Happy New Year!

'Smile' Overland Park, KS

Happy New Year to all!

A toast to all those sudden, amazing, unexpected, strange and wonderful chance meetings and encounters with the world (photographic and otherwise) which inspire us each day. May the new year bring many more. Much love and Cheers!

Simon

'States of Grace' series now posted at 'Get the Picture'.

Recession, Carthage, MO

Back Surgery

Hero

Yellow Brick Road, KS

Part one of my new body of work 'States of Grace' has now been added to GTP's website. Part Two and Three are presently being edited and will appear on this website when they are ready.

http://getthepicture.fr/En/Photographes/Kossoff/Sog.html

Extract from a letter to my friend and photographer Llorenc Rosanes.

“… this work was made between two dates in time and I suppose the subtext to the series is that it explores my experience of being both an outsider and alien going though the long, stressful and intrusive immigration process. It records my observations and experiences of and in the USA during this time period – symbolically and psychologically, rather than literally - my own 'States'. This series also takes into account too (mainly un-intentually) contemporary present day life in America - recession, election, national pride, myth compared to reality and my own fragile ‘American dream’. Which will, I hope, be revealed in more detail in Parts Two and Three, (which I am presently editing). Whist making this series I felt, at times like my own anxiety and hope was an echo of the anxiety and hope of the nation I arrived in.

It is a mosaic piece and purely personal in vision yet universal too, I would hope…”

Llorenc's wonderful work can be seen here: http://www.flickr.com/photos/llorensot/

Needed/Wanted

Victims exhibition at B-Studio, KC, MO

Victims Exhibition

An exhibition of my 'Victims' series opens this Friday December 4th at B-Studio 2016 Main St, Kansas City, Missouri, 65108.

This show will be part of the 'First Fridays' art event in the crossroads district of downtown Kansas City and will open at 6pm.

Anyone in the area at this time are welcome to come and see the show and say hi.

States of Grace

Southwest Blvd, KC

Waffle House

Eli

Here is another small selection from a new series I am working on called States of Grace.

STATE:

1. the condition of a person or thing, as with respect to circumstances or attributes: a state of health.

2. a particular condition of mind or feeling: to be in an excited state.

3. an abnormally tense, nervous, or perturbed condition: He's been in a state since hearing about his brother's death.

4. a politically unified people occupying a definite territory; nation.

GRACE:

1. elegance or beauty of form, manner, motion, or action.

2. favor or good will.

3. mercy; clemency; pardon: an act of grace.

4. favor shown in granting a delay or temporary immunity.

5. an allowance of time after a debt or bill has become payable granted to the debtor before suit can be brought against him or her or a penalty applied: The life insurance premium is due today, but we have 31 days' grace before the policy lapses.

6. the influence or spirit of God operating in humans to regenerate or strengthen them.

White House

White House, MO

White House, KS

White House, OK

White House, NM

White House, KS

This is a small selection of photographs from an on-going series called 'White House'. I began working on this project last year. The images were made on several road trips I took at this time, between New York and Arizona.

This photo essay has just been published in JPG Magazine, Issue 20

http://jpgmag.com/stories/11109

WHITE HOUSE:

With the world economy sliding into depression. An astronomical national debt. War and environmental issues reaching crisis point it makes you wonder what kind of White House the new U.S. President will be moving into. These images of White Houses made in the American heartland are a metaphor and meditation on this serious state of affairs.

A slideshow of this series can be seen here:

Voyage of Small Discoveries: Simon Kossoff at {:m Momentum Gallery. An exhibition review.

Lost Boy (II)

Bear, Lawrence, KS

Billboard, Wellsville, KS

Writer and artist Steve Brisendine wrote a review of my recent Running on Empty show for Re-View Magazine (Mid-America's Visual Arts Publication) as part of his excellent and energetic KC Art 365 column: http://ereview.org/category/all-articles/artkc365/

Simon Kossoff
Running on Empty

{:m Momentum Gallery
2014 Main Street
Kansas City, MO
816.560.1450

Hours: First Fridays, 6-9 p.m., Monday 11 a.m.-3 p.m. and by appointment.

