Don’t let your babies grow up to be cowboys: Echo Sackett edition feat. Yvonne Buckingham

Yvonne Buckingham.

When morning came, and when I had my breakfast, I sat waiting in the sitting room. I was wearing a poke bonnet and a long full skirt trimmed with bows of ribbon and a shawl around my shoulders. My knitting bag was on my lap and my pick was inside my skirt in its scabbard and ready to hand. A girl can’t be too careful.

(Louis L’Amour. Ride the River: Book Five in the Sackett Series. New York: Bantam, 1983.)

Don’t let your babies grow up to be cowboys: Vintage edition

   “To take revenge on a horse! Lassiter, the men of my creed are unnaturally cruel. To my everlasting sorrow I confess it. They have been driven, hated, scourged till their hearts have hardened. But we women hope and pray for the time when our men will soften.”
   “Beggin’ your pardon, ma’am—that time will never come.”
   “Oh, it will!”

(Zane Grey. Riders of the Purple Sage. New York: Grosset & Dunlap, 1912: 13-14.)

E.E. Cummings Month: “Buffalo Bill’s”

Buffalo Bill’s
defunct
             who used to
              ride a watersmooth-silver
                                                          stallion
and break onetwothreefourfive pigeonsjustlikethat
                                                                                     Jesus
he was a handsome man
                                          and what i want to know is
how do you like your blueeyed boy
Mister Death

(E.E. Cummings, “Buffalo Bill’s,” 1920.)

via

Well, how do you, Mr. Death.

This is one of several Cummings poems first published in The Dial in 1920. A very early example of his fascination with unusual forms, “Buffalo Bill’s” use of whitespace in the poem is in part influenced by Pablo Picasso, who Cummings met in Paris after serving time in France on a trumped up charge of being a spy during the Great War (total folklore — he was a volunteer ambulance driver and was guilty of nothing more than being an outspoken critic of war, violence, and suffering in general). Cummings was also a painter and was inspired by Picasso’s formalistic experiments in cubism: he carried the philosophy forward in to his writing as well.

Sam Haskins Month, Day 17: Kate and Rosie, the plot thickens

I feel like I should mention I’ve been putting these up out of sequence so I don’t totally spoil the plot for you. Don’t forget to add Sam’s Cowboy Kate and Other Stories, the Director’s Cut to your Christmas wish list. You can get it from Powell’s Books, Amazon, or get on a mailing list with Dashwood to see when they get another copy.

Sam Haskins Month, Day 15: “The Marshall’s star”

Sam Haskins Month Day 1: When art imitates art

“Kate in Jail”: one of the photographs that launched a thousand rip-offs.

Sam Haskins’ legendary collection Cowboy Kate is beautiful, wild, incredible art. I believe you can see its influence in nearly every major photographer working in erotica and artistic nudes today, and the influence spills over in to other art forms (Sin City, anyone? — I will prove that point another day) as well.

It is all well and good when art imitates life. But what happens when art imitates art? And uncredited to boot? All hell breaks loose is what!

I have already pointed out the low-class ripping off of Haskins done by Pompeo Posar on the cover of this 1965 November issue of Playboy, but, not having a hard copy of the magazine in front of me, I admit that I do not 100% know for certain that there is not some tiny line of text buried in the masthead citing Haskins as the source of the idea, so I am only partially incensed on that one: jury’s out, you know?

Photographed by Pompeo Posar: model’s name is Beth Hyatt

Much more recently, some shit the fan when, on his very entertaining blog, Sam Haskins took photographer Tom Munro and the UK edition of Elle magazine to task for what is inarguably very blatant and unmistakable composition thievery, with an unforgivable lack of credit.

Of course there are those who say that imitation is the highest form of flattery but that’s garbage, when it looks like theft, tastes like theft and smells like theft – then guess what?

The May 2008 cover shoot for British Elle featured Madonna as Cowboy Kate. This wasn’t a case of ‘influence’ – dipping into my books for a spark of inspiration or developing an idea or a variation on a theme – this was plain stealing.

