Sex Machine Party :
Modern Times Bookstore,
San Francisco

There really is nothing as challenging as doing a presentation in front of the home team. Everybody knows you, they've heard your jokes a thousand times, they've been hearing about this Sex Machine nonsense for years now. You know its going to be a tough crowd, but you gotta go forward and spread the word. That is just what we did at Modern Times Bookstore last Thursday night.


We got tons of support for this show: Aidin Vaziri placed a goofy and wonderfull story in The San Francisco Chronicle titled "Sex Documentarian's Family Friendly Fav's" and S.F. Weekly fearlessly plugged the lecture with a totally phallic photo from the book.












And of course....we had the help of the fairy godmother of the project, San Francisco writer and educator Violet Blue. Violet has been the cheerleader of this project from the very beginning, always helping me spread the word and reach a new audience, and always doing her actions quietly and without my knowledge. It feels like whenever I discover a door has been opened, it always seems it is Violet who has quietly and selflessly opened the door.
7:30 came around and the people starting coming in...it was filling up fast. The food table with wine, cheese, beer and Mother's Circus Animal Cookies had to be moved out into the store to let the people squeeze in. Here is Jane Palecek of Mother Jones, and now Bart Nagle of the legendary Mondo 2000 magazine! Eddie from Geek Entertainment Television is here with camera and microphone in hand and the president of Blowfish is here and wants to do a podcast...wow, here is Allen Stein of Thethrillhammer.com from Seattle and Dan and Jan Siechert of MonkeyRocker...the inventors are here! 9th Circuit Court of Appeals Attorney Steve Rosenberg and artist Susan Rattenbury as well as Merril Holt of Oracle Software. A couple of cool girls come in and said they read about the lecture on TRIBE. A guy buys a book and explains that he is on vacation in SF, was passing by, and thought it looked interesting... Here is the brilliant essayist Jenn Shreve, East Bay Express writer Justin Berton, and Jake Huffman from Veritas Software! There is room for everyone at a Sex Machine lecture.

We begin the lecture and a striking guy in his late 50's sqeezes into the room. Dressed in black, grey hair cut short, camera around his shoulder. He asks an oddball question about model releases. Everyone turns to see this guy, laughing at the back of the room. It is legendary photographer BILL OWENS, author of SUBURBIA!

Bill has been a major influence on my work since the very beginning. I've seen him speak countless times before but always chickend out from introducing myself...so we've never met. When the book "Sex Machines" was being put together, we always felt it was a homage of sorts to Owen's Suburbia. As I've said in many interviews, there would be no "Sex Machines" without "Suburbia" paving the way. The audience is filled with photographers. They recognize Owens and instictively begin applauding him, his contribution, and the fact that he so joyously showed up at this event.

The lecture ends and Owens' heads into the restroom. He seems focused, driven, and has the camera around his neck. He exits immediately, turns his digital camera over to me, and shows me his 2 striking images of a filthy toilet seat he just shot. Both images are brilliant compositions: funny, anthropological, graphically bold with an art historical reference to Marcel Duchamp. Genius.



















The next morning I see this note on the photo-crit site Reciprocity Failure:
12/08/05

"Went to see Timothy Archibald's presentation of his Sex Machines book at Modern Times book-store in San Francisco, and it proved not unlike the book itself, full of amusing and humorous quips and anecdotes- from photographer and subjects alike. But unlike most photo presentations, there was not one single question on film choice, f-stops, format or composition. There's no question that content and subject matter is the primary draw here- ironic nevertheless since the photographs themselves are as aesthetically competent and relevant as any of the color art photography being done today. "

-Stan Banos on Reciprocity-Failure.Com