Kyle Cassidy's Blog

A few months ago we got a call from Glen Foerd, which is a historic mansion owned by the city of Philadelphia. It's a great example of 1920's gilded age construction. the guy who built it made a fortune figuring out a process for tanning goat skins and made a huge amount of money overnight. Yadda yada yada, it's now part of Fairmount Park and they do all sorts of cool things there. One of these things is to throw a massive masquerade ball on Halloween. So they asked if we could come up with a poster image that was over the top. I had a few ideas and @trillianstars went out to have a look at the place which was fabulous. 

We'd recently seen the Heartless Revival collection at Philly Fashion week and it included some extremely over the top dresses. Behold:

So....I thought that dress would go spectacularly with Glen Foerd. So we rented the dress. Which came with a crew of people and all this apparatus to fill it up with air, and we went out to the mansion for a day of shooting.  Here's what we did.

Some behind the scenes with all the people (Haley, April, & Kostis) necessary to make this dress work:

Once Trillian was in the dress she was stuck there. So there was a lot of setup and then getting her into the dress, then shooting, then getting her out of it. We did three different setups and each one was like 90 minutes setup, 3 minutes photographing. 

Here's how it looked from the back of the camera. I was using a Hasselblad X1D which is a ponderous and ugly thing but I've had a great time with it.

The photo they chose for the inside is on the magnificent stairwell in the center of the house. It took a few people to get Trillian there and get everything attached. 

The house has a built-in pipe organ.

Their party is on Halloween 2025 and it's going to be spectacular. If you'd like to go, here's the info.

Five years ago this month I started photographing COVID nurses realizing that their stories were going to be critical in our understanding of what was happening to us and the world. This month Philadelphia's Mutter Museum of the College of Physicians put up a 5 years pandemic retrospective of the pandemic called "Trusted Messengers" and included 24 of my photos plus a copy of the book in progress. Trillian Stars and I got to go to the press and members opening last night.

The exhibit opens to the public today. 

Starting in 1999 I've done a 2 second long self portrait beginning one second before midnight on New Years Even and ending one second into the new year. 

Here's 2024 slipping into 2025 in Whitechapel England, for the second year in a row.

With Trillian Stars. 

So much that I should update.....

So, Trillian_Stars and I have two new books out and this is the anniversary of when we first started thinking about them. So first I'll plug out books, which you can get at https://elizabethsiddal.com and then I'll tell you the weird story about how they happened.

We've published the only popular edition of the (mostly) complete works of Victorian poet Elizabeth Siddal and also This is Only Earth, My Dear, 48 photographs inspired by her poems: 

So how did all this happen?! — A year ago today, Trillian and I went to see the Rossetti exhibit at the Delaware Art Museum — it had previously come from the Tate and featured works by a number of the Rossetti's, but focusing on the poetry of Christina Rossetti, and the paintings of her brother, Dante Rossetti, and his wife, Elizabeth Siddal. And for most people, finding out that Elizabeth Siddal painted was news. 

The museum is wonderful. Nobody was there. There was snow outside. Both Trillian and I have always liked the Pre-Raphaelites so we had a lovely time. But we saw one thing there that puzzled me, it was a photograph and looking at it, I was pretty sure that the information on the tag was incorrect. (Being a photographer you know stuff about photos that other people don't.) So anyway, when we got home, I started doing some research into the photos and because of that, I read this biography of Dante Rossetti by his brother, William. And in that, I found this poem:  

and I was like Sweet barking cheese, this is an amazing poem — dim phantom's of an unknown ill?? So I went to buy a copy of her poems. But there isn't one. I found some scholarly critiques of them and a long out of print limited edition art book from 1978, but you couldn't go to the store and buy a book of her poems. So we started looking and found the others scattered across three biographies of her husband, Dante Rossetti. William writes there that he has a few more scraps, but that's everything she wrote that was actually a poem. So I copied them all down and made a little booklet of them for Trillian and I. 

