WILLIAM GREINER: "Fallen Paradise (New Orleans – 1995 – 2005)"


© William Greiner, "Lounger Chairs , NOAC rooftop, New Orleans LA", 1995

© William Greiner, "Yellow Brick Wall, New Orleans LA", 2004

© William Greiner, "Rubber Co. , New Orleans LA", 2002

© William Greiner, "Sports Palace Metairie, LA", 2005

© William Greiner, "Covered Caddy, New Orleans, LA", 2003

© William Greiner, "Rickshaw Restaurant, Tulane Ave., New Orleans LA" 2002

© William Greiner, "Hope Mausoleum, New Orleans, LA", 2004

© William Greiner, "Rusted Hood New Orleans LA", 1998

© William Greiner

© William Greiner, "Kim Som, New Orleans LA", 1998

© William Greiner, “London Lodge, Metairie” (2005)

© William Greiner, "Pink Trailer Metairie, New Orleans LA", 2005



William Greiner is a man obsessed… William Greiner is a man in love. William can feel it… his heart aches… his heart will not let go, it refuses to give up... but, his love has been violated, his love has been injured and scarred, left for dead. Much of her left him, gone in the sad shadow of a storm, gone in the twinkling of an eye, taken away in massive act of violence and rape… much of her taken, never to return. Memories of her, fragments of her… the scent, her colors… her sounds… her things... some of these remain but much of William Greiner’s sweet “New Orleans” has gone away. William Greiner's obsession is still there. He still hunts for her… he see's all of her things, her clothes, her homes... he still dream’s about her, he still wishes that the tragedy, the loss... the decay that happened before the fall... that it would not have occurred. It still run’s through his mind… he still see’s things like they were, he still imagines things as they would have been had she not been neglected... had she not been left alone. His dreams at times almost feel real… he can still see her beauty as it was, it feels real... but, it is not the same.

William’s “New Orleans”, the subject of his new book, “Fallen Paradise (New Orleans – 1995 – 2005)”, is a woman whose wild and best years were already behind her… her makeup and her clothes partially hid that fact but she was still very beautiful… no one was as intriguing… she was full of a mystical and dangerous history… she was full of charm, full of voodoo magic… but she was already hurting before her violent and sudden attack. Her gritty but golden patina was there, but partly a mirage… her luscious charm hid her loneliness… her life was special, but it was a paradise gone... a paradise that had been lost… her fate… was already sealed. This woman was ravaged… ravaged by neglect, abandoned by her lovers... left vulnerable due to cruelty, left alone to struggle. This pre-Katrina New Orleans was already sick… and as Greiner painfully knows… vulnerable, isolated and alone at the time of her attack. The attack would come violently and then... no one would come to her rescue, no one would come to her aide... the police would not believe her story and they would not come, she would be left for dead, injured, cold, violated... alone. Dead or still barely alive, she was left to fend on her own.

William’s photographs come from love… born in New Orleans and working for years in the city, his inspiration would come from this "woman". Her everyday life would seduce him… her saturated palette of color would please him. His photographs are the embodiment of this love. What some may call “snapshot aesthetic” or the vernacular, what William Eggleston pioneered... this simply a road taken to express this love, this approach is a way to frame William’s beloved city. His skillful touch brings her to us to share with him. His aesthetic, his eyesight… his choices are William’s personal vision but it is a shared vision… he does justice to her downfall, he does justice to this decline… in his eye’s Greiner’s subjects downfall is seen… her bad health is evident but her once glowing beauty is still there. His pictures give her wings for a moment, you can see what once was… you can see her beauty…. and also know what is to become... was was already occurring.

William Greiner will always have a broken heart… but he will get along and nurture the memories - he will have hope. The dreams of her as she once was will still be around… the remnants of her will be passed to future generations… these dreams and fragments will stand… passed down and pass on. And he will have hope... like others, hope for her return.

Own his lover’s patina, own her memories… own her hope.


"Fallen Paradise"

Limited edition of 100 signed and numbered examples, hardbound , 28 pages ,

26 color plates, 11 ½ x 15 1/8” , each book includes an original signed c-print 4 x 6”.


