Tim Hawkinson | Octopus | Cindy Sherman | Untitled Film Still #82 | Robert Glenn Ketchum | Lakeshore in Morning Fog | Abelardo Morell | Camera Obscura Image of the Grand Tetons in Resort Room, Jackson Hole, Wyoming | John Sanchez | Rachel Rosenthal, Artist | Mitch Epstein | Buena Vista, Colorado | Leland Rice | Volkswagen With Figure | Catherine Wagner | The Lamps of 1900 | Ned Sloane | Telephone Pole Piece, Los Angeles: Photograph of Kim Jones | Andrew Freeman | #3.4.04- Don Becker's Garage & Guesthouse, Independence, California N36O.48.229 - W118O.11.620 | Ken Gonzales-Day | Franklin Avenue (1920) | Jo Ann Callis | Man in Tie | Bruce Nauman | Burning Small Fires (Artist Book) | Annie Leibovitz | Scarlett Johansson, Chateau Marmont, West Hollywood | David Maisel | Oblivion 1382-52p | Gilbert B. Weingourt | Timothy Leary | Richard Misrach | Untitled (Ocotillo) | Edward Steichen | Sylvia Sidney, Hollywood | Ruben Ochoa | Fwy Wall Extraction | Hunter S. Thompson and others | From "Gonzo" | Henry Wessel | Las Vegas No. 15 | James Fee | Epiphany | John Baldessari | Face (with Red Nose): Plus Four Alternate Noses | Anthony Hernandez | Everything #2 | Ansel Adams | Graduation dress | Loretta Ayeroff | Mountain View, Edris Drive | Grant Mudford | Walt Disney Concert Hall, Under Construction #7 | Frederick Sommer | Stendhal | Tina Modotti | Interior of the Church Tower at Tepotzotlan | Henri Cartier-Bresson | Mexico City | Irving Penn | Hell's Angels, San Francisco | William Dassonville | From Glacier Point | Christina Fernandez | Fashion International | Mark Laita | Air Traffic Controller, Todd Phipps, Palmdale, California, May 5, 2006
Juggler, Sergey Gripkov, Los Angeles, February 21, 2000 | Mark Wyse | Untitled Landscape | U.S. Air Force 1352nd Photographic Group, Lookout Mountain Station | Sugar, 1.2 Kilotons, Nevada | Julius Shulman | Von Sternberg Residence, Northridge | Joaquin Trujillo | Amy, Los Ninos | Robert Heinecken | Shiva Manifesting as a Single Mother | Han Nguyen | Tsunami | Melanie Einzig | Bikram Yoga Instructor, North Beach, San Francisco | John Patrick Salisbury | Untitled No. 134 | Karen Halverson | Gamble House Entry | Bill Owens | 4th of July Parade, Pleasanton, California | Catherine Opie | My Studio, Suzanne's Work | Eliot Porter | Reflections in Pool, Escalante River, Utah | Adam Bartos | Los Angeles | Stan Honda | From the Heart Mountain Barracks Project | Hiromu Kira | The Thinker | Jeff Mermelstein | Yosemite National Park, California | Lewis Baltz | West Wall, Unoccupied Industrial Structure, 20 Airway Drive, Costa Mesa | Dennis Hopper | Robert Irwin | Hansel Mieth and Otto Hagel | S.F. Water Front | Edward Burtynsky | Oxford Tire Pile #8, Westley, California | Beahan & McPhee | Almond Trees and Flood Irrigation, Oakdale | Larry Sultan | Boxers, Mission Hills | Isabel Gomes | Blue Horizon, Santa Rosa Island | Edward Weston | Cabbage Leaf | Anthony Friedkin | Offshore Winds, Zuma Beach | Richard Long | Donner Pass Circle: Along a 20 Day Walk from Ebbetts Pass to the North Fork Feather River Sierra Nevada California 2005 | John Swope | Dorothy McGuire, Beverly Hills | Hans-Christian Schink | LA Night #1 | Herve Friend | Redlands From Smiley Hill | Joel Sternfeld | Queen of the Prom, the Range Nightclub, Slab City, California |
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| Ned Sloane Telephone Pole Piece, Los Angeles: Photograph of Kim Jones 1978 © Ned Sloane, Courtesy Luckman Gallery, California State University, Los Angeles LL/18160 Photo Synthesis
Colin Westerbeck
"Kim Jones: A Retrospective" will be on view at the Luckman Gallery at California State University, Los Angeles, March 24-May 19.
Though crippled by a disease similar to polio as a boy, Kim Jones joined the Marines at age 22 and was sent to Vietnam. It was a miraculous recovery, the sort from which superheroes are made, except that Jones later turned himself into an anti-superhero he called Mudman.
He was a pioneer of performance art, of which the only surviving records are often documentary photographs. Mudman was Jones' reincarnation as a primordial or posthistorical being. He was a creature from the swamp who arrived slathered in mud, carrying on his back a fretwork of sticks held together with wire and foam rubber. Mudman was a "madman" who first attracted wider attention while walking the length of Wilshire Boulevard on a day in 1975.
When a reporter asked about the crazy get-up, he said, "I've been thinking about becoming a tree." This was the least sinister association he evoked. He was a fallen angel with exoskeleton wings, a model of the atom, a little boy held up by leg braces that were the burden he bore every day. In this photograph, he is the power grid gone awry, a reminder of how primitive our high-tech civilization is.
[Originally published in West Magazine : March 18, 2007, p.13]
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