David Shankbone has returned to the promised land, by which of course I mean WP, not any other promised land that Shankbone may have visited. He uploaded 60 or so images today to Commons. Welcome back, David!

He is even dismissing the usual "by" just to have " 'famous-star' David Shankbone.jpg' as the file name, e.g. "Jeff Koons David Shankbone 2010 NYC.jpg". Someone really has to stop him.

Self promotion aside, despite the front row access his snapshots are still shit.

Like Donatella Versace is really going to thank him for his one of her doing an impersonation of Mick Jagger in drag.

http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Don...nkbone_2010.jpg

O sweet jesus. Narcissism and self promotion ahoy.

C'mon. You can't make a silk purse from a sow's ear.

You could stand in the right place for the lighting, use the proper aperture, and wait until the sow's ear has its eyes open, though.

On February 16, 2010, David Shankbone sent me an e-mail that included the following words:



So much for that!

Stop all the clocks, cut off the telephone,
Prevent the dog from barking with a juicy bone,
Silence the pianos and with muffled drum
Bring out the coffin, let the mourners come

Or not.

Heh. Reminding me again of how much W. H. Auden can sound like Wallace Stevens. Stevens must have been a big influence at some point.

Dunno who was the influence on Shankers. Maplethorpe, maybe.....

I'm hopeful that Shankbone's return will be a long-lived one, and that he will be a valuable part of Wikimedia New York.

Milton: Shankers is influenced by shankers. Only. The cringe factor is off the scale here. Maplethorpe had an astethic quality, he was not too far in photography from what Bacon was trying to achieve in painting. But the verbal and visual drivel here is just, wow. Ouch.

Actually, I think he needs to use a ring flash.

I'd just hate to think what David Shankbone considers to be a ring flash ... and we certainly don't need to encourage any more on the Pornopedia.

What is the addiction factor that is kicking in here? An All American fascination with Celebrity and the need to justify the proximity to it by uploading to the Wikipedia? Victimhood to the social encultation? A community that loves him and values him for his 'work'? Or a return to exploit opportunistically?

I'd actually advise him to actually focus on taking 'bad' photographs ... really bad pictures ... specialising in crappy, bad, amateur pictures, pushing the limit of craptitude and becoming famous for that. An artful parody.

Nobuyoshi Araki could kind of be his guide but I am sorry that, despite all the access, he just ain't a photographer yet and so should not try to be. However, I suppose in NYC he could turn it all into a kind of 'art' by dint of persistence, an extension of the art of the obsessed amateur, outsider photographer rather than bad paparazzi and trade up celebrity for celebrity.

David should start by attempting a race balance in the number of penis pictures ... go for it David. Hire an auditorium and advertise for 1,000 each of black, brown and yellow penises and upload them to the Wikipedia as a race protest. You'll make your name.


But morally and ethically to be exploiting a so called charity by slapping your own name on them is a bit weak and unclassy.

Hell yes. He wants to rape. He wants to be raped.

Poor boy, so misunderstood.

Imagine WR as Louis Armstrong and Shankbone as Barbra Streisand and this represents our sentiments: