Oppenheim Arts & Letters

Antietam

http://www.communicating-arts.com/index2.htm

My project, "Antietam", started at the National Cemetary and with this view of the "Private Soldier" statue, beneath which form on the pedestal has been inscribed the phrase, "Not for themselves, but for their country."

One knows this is common stuff for school children and tourists. 

There is always the drive through Maryland's congenial countryside, the walk in the fresh air, the brief encounter with the Gettysburg Address (displayed on a large plaque on a nearby building), but it takes more time than that for the meaning of those rows of uneven tombstone teeth to sink in.

As a photographer local to the battlefield (and not far from several others), I have better ability than most to return again and again to its ground, and that early in the morning to near dark, from winter through the fall.

I've joked with myself, "Everyone shoots September 17, 1862.  I am working on the year prior, and getting the digital files to look like it too."

In his work, This Hallowed Ground, historian Bruce Catton foretells the end of the struggle near its start with three critical variables set into place: the development of the Soo Locks enabling massive growth of America's steel industry; the cordon made of the border states and Mississippi River at the outset of hostilities; and, most telling, the sense of country unified and set on its egalitarian principles held in the hearts of those who would fight, and that seems a common sentiment held across boundaries even though loyalties and politics were articulated otherwise. 

The Civil War is the one that ended with Confederate officers entitled to their sidearms and soldiers provided with horses and mules, what would have been the spoils of the northern armies, paroled out of uniform to return to their farms and work.

Strangely, and with not much made of it, so it seems, the first charge seems to have been led by rebels out of Baltimore under the command of Captain J. B. Brockenbrough (Baltimore Battery, Jackson's Division, CSA). [1]

If decorative art is about making pleasant and hosting company, retro-historical fine art may be about reflection and wonder, and nothing more compelling about that than the ghosts of this old and resonant conflict most hard to fathom.

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1. National Park Service.  "Baltimore Battery, Maryland, Confederate."

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Correspondence: James S. Oppenheim

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Little Dove -- I am not Feeding Her

For a bird that's had its sticks tossed out twice, she's proving more stubborn than me.

I'm not feeding her.

The cat may have to stay indoors when he visits.

Antietam - "The View Toward 'Bloody Lane'"

My "Antietam" [1] is a work in progress, but it's coming along fast as such go.

http://www.communicating-arts.com/catalogs/Antietam/

The Civil War balltefields are traditional subjects, and I'm trying to treat the one in my neighborhood with equal elegy and homage.

Prints will become available soon with formats as follow:

1. Dye-based ink jet on 8.5 x 11 ceramic coated glossy stock.  Estimated longevity: 30 to 70 years.

2. Pgment-based ink jet (HP's Vivera) on 13 x 19 inch bright rag "pearl" finished stock (Hahnemuhle): Estimated longevity: upwards of 200 years.

3. Chromira or "light jet" on 16 x 20 inch Fuji Crystal Archive paper.  Estimated longevity: 80 years.

Print integrity estimates generally represent extrapolations of data involving color fade or darkening due to light, heat, or oxidation, all of which involve variable environmental conditions.

Along with shoring up my own printing technology, which I have done, considering how to manufacture the series--should it be mounted and boxed; framed for walls; set into a folio book--has been part of the work.

By comparison, gallery or museum quality framing options may prove more clear, from acid-free mats to UV preventive glass.

In any case, it's coming along, and in advance of pricing, bids will be considered.

Also, depending on how the work finds its value, linked contributions to the restoration of the battlefield may be made a part of my program.

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1. Oppenheim, James S.  "Antietam." Photographic folio, work in progress. 

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Correspondence: James S. Oppenheim

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Somalia's Shoebop Shabab and the Old Hold and Fold

You really have to watch the movies--and appreciate them--to get this post:

"Two rival motorcycle gangs terrorize a small town after one of their leaders is thrown in jail," says the IMDB plot summary.

Looking so very young, vulnerable, threatening and tough in leather--ain't that youth?--Brando and gang do with bikes and beer much of what their inverted mirrors have been doing in Somalia: they ride into town, humiliate the authorities, terrorize the citizens, and get gone before the cops show up in full and overwhelming force.

Across cultures and generations, removal of the surface posturing, whether the business of being out for "kicks" or out to impose Kalashnikov Sharia, leave the romantic and identity-forming plots of the old movie and the onling and moving reality looking quite the same.

Brando's character betrays a laudible nobility despite the rebel posturing, but let's be careful here: a movie is a thing scripted to "educate, entertain, and delight" its audience; in this particular cross-culture inversion in "realspace", the posturing is noble--the gang's out to save Islam in Somalia--but so many of the actions steal innocent Islamic lives, not only the police but any Moslem unfortunate enough to catch attention or crossfire in the fighting, that The Cause becomes a bewildering front, a thin mantle belying other compulsions, forces, and needs residing in the personalities of its warriors.