And two other things happened at this same time. One was that we were headed to London in a month to cat sit and do absolutely nothing. The second was that I found out that in 2016, Swiss camera behemoth Hasselblad had put out a cell phone camera called the Hasselblad Moto and the reviews were scathing.  Everybody agreed that it was an absolute piece of garbage. So, Hasselblad making a cellphone camera is sort of like Ferarri making a shopping cart. 

Like a) you need a shopping cart but b) what the hell does Ferarri know about making a shopping cart? So anyway, these cameras came out in 2016 and immediately stopped being produced. So looking, I found that they were just littering eBay for like $20. So I bought one. And we took that camera and that booklet to England with us and we were staying right near where Elizabeth Siddal lived and died, so it was easy to read her poems and spend a lot of time thinking about her. And we found that while we kept reading these poems over and over and over and we were walking through  the neighborhood, the photos that we were taking were infused with the thoughts from those poems. 

And we started posting photos with snippets of her poems. 

And those posts started getting an enormous amount of attention. And we started to think that maybe this was bigger than just us being on vacation with a folded up bunch of poems from a woman who'd never lived to see them published. 

So ... yadda yadda yadda, we decided that getting our photos published was worth pursuing and we created a book that included eight of Elizabeth's poems and somewhere along the line we decided that we should also publish her poems as their own thing as a companion volume so people could read all of them. 

And a year later. They're here. 

They "officially" come out Spring 2025. You can pre-order on amazon or barns and noble. Or you can get them directly from ElizabethSiddal.com

Hope you're all doing well.

Our artist friends were either completely destroyed by covid or the metamorphized like butterflies and created beautiful things. Both of these things happened to Helen Rosemier who lost her husband, Matt, during COVID and also created an astounding book about the swirling emotions. ZONES OF POSSIBILITY is a book of photography, memory, loss and celebration. It’s also a book filled with design elements that would send a publisher into spasms. “What do you mean you want to glue photo corners onto page 11 of every copy?” “What do you mean pages 24 and 25 need to be ripped in half? We already agreed to an embossed cover and a foldout flyleaf.” “Wait, you want loose photos stuffed in there too?”

ZONES OF POSSIBLLITY has an incredibly thoughtful, beautiful, and complex layout that includes archival images from her husbands family album, included with new photographs mostly taken in her garden during lockdown where she explored the unknown spaces that had surrounded their lives together all the years they were married.

This is a book about the unfamiliarity of familiar things — the lost right under our noses and the decoding details that we have never observed. 

Helen seeks to "complete"the understanding of her husband through the left-behind clues of his childhood, seeking out more moments together that can happen now only in the unknown and unknowable past.

This is a highly personal volume — there are no answers for outsiders — the what, who and how are all beyond our reach. We can only look into this collection of memories and speculate, as though flipping through a box of prints in an antique store. It's not a book of answers, only the yearning for answers.

But is also a beautiful book — an object of inspiration and a book about design. Once, in college, while staring at a Mark Rothcoe painting in I said "I don't understand why this is in a museum" and my compatriot, a painter, said "This is a painting about painting, and you don't understand it because you don't speak the language of paint." And that's stuck with me. That sometimes we might not understand why something is beautiful because we don't yet understand what we need to know to understand it. 

Throughout Zones of Possibility there are the signs of missing photos, slight shades of discoloration where things once were, memories that were preserved but are now lost — a forever unknowable hole in Helen's understanding of Matt.

We also need to talk about the exquisite design by Lisa Ferron, who gives us an object of ponderous beauty and mystery, and poetry contributed by Julian Dobson. 

You can get your own copy from Helen's website: https://helenrosemierphotography.co.uk/albums/0UE5/zones-of-possibility

In London again. With <lj user="trillian_Stars"> and a Hasselblad 4116 trying to remember LJ embed codes. 

Not Spittlefields, probably Mile End with Trillian Stars

I feel like we're at that delicate nexus of possibility and creativity and my inclination is to run as far as I can before we fall off.

