WRITING AND THE TRUTHhttp://www.bloghttp://www.blogger.com/img/gl.link.gifger.com/img/gl.link.gif

Just got back from seeing a magnificent retrospective of Annie Leibowitz' photography -- and was so struck by the power of story implied in her portraiture. The heartbreak and pathos of Johnny Cash and his family. Wow did Roseann look depressed. The pleasant maternal chaos of Patti Smith and her family juxtaposed with the demonic figure of Matthew Barney captured as if he were a satyr. The show seemed to reach a peak intensity with the portraits of Clinton and his family taken at the height of his power, and then the Bush administration shortly after how the Iraq war began.

The Bush photograph is a masterpiece in the vein of Goya's portrait of the syphillitic and decaying royal family he worked for but detested. Bush flashes an arrogant shit-eating grin that says "I can do anything and git away with it long as I sound Texan and shoot ducks on my ranch." Rumsfeld looks sneaky and tragic, as if he knows his days are numbered. Cheney looks like the devil incarnate with a defiant raised eyebrow. Condoleeza Rice has her fists clenched over her crotch, her eyes are dark violent stones burning in her head glaring at Leibowitz with hatred. Her face says: "We know how you are. A liberal. A lesbian. A subervise. We know and we are not afraid of you and your camera."

I came home and began thinkin of power and fiction. Annie Leibowitz is definitely getting down the disturbance of our time. The show is magnificent. I'm so curious to see what writers of our period will rise up to take on this current epoch and expose it, in the way Burroughs blew away the 50s, Barthes and Coover defined the 60s, Pynchon and his descendants rocked the 80s, and Chuck Palahniuk introduced a shock wave into the commercialism of the 90s.

Let's stay tuned!