In October 2023 I photographed people attending a "Day Of The Dead" event at the Hollywood Forever Cemetery. I focused on their painted faces and then solarized and enchanced the color to achieve a surreal portrait.

Dear Don,
CONGRATULATIONS! We are thrilled to extend an invitation to you to take part in Projecting L.A. 2024. Thank you so much for submitting your outstanding work. The jurors loved it. You are one of 16 photographers selected by the jury out of 167 submissions and one of 33 photographers in the show. Each photographer will have up to 20 photographs, which will result in an hour-long video presentation. Projecting L.A. co-producer Joshua Stern, compiles the music, selecting a different piece of music per photographer’s portfolio. This is going to be one magnificent show.

IMAGINE your photographs projected 80 feet wide and three stories tall! The event will take place in the same beautiful outdoor location in Chinatown as our first Projecting L.A. last year, with City Hall towering above. April 27th 2024

Hello Don,
It was a hands down YEA on your incredible image. Don, I have included a pdf PHOTO21 Art Donation Form if you’d be so kind to fill out. I also wanted to share this Master List that is ever evolving and have included you.
 
We can’t thank you enough and super proud to have your image at PHOTO21
 

The Tang Museum, Saratoga Springs New York recently collected two 20x24 prints for their photography collection. From my Artist Double Exposure series portraits of Peter Beard and Jack Shear.

Thought I would have some fun creating a collage for Cut Me Up Magazine.
Both Jason and I spend a night cutting images out out of magazines. Here is our work on their website on the bottom of the page. Check it out.

https://www.cutmeupmagazine.com/issue3allworks

Ithaka recorded a rap album in Portugal and was in L.A. finishing up the final mixing. These photos were taken for his CD package. The art he's holding are surf boards he turned into sculpture. The shots were taken in the streets of Hollywood. Check out Ithaka Darin Pappas a man of many trades.

I used Polaroid Type 55 Black and White 4x5 negative film for many of my photographs. I also used Polaroid ready load 4x5 transparency film. Polaroid asked me to donate prints to the Polaroid Collection.Then they did a little article on my photography in the monthly pro magazine. I asked for film in return to shoot more images. Here is a little article on Barbara Hitchcock who was the curator for the collection for many years. https://www.orlandosentinel.com/news/os-xpm-2000-07-16-0007150531-story.html

PORTRAITS OF ARTISTS PHOTOGRAPHS 1926 - 2008
Staley-Wise Gallery New York October 5 - Dec 1 2018

"What do artists look like and how are they recorded? The interaction between photographer and sitter has helped craft the public persona of their subject with these portraits."

I stopped by the gallery on Tuesday October 23rd to see the Portrait show.
I have known Taki Wise for 30 years doing work through Photo Impact for some of her photographers. I had just photographed Duane Michael's and she asked to see my portraits. After seeing the image of Ellsworth Kelly she wanted to include it in her current show. Great to be included with such notable photographers.

Dear Don Weinstein,

It's been an honor to show your photography as part the Fifth Annual Exposure Award. The work of this year’s project has been extraordinary, viewed by over five million photo enthusiasts from around the world. Additionally, your photograph was included in a digital display of images presented at the Exposure Award Reception at the Louvre.

Your photography was included in the Art Photography Collection
and was presented at a private reception at hosted at:

Musee du Louvre
75058 Paris - France
July 13th, 2015

Photography holds power. The act of taking a photo acts as a historical marker and a capture of time. Just as archaeologists offer hypotheses about ancient societies based on cave paintings, historians of the future will base their conjectures about us on the photography that is happening at this very moment, including yours.

As technology makes our world more interconnected, the act of creation has become a universal language and a vital conversation. Your photography, represented at the Fifth Annual Exposure Award reception is a thrilling contribution to that dialogue.

It's been an honor to have your work included. Thank you for sharing your photography with us and with the world.

Sincerely,
William Etundi Jr.
Founder of SeeMe

Don Weinstein may well be the prototype for what might be classified as a post-Warhol art movement. Andy did the best job of cementing pop culture icons at a moment in time like a bug in amber, forever frozen at the peak of it’s existence. But there is a conundrum that all human icons face, that defies time and entropy... everyone and everything dies and the process is not pretty.

It’s easy enough to classify Weinstein’s work as a simple catalog, documenting the necrosis of street art until one closely examines the extreme irony with which Weinstein approaches his subject. Growing up in the “Hollywood-adjacent” San Fernando Valley as the son of a celebrated photo-gear salesman, Don grew up with an innate understanding of the power of images, how they are made and how they affect the viewer.

His baptism into the nuts and bolts of icon-building started with his employment at the legendary Hollywood camera store Schaeffer’s, and continued in his own business, Photo Impact, where his day-to-day exposure to the flesh and blood reality of celebrity gave him a sense of pragmatic irony. Celebrity is an immortal visage, a demigod’s mask or persona, that covers up at it’s core, something very mortal.

The process of photographic image making creates a two-dimensional representation of a subject that has a meaning to the photographer at the instant when when the image was made and hopefully, has significance to the viewer when the photo is viewed. Show business masters of the celebrity deification work to craft their mortal clients into deities, and to distribute those images often as “wheat-paste” art in the form of construction-site posters.

