photographs by Oliver Maxwell Kupper
Autre Celebrates Its 8th Issue Featuring John Waters and A Special Collaboration With Old Pal at The Friend In Silverlake
Mel Frank's "When We Were Criminals" Documents a World of Guerrila Growers @ M+B Photo
If you have consumed marijuana anywhere in the developed world over the past thirty years, you can most likely trace the variety you are consuming back to the work of Mel Frank and a handful of his California colleagues. Mel Frank, quite literally, wrote the textbook on marijuana. His 1978 tome, Marijuana Growerโs Guide Deluxe, was the first serious manual on how to grow cannabis. Combining research with practical experience, the book broke the seal on the often-secretive world of growers.
Frank was unique amongst his contemporaries in his love for documenting the process of marijuana cultivation as much as the product it yielded. His photographs were used as a means to chronicle and promote cannabis botany, illustrating numerous books and articles over his forty-year career. The images also served as the artistโs personal record of guerrilla growers and breeders who collectively helped create the seminal varieties that have come to define todayโs marijuana. The photos are an intentional and descriptive record of what growing looked like at a particular timeโbefore cultural acceptance, giant indoor grows and legalization. While representing long-ago criminality, they also represent innocence and optimism; many of the photos have a giddiness about them, an awe, maybe an aspect of braggadocioโlook what we hid, see what we grew... When We Were Criminals is on view through June 9 at M+B Photo 1050 North Cahuenga Boulevard, Hollywood. photographs by Oliver Kupper