Toronto Sun, 19 November 1995

Strange Ritual

By HEATHER MALLICK

That's Pretty Strange Only The Very Peculiar David Byrne
Could Have Found A Philosophy In His Holiday Snaps

STRANGE RITUAL
By David Byrne
Chronicle/Raincoast, $35

David Byrne, American filmmaker, photographer, writer and
founder of the band Talking Heads, has always been a piece
of strange. With his unblinking gaze, his tinny voice, his
intellectualism and his penchant for oddity, he was the
reason people walked around in the '80s with mad staring
eyes, tieless, with the collars buttoned up on their shirts.
It was informal, but somehow formal. It was eccentric and
very David Byrne, and at that time there was nothing more
fashionable than to look like Byrne and be a talking head.

Byrne has just produced a coffee table book, a collection
of pictures he has taken on his world travels of things he
finds bizarre and incongruous and interesting. Many of them
are not readily identifiable, and few are attractive. They
include: crusty debris on a Dublin beach; a wall of human
bones in Spain; a coral snake emerging from the fly of a
man's Madras pants as he reclines on Astroturf in India; a
Los Angeles shop window display of aluminum foil and
mothballs; a freshly painted house near Plano, Texas; a
collection of photos of fluorescent light fixtures in
American motel rooms.

Lest this sound as though it errs on the side of National
Geographic (and aren't those Hopi a vibrant people?), it
should be emphasized that these images are all of objects
or behaviors or evidences of belief that would be considered
run of the mill in their home countries. "I seem to look for
the numinous in the banal, in the mundane," says Byrne. "And
I often find it too. There is a crazy beauty in these places
that I am compelled to document."

For instance. A handbill posted on a New York City street
reads, "I am a taxi driver trying to locate one of my
passengers who lives in this neighborhood. A Swedish lady,
23-28 years old, about 5'8" tall with long blond hair. She
is married to an Egyptian man. Please call (718) 457-6127.
Very important."

Is the cab driver a humble madman? A stalker? A Good
Samaritan? Who's the Swede? Did she leave a package in his
taxi? Did it contain barbiturates? A child in swaddling
clothes? How does he know her husband is Egyptian? Is this
found art or lunacy?

Byrne photographs the Mormon vision of heaven at a display
in Salt Lake City. Heaven, to a Mormon, is not a bank of
clouds, not a green bower. Heaven is "The Celestial Room,"
a parlor designed in a palatial style with French Empire
furniture, chandeliers, gilt columns, inlaid tables, and
acres of gold velvet and cream paint. If that's heaven,
one hesitates to think what the Mormon hell is.

All of Byrne's photographs are like this, just as weird as
weird can be. Lest you think he's racist, Byrne has been
the first to recognize strangeness in American whites, in
his semi-documentary film about Texans, True Stories. After
all, weirdness is not exotic, it is homegrown.

Crucially, not all Byrne's little scenarios are peculiar
at first glance. Had he not isolated them with his camera,
one might well have walked past them without a second
thought.

Byrne obviously felt Something Strange call out to him.
"Strange = Good," Byrne says. "It's a physical sensation, a
feeling in one's stomach that connects to pleasure centres
in the brain." He refused to photograph a woman in a red
dress throwing herself off a building in Mexico City,
instead choosing to photograph more of his favorite
fluorescent light fixtures further down the street. He
includes a moral element in his photography.

Let's not get pompous here. Obviously, you either like
this sort of art or you don't.

But Canadians have many inexplicable rituals too - maple
sugaring, sugar waxing, saying, "And nice to meet you too"
instead of "Die now" when we're introduced to a separatist,
attending Sunset Boulevard and saying, "Wasn't that something"
when it ends, going around in winter hitting our trees with
broom handles. But a coffee table book those rituals will never
make, unless David Byrne takes the time to isolate them and
commemorate their strangeness.