the Conscious […]
Most humans have a personal list of undesirable conditions they wish to escape. After Death it is usually old age and poverty followed by an ego specific list, but various assumed Freedoms are taking on weighty meanings in this era of mind control, geo engineering and blatant soul crushing cultural destruction. The New Age Thinkers say “Consider our own self created shadow and our lack of knowledge of this dark mirror image as our problem” and learn to live in light of our urgent collective need to ruthlessly confront the Beast Within and we have an arena worthy of discussion. Unfortunately, the massive data informing humanity of its follies and shortcomings on both an individual and collective level consists of deliberate disinformation, denial of responsibility, faulty logic, distortion toward the sensational, redacted reportage, naive psychology, and content inducing a perceptual buffer by […]