One of the highly disputed and disrespectable Munro Madonna images in question.

One monitor in the studio was plastered with images from my books including the iconic shot of Kate with her black hat over one eye and next to it another monitor with the copies – literally an identical copy of Kate, live digital images of Madonna from Tom Munro’s camera. This is as brazen an example of photographic plagiarism – straight forward stealing – as you will ever see.

left: Kate from Haskins’ book; right: Madonna in Munro’s shoot

… Arianne Phillips holds forth on “the concept” of the shoot without mentioning Sam Haskins or Cowboy Kate at all. The commissioning magazine Elle also stays silent in print and online. The photographer Tom Munro who, (at the time of writing ) has a Cowboy Kate rip-off image on his website cannot find the honesty to give credit. Many of his photographs are very ‘reminiscent’ of my work as well as that of Richard Avedon, Irving Penn, Sarah Moon and on occasion, David Hamilton.

Munro, you are straight called out! What is that like??

I wish I could say those are the only cases, but Sam Haskins is such a superfly amazing guy that he “inspires” slews of eager young b&w photographers. For example, Haskins aficionados on the tumblr have observed this well-liked picture floating about which is a clearly Kate-derived piece:

Via bebe le strange.

In every case now when that photo gets reblogged on tumblr, the text “This is such a rip-off of Cowboy Kate by Sam Haskins,” accompanies it. Yes. Good on them for spotting an imitator and making sure the original source got proper credit. It’s well and good to appreciate a new, well-shot photo, but when the roots are so clear-cut, it’s important to cite that source. Sam himself said so; come on!

Now here is how you do such a thing right: the company Valdés Wright represents fashion photographers. On their website they have a lovely portfolio shot by Tom Sorensen and produced by AVK, which is specifically titled, “Cowboy Kate 2008,” and described as, “Inspired by Sam Haskins’ famous 1964 book, Cowboy Kate & Other Stories, a beautiful outlaw eludes the sheriff while awaiting her lover.” Below is an example from the shoot, which is not very NSFW, so feel free to click through safely for once.

By Tom Sorensen

That’s how you borrow an idea while still gracefully paying homage. None of this sneaky stuff. Amateur hour with that Munro chicanery, I swar to gar. Can you believe that shit? I love that Haskins ripped him a new one.

This has been Day 1 of Sam Haskins Month!

NSFW November: Pamela Saunders, Miss November 1985

Miss November 1985 was the lovely and talented Pamela Saunders. Despite claiming to hate public speaking when she was younger, the Texan bartender spilled a lot of personal refried beans to Playboy during her disarmingly candid and rueful, charming interview.

Photographed by Kerry Morris

“I love men to death,” she declares. “But, you know, they aggravate me. I let men get to me, and I’ve got a nervous stomach. I don’t think I want to get married.” (“Dealing With Dallas,” Playboy, November 1985)

“I guess working in a bar ruined me — you know, watching the way some of these married men act.” Pam medicates her nervous stomach with a steady diet of beer and junk food.

That is totally the way to do it! See, what did I tell you?? Funyuns and Newcastle and a gypsy curse — it’s a three-step weight loss program and it could be right for you!

“I suppose [men] think girls, especially blondes, are stupid. Well, you know,” she says, laughing, “I’m not a true blonde. … I am a klutz. I fall down stairs, spill things. I have to watch myself out on a date.”

This picture is adorable. And finally, in addition to being a klutz who likes beer and junk food, Ms. Saunders doesn’t give a shit about your social niceties when it comes to spic-n-span eat-off-the-kitchen-floor nest-feathering either:

“No, I’m a klutz; a slob, too.”

It’s love. Call me!

Final thought — Seth Godin was interviewed in this issue, just after the MENSA spread, about his work with then-employers Spinnaker Software, though he is better known now as the co-founder of Yoyodyne and for coining business terms like Purple Cows and permission marketing. You should check Playboy out, because that old saw about the articles being really good is actually the god’s own truth, y’all.