"Not to sound the urgency alarm or anything, because Mondays exact a toll as it is, but if you don't get to the {:m Momentum Gallery today, you'll miss the second half of Simon Kossoff's Running on Empty and miss a chance to see this city, this region, this country through the eyes and lens of a recent arrival.

Kossoff, a native of England who now lives in Overland Park, came to the U.S. just in time to see history in the making. Not long after he got here, he started exploring the country.

Instead of presenting the landmarks of America, the things in which we take national pride, Kossoff captured images of kitsch (as in Hobby Lobby, Kansas, today's featured piece). He turned his lens toward our culture of disposability and the chase for easy money. He recorded all of it with an observer's dispassionate eye and an artist's gift for composition that elevates his subject matter above the commonplace.

This is not a show of "pretty pictures". Nor is it an exhibition of in-your-face images chosen for shock value. If there's confrontation in Kossoff's work, it's because he shows us as we are (which is not always how we want to see ourselves). And if there is beauty, and there is, it is not necessarily in the things Kossoff photographs, but in the lines and colors and light that define, outline and shape those things.

These are postcards not from an extended vacation, but from an ongoing quest. And if you get to the gallery before three this afternoon, you can go along for the ride.

By Steve Brisendine August 31, 2009

A link to the published review can be found here. Many thanks Steve. :

http://ereview.org/2009/08/31/voyage-of-small-discoveries-simon-kossoff-at-m-momentum-gallery/

A slideshow of the Running on Empty series can be seen here:

First Solo Road Trip Part 7. Virginia/Kentucky

Somewhere South KY


Somewhere South KY


Bridge, KY

Bridge, KY

I spend much of the day driving though and passing close to places called: Glade Spring, Marion, Wise, Grundy, Big Stone Gap, and Hazard county (Of the Dukes of Hazard fame, perhaps.) and other villages, which I cannot find on my map. Somewhere on these winding roads, I make a wrong turn and end up underneath an enormous and very impressive iron rail road bridge which straddles a ravine with a wide river at its base. Very picturesque. I sit with ahead of me a folk in the road which turns into narrow dirt tracks that quickly disappear into the thick forest and I wonder if I have reached the end of the road? I pull over looking for the River and bridge on the maps but cannot find either. I sit smoking and sweating in the suffocating afternoon heat, dazed and dizzy with driving these endless twisting roads when a pickup truck speeds up from one of the dirt tracks out of no-where and skids to a halt next to me. The window immediately winds down and I am met with the smiling dusty face of a weathered man in his fifties with a wild nicotine stained beard. 'Lost?' he says, laughing, which sounds like escaping air and showing a wide smile of yellowed teeth. 'Yeah, I reply' and he immediately recognizes in my accent that I am not from around here. He asks and I tell him I am English and he goes on to tell me I really AM lost, laughing hard all over again! He then turns off his engine and I begin telling him about my trip and how I arrived at this bridge. He is curious and asks lots of questions, smiling broadly all the time and then starts telling me about this place and this bridge and that it was the biggest of its kind in America when it was first built: ‘God in Hell knows when”. He tells me too that the ferry, which used to cross the river taking cars, linking up the road, hasn't run for twenty years and I will have to backtrack some miles to get across. He then goes on to tell me that over the years he's seen hundreds, just as lost as me, scratching their heads at this very spot. 'When I was a kid', he says, ‘this is where we brought our dates. I was up here one time (a friend of his), who had just signed up for the army and shipping out the next day to Vietnam, was dangling some blonde girl over the edge, by her ankles, telling her she ain't no damn good and I told him to put her down or he'd be going away for a long time and it won't be with the army neither..' He tells me also about his childhood and when he was a baby he was real sick and couldn't drink nothing 'cept goat milk’ and has drank it ever since. Slept on ‘nothing but a pillow’ for the first two years of his life.. He talks about his family and of one of his cousins went to live in Italy to play in the Milan orchestra and how he sent musical instruments - small tubas, back to his boyhood school, a few miles away, to replace the ones that were stolen. All the while he is talking he is smiling and shaking his head in a constant kind of amazement and disbelief at what he and I are saying. We are there for almost an hour when he suddenly says he's gotta go check on his sister and he is gone as quickly as he arrives, without a farewell..