To order contact:

WILLIAM GREINER photographs
T. 225-803-0185
E. fotoart1@cox.net
www.williamgreiner.com


Regards,


Doug Rickard
|
AMERICAN SUBURB X: WILLIAM GREINER: "Fallen Paradise (New Orleans – 1995 – 2005)"Tweet this!

SHELBY LEE ADAMS: "All of Us - An Essay (2007)"

SHELBY LEE ADAMS: "All of Us - An Essay (2007)"
" From the beginning, I never felt the need to use photography to implement change. Certainly not change in the way documentary photography had served us before. This response comes from growing up in Kentucky and seeing how documentary/sociological photography hurt my people..."

JOSEF KOUDELKA: "Modern Sublime - The World of Josef Koudelka"

JOSEF KOUDELKA: "Modern Sublime - The World of Josef Koudelka"
""Devastation is photogenic," claims Koudelka whose empathy with the scars left on the environment by Man's violent carelessness is expressed through the dark and strictly-composed draughts of a "mad geometrician." The photographer's black and white prints (he only used color once and never liked it) recreate a world that lies somewhere between Shakespeare's King Lear and Alfred jarry's Ubu Roi. It is a world of muted sound and obvious devastation seen and told by an extremely opinioned and almost obsessive eye whose fascinated and fascinating quest follows a manic spiral..."

MARK RICE: "Through the Lens of the City: NEA Photography Surveys of the 1970s" (2005)

MARK RICE: "Through the Lens of the City: NEA Photography Surveys of the 1970s" (2005)
"The Los Angeles Documentary Project was one of the most ambitious of all the photography surveys supported by the NEA. In addition to including more photographers (eight) than any of the other Greater L.A. surveys, Los Angeles presented a larger subject than any of the other NEA-supported surveys of cities. The application noted that the project would be “a visual examination of the sociological and topographical diversity of one of the most dynamic and unusual cities in the world...”

BILL OWENS: "Suburbia" (2000)

BILL OWENS: "Suburbia" (2000)
"Owens explains that, "the photographs for Suburbia weren't done by accident. I put together a shooting script of events that I wanted to photograph... Christmas, Thanksgiving, Fourth of July, Birthdays, et cetera. I got a small grant, and began taking photographs every Saturday for a year, so basically Suburbia was shot in 52 days..."

ANTHONY HERNANDEZ - "Phantoms and Dreams, Ghosts and Grit..."

ANTHONY HERNANDEZ - "Phantoms and Dreams, Ghosts and Grit..."
"The 1970’s photographs of Anthony Hernandez possess something stupendous, something despairing and faint... lusciously strange… something that is fleeting, or maybe some would say… “hard to pin down”. Of course the aesthetic is godsmackingly gorgeous in its bleak ugliness…"

ANTOINE D'AGATA: "Dead Shell Walking..."

ANTOINE D\
"A living thing yes, a tortured adventuring heartbeat, yes... perhaps a sort of hybrid man-beast animal behind glass... one that seeks, that follows its urges and never finds satisfaction...

ROBERT FRANK: "Dissecting the American Image" (1986)

ROBERT FRANK: "Dissecting the American Image" (1986)
" Unified in intent -- as an experience, as a disdainful gesture, as a critique of photography, and superimposed on a critique of America -- the combined power of these images voiced that something was wrong, that changes had to be made. Often more felt than rationally understood, the message became a radical point of departure for the work among a generation of photographers. Even for those more inclined to the opaque formal qualities of Frank's photographs, it was the circumstances of publication of the book which informed any understanding of the photographs, rather than a meaning derived from the content of the book..."

HALLY PANCER: "America 1986-1990"

HALLY PANCER: "America 1986-1990"
The blacktop, it’s cracked and your heart beats a-flowin’… open road blisters peal off and your goin’, patriot eye’s - shit covered in flies, lay back in the chevy and look at the skies. Big damn breath-stealing skies & American hearts-American eyes. Out there the young one’s, the old one’s, the black one’s and the cold one’s. The broken one’s and the gold one’s, white one’s and the bold one’s. Red and yellow - brown and mellow. Hollowed-out bones and melancholy tones. And the hope-filled-heroes. The tricksters-the greasers-the dreamers and the killers. Every one of ‘em out there. Even them cowboys, bikers & Mexicanos..."

