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From The Desk Of The Rentals’ Matt Sharp: “Voyeur” And “Guess Who”

mattsharplogobThe multimedia Songs About Time is an ongoing project from the Rentals, the revolving-door band founded 15 years ago by then Weezer bassist Matt Sharp. Songs About Time finds Sharp and Co. collaborating with a cast of about 50 filmmakers, designers, producers, editors and artists. They began this year-long experiment January 1 and have since made a new black-and-white film every week, not to mention documenting the process with a daily photo diary and recording three mini-albums. (All of this content can be found on the band’s website.) As if Sharp wasn’t busy enough, he is also guest editing magnetmagazine.com all week. Read his introduction.

Vogare-IMAGES2Sharp: This year, I’ve had to keep two identical Minolta X-700 cameras running at all times. The first camera is used for the daily mystery rolls, and the second camera is used to shoot a weekly test roll just to make sure that both of the cameras are functioning properly. At the end of each week, I switch them around so the second camera is used for the mystery rolls and the first camera is used for the test rolls. The result of all of this photographic insanity will be a photo book that Artists In Residence is going to make exclusively from all of the test-roll images. Here are two photo books that have started to inspire the way we might approach our photo book. The first is Voyeur (pictured), a collection of black-and-white erotic photographs. Not all the images are truly erotic; some of them are actually pretty funny. But, the design of this book allows you to discover something new almost every time you open it. The second is Guess Who by Peggy Sirota, which Jeff Anderson recently gave to me. There are some beautiful photographs in this book, but for me, it’s not really the content. What I love about Guess Who are the very simple things like the weight and the feel of the paper and all the rest of that geeky stuff life is made of.