Tracking Borderland Myths

Borderland Myths is a shared-content blog, authored by creatives in both New York and Los Angeles.

No Legend: The Donner Party

Watch the entire doc, series 1-9, via YouTube.

I'm moving this blog to either WordPress or tumblr. Details soon.

Polaroid, Drawings & Poem 2003 -

2000-2010 © VINCENT SKELTIS STUDIO, INC.

LETS GO 2002-2005

Recently, Phil Knott, also a photographer, put me onto issuu, a self-publishing and social networking web site for creative publishing. The site offers the effortless uploading and sharing of multiple page documents - in my case this afternoon, I'll be posting a half dozen or more PDFs of portfolios, books and journals, from about 2004 to 2009. Sometime next week, maybe with some of the downtime I'll have - I'm stuck in front of the computer while we print new books for MCA - I can continue to add content. The PDF of LETS GO is below. Click thru.

Phil Knott's TALLY HO!, While I Babble With Derangement.

(above: poster edition I made for TALLY HO! Issue No.02.)

Having been raised in the UK along with punk rock, Phil Knotts photographic style is rough and energetic. Establishing himself as a serious photographer well before I was even out of school, I had seen his work in Raygun - grainy and cross-colored, his images stood out.
May 17, 2003, FAILE was putting together a group show / party at an abandon firehouse on Lafayette, one block below Canal. Phil, myself and Michael O'Neal were the only photographers in the show.
Six years later, Phil launched TALLY HO!, a newsprint-magazine (at bottom: a PDF version of Issue No.01.)
featuring many of his favorite artists, both established and emerging.
One of the most loyal and hardest-working motherfuckers around, and with ambitions practically bigger than he is. Phil's a right proper cunt - and of the best kind.

This from a series of interviews Phil did with t5m.com:
Photographer and artist Phil Knott’s portfolio includes clients such as Boy George, Justin Timberlake, Jude Law, Christian Bale, Kanye West, The Libertines, and countless others. Based in Brooklyn, Phil started out at Harrow college, but soon became frustrated at not being able to learn enough, quick enough. When he left university in his last year for a job at Click Studios, he worked as an assistant to some of the biggest names in photography. Phil tells t5m how inspired he was working with the likes of the great Mondino, ‘that was the one that did it for me - it was like fireworks going off’. The photographer explains how he thinks you get an ‘honest’ portrait out of a subject. Focusing on ‘the expressions, what people do in the off moments’, Phil prefers the subtler approach as opposed to cheesy, direct ‘wedding photos’. ‘There’s something nice about portraits when you have to look into them’. [t5m]

TALLY HO Issue No.02 is nearly complete. The online edition will be available March 1st.

Clothes Moth

As previously mentioned, I'm looking to shoot a book of nudes, photographed exclusively using digital camera formats. If you would like to be photographed for this project, please e-mail me a headshot along with your contact info. You must be 18 or older to be considered. Both men and women, all are welcome.

Incredible: The Vice Guide to Liberia

I've published one or two pictures with Vice over the course of roughly a decade - hardly even worth mentioning, really. I don't know Shane or Suroosh personally, and Gavin (who is no longer there) and I maybe shared a bump together in a John Street bathroom 7-9 years ago. To be honest, I never could relate to the magazine, but had many friends who worked there throughout the years. I always considered it an empty and ironic rag for an equally vapid and declining (ascending?) culture. I was under the impression many others felt the same way I had, although would never have admitted this aloud.

Vice then launched VBS.TV, and slowly their greater interests - maybe having grown with age along with my own, or maybe having been there the entire time and I was just blind to it - started to reveal themselves.
VBS.TV is the news media arm of the Vice empire, and it has a unique and unflinching perspective. I realize the magazine also embodied this "unique" perspective, but it always felt more in the realm of shock and stunt. It's quite possible that I'm fond of VBS.TV solely because it has a voice that can be heard, literally. Whether it be a narrator, a show host, or an interviewee, you get the sense that they are truly invested in building awareness, covering a wide array of topics and issues - maybe without the print versions gratuity.

The video posted below is from their new mini-doc series, The Vice Guide to Liberia. There are eight installments making up an incredible portrait of a war torn country. Astonishing piece of work. My congrats to VBS.



Go to VBS and watch the entire series.

