Les Krims, Stack o’Wheats Murder #9, Celestial Chocolate Syrup Simulated Blood Puddle (From: The Incredible Case of the Stack o’Wheats Murders), Buffalo, New York, 1970. Printed by Les Krims, in a basement near the boiler room, in Buffalo, NY —a failed border town where the stank of government cheese meets the Ecoli scented Lake Erie breeze.
The Incredible Case of the Stack o’ Wheat Murders photographs came 10 prints in a box set, including Hershey’s syrup and enough flour for the stack. It was like Barbie meets Easy Bake Oven!
The first time I saw the series I thought, “That is tough!”
The particular image here is just a knockout! It’s kind of odd that it’s the solar system, but you’re looking down at it. The scene is hot! Sexy, hot, cool, a little perverted, wow, bad dream, good dream, wet dream. Shock, twisted, apolitical, fashion, nightmare, twilight, the fact that it makes some people mad. It’s hot, and it’s cool. I would do her. She’s hot! You may not want your mother to see it but she would find it under your mattress and still just leave it. There is of course the style and aesthetic like painting or film. The Document. It’s like a scene from Antonioni’s Blow-Up. It’s just too cool.
Tough.
I really wasn’t that interested in whether it was fictitious or real. (I did daydream from time to time of what it would have been like…) As years have gone by, its charge and its histories still have no real interest to me.
Skip Arnold, Artist
William Mortensen, Kitty Buchanan, N.D.
William Mortensen took this photograph of Kitty when she was about 21. The image fits Mortensen’s description as a Romantic–this could almost be a Gabriel Rossetti painting. Mouth slightly open, head tilted up, she is looking–where? Heavenward? Kitty was extraordinarily kind. Throughout her life, she gave everything away. After she died, I realized that, for her safety, my sister should have been a nun. Here, she seems both pure and sensual. Slender, with naturally curly hair that fell to her waist, she never knew how beautiful she really was.
Aftershe died in 2000, I found the prints the photographer had given her from the modeling session. It is said that Ansel Adams hated Mortensen’s technique so much he tried to discourage any serious consideration of his work. I was glad to learn of Mortensen’s revival and wonder if Kitty’s portraits have ever been published.
Nancy Buchanan, Artist