But, true love, seek me in the throng

Of spirits floating past;

And I will take thee by the hands,

And know thee mine at last.

— Elizabeth Eleanor Siddal

People, let me tell you about our best friend, Kevin Hollenbeck and how we want you to have his cameras.

Kevin Hollenbeck, aka "Shadowcaptain"

Kevin was ubiquitous in the Dresden Dolls band scene and so many other music scenes. He was the person that a lot of rock stars relied on to Get Things Done when they came through town. I remember Kevin telling a story of how he ended up in a Volkswagon Jetta, driving it like a get-away car, hunched over the wheel, swerving around ducks and trash cans with Weird Al Yankovic in the back seat, careening dangerously towards an amusement park where there may or may not have been a roller coaster they wanted to ride at 2:00 in the morning. And while this sounds like the fevered dream of many a person, it wasn't Kevin's fevered dream, it was a true story, though I may have gotten some of the details wrong.

Kevin Hollenbeck, aka Shadowcaptain, was a photographer from the Washington D.C. area who passed away of colon cancer in 2022 leaving an incredibly large group of friends devastated. Kevin was a theater person who loved music and spent his career helping indie bands with his photography. His kindness and enthusiasm put him at the center of a lot of amazing experiences with musicians. He left behind a lot of photo equipment and to honor his legacy, we want to give that equipment to people who will continue to support bands and theater.

Here's how you can win one of Kevin's cameras.

Amongst Kevin's gear, there are three DSLR kits, two point and shoots, a gopro-style kit, a film camera kit and two lensbaby lenses in Nikon F (not Z) mount.

We'd like to to give the DSLR's to people who do not already have a DSLR — so if you've got a camera already, get out there and take pictures and support bands. Go go go! If you're currently rocking your cell phone, we may be able to upgrade you.We'd like to give these to the people who can do the most to help indie music. 

There are some caveats to getting these:

We ask that every time you post a photo that you took with Kevin's gear, you tag him in the social media: #ShadowCaptain — that way we can all follow along with your career and the new life that Kevin's cameras have. You can't sell Kevin's gear. You can only give it away. If you upgrade your equipment, pay Kevin's things forward to someone else who needs them. If you're over 40 years old, talk to your doctor about getting a colonoscopy. Colon cancer is curable and this simple procedure could be the difference between a long happy life, and your friends memorializing you by giving your stuff away, even if the memorial is something you would really love (as I'm sure Kevin would be tickled pink about this one.)
Here's how to enter:

Decide what you're interested in, either a DSLR kit, a point and shoot, the gopro(ish) camera, the film camera, or the nikon lensbaby lenses.

Put your six best photos together with a statement of no more than 500 words. Tell us your vision for music photography. This can include what music means to you, how you see photography as part of music, what excites you most about music photography and, importantly, your plans for helping out indie musicians. Do you know particular bands you want to help out? Tell us about them! Is there a music scene that you're a part of? Tell us about it!

Convert your file to a .pdf no more than 4.5mb in size and send it to kyle@kylecassidy.com with the subject line Kevin's Gear. Gigantic files will be rejected and email with different subject lines might not get filtered properly. 

(You can use adobe's pdf compressor to help you get your file size down: https://www.adobe.com/acrobat/online/compress-pdf.html)

INCLUDE IN YOUR ENTRY WHAT PHOTO GEAR YOU'RE INTERESTED IN, YOUR NAME, AND YOUR CONTACT INFO.

Entries are due by November 30, 2023. We'll let the winners know sometime in December and we'll get your gear out to you asap.

Judges:

Jim "Kimo" West has been the guitar player for Weird Al Yankovikc's band since its formation.

Amanda Palmer is one half of the Dresden Dolls

Kyle Cassidy is a photographer from Philadelphia who's done a number of album covers and photo books about music.

Thanks to Natalie Serwan for handling the logistics of this.