Current (Kinda New) Favorite: Fever Ray

Karin Dreijer Andersson, one half of The Knife, is now a solo artist under a new name: Fever Ray

NORTHERN CALIFORNIA: The first night I got here I had nightmares. Nightmares that woke the entire house, like nothing I've ever experienced before. They were physical - the last one I remember of the evening actually had me screaming about hands on my shoulders, dragging me out of the house. Truly scary and out of my control, and I can't help but admit, they felt evil. Now, two days later, things are slow. Listening to music that suits the land. Heading to Lake Tahoe this afternoon. Looking forward to driving around.

One Side Too Many. One Side Too Little.

Via "The Fan", Via TMZ, Via John Mayer, Via Gawker, Via John Mayer, Via A American Family Man.
Do you like to read? Do you like smart people? Are you as fascinated as I am by our culturally retarded America? Good. Ok, so, if you follow the steps below, you'll take the same journey I just did, and, hopefully, at which point, fully understand just how lame our celebrity-obsessed media has become - and, strangely enough, how level-headed John Mayer, a celebrity himself, really is.

Just follow the steps below:
Step 1: Go to Gawker.com and read Foster Kamer's post about John Mayer's covering of the verbal scuffle between "Avatar" director James Cameron and a "fan," at LAX Airport.
Step 2: Go to John Mayers original tumblr post, where he dissects the anatomy of (all the likely) events leading up to final James Cameron video.
Step 3: Appreciate being somewhat normal and unknown.



*I much prefer odd numbers, personally. 5,7,and 11.
2, 4, 6 and 8 always seemed too neat.

Happy Holidays

Anyone who says
I'm not a Jew
is not a Jew
I'm very sorry
but this decision
is final

-Not A Jew by Leonard Cohen

So Dust.

Picture Archiving
As I've been looking into the archive over the last few weeks, not only did I find photographs (of the terrible kind) that I forgot I had - I also found images I never knew I had. Take a look a Shirley huffin' base in his kitchen in like 2004, or, Arfin on her bed, pre-adulthood. I loved those times to dust.

I Once Saw A Porno Starring Alex Dyck.

I interviewed Asger Carlsen this week, as it was my duty to interview a photographer of my choice after having been featured as last week's subject. Asger's new series, Wrong, for some strange reason, reminds me of a girl I once photographed for an editorial job - the resulting images were then later killed by the magazine for reasons I escalated, (and she never got paid for the images.) Sucks full-circle, but whatever, no harm no foul, right? She smoked crack all night for free and had her ego stroked. Wrong. T'was all wrong.

Long story. Sorry, I digress.

Asger's photographs are a lot of things, but they aren't bad. I have to say, I didn't like this series at all when I first saw it, but the more I looked at it as a whole, and as a concept, the more the images grew on me. They are well-done, and they are funny, and, in the likelihood of imagining their drama in a realistic context, they are gross. Like smoking crack and stiffing people.

*Thanks for the correction, Dyck.

I Want I Should I Will.

I never gave it much thought. I don't own many books like these. I should, but I don't. In fact, I think I have two, one by Helmut Newton and the other, a Playboy anthology featuring more about of the magazine's making and history and less of the women that were photographed for it.

I want all these books, and I think it would be great to begin shooting one, too.

Better Jobs: A Career Change? Possible.

The New York Times Magazine Looks Back On The Past Year of Ideas.

HWS: Five Years Old

Happy Birthday, H-Man!

Love,
Daddy

TMC: Vincent Skeltis Interview By Luke Gilford

To read the interview in it's entirety, click here, or on the image above.

Growing Up, Both Father & Son

It was not as if you didn't love him then
you didn't know yourself
and to love a boy you must
be a man
Your mother did the best she could while rearing you
do not hate yourself knowing that now
the foreseer you were not
as a boy
mistakes you both made have now come to pass
so be yourself
allow him to see what you had not
in fatherhood
you will be important

f22 @ 1/30 sec: The Lumix G1

(above: Test Image No.1, photographed with the Panasonic Lumix G1. This camera is going to make things interesting.)

While in Asia, I only shot (5 rolls of 35mm) film and (4 packs of FP100) Polaroid. Since being ready to get back to work, the Lumix G1 feels simple and professional [enough] to integrate well with my work produced on film. Strange to say, and most definitely late to the party, but, I think I'll be going hard digital from here on out - at least for the time being. After reading more than a hundred reviews, and doing numerous camera tests, the difference between this camera and some larger, more popular DSLR's are hardly noticeable. I haven't printed anything yet, but I know my machines, as well as my work flow capabilities; Judging from the monitors, it will hold up beautifully in sizes up to 30 x 40", and possibly larger.

More Palin Please.

