Cary Loren Polaroids 1973-1979 is a gigantic leap into pop culture and its seductive off-shoots in one book. Besides the beautiful and intriguing images, we also have an interview with Cary Loren and Cameron Jamie, which is an essential reading of both the works in the book and getting the drift into Cary’s thinking and approach to the world around him.
Loren has a strong presence in my life because some years ago, he asked me to write something about my father, the artist Wallace Berman, for an online publication called Blastitude. Doing that little assignment opened up my past as a subject matter for my future writings, which led to my memoir TOSH: Growing Up in Wallace Berman’s World (City Lights). I mention this to plug my book (HaHa) and to show the importance of Cary Loren’s work and life to many people. The word Detroit can bring many things to mind, such as the automobile business or Motown Records, but the first thing I think of when I hear that beautiful word is Loren because, in essence and practice, he is Mr. Detroit. Not only does he live and work in the area, but he and his wife run a first-rate book shop called The Book Beat. The band he was in, Destroy All Monsters, which in various lineups featured the visual artists Mike Kelley, Jim Shaw, and Niagara but also Stooges guitarist Ron Asheton, MC5’s Michael Davis, and, of course, Loren, among others. Perhaps more of an art collective attached to many mediums, they are/were the essence of creative life in Detroit.
While staying in Detroit with my wife, Lun*na Menoh while she was putting the finishing touches to her Les Sewing Sisters album with the production and assistance from the Detroit duo music group ADULT. we visited Cary at his bookstore, which is a very impressive bookshop with titles of and from many interests, but I was attracted to their regional section, which of course, is Detroit and its culture. Although the weather is too extreme for my taste to ever live there, but on the other hand, the architecture, its people, and of course, the music history, of both Destroy All Monsters in the backyard of Motown is a beautiful relationship. The whole world that represents Detroit seems filtered into the aesthetic and presence of Cary Loran.
Or, I should acknowledge that there are many levels of Detroit, and Cary conveys a certain landscape from the 1970s that is underground, like other scenes at the time, but each city or region had their unique approach, and Loren’s is personal, but using pop culture to convey a something bigger than anything approach. There are traces of Jack Smith, who Loren worked with in New York, but the images that are in this book are very much part of his DNA, and how he looks at the world, and choose what he wants, and that is what’s exciting about his art.
Loren and I are of the same age, and I share some of his obsessions from childhood such as publications Famous Monsters of Filmland, and various comic books from our childhood era, Ri¢hie Ri¢h, Little Dot, a girl who is obsessed with dots & spots, and sometimes a companion to little Richie, with images of classic movie horror, and eros of the exotic world, as well as from the cinema. It is Jospeh Cornell meets Jack Smith, with a touch of Warhol, and with a whiff of Kenneth Anger mythology, but blended in by the masterful cocktail maker that is Cary Loren. His Polaroids images are more like paintings than an actual photograph. Cary used Polaroid technology at the height of its power and fame in the 70s. In a manner, like my dad using the Verifax machine to do art in the early 1960s, Loren did the same with Polaroid technology of its time. I really recommend Cary Loren Polaroids because it’s an organic appreciation of what is surrounding him, and time, location, and the eros of pop culture are blended so well in this book. His work is masterful, as well as visually witty.
Cary and Colleen are good people. I met them 40-odd years ago when they first opened The Book Beat (and now I write reviews for them). From now on, I will address Cary as "Mr. Detroit." He will never forgive you. ; )