Victim IX

Victim VIII

Victim VII

Victim VI

Victim V

Victim (A series in progress)

Victim IV


Victim III


Victim II


Victim I


Here are a few images from a new series I am working on.

Victim:

1. A person who suffers from a destructive or injurious action or agency: a victim of an automobile accident.

2. A person who is deceived or cheated, as by his or her own emotions or ignorance, by the dishonesty of others, or by some impersonal agency: a victim of misplaced confidence; the victim of a swindler; a victim of an optical illusion.

3. A person or animal sacrificed or regarded as sacrificed: war victims.

4. A living creature sacrificed in religious rites.

First Solo Road Trip Part 6. Foam Henge, Natural Bridge, VA

 

Foam Henge, Natural Bridge, VA 

Further down the same road I see a road sign almost hidden in the trees for 'Foam Henge' one mile ahead on right. I can't believe my luck and when I suddenly see the familiar monoliths in a clearing perched on a small hill I pull over immediately. It is exactly what it says it and I am in mute amazement to see this familiar landmark from my childhood home in Hampshire way out here in deepest darkest Virginia. It is a strange and deeply surreal sight. I immediately think too of the ending of the original Planet of the Apes movie and the line: “I’m home. All this time, I was home” are words which ring over and over in my head until finally I am compelled to whisper them to myself out loud in the car. These are the first words I have spoken all day too and my voice sounds remote and alien. I pull off the road into a small empty car park and see a track leading up the hill to where the foam stones are dramatically silhouetted against the late afternoon sky. 

At the bottom of the track is a small plaque staked into the ground which reads: "Welcome to Foamhenge. Completed in 6 weeks using beaded Styrofoam blocks weighing over 420lbs. Delivered on 4 tractor trailer trips from Winchester VA 100miles north. Taking 5 Mexicans and one White Man to construct." 

I clamber the path to the top and walk around the structure which is impressive in a totally eccentric way and, very carefully smoking, I begin to contemplate, in much the same way I would contemplate the original Stonehenge -considering deeply the mysteries of its purpose and also its makers. Finally, feeling weary from driving and overcome with childhood memories and emotions, I sit on one of the realistic gray painted now flaking fake fallen foam stones, which are quite comfortable, with a sense of peace and strange relief, until the sun goes down..

First Solo Road Trip Part 5. Natural Bridge, VA

Natural Bridge, VA

On the way through a no-place called Natural Bridge I pull over at the sight of two strange spectacles. The first is an old boarded up lot covered in bright blue peeling paint, which first gets my attention with it having the Ten Commandments nailed to the heavily chained up gates. I get out, photograph, and peek into the enclosure. Inside it is filled with dozens of life size replicas of real, mythical and prehistoric animals. It is a storage facility for a closed down leisure park of some kind called and according to the faded sign inside: The Enchanted Kingdom.

It appears to have been closed a long time ago and the forest has again begun to reclaim it, like everything else left, lost and abandoned around here. The fibre glass animals are scattered, shattered, lame, limp, fractured, limbless and broken about the entire lot: A herd of Elephants in a petrified parade are lashed down with ropes between two outhouses. Two faded and peeling Tigers tied to a truck bed next to a decapitated Giraffe. A glowing green Brontosaurus which stands on three legs frozen in an eternal topple. Cattle and Deer lay sideways in the undergrowth stiff with plastic rigamortis. Giant crumbling Pharaohs stand as sentinels against the fence looking inwards. Raptors fossilized between empty corroding cars husks. A massive and horrific blue hand reaches up from the weeds with screaming faces on the ends of each of its fingers. I am astonished by this sad amazing and weird beauty and begin photographing as best I can between the small gap between the gates.

