This weekend I had great time shooting the Queen of Love chairs for Linvin at Kimber Modern, a new Austin Boutique hotel. Everyone was so nice, we all had a great day.

Tags: Queen of Love chair, furniture, outdoor, plastic, recycle, Linvin, Italian, design, Kimber Modern, Austin, Texas, hotel, boutique, SoCo, yellow, green, orange, pink, blue, purple, lavender, white, black, red, gold, silver, photos

Among other things, with the explosion of digital photography, blogging, social networking, aging in general and my one time assistant running away to South America with my new muse, his Canon, selling it off like an old guitar to some beach bum in Argentina, I seem to have momentarily lost my voice.

But in my idle time of not photographing best friends, beautiful women and musicians I’ve become intrigued with this new trend in photographic self-promotion. I call this “Gen-N,” a generation of narcissists. Maybe that is too harsh.

I remember my most painful assignment for Photography 101 in college, the self-portrait. Was this a test to see if I could use the timer on my camera? To focus my camera without the subject actually in the frame? It pained me to turn the camera on myself.

This was back in the 90s before I knew about Cindy Sherman, before Friendster and the iPhone, before Sea of Shoes, Flickr and my most recent discovery, http://lookbook.nu

After wasting several rolls of TMAX 400, after wasting several hours and liters of chemicals in the darkroom I showed up to class with several failed “self-portraits.”

A few years later I realized that all of my photographs were self-portraits. There is something that I am desperate to communicate that can only be explained on the tip of Marilyn Manson’s tongue, in the intricate matching of the stripes at the crotch seam of Gwen Stefani’s pants, in the tired vacant stare of my best friend with her head on the floor, and in the colors of a plastic toy out of focus.

Every opening of the shutter feels like a confession. For most of us that is quite a release regardless of our intentions.

Self-portrait with Alyssa, 2008
© Amy V. Cooper

© Amy V. Cooper

From the series "Ghosts of Dates Past"

I had the pleasure of working with the band Shearwater last month on new publicity photos. Their music is really beautiful and unique, they are currently working on a new album. I finally got to shoot on location at Mohawk which I had been wanting to do since I moved to Austin. It's a really inspiring space and the people there could not have been more gracious, thank you Mohawk!

One of my favorite things to do in New York City when i lived there was to shoot the holiday windows. I'm handing over the archives to Rudy at http://www.anothernormal.com where hopefully they will get the attention they deserve, these windows are amazing works of art and i miss them so much.

You can revisit my 2007 Bergdorf Goodman windows here http://www.anothernormal.com/?p=1401

And hopefully more coming soon!

thanks Rudy!