Please welcome to the world … Brendan Lott Safer at Home (foreword by Jack Skelley)

A couple of years ago I started taking these photos from my apartment window. People in their apartments across the street. I wasn’t going anywhere because of the virus, so I felt stuck and my usual art practice was dead.

I liked them. I started to figure out how to make them, what to look for, what worked and what didn’t. Eventually I started to post them on my IG page and then had a show. Blog regular Jack Skelley liked them. I like Jack’s work a lot.

I wanted to put out a book so I asked Jack to write something for it. I told him he could write whatever he wanted. The book is called Safer At Home. It came out to tiny but intense Los Angeles fanfare last December. I really loved making it. It forced me to think about this work in a completely different way.

Jack and I have adapted it into the wondrous format of Dennis’ blog. Here it is.

 

Acts of Immobility

Brendan Lott – Safer at Home By Jack Skelley

“To have been what I always am – and so changed from what I was.” — Winnie in Happy Days, Samuel Beckett

The wide sidewalks are empty. How many storefronts are now boarded? Who observes the tattered adverts plastered on the plywood? They are ripped, faded, pasted-over. If anyone stopped to notice them, they might be symbols of desolation. Compulsive but futile attempts to persuade. Their audience a void.

He notices them. He sees something else: The street is lined with these spontaneous collages. Abstract murals. Accidental collaborations. The beauty of chaos and decay in every direction. A thousand Rauschenbergs. He frames them with his camera.

He returns to his room.

 

Paralyzed Drama

He is stuck. Can’t go forward or backward.

At times he’s the woman in Samuel Beckett’s Happy Days, Winnie, buried to the neck in the blazing sun, searching her black bag, grasping for memories of love amid the ruins of a life, ruins of a world.

Beckett’s stage directions read, “You peer in, see what things are there and then get them out. Peer, take, place. Peer, take, place. You peer more when you pick things up than when you put them down.”

Or he is paralyzed Captain Pike in that weird, old, lugubriously sluggish Star Trek pilot episode, communicating through beeps and buttons.

No, that’s not it. He’s Jimmy Stewart laid-up in Rear Window, a one-man Neighborhood Watch.

Because everyone else is stuck too. The entire city – and he’s in the center of it – is immobilized. Shut in and locked down. Some group into pods. Others brave isolation alone. Who knows for how long they’ll be frozen in space and hitched to “time’s turntable of deception.”

He creates an escape hatch. His eyes are portals through confinement. From his perch, he watches the sunlight dwindle and the moon rise, he looks across the street. In the facing building are a crosshatch of windows. Each rectangle is a frame. In each frame is a person. Sometimes two. Rarely more. Each enacting the rituals of shutdown in cubical volume. A mute Hollywood Squares with civilian fill-ins for Paul Lynde and Lily Tomlin. An alternate-universe Brady Bunch intro drenched in the colors of the city. The updated cast an extended family of captivity.

If he were a playwright he’d dialog acts of paralysis. Beckett’s Happy Days lady now a Valkyrie stuck in the world’s longest Ring Cycle.

As a Hitchcock he’d stage diabolical drama. As a Warhol, he’d assembly-line silkscreen variations. Instead he tripods and shoots. Watching. Waiting. Each window frames and formalizes a painting. In endless variations of character and mood.

The logistics of light and distance are extreme constraints. And yet, renewing one of the oldest of paradoxes, these limitations liberate.

He opens exposure as wide as possible to peer as deeply as possible into dark rooms, to soak up light and detail. Theacutely forced angles flatten perspective. The windows are grimy, smudged and smeared. (Some are caked with mush where birds smashed.) These become stage-light filters. Plants and furniture are props.

Now color-textures – arbitrarily corralled by the lens but stretching unseen in a forever hypothesis – blur into abstracts like Diebenkorns, but shaded by the boulevard buildings rather than illumined by the marine-layer light of Santa Monica.

