Jay Myself

"Jay Myself" (2018 release; 76 min.) is a documentary about the life and works of Jay Maisel, noted photographer (in particular of all things New York), and reluctant real estate guru. We get to know Maisel through the lens of Stephen Wilkes, who comments that in 1979 he became an apprentice of sorts of Maisel, and had the great fortune of working under him and being mentored. All of this was taking place in "the Bank", a 6 story building in Manhattan's Bowery, and which Maisel had purchased in the mid-60s for next-to-nothing. Now 50 years later, Maisel is selling the Bank for tens of millions of dollars. But it also means he needs to clean up 50 years' worth of art, artifacts and memories... At this point we are 10 min. into the movie. Couple of comments: this is the feature length documentary debut of Stephen Wilkes, who was for all practical purposes given full access to that amazing building. Along the way we get an up-close assessment of Maisel's output as a photographer, which is nothing short of amazing. Maisel and Wilkes discuss all of this as if among friends (which they probably are). We also get a good sense of the changes that New York, and in particular lower Manhattan, have gone through during these decades. In that sense the movie is a but nostalgic, in the best possible way, as if Maisel took it upon himself to chronicle New York's changing fortunes. But in the end, this movie feels being almost as much about the Bank than it is about Maisel. Please note that this movie is quite short, as in literally less than an hour and 15 min. (if you exclude the credits). "Jay Myself" opened out of the blue this weekend at my local art-house theater here in Cincinnati. I figure this will not play very long, so I went to see it right away. The Sunday matinee screening where I saw this at was attended dismally (3 people including myself). If you like documentaries, or photography, or New York, I'd readily suggest you check this out, be it in the theater (not very likely), on VOD. or eventually on DVD/Blu-ray, and draw your own conclusion.

The photographer Jay Meisel had the rare fortune to own and live in a 6-story former bank building in New York City. The Bank is stuffed to the gills with slides, photographs, film, objects of every kind that struck Meisel's fancy over the years. This movie is all about what it means to see, how any object can be fascinating or any view can contain multiple photographs. For anyone interested in color, light, composition and humanity, this is a great film experience. The driving narrative is the dismantling of 50 years of collecting in what might be the last remaining artist-owned massive playground of living and work space in NYC, but on the way we learn about the man and his singular vision.