Here's what we're giving away:

Lot 1 - Nikon D7500Nikon D7500 BodyNikon VR 18-140mm 3.5-5.6 ED LensNikon 85mm 1.8 G LensNikon 35mm 1.8 G LensLowepro Camera BackpackSunpak Ultra 7000TM TripodWireless Remote Trigger2x BatteryCharger

Lot A Lot A continued

Lot 2 - Nikon D5100Nikon D5100 BodyNikon 18-55mm 3.5-5.6 ED LensNikon VR 70-300mm 4.5-6.3 ED Lens2x Pro Series Multi-Power Battery Grip for D5100/5200 (not pictured)Lowepro Camera BagSunpak Travellite TripodProfessional LCD Viewfinder kit2x BatteryUser ManualCharger

Lot 2 Lot 2 continued

Lot 3 - Nikon D3000Nikon D3000 BodyNikon 18-55mm 3.5-5.6 ED LensNikon 55-200mm 4-5.6 ED LensSunpak Travellite TripodProfessional LCD Viewfinder Kit1 BatteryCharger Included

Lot 4 - Nikon Coolpix P900CameraUser Manual2x Batterycharger

Lot 5 - Nikon Coolpix P600CameraQuick Start Guide2x Batterycharger

Lot 6 - GearPro CameraCameraAccessories KitCar Charger Included

Lot 7 - Minolta XG-M Antique Film CameraCamera 45mm 2.8 Lens
Carson Mini TripodTextured Lens Cloth

Lot 8 - Lensbaby Scout Lens w/ 12mm Fisheye Optic for Nikon F mount cameras

Good luck, thank you, buy some merchandise from bands, tell your friends about music you like and get a colonoscopy. 

<3 

Peter left this world a year ago last month and I don't stop thinking about him. It's really hard to describe how cool Peter Straub was. How just, kind, and funny and full of the joy of life he was. One story that really comes to mind is his side-stint as a soap opera star.

The first time I met Peter I was interviewing him for a book that, so far, hasn't come out about writers in their creative spaces, and Peter told me about his rigorous writing habits, which were to start writing really early in the morning, and then take a break for lunch in the early afternoon, make a sandwich and sit in front of the television -- and this was in the 1970's and 1980's when society told us that men were all at the office and the only people at home watching television were women, so, on the three network TV channels you got during the day, ALL of them were showing soap operas from 12:30 until around 4:00 when the kids were supposed to get home. So Peter sat down with his sandwich and his glass of scotch and he watched soap operas. He told me at the time that soap operas were fun things for a writer working on a novel to watch because "they're 100% plot" like a Dickens novel. So, Peter Straub and three million New York City housewives got hooked on One Life to Live. He watched it religiously and got swept up in the story. And at some point at one of those Manhattan parties that they make movies about, he bumped into OLtL star Michael Easton who plays detective Lt. McBain (and who, for some period in 1997 might have been, I believe, a vampire, it's hard to remember all the plot twists). Michael Easton was a fan of Peter's and they got to talking about things and they realized that it would be fun to work together, so they wrote a graphic novel The Green Woman (Easton had already written a couple of novels at this point) and Peter started guest starting on One Life to Live.

You read that right.

Michael Easton went to the writers and said "Hey, you should write Peter in" and someone shrugged their shoulders and said "ok" and blind detective Peter Braust was born. Peter Brust was the former partner of Lt. McBain's father and when Michael Easton's character was at a complete loss for how to solve a crime, he would go visit Peter Braust who would say something like "you said you smelled hibiscus. Hibiscus doesn't bloom in September. It must have been a woman's perfume." and Lt. McBain would say "Of course! Hiding behind the curtains! thank you so much Peter Brust!" and go solve the crime.

In 2011 Peter invited me up to his house to watch the latest episode and it was some of the most fun I've had in my life. Peter has a wonderful, literary, family. His wife, Susan, started "Read to Me" which is a program to get parents to read books to and with their children, and his daughter Emma is a novelist. It's hard to think of a time I've been surrounded by so much joy and a properly functioning American family.