 

Candid Poses

And, of course, there are the human figures. Also flattened by the 100-foot distance across the street, and frozen into shapes, they stage soundless dioramas.

Now, shadows drape faces and limbs, shroud or reveal character. Grimy Rembrandts.

Now, a woman lounges on her couch, assuming an Ingres or Matisse Odalisque pose. Now a bunch of bottles on a table make a Dutch still life.

All this adds to the illusion of image as painting. And when, eventually, the artist prints and enlarges the photos, this painterly effect amplifies. They seem to show brushstrokes.

Cubistically, angles and quadrilaterals order panes into planes, hint at volume while projecting temporality before and after. Squares within squares. The smallest squares are smartphones held by figures taking selfies. Some are perhaps doing sessions on OnlyFans, their ring-light halos a sure sign. That and their naked bodies.

Does the distance of space and light level into an emoted asseveration? Is there such a thing as a posed candid?

Distortions of perspective and reflections on the glass confound the eye: Floors are walls. Is that blob inside or outside?

But unlike, say, Merry Alpern’s “Dirty Windows” series of photographs – which these acknowledge – the effect is not “lurid” or “seedy.” Gritty, yes. And yet the lighting/framing lend a damaged dignity to the figures. The very act of composing – the spotlight eye of the artist – does that.

 

Body of Loss, Body of Grace

In this light, at this distance, romantic or sexual activity is not so much erotic as libidinal. The grimy panes strain body shapes to their Freudian essence, refracting a need for connections. Is the effect embarrassing, discomforting, indecent, voyeuristic? How intimate can a remote-by-definition OnlyFans encounter be? Or does comfort and reassurance hide in the shadows and corners?

What is expressed in the beckoning of limbs? And what do they reflect about you?

What about your own relationships? Does the vacuum of lost love suck out dignity? How do you heal friends who suffer at a distance? What do you look like when you are deep in need? What if a god-like lens peered into you? What holes in your life would it expose? What fractures, rejections, betrayals, confusions would gape? What color is your vulnerability?

And at what hours would you jolt awake? Which person – or fluid person/combos – haunts your dreams? What love flips to loss?

Then, deep in periods of darkness, a friend comforts with questions of eloquence and insight: Can there be validations of love beyond slippery appearances? Is there an embodiment, a proprioception, normally barred, now accessed in the outlines of sexual connections, no matter how long-ago, far-away?

May boundaries of pleasure and pain admit the internal logic of physical empathy, invisible, but somehow felt, somehow shared?

——

There’s a great sickness in a gutted world. It’s hard to tell which is greater: the sickness of the virus, or the social sickness of people’s reactions. And yet, transmuted, these images place sickness into relief against time and “human nature.” They illuminate – in spite of plagues – with rays of grace, no matter how dusty.

 

Some images:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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The Book itself:

 

Some other things written about this series:

Window as Screen: On Brendan Lott’s “Safer at Home” by Daniel Coffeen

Brendan Lott: ‘Safer at Home’ A Time of Suspended Animation by Jody Zellen

Brendan Lott – Walter Maciel Gallery by Genie Davis

See and Buy the Book Here

 

 

