Brian Beker

@brianbeker.bsky.social

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Old school street photography. All photos ©me unless repost or noted. Film in permanent collection MoMA/NY. Signal: Dispatch.02 brianbeker.com

The album cover of Thelonius Monk’s album Underground, on which he is playing an upright piano with a submachine gun slung over his shoulder and a Nazi SS officer bound to a chair in the background.
A black and white photograph of a black and white dog happily running at full tilt through high grass.
A front page photo of a murderous Saudi jackal assuming a position of dominance over a weak and stupid looking befuddled old criminal in heavy orange pancake makeup who appears to have shat his diaper judging from the way the Saudi master tries not to recoil in disgust as he palms what must be a fifty to the stinking old painted whore, trying desperately to keep his fingers from touching his rotting carcass.
A color photograph of a huge meteor crater in Arizona seen from the cockpit of a single engine Cessna 185, the wing of which is at the top of the frame.
A photo of a round, greyish nest constructed by a vicious gang of aerial murderers under a lawn mower.
A photograph that looks like an engraving of a stately old home in Eufala, Alabama.
A color landscape photograph made soft and hazy by a mild infestation on the emulsion
A couple of cheap Indian movie posters plastered to a wall in India. On the right are three identical frames of a man pointing a gun at the camera. On the left is one titled “DEAR” TARZAN, witih the “dear in quotes, showing a tall blonde woman in hot pants being grabbed from behind by a short man wearing nothing but a loincloth.
A color photograph with blotches of green mold, of the Sphinx and the Great Pyramid of Giza.
A contrasty black and white photograph of a trail in the Vermont woods.
A black and white photograph of a young Burmese soldier sitting on the ground with the muzzle of a rifle leaning on his shoulder. His head is turned to look over his shoulder. In 1988, the Burmese government massacred more than 14,000 people who were protesting their totalitarian rule. Thousands of students like this one fled the cities to join rebel forces in the jungle to join the fight against the dictatorship. There they received training and heroically entered the tough battles ahead. They were too outgunned to succeed and yet they fought valiantly., true antifa in action.
A close-up black and white photograph of the head of a civet. Her ears have long ago been chewed off from fights in the jungle.
A picture of a road with a bend in it under a cloudy sky
A black and white photograph of seven women in black short shorts, white halter tops, posing on the curb in front of a house and looking towards it for some unknown reason.
A screenshot of an article on the web site of the New York Times about the release of the book The Fire Agent by David Baerwald. The review is titled His Grandfather Was a Spy. Obviously, He Wrote a Novel About It. there are two photographs, one of a Japanese military officer from around 1917 and another of the author, David Baerwald.
A black and white photograph of a section of outdoor wall somewhere, covered with many shreds of what’s left of posters that have been torn down, turning that bit of wall look like an abstract artwork. The only remaining recognizable image is the profile of the older Johnny Cash, his head resting on one palm and a smile on his face, near the upper right corner.
A black and white close-up portrait of a Tibetan man. His eyes are closed in meditation and his face is deeply lined by a lifetime spent in meditation. On his turban-like head covering is pinned a portrait of H.H. Dalai Lama.
A black and white photograph of a classic British-style motorbike. It’s painted black. In the background are terraced rice paddies and houses perched in the hillsides
A black and white photograph of a turbanned, barefoot man on a spread blanket in a Kathmandu street. A ring of onlookers watches and listens as he extols the curative powers of the various things he has in many open tins
A black and white photograph taken in dawn light. Two men wrapped in shawls and wearing lungyis, carrying wooden staffs. One faces the camera, the one behind him is in profile. In the left lower corner of the frame a little calf grazes on scant grass.
A black and white photograph. Two barefoot men with long shank hammers sit on piles of large rocks — the big rocks they are breaking by hand on the right into smaller ones on the right. A hard, miserable way to earn enough to eat.
A black and white photo of a young Tibetan mother in traditional dress and a baby slung to her back by a shawl. THey’re at a street produce market. The woman smiles as she talks to someone out of the frame and she has the most beautiful smile and vibe.
A close-up black and white photograph of a little boy wearing a few layers of sweaters and a thick, knitted hood, looking into the camera and holding a deck of cards
A black and white photograph taken underneath a house typical of an Akha family in Burma. In the background, three women in the traditional black dresses and silver-decorated headdresses of the Akha. In the foreground a little girl looks into the lens while she fans the flames under a bunch of firewood.
