"Gouaches of Russian figurines and speed skiers’ aerodynamic helmets are interspersed with a twenty year selection of photographs showcasing, amongst other things, London’s Hampstead Heath, a recycling facility in Chicago, a boat crushed by a tree in Detroit, a capsized shrimper in North Carolina, an upside-down umbrella in a bicycle garage in Beijing, and the Cooper Tank facility in Brooklyn. Peppered in between and throughout, by way of a Red Hook to Budapest postal back and forth, are Kim Cespedes and Doug Schneider re-photographed out of ancient issues of Skateboarder, halftoned obituary head shots, a SPIT flyer inspired by COST and REVS that appeared two decades ago on the walls of Soho, a Los Angeles Times clipping headlined “With nothing left undone, a double suicide” telling the tale of a tidy joint self-destruction in Lakewood, Colorado, and an insightfully reproachful yet supportive letter Frank Sinatra wrote George Michael a while back, with advice like “And no more talk of the ‘tragedy of fame.’ The tragedy of fame is when no one shows up and you’re singing to the cleaning lady in some empty joint that hasn’t seen a paying customer since Saint Swithin’s Day.” Geographically, temporally, and pictorially promiscuous, The Lake of Death is a stew, a blend of old and new, with a guest appearance by Duane Peters doing the original Indy Air out of the original Combi Pool, and a report on the mysterious and deadly 1986 Lake Nyos disaster in Cameroon that gives the compilation its title."

http://www.tipitin.com/shop/the-lake-of-death-by-jocko-weyland

- JK 5.2.17