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p.s. Hey. ** Today the blog goes into ushering mode to give y’all the heads up about a new book collecting the beautiful pandemic/confinement era photographs of the superb artist Brendan Lott as accompanied by the sparkling thoughts on paper of maestro wordsmith Jack Skelley. That both of them are d.l.s of this place makes today extra sweet. Please pry the post apart via your eyes with your consummate skill and care, please. It’s a gorgeous thing. Thank you, Brendan, and thank you, Jack. ** David, Glad the post unearthed such a personal whirlpool. I’ve never seen Kate Bush live, but now I don’t even think I need to. It’s accomplished. ** Maria, Isabella, Camila, Malaria, Gabriela, Hi. That would make for one hell of a death, my group of friends. But I think it’s probably better if you just never die. ** Verity Pawloski, Hi. ** David Ehrenstein, Ah, Apichatpong Weerasethakul’s good old days. ** Dominik, Hi!!! Well, … ha ha, so, guess what? Both of my friends cancelled on me yesterday! Both of them! One of them says he’ll go to TRM today, but I do not believe him or really anyone anymore. So, no, I didn’t, and there is no God, not that I ever thought there was one. Me either, about my shoes. I just wear whatever I have until they’re falling apart, and then Yury says, ‘You need new shoes’, and then he shows up with new shoes for me, and I put them on, and the cycle begins again. He always gives me Paul Smith shoes, I don’t know why. I’m sure Anita has mastered the reaction emoji. I have yet to know anyone personally who goes that route without making me cringe. I probably expect way too much from GIFs. No doubt. My love of yesterday has saved you a seat. I think most slaves would be willing to go for that co-burial option, although, hm, actually some of them clearly want to inherit their masters’ estates, so I don’t know. Love remaking ‘Pet Sematary’ on his OnlyFans account with unsubtle changes and calling it ‘Twink Seminary’, G. ** _Black_Acrylic, I came ‘this close’ to including that Patrick Caulfield gravestone in the post. Seriously, ‘this close’. ** Sypha, I haven’t had the time to imbibe the new Sypha Nadon LP yet, but I think today will probably throw up a decent stint of pleasure-oriented time. More curious than ever. ** Shane, That Vaporwave remix made me want to kill myself, so I hear you, bro. ** T, Hi. The good thing is, what are the odds of actually getting buried alive, you know? No earthquakes in France. No wells to fall into, that I’ve ever seen anyway. You’re probably safe. I’ve always been really hardcore about wanting to be buried in a grave and not cremated, but now I don’t remember why, so I’m confused about that at the moment. Buried at sea … see, I think the idea of getting eaten by fish is a little scary to me. In theory, I think that 11 year-old robot yelling kid and I could be fast friends, but I probably would yank the wire out. At least he likes macadamia nuts, or maybe he hates them? What an intriguing child. Cool about the email/Sunday. I hope your Friday is like the guy who goes to see his favorite band in concert and spends the whole set yelling, ‘Play *his favorite song by them*!, knowing full well that’ll never play it because it’s an obscure bonus track, and annoying everyone around him until they realize that, yeah, it would be awesome to hear them play that song, and they start telling for it too, and the band eventually has no choice but to play it, but very badly since they haven’t rehearsed it and don’t remember the chords and lyrics. xo. ** l@rst, Interesting. I have a crazy imagination, but I don’t think I’ve ever imagined being buried alive. I should try it. Might do me a world of good. Ooh, I want to see ‘Jackass Forever’! ** Steve Erickson, Everyone’s saying that. Yay! Huh. Zac saw the Christophe pandemic doc and said it’s one of the worst films he’s ever seen, but maybe people in the US will be all charmed by how French it is or something. Happens. Hm, about the imposter syndrome. I almost never think about age difference when I see movies or hear music by much younger artists, etc., so I don’t know if I would feel that. I would think that pointing out comparable work by older artists would be useful to the artists and the listeners unless one got nostalgic and hierarchical about the past vs. present. Interesting. ** Misanthrope, Well, I’m glad you’re starting to get things sorted. I mean, you know, spilt milk and all of that. But, yeah, what an unpleasant side trip. ** Brian, Hey, Brian. I don’t think it has to be superficial, but, yeah, give them another look and see if your wheels start spinning. I really don’t think shallowness is an issue since you’re obviously not shallow and do not tolerate shallowness from the amount I know you. I love ‘Four Nights of a Dreamer’ a ton. It’s Bresson’s funniest film by a lot. It’s practically a dark comedy. That scene where they watch the boat pass is among his greatest scenes ever, I think. There must be some aspect to that 4-hour class that will benefit your filmmaking that you can hook into, no? I hope so. I hope the waters of your Friday are ultra-calm. ** Right. Investigate the wonderful Brendan/Jack book until further notice, please. Thank you! See you tomorrow.