TONY STAMOLIS: “Frezno” (2008)

 FREZNO IS WACK.

 

By Doug Rickard, for ASX, 2008

Take a fast-drive into a cement wall… broken AC / sweat stained moustache drippin’ – ugly streets& stupid palm trees standin’ in a row tellin’ you to run away from here!  Dirt in your ratty hair – Mexican blood on your vinyl seat –broken glass smashed in your white forehead, this is taco bell-trash bin hell-livin’. Leftover drugs and crusty-boogers in your pitted nose- old polyester folks in big oldsmobiles sipping stale ice tea. Nothing to do – bored as fuck – drug and drive- skate and fight – hump and cuss – armpit-fruit-pickin’ capitol of the Cali American blues. Redheaded-central valley-stepchild – KISS RULES-KISS MY ASS – go fuck yourself. Broken down bus- crops of stinky mean-green growin’- bandana over your fat face black shades – smilin’ skinny Santa bringing needles in a brown bag. Dirt for sale – skinny face – blood on your scabbed fist – naked tramp-stamp love while bedbugs be bitin’. Wish I could float on a dirty canal right on the fuck out of here-float down to LA -find an empty dream to latch on to- spray paint my heart jet black.

 

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FREZNO IS WACK.

Tony Stamolis‘ tour de armpit force of California’s Fresno is righteous-meth-mad- migrant worker livin’… a photographic onslaught of  the ugly dirty beautiful. A camera full of fugly-poppin’ pill-mushroom-love. This book is an ode to a brand of America, an ode to hot dusty loser city… an ode to the lives that just keep livin’, the lives that break and just keep givin’-and keep on wiggin’… the one’s that burn like the sun, and pop like a rocket. This is the America that will tell you to kiss their ass and then share a beer with you while your car is overheating- light a smoke sucka you have no place to go. This piece of art is the real deal.  FREZNO does Fresno proud.

Tell the other hipsters to hit the road jack… right back to NYC.

Here are the sloppy seconds of the American Dream…. suburbia stuffed into a serial killer trunk.

Published in November 2008, FREZNO is destined to be a cult classic.

 

 

Frezno. 
Photographs by Tony Stamolis.
Process Books, 2009. 136 pp., 100 color illustrations, 9×6¾”. 

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