A Walk In The Park/Then Annie Disappointed Us/But Amy Didn't

Went for a nice walk in the Prater, the former imperial hunting grounds.

It's a huge park and though it was cold and gray outside, there were plenty of people jogging, bicycling, walking, and playing with their dogs. There was a hill with some snow & ice on it (probably man-made, because we haven't had enough snow to accumulate like that) and the kids were having a great time sledding down...

Even the crows seemed to be calling his name, thought Caw. 

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Then we went to the Annie Liebowitz exhibit at Kunsthaus Wien.

Annie was the subject of a recent American Masters documentary. She's been around forever and even people who have never heard of her have seen her images. Among the most famous is the pic of a naked John Lennon curled up in bed with Yoko Ono, and a pic of the naked, pregnant Dimi Moore. Both of which were at the exhibit.

And there were some great portraits on display, but the exhibit mostly disappointed us. Most of the work looked pretty ordinary to me. There were lots of shots of Annie's family---her kids, her siblings, her parents---doing ordinary stuff in the back yard or at the beach. I don't care if photographers shoot non-famous people, but the photos have to be interesting, and these weren't. Annie's large format, B & W shots were beautiful but most of the other 150 or so images made us shrug and say, "Eh."

The exhibit was crowded, though. Mostly with younger people, staring at the photos of famous people.

I dunno. I always liked Annie's work, but maybe that's because I only saw the very best of it. Why she chose to stack her exhibit with shots my grandma might have taken, is beyond me.

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We discovered a local public-access station here called Okto. They carry Amy Goodman's DEMOCRACY NOW! and we watch it several times a week.

Yesterday, Amy featured a guy who spoke of an interesting plan: people disappointed in the attitudes of, and risky investments of the major banks, should consider withdrawing their money from those banks and depositing it instead in small local banks and credit unions.

I like the idea of thousands or millions of customers telling the "too big to fail" banks: Go fuck yourselves. Voting with your money---it's the American Way.

Check out the Move Your Money website for more.