I'm really happy. She's amazing, highly entertaining, and in non-technical terms, to grossly understate her seemingly deteriorating and delusional mental condition, 100% bat-shit crazy. Possibly the most terrifying figure in modern politics, Sarah Palin, with her book Going Rogue, [published by HarperCollins] is certainly causing the main stream media and other less visible news outlets a stir. It would take me days to link all the sources covering this book since it's release - I will not link every story of merit, however, four notable articles are shared below. Read on. Be amazed.

The Odd Lies Of Sarah Palin: A Summary Before The Next Round - The Atlantic | By Andrew Sullivan
Memoir Is Palin’s Payback to McCain Campaign - The New York Times | By Michiko Kakutani
McCain Campaign Emails Contradict Palin's "Going Rogue." - The Huffington Post | By Sam Stein
Palin's Book Tour Builds on Effective Web Strategy - The Wall Street Journal | By Peter Wallsten

DEAR ANDREW,

I turned 33 years old (today, the 11th, in North America.)

For my birthday, they keep asking me what I'd like, and where I'd like to go.
The truth is, I'd just like to take a bike ride with you somewhere and not have to say very much and maybe eat a hot meal around four PM.

Hope all is well. Speak to you on the 16th.

Vincent

September 12, 2008

To date, there are only about a dozen or so people I'll take a reading recommendation from. My son's mother, Megan, is one of these people. Not only does she know my likes and dislikes well enough, but she'll listen to my stories, concerns and complaints without judgment, and without sharing what she herself would do if in my shoes - as to never make me feel bad or worse about whatever it is she's listening to me go on about. All this makes her quite the authority when asked to suggest reading material that's going to be engaging, and since her recommendation of David Foster Wallace' story Good Old Neon, published within his book titled, Oblivion, life has been hazily different. I've now recommended it to many of my friends. I found it to be so good, I even insisted it's reading to a friend-of-friend whom I had only met the day before during a breakfast meeting, via email, no less. How inappropriate is that? Well, that's how much I believe in it's being read by as many people possible, hence my posting of it here.

If you have a must-read suggestion, please post it in the comments section.

Home? From Asia.

"Oh, no thank you."
"No, no thanks."
"Nope."
"No!"

These are the statements I'm hearing while under uneasy sleep,
now, back in New York. Always aware of my obsession with the word "no,"
my understanding of it's most powerful delivery when used came in handy often while traveling.
I can be scary.

For as long as I can remember I used the word "no" in a context that was distancing.
When I really needed something like my family, love or trust, work, and keeping close friends close, I practiced saying "no."
Always to my detriment.

"No, I don't need a taxi, a moto, a tuk-tuk, any smoke, ping-pong, another loaf of bread, another swim in clear water, another bus ride, another scarf or shitty cotton t-shirt, a tailored suit for a "great price", another game of pool, or can of Singh, another thirsty hooker, or another hit of Yabba. I certainly don't need to see another digital camera pointed at a temple, or hear another story about why the English hate the Euro, either.

Traveling through an impoverished country can bear many lessons, and despite the ever present heist, the often scam and the marking of any tourist, the doing is done as a family. So much love and respect to those I met along the way, and to those I found again from once familiar places.

Monday, October 19, 2009: SAIGON

COMING SOON...

Sunday, October 18, 2009: PHNOM PENH

COMING SOON...

Thursday, October 13, 2009: SIEM REAP

Thursday, October 8, 2009: KOH PANGNAN

Monday, October 5, 2009: BANGKOK

Saturday, October 3, 2009: HONG KONG

Until November.

All personal matters, email or text me direct. All work related matters and bookings, please contact Patrick Casey at (212) 929-8611 or email patrick@margecasey.com

Thank you. 

Asia Forward New York

Have not made anything in weeks
nothing one
could frame hang display and view
Still clearing gathering

November 
looks to be the time for these
changes to
take on shape

HANDS DOWN, Placerville, California after dark, is the creepiest place I have ever been (and I've been to some creepy places. Hell, I've even hosted a few creepy people in my own creepy places.) It takes the gold for most eerie and for the ever possible.

Every Man.

Every man is said to have his peculiar ambition. Whether it be true or not, I can say for one that I have no other so great as that of being truly esteemed of my fellow men, by rendering myself worthy of their esteem. How far I shall succeed in gratifying this ambition, is yet to be developed. ~Abraham Lincoln

Cartographies of Silence (No.4)

4.
How calm, how inoffensive these words
begin to seem to me

though begun in grief and anger
Can I break through this film of the abstract

without wounding myself or you
there is enough pain here

This is why the classical or the jazz music station plays?
to give a ground of meaning to our pain?
~Adrienne Rich