I walk around the perimeter. Its late afternoon and the sun is hot and the air thick with insects. Around the back of the lot, trampling down thick undergrowth, I am acutely aware I am now trespassing and also watching for snakes or other nasty's - (like the person who owns this strange space). Suddenly I am shocked still in my tracks as I stumble into a giant fibre glass Tic, right there in front of me. It was once a vivid blue, but with time it has lost most of its colour, looking now like it was made from bone. It stands ten feet tall in the grass with a nightmarish life size tortured human face frozen in a dreadful pain filled grimace. Its legs still lifting it above the grass, which has now gone yellow beneath it. On the Tics huge bulk it looks as though a man were trying to climb out, though trapped once on the inside of it, but had been quickly petrified in mid-motion - weathered hands reaching into the air with splayed fingers. It is a shocking wonderful and exciting site and I begin laughing out loud with its absurdity.

My photographs though are disappointing. The bright afternoon sun frazzling the strange mystery which I see with my mind. It is here I become aware of the sometimes vast space between writing and photography.

First Solo Road Trip Part 4. Grundy, VA

By the late afternoon I have more or less descended the mountain. I drive for several miles winding my way through deep valleys with small towns and villages which all sit precariously squashed up against the roadside, between cliff and rivers edge. Mining and Mill towns where every other house is either empty or derelict. Scary looking gas stations which I am worried about pulling over into with beat up, rusting trucks parked up in lines with wild looking bearded guys in dungarees sitting outside - barking dogs and peeling signs from the 60s advertising things no longer in existence. A few miles down the road I pull over to take photos and quickly attract the locals, who seem to drive out of no-where, pulling over and asking questions with their shocking, but actually quite friendly southern accents. They ask about my New Jersey number plates and lump England in with the rest of the world in their long musing loosely based outside the U.S. stories. They all think I am seriously lost and well off the beaten path and want to point me to the Interstate giving incoherent directions and don't understand my reluctance to use it. Confused when I explain what I am doing. I feel in no way threatened either, the fear being only in my mind, fed by movies and other horror stories. If anything they were nervous and a little frightened of me. I think that if I was in trouble or needed any assistance at all, they would have done anything for me to help in any way possible.

Running on Empty show moves to a new location

Buena Vista, VA

'Where' New York City

Holiday Handguns, Gun Show, KS

Tight-Rope Walker, Worlds of Fun, KS


My Running on Empty Exhibition has now moved to another location.

For the next two months, until the end of October, It will be showing at Dunn Bros coffeehouse 87th St and Metcalf Ave, across the street from Borders Book Store in Overland Park, KS.

I will also be the featured artist at B-Studio in December where I plan to Exhibit the Running on Empty series in full. Apx 80 images. This will be a part of the First Fridays event in the Crossroads District in downtown Kansas City, MO.

I will post more information about this Exhibition at a later date.

Front Royal, VA


Front Royal, VA


Front Royal, VA

First Solo Road Trip Part 3. Vesuvius, VA

Level with the town Roanoke I decide to descend the mountains and turn off at a tiny junction onto a tiny single lane road with thick forest either side of me. Hairy too and every tight bend is just like the last and it feels like I am driving the same 100 yards over and over again for hours - like on some broken record time loop - steep cliffs on one side and on the other deep ravines covered in the same endless dense forests layering away. My imagination goes haywire. On the way down I pass through a small village name 'Vesuvius' (like Pompeii volcano) which looks deserted and half reclaimed by the forest. Every building and telegraph pole and signpost, dripping in luscious vines. Further on I pass a homestead which I want to photograph, but am nervous about it. The house is hidden in the trees up a winding dirt track. The ground littered with garbage, broken down and rotting cars and other nameless rusting farm machinery, vine covered garden furniture, stained tarps and dozens of faded, chipped, peeling or decapitated religious icons, some standing twice man height litter the grounds. It reminds me of the home of the Texas Chainsaw Massacre family, complete with loud and spluttering nearly failing generator. I pull over and wait a few moments taking it all in - looking up the track for the house, which is difficult to make out - a dilapidated single story place almost completely covered in vines. The windows are dull and dirty with grime and an old sorry looking leather couch sits on the paint peeled porch outside with a hole filled red blanket thrown over its back. I wonder if in fact the house is empty, but the sputtering generator says otherwise. I notice too that a thin wisp of smoke is coming from the chimney. I really want to photograph the place, but when I open the car door to get out two large sounding dogs suddenly start barking viciously so I decide against it and drive away with a pounding heart, telling myself that something's are better only written about..

