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Dmitry Samarov on Muck Rack

Dmitry Samarov

Chicago
As seen in: Bandcamp Daily, Chicago Tribune, Hyperallergic, Crain's Chicago Business, Chicago Reader, Frieze, The Rumpus, Aquarium Drunkard, Belt Magazine, South Side Weekly and
Covers:  art, movies, theater, books, culture.
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Why I quit social media cold turkey in 2015

Why I quit social media cold turkey in 2015

Chicago Reader — There was an ad that ran during the 90s that really creeped me out. It was from AT&T or some other remnant of the Bell Telephone monopoly, and it proclaimed that WE'RE ALL CONNECTED. I've rarely felt connected to individual people, much less all people, so the mental image the ad produced—millions of cables and signals tethering and binding us to each other—was alarming. I paid little mind to the Internet. I was a cabdriver and painter who was suspicious of photography, so what good could anything on a computer screen do for me?
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Inside Christian TeBordo's Uncanny Fictions

Inside Christian TeBordo's Uncanny Fictions

vol1brooklyn.com — I met Christian TeBordo years ago at the Rainbo Club. He’s a regular. His spot is by the door, facing west. There’s a calm, self-contained quality to the way he carries himself. There’s no smartphone, notebook, or any other accessory on the bartop in front of him; just his pint of beer on the bar and a thoughtful expression on his face. He doesn’t look bored or lonely or sad like so many solitary drinkers do. The visit to the bar is clearly part of a routine. I find out later it’s the mid-point stop on his return from work between the Blue Line and home. For years we waved familiarly but rarely talked. I’m not in the habit of intruding on others’ space without a good reason. I knew TeBordo was a writer of some kind and that he was a professor at Roosevelt University, but not much more than that.
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Catching Up With Peter Prescott : Aquarium Drunkard

Catching Up With Peter Prescott : Aquarium Drunkard

Aquarium Drunkard — I met Peter Prescott in the late 80s, while working at the Coolidge Corner Theatre in Brookline, Massachusetts. My in was that the father of Prescott’s guitarist in his great 80s band, Volcano Suns, ran that movie theater. Movies would remain a touchstone of my talks with Prescott over the years. He once told me that Martin Scorsese’s New York, New York was the best movie ever made about the musician’s life. I tracked down that film soon after, just to see what he was talking about. I’ve made a point of visiting Prescott on trips back to Boston over the years. He’s been one of my few constants in that town. The music he’s made— and continues to make—is as important to me as an artistic influence as any work book or painting. These sounds have been with me most of my life.
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Roseland's transformation captured in 1970 student film

Roseland's transformation captured in 1970 student film

Chicago Reader — There's fastback Mustangs, there's tight pants, there's Afros, there's ancient Dutch farmers walking along with palsy . . . it's the human comedy," says Paul Petraitis. He's describing the 45 minutes of film he and John McNaughton shot in 1970 in their south-side neighborhood of Roseland and have recently started digitizing. "Fifty years in production and we just started last Thursday," their editor, Bob Brandel, jokes. These 45 minutes will be the centerpiece of a documentary the three old friends hope will explore Chicago's history and culture and the way race and economics have affected the city.
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Brian Wells has quietly spent decades documenting the south side in oil paintings

Brian Wells has quietly spent decades documenting the south side in oil paintings

Chicago Reader — I sat next to Brian Wells at the Rainbo Club for many years before I knew he was a painter. Wells is quiet and unassuming. When he talks, it's deliberate: he pauses to think before he speaks. We often sat together and barely exchanged a word.
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The Vivian Mire

The Vivian Mire

vol1brooklyn.com — Vivian Maier died 5 years ago. Her obituary was likely written by the grown Gensberg brothers, who she used to nanny. They provided her with a place to live the last years of her life and cared for her as she cared for them in their youth. They also cared for the truckfuls of things that she accumulated and never let go of throughout her 83 years on this earth. Newspapers, clothes, and collections of seemingly-random bric-a-brac filled multiple storage lockers. When payment on a couple of those lockers lapsed in 2007 the contents were put up for auction. Maier would be dead less than 2 years later but that was when the Vivian Maier legend began.
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The Vivian Mire (Revisited)

The Vivian Mire (Revisited)

vol1brooklyn.com — I never met Vivian Maier and doubt whether we'd have gotten along if I had. Taciturn, solitary people obsessed with their own struggles don't often make friends. Yet we walked the same streets, went the same places.
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A Novelist's Beautiful, Unusual Tribute to Her Parents, Liv Ullmann and Ingmar Bergman

A Novelist's Beautiful, Unusual Tribute to Her Parents, Liv Ullmann and Ingmar Bergman

Hyperallergic — Is it necessary to know who Linn Ullmann’s parents are to enjoy her book? Is writing about a childhood with famous parents any more compelling than writing about a more common childhood? By presenting her book as a novel rather than an autobiography and leaving her mother (Liv Ullmann) and father (Ingmar Bergman) unnamed, Unquiet avoids banking on celebrity gossip to hook readers as Ullman raises these questions. Her approach pays tribute to her parents while not allowing their acclaim to overshadow her experiences. It is a spare, beautiful portrait of an unusual childhood with unique people.
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Chris Ware talks about higher education, creating art as a Chicagoan, and making peace with self-...

Chris Ware talks about higher education, creating art as a Chicagoan, and making peace with self-...

Chicago Reader — Chris Ware's Monograph (Rizzoli) is part autobiography, part art manifesto, part greatest hits, all contained in a 13 x 18-inch hardcover. Throughout his 30 years of writing and drawing comics, Ware has always pushed the medium forward through his inventive layout and compositional schemes, his questioning of the relationship between word and image, and his deep examination of how memory and imagination shape the way we tell our stories. Monograph touches on many of his career highlights with Ware himself as our often caustic, self-deprecating, but ever-insightful guide. Ware generously took the time to answer a few questions about his life and work over e-mail.
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"Almost There" Gets There - Belt Magazine

"Almost There" Gets There - Belt Magazine

beltmag.com — Documentaries about artists can go wrong in a million different ways. Take John Maloof’s recent Finding Vivian Maier, which is more a film about Maloof’s transformation from a ragpicker into the self-appointed keeper of a dead photographer’s legacy rather than a document of said photographer’s work. Or Exit Through the Gift Shop, a barely-veiled hagiography/infomercial for Banksy and his/her genius. That’s not to say that these and other recent films concerned with artists’ lives don’t have their merits and charms. Only that, increasingly, documentaries seem to be more and more openly self-referential. Perhaps this has always been so, but the recent trend seems to be to dispense with any posture of objectivity or critical distance.
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Best Working Breakfast: Eppel's Restaurant

Best Working Breakfast: Eppel's Restaurant

South Side Weekly — The last time I came in, the waitress let me look over the menu but knew my order without prompting. Eppel’s Combination #1 Omelet with grits and holly toast. Cheese on the omelet. Coffee and two glasses of water. I hadn’t been in in over a year and she wasn’t my regular waitress but she knew anyway.
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Don't celebrate the Russian Revolution

Don't celebrate the Russian Revolution

Chicago Reader — One hundred years after the 1917 Soviet revolution in Russia, two baffling museum exhibitions attempt to recast one of the bloodiest regimes in human history in a positive light. "Revolution Every Day" at the Smart Museum and "Revolutsiia! Demonstratsiia! Soviet Art Put to the Test" at the Art Institute take different approaches to their subject, but neither pays much more than lip service to the millions of victims of the historical period these shows celebrate.
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