As with Brando's biker troops, tearing up the town for a spell and taking care of it prove quite different things.

In the living theater of war that contestants have made of Somalia, a similar thing applies: the shoot-em-up followed by a disappearing act is easy--administering, caring for, employing, feeding, housing all who care not to take up arms proves hard.

To be fair, or perhaps not, to Somalia's Transitional Federal Government and "Islamists" (and assorted warlords), nature plays a third part in Somalia's suffering. 

While fighting over little more than rightful male assertion hasn't been doing anyone much good, such, for all its fury, well may be dwarfed by combined environmental and social carrying capacity issues: The country would present a culturally and physically tough challenge to international community interest in development and health were civic peace its most shining product. 

That the delivery of humanitarian assistance, especially of food and medical attention, have been hampered by violence keep the same from having to prove heroic in effect.

Brando and gang, full of themselves, took pains not to reveal too much interest in the well being of others. 

Somalia's Islamist warrior bands look much the same, but the bullets, grenades, and rockets are real and the suffering immense of those less interested in their own glory and most in need of the benefits certain to come with peace.

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1. Benedek, László.  The Wild One.  Feature film starring Marlon Brando.  1953.

2. UNHCR Somalia.  "Internally Displaced Persons in Somalia as of February 2008."  PDF.

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Correspondence: James S. Oppenheim

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Resident Dove

This guy (?) has settled in.

What is it about my little place that say, "home"?

I've tossed out his sticks twice, and he's back with Big Mate planting herself on the railing below (I don't know where she's hanging out, but it's not the same planter, thank God).

Uh oh . . . maybe it is the same planter.

I can't watch it all day.

Grumble.

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Just stepped out on the balcony; chased him off; attached wind chimes to the bottom of the basket.

Felt like crap watching the two of them, homeless, hanging out on a tree limb.

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Poured a cup of coffee.

Cooked an egg (so much less fortunate a bird).

Looked out the window: the two have returned.

They're going to destroy the pansies and have little doves out there.

I know it!

The Garden This Year

It had been a hard winter--cold, much rain, girl, cat, 850-square-feet of floor space and much living and working in it.  At the end, I missed . . . a lot of things and most of all space, freedom, time. 

Anne has moved to the south side of town.

I have made it my mission to continue distilling my arts and bringing new order to my place.

In photography, quite soon, the fine art mission may be the one that lifts my boat.  The series at Antietam will tell.

In living: this year's garden has so far cost about $30, a little more than the cost of a dinner out, for a spring basket, above, two English ivy plants, a fern, a six-pack of Begonia, and a fistful of Viola.

Surviving the winter, miraculously: Dusty Miller, yellow Pansies, possibly Rosemary (although I bought a new plant and gave it its own container), Sage (no question: there's new growth in that plant), and possibly Thyme, which I've pared back to stubble (and also bought and planted not far from last year's a new "German Thyme").

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Correspondence: James S. Oppenheim

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Antietam - The Road to Roulette Farm - Limited Editions

It has been my fate to embark on the promotion of practical services with some energy and wind up always--whether with literary interests, musical ones, or photography--on the fine art side of the bench. 

Even the journalism here, the punditry from my vaunted "second row seat to history", wants to lean back into books and book reviews (coming soon), beholden to none (no-strings contributions only accepted via Paypal for this blog).

The road to Roulette Farm was in the other direction the one leading to Antietam Battlefield's "Bloody Lane", a culvert, more or less, so laden with the dead and dying on September 17, 1862 that one could fairly walk on bodies for a fair part of its length.  As for the Roulette Farm, some 700 soldiers have found buriel beneath its grounds.

This project is for me an elegy.

I've set out to produce just six to 12 photographs from Antietam, and to print editions of close to those same numbers.

For first editions from my desktop using dye inks laid into Ilford Galerie paper, which results should last decades under glass or in plastic sleaves, the sheets will be 8.5 x 11 with actual image dimensions of 6-5/8 x 10" unless otherwise specified. 

Washington's finest digital printing boutique, United Photo of Beltsville, Maryland will be tasked to produce a second edition short stack of nominal 16x20 Chromira prints on Fuji Crystal Archive paper, estimated life span of 85 years, and custom matted to a 20x24 frame size.

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Correspondence: James S. Oppenheim

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On Whipping the Catalog into Print Shape

Design? Street? Portraiture? Weddings? Journalism?