In Hollywood, these promotional images are routinely bloom on walls and worksites that surround the studios and workshops of the “real” Hollywood. The glamourless and nondescript buildings where “dreams” are made.

And yet, the very form of paper and paste in which these images are delivered, ultimately leads to a slow and very public death by the elements. Weather errodes the icons and after a few weeks, new bright and shiney images appear on top of, or covering the old ones.

Sometimes the images are “buried alive”, still breathing, but trapped underneath another, with the only chance of renaissance being the the force of nature. It is often at that moment when the greatest ironies become apparent to Weinstein and he makes the commitment to the image. To sanctify and canonize a moment in time where the forces of nature and pop culture collide to expose a commentary about the essence of our fragile existence. To expose and rip away the visage and honor the only true constants in our existence, time and entropy.

By using the most popular elements of the cultural street, Weinstein's work usurps the intended messages and turns them into a reflection, a mirror in which the viewer not only considers the subject, but themselves.

The subjects themselves, the posters, stickers and tags are in captured mid-performance in a show that moves so slowly as to be imperceptible except to those that have shifted their time-space perception of the world.

It might be easy to discount Weinstein’s canon as a mere catalogue or curation but for the sense, and sensitivity for the balance between time, culture and the human experience. Why do we like the things that we like? Why does that change over time? How does Andy Warhol continue to be Andy Warhol when Andy Warhol is dust?

More from Don Weinstein http://instagram.com/donweinsteinphoto

by Peter Duke
November 6, 2013
Los Angeles, California

They used one of my poster images for a feature story on my photo lab.

My poster work was included in a Japanese art magazine featuring several art photographers including Laurie Simmons, Joel Peter Witkin and Cindy Sherman.

Email message from Bill Jones "Don: In 1991, you donated a photograph, "Elise-Oliver" (1988, 14x20, nude couple), to the Focus on AIDS III auction benefiting AIDS Project LA, and I bought the piece at that time. I am now donating it back to APLA for their upcoming Art Project LA auction."

An auction of classic works of art, such as a special piece by the late Keith Haring, was held June 25 – 27, 2010 at Bonhams & Butterfields in Hollywood, to benefit AIDS Project Los Angeles. Other works by other world-class artists are also up for auction, including Basquiat, Hockney, Longo, Picasso, Ruscha, and Warhol, plus emerging artists – and a never-before-seen, limited edition Richard Mille watch valued at $90,000.

Just got back from New York. I went to Lincoln Center for the International Lucie Photography Awards for which I won two awards. For the Culture category was a shot of four Monks walking through Angor Wak Temple, Cambodia, at 5 am in the morning. In the portrait series a selection of artists I photographed using double exposures.

Please join me in attending the openning reception for Show & Tell "the art of language" on Thursday April 30, 6-9 p.m. at the Bell Family Gallery in the Jewish Federation Building 6505 Wilshire Blvd Los Angeles. RSVP required 323 761-8141 or zoe@zimmermuseum.org. For info on the artists participating in the show check out the web site: zimmershowandtell.org. I have donated a special 30" x 30" framed print of my poster image of Marilyn Monroe titled "Lost Hollywood.

I had a good time in New York but froze my butt off. It stayed in the high 20's and low 30's the whole week. That didn't stop me from running around the city. I was able to do 4 photo shoots while I was in New York.
First I photographed Ellsworth Kelly in his studio in up state New York. I stayed at his and my friend Jack Shear's house. We had a great time talking about art and watching old movies. I took the Hudson train back into the city. I then took a portrait of Carl Fischer who was having a show of his iconic images from the 60's. His most famous image is from the cover of Esquire Magazine of Muhammad Ali with arrows in him. Then on to Editta Sherman the 97 year old photographer who I heard on NPR talking about being evicted from her Carniege Hall studio. I emailed her and she agreed to see me. While photographing her I got a call from Norman Jean Roy who was waiting for me at his show in Chelsea. Got the shot of Editta and rushed to the subway to see Norman. Norman shoots the top stars for Vanity Fair so it was fun to get him on the other side of the camera.
After returning to L.A. I browsed through the digital photos I took in the streets through out the week( with my new Canon G10 camera). Strangely they were devoid of people. Hard to get in a city so full of people. Next trip I will only take pictures of people!

I recently donated a 30" X 30" special print from my series of torn posters to raise money for the Zimmer Musuem. The image "Lost Hollywood" depects a worn torn Marilyn Monroe poster I found in the streets of Hollywood. It sold for $4000.00. I'm always glad to help a worthy cause.

Check out the L.A. Nude article in the current September/October issue of Picture Magazine.

Check out the show I curated at A&I Gallery in Hollywood. 41 photographers all exhibiting the nude image.The reception was June 7th and about 1200 people attended. If your in the Los Angeles area please come see the show and pick up a book The L.A. Nude show is up until the end of July. For more info go to aandi.com.

On Friday April 25th I photographed artist Ed Moses
at the Frank Lloyd Gallery in Bergamont Station, Santa Monica.
We had a very creative time doing long and double exposures.
The results will be posted soon.