Some of the cast showed up and I heard lots of inside stories about life in a soap opera.

I posted these photos right after the party in 2011, but here they are again:



Clickenzee to Embiggen!

Peter, his son-in-law, Michael Fusco, daughter Emma, Peter's assistant, Este Lewis, actor Robert Woods who has played Bo Buchannan on OLTL, his wife, Loyita Chapel, who plays both Blaze and Dallas on OLTL, & Susan Straub who runs Read to Me.




Blind detective Peter Braust always shows up at the critical moment with just the right insight to crack the case. Though this time, it's the Lieutenant's cold feet in regards to his upcoming marriage to Natalie.


In the episode Bo (played by Robert) gets into a fight with his brother Clint (played by Jerry verDorn) at Natalie and Jessica's double wedding, Clint has a flash drive that has, I think, naughty photos of one of the brides, and someone else has switched one of their paternity tests (they're both pregnant) but can't remember which one. I'm not sure how much of this Bo knew about when he was doling out ten fingered justice. It was confusing but glorious. Peter delivered his lines with eloquence and there was a heady delight at the Straub residence as we watched and cheered. He's really such a lovely person, you'd never expect that he spends most days thinking about how to disembowel people in new and unique ways.


I do miss you Peter Straub. You're one in a million.





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Ever since it came out in 2018 I have coveted Micah Bloom's book Codex, published by the University of North Dakota's Digital Press. Codex is a response to the 2017 flood in Minot, North Dakota and asks the question, what if you love a thing far more than anybody thought humanly possible? After the flood, Bloom and a meticulous team of researchers went to Minot and combed through the flood debris documenting and collecting books. Ordinary books. Collected and treated with the care the NTSB would give to airplane wreckage. Indeed, the whole thing has the overtones of an infinitely funded quest to discover ... what? The resulting expenditure of resources on something that we'd all walk past gives us a fascinating and beautiful look at the intersection between humanity and nature. Floods are, intrinsically, i think, about the ownership of the liminal spaces that people expand into.

Bloom took many of the collected books and exhibited them in a gallery show that I'm sorely depressed that I missed. But I'm incredibly happy to have one of the 20 art books created from the gallery show, thanks to me whining about not having one loudly on the Internet and the press realizing that there was one unsold copy lying in a drawer.

This is literally one of the two or three most beautiful books I've ever seen.

But don't be sad!!! You can get a digital version of this astounding book, for free, from the University of North Dakota Digital Press here.

I leave you with some images of this absolutely astoundingly beautiful book.

The Haddelblad X1d is simultaneously one of the most beautiful and yet one of the most tragically terrible cameras I've ever used. 

It produces excellent images when it produces images but it's as slow as a 4x5 without the reliability.

The X1D is very easy on the eyes for an intrinsically ugly camera.

Being a mirrorless, you can put a whole lot of other lenses on it but with the Hasselblad having the shutters in the lenses, there are some tradeoffs — with a non Hasseblad X lens you're limited to using the electronic shutter, which takes 1/3 of a second to write the frame, so any movement in the camera during that time will show up in the final image. But the advantage of a built in leaf-shutter is that H native lenses will flash sync at any speed. So that's nice. 

The camera itself is ponderously slow to respond to requests from the user to actually do something, pressing the shutter is basically sending a third class parcel package to the camera asking for it to take a photo when it has a chance. Another powerful annoyance is how slowly the camera turns on either the ELF or the rear-screen. I'm used to the Panasonic X series — the GX7 and the GX9 respond instantly to a touch of the shutter button and display the live view. Not so with the Hasselblad, where four or five frantic half-pushes of the shutter and several long seconds are required to switch the camera from menu to live view. But, if you can live with that, the images are nice. There are two newer versions (X1Dii and the X2D) both of which use the same exact sensor. 

But when it does decide to take photos, they're very nice.