ANTHONY R. VIZZARI | ARCHTOGRAPHIST

all I ever wanted was to destroy myself. …but instead, I ended up destroying you. I was a battleship and you were a duck, a swan, a water bird of some kind. with your arms around my shoulders, I felt the weight of all my words drowning us both. and even while gasping for air, you held tighter. I was a battleship and you were silk to a cigarette. with the start of one small smoldering hole, the entire cloth was devoured thread by thread. ***For those who don't get it... this is not an autobiogrical work or post. This is indeed fiction, part of my ongoing series, "Polaroid Epitpahs". http://polaroidepitaphs.com

Highland Mary I fell off the wall when plaster gave way to the weight of one-thousand prayers hanging on a single nail. A certain half-cracked silence floated over Highland like soft piano keys tapping as the glass tore itself apart from the frame. New little symphonic shards projected themselves across the floor, crooked and stubborn. I fell off the wall when plaster gave way to the vibration of so many voices resonating on one thin wire. I fell off the wall when you forgot to push me straight. I fell of the wall despite your attempts to battle gravity. I fell off the wall and cut your foot.

Booths & Bodies: The life and work of Anthony Vizzari from Philip Bloom on Vimeo . A few weeks back my good old friend Sarah Estella came to visit our studios with camera "rock star" Philip Bloom . It was great to see Sarah again, as always.... but it was also a pleasure to meet Philip, who is a machine (in a good way) in his camera wrangling. As a still photographer myself, it was fun to watch him move about, pan, twist, swap lenses, etc. As a subject, I felt like I knew Phillip for years, but just met him that day. The result was a well shot documentary short. (I wish my voice was cooler and I looked more like George Clooney, but hey... you work with what you got!). Philip literally has THOUSANDS of followers. I was on the road hauling photobooths from North Carolina to Chicago (AKA The Junkin' Trail). So, when my email box started exploding from the road, I was caught a bit off guard. The cool thing is that I'm not alone... other people also like vintage came...

Spent a good chunk of time chatting with Dave at the Impossible Project. Coming soon, IP film to our studio in Chicago!

The Bather… Hot water turns cold so fast, you’d hardly know that I was headed down the drain. I always imagined that a tornado would be a poetic way to die. …rip my body into the wind with the most brutal force-vacuum, sucking my breasts flat and lungs full of internal gasping all with the thunder of one-thousand freight trains over the prairie. The tornado passed. Instead, I simply pruned slowly-elastic in a cast iron tub.

The Stutterer... I had something more to say but left it out… I hesitated to let my tongue push the letters out my mouth. Unable to transmit, the shovel heaped over a final sentence. (Thanks to Maureen Wurster, who found this Polaroid on Michigan Ave, Chicago, IL: 2010)

FDG-PET: Note the large tumor lesion with an SUV +/- 60. FDG-PET: Note cross hairs on the "potential" primary tumor in the pancreas. I am out of the hospital in Germany and the good news is that I will not have to return for 12 months… the bad news is that I need to have surgery soon. It turns out that the large potentially 90% benign lesion IS NOT BENIGN after all… This wouldn’t be so bad except that now, it appears as though I don’t have a pure NET, but some type of rare unidentified hybrid (both in the liver and primary). This was revealed by the FDG-PET scan. These suspect tumors have massive FDG uptake. (-a scan that is available in the US an none of my doctors thought to order…???) This “mixed-tumor” didn’t happen overnight, it has been like this from day one, but we only now have the information to deal with it. My disease is no worse than when I walked into the hospital, but the information we have changes the plan, and potentially the prognosis, greatly. Luckily, th...

Lillian R. I cut him out of the picture… or maybe, he cut my heart out first? then, my brother cut me out… my family cut me out… or maybe, it was I who cut them all out? maybe is the bitch of history and my children were little paper dolls of stubborn-anger… after a while, the sequence mattered little and the fact was that I was alone with my frozen meats, tiny samples, coupons, letters of spite, and an empty home with a refrigerator full of so much garbage. It doesn’t matter if it were a stroke, or heart attack, or both, because no one was there to ask. cicero was not silent when I died.

The Stringer What you see can’t hurt you…right? until the worm tight around the hook sneaks right into the lower fish-jaw. a big fish- eyes google, gaping-at-the-air-sideways when a last breath escapes… out of water out of air out of life flapless a mount or a meal the end is always the same, terrifyingly still. The American In Mexico the sky was always blue, but the dirt evaporated the moisture in my nose. a hooker a handgun a heroin fix a hollow heart I swallowed the worm, lost my way, and never made it home.

From the collection: square landscape Polaroid with torn corners. So many little trees like little fingers on a hill. Out there something sprouts, despite the snow, despite the view.

Polaroid: Taken out the window of my old green Saturn on I-55 South, Misouri, on route to New Orleans. 2002. I've had a monster headache that won't quit for the last 2 days. I've been trying to work through it. Wrapped up some shop tasks yesterday afternoon just in time to get everything together for a photobooth event. We didn't get home until 1:30am. So, basically an 18hr work day. Today (Sat.), had to do some web work, photobooth work, and just more general work. Somewhere in all that, I found time to eat and watch a movie. And, there's a longer story in there about how a photobooth rental company on the west coast stole some of my marketing images. I have "the lawyers" on that one... so, we'll see. We'll save that story for another day, when my blood pressure needs to be elevated. From what I've read, the Sandostatin shot I'm on can cause headaches? Or, I could be just stressed and overworked...hence, pain? I have a lot to write about...