Digital Diaries

May 7, 2000 3:18 PM

Digital Diaries is a photo journal of sorts, detailing the sex life of the author, Natacha Merritt. I haven't seen the book or anything, but what struck me as a little odd was the interview they have with her on Salon. It seems like they purposefully tried to make her come off as completely ignorant with regard to photography and art in general.
posted by fil! (12 comments total)

Ok, so blogging for 4 months doesn't exactly make me a journalist or anything... but I've read a lot of interviews in my day, and that one sucked.

Um, no pun intended...
posted by baylink at 3:27 PM on May 7, 2000

Yes, i read it earlier and was dissappointed, even for salon this is bad. Wasn't it their headlining article?
posted by corpse at 3:43 PM on May 7, 2000

I think I've read two interviews on Salon. The other one was the Orson Scott Card interview in which the interviewer spent the whole article whining about how she couldn't suddenly convince Card to no longer be extremely right-wing intolerant about homosexuality.

I think Merritt's work thus far is sensetionalistic derivative crap (decent camera work, but the subject matter? giveth unto me a break. she's got potential if she finds something new to shoot. yeah, i know, everyone's a critic), but that interview was just ridiculous.

I'll be skipping Salon interviews in the future, I think.

posted by faisal at 3:49 PM on May 7, 2000

she didn't come off as very intelligent or talented in this nerve discussion, either. she's just hot, i think. [that nerve piece has some more photos from her book]
posted by palegirl at 4:27 PM on May 7, 2000

She was featured in the Observer's review section a month or so ago, and while the interview there was less lazy, it was no more impressive.

Shallow shallow shallow shallow. On all sides. Because all the review copy I've seen comes across as a kind of verbal masturbation in parallel with the real thing.

It's a little sad, I think, that someone who's so young, no matter what she does in the next [x] years, will have to deal with being "oh, the blow job girl". Which isn't necessarily
posted by holgate at 4:42 PM on May 7, 2000

a good thing.
posted by holgate at 4:42 PM on May 7, 2000

The title of her Web page is "Welcome to GoLive CyberStudio 3." What a strangely non-erotic title, yet mysteriously alluring, too.
posted by luke at 5:25 PM on May 7, 2000

cliche watch anyone?
posted by palegirl at 6:04 PM on May 7, 2000

<ROAR>
posted by baylink at 7:02 PM on May 7, 2000

I had the exact same thought when I saw that story. I was pretty irritated, in fact. The interviewer seems not to have even *tried* to find anything to say about the work or what it "means" (big air quotes!), only on sharing with us snippets of the interview that make both her and him look bad. And what the hell is up with that Dr Laura-esque "no, I asked WHY" interruption? Really, I'm not saying that if an interviewer has nothing nice to say, that he should say nothing at all, but this article told me nothing about her work, or new ground it covers in adult-themed artwork or confessional prose, or the place it occupies within either of those genres... there could have been an interesting story there, regardless of whether you think her work has any actual merit, but this was sure as hell not it.
posted by Sapphireblue at 7:31 PM on May 7, 2000

"...it's unprecedented for a woman to take self-portraits depicting herself as a cocksucker."

ok and people wonder why women are so skittish about giving oral sex, or at least talking about giving head.

really, did the interviewer *have* to make that so insulting?
posted by sugarfish at 8:06 PM on May 7, 2000

My complaint was this: I spent half an hour on my Tandy looking for "the good stuff," and it turns our you have to be a memory. Who cares if it's art or not when you have to pay?!
posted by chaz at 12:43 AM on May 8, 2000