TODD HIDO: "Two Way Street"

TODD HIDO: "Two Way Street"
"This work seems to come into existence through the eye's of a smeared-single-pane-window voyeur fog. It is the adult-white-male fog of childhood memories, the mental hot-iron-branding of broken families, divorced parents, alchohol, abuse... of 1970's vinyl feelings and plastic textures, popcorn ceilings and paneled-walls. It is a disturbing world that brings with it smells and sounds that are padlocked into the brain with a Freudish rush of emotion – the harsh emotion of the human psyche and the physical feelings of a traumatic sexual memory that has been locked forever into the consciousness... never to be set free. Phone-sex-operators, classified-ad-fetish-girls and white-trash-cotton-tube-top-prostitutes look back at you through flash-lit-black-circled-eye's, through the snapshot-amateur-porn-camera, through the page, through Todd's own head and into your face with harsh empty stares..."

STEPHEN SHORE: "Gil Blank and Stephen Shore in Conversation (2007)"

STEPHEN SHORE: "Gil Blank and Stephen Shore in Conversation (2007)"
"Yes. So there was a little bit of overlap, but I’ll specifically tie it to a shift in equipment. All of American Surfaces was done using a Rollei 35 millimeter camera, which was a precursor to the point-and-shoot. It was very small, very unpretentious-looking, very amateurish in a way. All of Uncommon Places was done with a view camera..."

TONY STAMOLIS: "FREZNO"

TONY STAMOLIS: "FREZNO"
"FREZNO IS WACK. Take a fast-drive into a cement wall- broken AC sweat stained moustache drippin’ – ugly streets – stupid palm trees standin’ in an ugly row tellin’ you to run away from here fast – dirt in your ratty hair..."

EMMET GOWIN: "Interview with Emmet Gowin (1998)"

EMMET GOWIN: "Interview with Emmet Gowin (1998)"
"You're absolutely right and what a good point. The fact that something is unsayable, that you are emotionally restricted from saying or even recognizing consciously what your own spirit is struggling with, energizes one's work. That is exactly where good work comes from. And that's why you can't ask somebody to find out what it is they need to do..."

RICHARD BILLINGHAM - "Ray's a Laugh"

RICHARD BILLINGHAM - "Ray\
"A long time ago, far, far away, in a rainy-king and queen-filled land, in a colorful little-knick-knack, jigsaw-puzzle, cat-hair-filled, grease-streaked, filthy tiny fishbowl, baby Richie was born. Little Richie came into this lovely rainy little world born to proud parents, drunk-unemployed-Ray and devoted-enormous-"big"-Liz Billingham..."

HENRY WESSEL: "Behind the Wheel with Henry Wessel (2007)"

HENRY WESSEL: "Behind the Wheel with Henry Wessel (2007)"
"These images possess the combination of comedy and contemplation, striking graphics and mysterious subtext, formality and oddness that gives Wessel's work its distinctive look. Also paradoxical is how convincingly real Wessel's eccentrically framed, frozen-looking subjects appear, the result of his practice of overexposing his film and then under-developing it to achieve a clarity of detail and tonal range rivaling that of the naked eye."

WILLIAM EGGLESTON: "Draft of a Presentation (2003)"

WILLIAM EGGLESTON: "Draft of a Presentation (2003)"
"And every time I see a new picture of his, there is this moment of recognition, a first hasty grasping, and then the close study of the photograph. The subject matter, the composition, the color. His photographs burn themselves in our memories, and you can't get rid of them. Why is that so?..."

THOMAS RUFF: "Gil Blank with Thomas Ruff (2004)"

THOMAS RUFF: "Gil Blank with Thomas Ruff (2004)"
"When I started with the portraits, it was with an awareness that we were living at the end of the twentieth century, in an industrialized Western country. We weren’t living by candlelight in caves anymore. We were in surroundings where everything was brightly illuminated—even our parking garages. Surveillance cameras were everywhere, and you were being watched all the time."

INTERVIEW: "Interview with Camilo Jose Vergara (2007)"

INTERVIEW: "Interview with Camilo Jose Vergara (2007)"
"But, by and large, this is a country that has come through for immigrants, and that counts for people just about everywhere. It is the natives, those are the ones that get screwed. It’s the folks that were here that own the place to begin with, the folks that came here as slaves and ended up in the core ghettos and they’ve been there three, four generations. Before that, they were in some plantation exploited by some landowner."