Standing in an archway that has a big bell suspended, a bearded sadhu in a white robe and turban waits with his hand on the bell’s clapper to ring it during a Hindu ceremony
Two little boy monks at a Buddhist monastery in Diskit, Ladakh. The one in the foreground is feeling his newly shaved head with both hands and with a displeased expression.
A group of elderly ladies, four seated outside a traditional Nepali house in Kathmandu, one standing with a basket of laundry, enjoy their usual morning get-together with a couple of their granddaughters
Some horn players sit on a stoop in Kathmandu while a little boy looks on
Five Tibetan Buddhist monks work at tables. Three of them have their hands in shallow pans where they mold candles while a young boy finishes the conical tapers with a brush and the youngest of them sits at the table smiling at the camera
A cityscape of religious monuments at the Swayambu temple complex in Kathmandu surrounds a little girl whose flowered dress is billowing the wind as she walks
A Golden retriever seen from behind is surrounded by a million drops of water as she shakes off during a dip in the beautiful San Pedro River in south Arizona
A Golden retriever is lying on the ground in front of a locked chain link gate to a tennis court on which there are lots and lots of tennis balls
A smiling pit bull is seated beside a painting on a the side of a dumpster of some kind of vicious monster who resembles Sammy a little, even though Sammy was a super sweet boy.
On a rocky outcrop four seals lounge around in the sun.
Standing in shallow tropical coastal waters a woman with a mask and snorkel holds a wet Dalmatian
A view of some low, brown rock Himalayan mountains at around 15,000 feet in Ladakh. In the lower left corned is a little bit of road with some trucks on it. In the distance are some low snow-covered peaks, which, at around 20,000 feet, are little more than foothills compared to the big mountains nearby.
In a crowd of pedestrians jamming a narrow Kathmandu street, a little baby who is being carried by her mom looks wide-eyed at a man who is picking his nose.
A black and white double exposure photograph of lots of pigeons doing nothing but hanging out together.
A black and white photograph of a beach in which the bottom half of the frame is the sand with some people sitting and walking on it and the top part of the frame is the sky with a few wispy clouds.
A black and white photograph of three seated Buddhist monks in their robes in a cave, all laughing.
A black and white portrait of two little barefoot boys leaning against a wall and looking into the camera
A black and white photograph of a handsome white dog sitting on the brick steps at a Buddhist temple, as though watching over the chorten above the dog at the top of the steps.
A black and white nighttime photograph of a couple in front of a hot dog stand in Los Angeles, standing behind their black Camaro. The woman poses with an arm high in the air and a big smile while her boyfriend dines out of a paper bak on a newspaper machine.
A black and white photograph of a Douglas DC-3 aircraft. It sports polished aluminum, has two engines — the propellers are towards the bottom of the frame, and the nose of the elegant 1930s design points skyward.
Seven drying black and white photographs hang by clothespins from a string tied to two chair backs
A black and white photograph of a man with shaggy hair, a big moustache and a rather large belly reclining on a sofa. This photograph was taken a few years before The Big Lebowski, while his friends the Coen brothers started working on the film.
A black and white photograph of a man reclining on a sofa. His name is Jeff “The Dude” Dowd and he was the inspiration for Lebowski.
A black and white photograph of a saguaro cactus with arms raised as if excited to see someone.
A black and white photograph. In the foreground, light-colored dust and rocks, in the middle ground, a stark and jagged dark hill at the top of which is perched the remains of an ancient Buddhist monastery. Chortens marking the graves of rinpoches dot the area randomly. In the background are some Himalayan mountains, the highest of which is K2, its peak entering the cumulus clouds.
A black and white photograph of a big, shaggy, dignified Tibetan mastiff who lies in the dirt beside a lake and mountains seen in the background.
A black and white photograph of a motorcycle parked next to a painted concrete sign that reads. “World’s highest motorable road, Altitude 18380 Ft.” This road is in Ladakh, leading into the southern Tibetan Plateau; it’s mud and ice and on the side of the road it’s snowy.
A black and white photograph of a handsome, young white Labrador who is lying on a platform in the back of a Land Cruiser and has an arm slung over the seat back as he drives through Nepali countryside.
A black and white photograph in which we see a young, lithe monk, from behind, in his robes, standing on the marble portico of an ornate Buddhist monastery building
A black and white photograph of a little girl of about five in a white dress, dancing alone with a smile in a grassy yard in front of some house in Belize
A photograph of a little dog calmly standing on a branch high up in a tree
A hat has crazy squiggly limes of light on it.