All.

But rule number one for me: when one of my photographs appears online here or on the main web (www.communicating-arts.com), it must be printable.

How large?

Ask.

Production includes film scans from slides and negatives, which generally "weigh" about 54 Megabytes in 8-bit RGB digital file content as well as digitally-generated art, 6-Megapixels to 12.4 Megapixels, not bad for up to 16x20 inches in many cases.

Vendors printing my work: The Framing of the Shoe, Annapolis, Maryland; United Photo, Betsville, Maryland.

Gratuitous photo for this post: Mumma Farm, Antietam, Maryland.

Solitaire

 

Praise the (War) Lord and Pass the Ammunition . . . .

YouTube Reference URL: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O4kxSpIBago&eurl=http://karmalised.com/.

I don't know what we're viewing, but about the conversation --

Last week, the U.S. military suspended its $300 million contract with 22-year-old Miami-based arms dealer Efraim Diveroli after discovering--err, fielding complaints from Afghani forces--that shipments of ammo from Diveroli's company, AEY, arrived aged by decades, potentially unreliable, and with origins in China, politicaly unpalatable, not to mention illegal.

While the press concentrates on who, what, why, when, and how young Efraim got his gig (and the back of the basement goods), one may wonder how much old arms stock remains in the markets (and how much new enters it as well).

Hand wringing aside, we know someone posted the above video, essentially feeding it into the global media and removing a layer of cover from a business best done quietly, whether legitimately or not, for who in the used arms market has so many millions--not tens, thousands, or hundreds of thousands, but millions--of rounds stockpiled back in the barn from some kind of good old and arms plentiful days?

Efraim Diveroli's story dovetails with another in March's arms trade coverage: the arrest of the legendary Viktor Bout in Thailand. [11, 12]

At the intersection of Bout and Afghanistan in 2002, Frontline reported, "On August 25, 1995, Agence France Presse reported that an Aerostan plane leased by Bout's company Transavia was forced to land in Kandahar, Afghanistan by a Taliban jet fighter. Taliban officials impounded "30-odd tons of AK-47 small arms ammunition" meant for government forces in Kabul." [13]

Update Bout, 2004: "Viktor Vasilevich Bout, one of the world's most notorious arms merchants with proven links to the Taliban, has become a valued partner of the US as it grapples with the insurgency in Iraq."  So wrote John C.k. Daly, lowercase "k" as printed online, in the Jamestown Foundation Terrorism Monitor and posted online at the Global Policy Forum. [14]

While combatants worldwide fret over the meaning of courage, faith, family, and honor and while governments try to control information to shield their constituents from some ugly truths--or the private agendas of the powerful or audacious--another term may be similarly suited for cultural, linguistic, and political scrutiny as well as personal introspection and insight: integrity.

Efraim Diveroli and Viktor Bout sold arms.

Leave it at that.

Afghani military and police need NATO rounds for their Kalashnikovs?

Buy and ship new.

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1. "U.S. military suspends Afghanistan ammunition deal."  Reuters, March 27, 2008.

2. "$298M to AEY for Ammo in Afghanistan."  March 21, 2007.

3. "AEY ammunitions shutdown."  The Firing Line, misc. thread posts, March 27-28, 2008.

4. Chivers, C.J. "Afghans Sent Obsolete Ammunition."  The New York Times, March 29, 2008.

5. Beyerstein, Lindsay.  "More on Efraim Diveroli and Michael Diveroli." Majikthise, March 28, 2008.

6. Worldwide Tactical, LLC.

7. Kiel, Paul.  "Today's Must Read."  TPM Muckraker, March 27, 2008.

8. Niccol, Andrew.  Lord of War.  Film, starring Nicholas Cage. 2005.  IMDB reference.

9. "Albanian Politics: "Transcript of Diveroli - Trebicka Conversation."  Albanian Canadian League Information Service.  March 21, 2008.

10. "Biseda telefonike Trebicka-Diveroli per trafikun e armeve!" Recorded telephone conversation.  Origin credited to Qeveriadoteu: http://www.youtube.com/user/qeveriadoteu.

11. George, Pavithra.  "Arms dealer arrested in Thailand."  Reuters, March 6, 2008.

12. "Viktor Bout."  Wikipediai, as experienced April 1, 2008.

13. Burnwasser, Mattew.  "Victor Anatoliyevich Bout--The Embargo Buster: Fueling Bloody Civil Wars."  Frontline World under the PBS web site, May 2002.

14. Daly, John C.k.  "Viktor Bout: From International Outlaw to Valued Partner."  Global Policy Forum, October 21, 2004.

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Correspondence: James S. Oppenheim

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