First Solo Road Trip Part 2. Washington DC-Front Royal, VA

Front Royal, VA


Front Royal, VA


'Sky-Light Drive', VA

From Washington DC I backtrack and stay the night in a place called Front Royal, a small beautiful town in the Appellation foot hills in a motel set against mountains and dense forests. My arrival is spooky as a huge dramatic thunderstorm suddenly comes out of nowhere, which makes my decision to stop in this particular place for me, instead of pushing on, as it is still early in the afternoon. I get a great and cheap room with amazing views of where I will be heading in the morning. At dawn I get up early and head out for the 'Skylight Drive' on the Blue Ridge Mountains of Virginia's Shenandoah National Park. A road which climbs to the top of the Appellations and takes you 400 miles to the other end in Georgia, I believe. It is a spectacular drive on single empty winding road with fantastic views 4000 feet up. Valleys in the early morning filled with thick clouds which in between I see the sprawling mountain range on either side - endless forests layering away into the distance, from peek to peek, until they faded into the sky itself, like a giant green ocean. Unimaginable again to think this is America and understandable too that such stories and movies like Deliverance and Wrong Turn were born from this very landscape - ultimately remote in every way and totally mind-boggling. After two hours of driving hypnotized by the smooth but winding road and the magnificent view, which had now cleared of clouds and was spectacular all over again, with deer casually feeding and unafraid at the roadside and the constant high pitched ring of crickets in the warm summer air I suddenly meet a small traffic jam of caravans and massive coach sized RV's blocking the road and parked in a long zig-zag. Unable to pass I pull over to see what the holdup is and see it is nothing but a Tortoise crossing the road. Before this I hadn't seen a car for an hour in either direction so these cars that were now waiting in front of me now must have been there for some time. I wanted to get out of my car and go and simply pick the Tortoise up and move it to the verge, but a little girl beat me too it.

First Solo Road Trip. Part One. NYC-DC (July 08)

Heading south from New York City and down into Virginia. At an interstate junction I make a knife edge decision, later to my regret, to see Washington DC. It takes me 70miles out of my way and into, what was on that hot July day, a horrid and oppressive city. It takes me 1 ½ hours to arrive downtown after being stuck in bumper to bumper traffic jams, then I drive around for hours, without success, trying to find somewhere to park. This is how I see the Nation’s capital: stressed out and blinded by my own sweat from a stuffy and airless car. I see all the sights too, scowling and cursing at everyone. Sightseers are everywhere too, wedged from monument to monument (It is a summer holiday Saturday) all dressed in those ugly bright block logo covered colours, wearing baseball caps and white trainers with long socks shouting at each other, like caricatures of themselves. In the end, bitterly disappointed, exhausted, dehydrated and stir crazy, I decide to just leave, thinking bollocks to it and I then make the firm decision to stay out of all big cities and off all major Interstate roads altogether until I get back to Kansas (which I do, and because of this, I see an America which is easily missed from the Interstates and I drive 2100 + miles home on roads no bigger than the A303 - the West bound duel-carriageway which runs from London to the West country ).

The King And I (edit)

Lexington, KY

Lawrence, KS

Thrift Store, KS

Williams, AZ

Shopping Mall, KC,MO

This is small selection of images from another on-going series I call ‘The King and I’.

On my travels in the USA Elvis began appearing to me like some religious/cultural vision in a wide range of places and in the strangest of circumstances. From New York City to rural Kentucky and Virginia to the desert towns of Arizona. He has appeared in Shopping Malls and Thrift Stores and everywhere in between. Elvis has become one of the many ‘psychic coordinate points’ which I mention in the introduction to this blog and I have often orientated myself culturally around his scattered presence.