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Awesome cheesecake photos from the weirdest, kitschiest ‘sex hotel’ in Colombia
05.19.2016
01:12 pm
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Here’s a fascinating collection of pictures from Kurt Hollander, a photographer originally from New York City whose current base is Mexico City.

Recently Hollander visited Cali, Colombia, in particular a remarkable “sex hotel” called the Hotel Kiss Me, each of whose 180 rooms is painted and decorated according to its own different theme by local artists. Hollander was given the run of the place for two weeks, during which he invited some female friends of his—they’re not prostitutes—to pose in the rooms as if they were seducing a lover.

To be clear, while prostitution is legal in Colombia, the main purpose of the Hotel Kiss Me is to serve as a venue for a sexual getaway for couples.

While the purpose of the Hotel Kiss Me is certainly interesting, it’s the vibrantly decorated rooms that are the real star. “Kitsch” might be too bland a term for the hilarious and lovely rooms on display in Hollander’s pictures—many of the rooms are based on representations from a certain country, and the artists were just as likely to stick in an image of Adolf Hitler saluting a Volkswagen Beetle as they were to put Saddam in the Iraq room next to an image of burning oilfields. (One of the rooms has an image of 9/11, which you can see at Vice.)

Hollander’s show about the Hotel Kiss Me is called “The Architecture of Sex” and can be seen at Proyectos Impala in Ciudad Juárez until May 25.

He’s an interesting fellow. After a nasty case of salmonella, which led to severe chronic ulcerative colitis, Hollander wrote a memoir called Several Ways to Die in Mexico City. He’s also published a book of photographs documenting the rough-and-tumble streets (really, they once were that!) of downtown Manhattan called Low Rent: A Decade of Prose and Photographs from The Portable Lower East Side.
 

 

 
More from the Hotel Kiss Me after the jump…

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Posted by Martin Schneider
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05.19.2016
01:12 pm
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Burly fireman stars in his own ‘sexy’ cheesecake calendar
04.29.2016
05:57 pm
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Any woman (or man, for that matter) who has ever walked into an auto garage and rolled their eyes at the ridiculous pinups on the wall featuring scantily clad woman draped on top of Ford Torinos or holding Valvoline motor oil, will probably appreciate these bawdy pics.

This fantastic photo shoot was done to help a nonprofit called Books To The Rescue Yavapai County, which seeks “to help first responders limit the emotional impact of adverse childhood experiences” by providing comfort packages with books and toys.

The nonprofit was founded by Jasmine Castigliano, who had the idea of enlisting her photographer husband Chad for an, erm, “provocative” photo shoot that, in addition to being hilarious, also does achieves something important by lampooning some outdated gender images.

All we know about the hirsute firefighter in the pics is that his name is Tim—although he now goes by the moniker “the whimsical woodsman.”

You can buy your “Whimsical Woodman” calendar here—a portion of the proceeds does go to Books To The Rescue Yavapai County.
 

 

 
More hilarious and sexxxy pics after the jump…...

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Posted by Martin Schneider
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04.29.2016
05:57 pm
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The weird world of cheesecake stock photography
06.12.2015
07:58 am
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This is the third and final installation of posts from the influential graphic artist Art Chantry’s forthcoming book Art Chantry Speaks: A Heretic’s History of 20th Century Graphic Design. The first is here, the second here. Chantry’s clear reverence for and deep knowledge of the history of his discipline, particularly in championing its seediest manifestations and its obsolete processes, informs a body of work which as much as anyone’s has been THE look of garage punk and grunge, and we’re grateful to Chantry and Feral House for letting us use his work in this form. —Ron Kretsch

We’re all familiar with stock photos. Nowadays, most professional photographers I know no longer take photos, but make stock images. These photos are sold through websites for download and reproduction. Designers grab these photos, sometimes actually paying for them, and then “re-work” them in Photoshop to create the desired image. Basically they take stock photos and make new photos out of them. Strange days.

Maybe not so strange. This system existed back in the earlier days of advertising and design as well. The images were often seconds, outtakes and highly adaptable images that could be used in any of a number of settings and advertising situations. The user would order it through the stock photo house (often out of a printed catalog). Then the stock house would send them either a slide or a print of whatever was needed for their use. The user would pay a “usage fee” depending on how the photo would be used. If it was to be used in a dummy or comp, the fee would be much smaller than if it were to be used in a brochure printed in the millions of copies and distributed worldwide. Very practical, and everybody made money. It would still cost much less than hiring a “live” photographer and working with them to obtain the custom photo image you might need.

In the postwar period—the glory years of “Mad Men”-style advertising—one of the most popular forms of stock photography was the “glamour” shot. This was an offshoot of model photography that would have a buxom, beautiful young woman posing in a variety of peculiar environments (and varying states of dress) that could be used for adverts or calendars or even be picked up by “men’s magazines” and used to entice America’s hormone-soaked males.
 

 
A lot of these glamour stock photo companies were little more than a single somewhat slippery fella with a studio, camera equipment and a lot of props. I think of this territory as classic “bachelor pad” photography—that weird fetishistic territory where the hot-shot handsome young man with a camera used the existing system to meet hot chicks and maybe get lucky. Then they would make some money on the side. It’s one small step above pornography. Indeed, back in the days of our fathers, this was viewed as “R-rated” pornography. Those old “morality code” systems disappeared in the late ‘60s and are almost forgotten.
 

 
Once in a while I’ll get lucky and find an old catalog of glamour photography stock photos. Some of the glamour photographers became quite famous, like Russ Meyer and Peter Gowland and even Bunny Yeager. Exactly what kind of advertising could this stuff be used for? Dunno. They all have terms and conditions of use on the cover and the rest of the catalog is only photos of buxom scantily clad babes in silly poses. I swear I’ve seen some of these images in old “men’s magazines” of the ‘50s and ‘60s with names like Cocktail and Duke.
 

 

 

 

 

 

 
Art Chantry is a graphic designer with more awards and accolades than he can shake a stick at, including a Golden Lionne from Cannes. Over his 40-year career, he worked on the dark side of the marketing world, concentrating on popular culture and broken clients.  during that time he managed to brand a cultural moment in time - grunge. His works hangs in the Smithsonian, MoMA, the Library of Congress, the Louvre, and the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. More recently, he’s been getting old and writing down his heretical notions about the work he immersed himself in. The results weren’t pretty. Art Chantry Speaks: A Heretic’s History of 20th Century Graphic Design is due out on July 14th.

Posted by Ron Kretsch
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06.12.2015
07:58 am
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