Calendar Marking
Harold Baquet, photographer
Wednesday night on Loyola’s campus (7-8:30 p.m., Miller Hall 114) Baquet will be showing some of his early–and little seen–work and talk about his 30+ year career. Harold is a fabulous guy and will no doubt be entertaining. He’s been the official Loyola University photographer for many years and before that he was the official photographer for Mayor Dutch Morial the city of New Orleans. Here’s one of Harold’s shots of Mayor Morial with Miss Squeekie Clean:
Harold describes his work:
Most of my work is still done in black and white. Most of my exhibited work is black and white. It is not public relations photography. One of the greatest compliments given my work came from a fellow artist named Bob Tannen. I was showing in a group exhibit, and he said the differentiating quality in my work was that it involved a hard-edged risk, usually involving the lifestyle of the subject. I’ve covered Klan marches from Texas to Georgia. I’ve documented the lifestyles of children in low-income housing projects. Most of the world tries to avoid my subjects. They attempt to drive by without noticing them. It’s very easy to ignore the unwanted, to deny the ugly side of life. But nevertheless, I feel these subjects should not necessarily go unseen. My hope is that my photographs will be an introduction to subjects which need to be confronted, resolved, and settled.
Here’s a link to his work with the Mayor’s office. Harold is also rather well known locally for his protests against closing Our Lady of Good Counsel Catholic church in Uptown New Orleans.
Eric Overmeyer, screenwriter
Overmeyer is on the Treme writing team and he’s speaking at a free screenwriting seminar Thursday at UNO.
Amy Hempel
Hempel is the Newcomb College Institute writer in residence and she will be reading from her work March 15 at Tulane.
Occasionally I’ll read some blogger point to something as an example of “great writing,” or so-and-so is poetic, etc. Sorry, but there’s writing, and then there’s writing. To find examples of truly great writing, open up any of Hempel’s books. I’m not sure there’s a writer who can write a better sentence than her. Sometimes I’ll read a sentence of hers and I’m in such awe I wonder why I ever bother to write anything.
Tags: Amy Hempel, Eric Overmeyer, Harold Baquet
Hempel is a writer who can humble almost anyone out there, much less some…..Results are different when your focus is the sentence rather than how great you or your idea is.
“Poetic” is overused, and rarely invoked with the proper irony.