Cure fans.
 
The first time I saw someone dressed-up to like one of their cultural idols it was a young lad, no more than fifteen, wearing white denim, white shirt, red braces, a bowler hat, with a natty black umbrella parading with a swagger and a menace outside the ABC Cinema, Lothian Road, in Edinburgh, where they were screening A Clockwork Orange. He was obviously a fan of Alex, or maybe one of his droogs. Within a few months of this, and on the same stretch of road, came a gaggle of female Bay City Rollers fans stomping in their six-inch platforms decked out in white half-mast bags with tartan trim and white short-sleeved shirts with similar plaid detail, holding scarves above their heads while singing “Shang-A-Lang.” It was almost religious. Young girls out evangelizing the heathens about their mighty gods.

Then came the long-haired trench-coated prog rockers, the punks, and button-downed mods and new wave rockers. If you stood long enough on any high street you would see the fashions come-and-go just like Rod Taylor did in The Time Machine when he watched the window display of a shop opposite his laboratory change year-by-year as he hurtled into the distant future. According to ye old fictional textbook Pop Psychology for Beginners, dressing-up like your pop idols is about expressing your individuality and a way for youngsters to find like-minded people to share their interests and experiences or a favorite band/singer/pop group/artist/dictator.

Between 2004 and 2011, photographer James Mollison documented many of the different pop music subcultures and their fans. He traveled across Europe and the U.S.A. with a mobile photographic studio which he parked outside various music venues and then invited an assortment of fans to come and have their picture taken. When he had enough, he put all these different portraits into one composite picture. He called the finished series of photographs The Disciples. These pictures capture fascinating moments of pop culture history and something of how our search for individuality inevitably leads to conformity. See more of James Molison’s work here.
 

Fans of Bjork.
 

Motörhead fans.
 

Missy Elliot fans.
 
More fab pix of the usual fan suspects, after the jump…
 

 
Slava Semeniuta is a Russian artist and photographer based in Sochi who works under the name Local Preacher. He says he has a “love [for] everything that looks cosmic,” in particular the bright garish neon colors because “neon colors are colors that are rarely found in nature.” 

Semeniuta uses these neon colors in his pictures, for example, his series of street puddles Wet Neon where he photographed and digitally altered the mirror surface of water to reflect vibrant neon colors or his series The Velvet Mountain in which Semeniuta used a “minimalist” palette of neon colors, mainly reds and blues, to create vibrant, textured images of a mountain peak.

Some of his work will bring comparisons with other neon photographers like Greg Girard’s neon streets—in particular his image of a waterlogged gutter reflecting all the colors of the night, or the erotic neon photography of Robert Babylon.

With his figurative work, Semeniuta focuses on the human body and its relationship to sensation. A bellybutton looks like a whirlpool in a gently undulating sea. A body is mapped by its circuitry of pleasure. He explores its sculptural form in highly stylized, supersaturated, and sensual images using bodypaint and digital techniques. See more of Local Preacher’s work here.
 

 

 

 
See more of Local Preacher’s neon bible, after the jump…
 

A photo by Paris-based artist Nicole Tran Ba Vang.
 
Artist Nicole Tran Ba Vang‘s specialty revolves around her clever manipulation of photographic imagery. In a thematic series of photographs, Ba Vang’s subjects appear to be removing an outer layer of their skin to reveal another one underneath. And the results are as beautiful as they are reflective and unsettling.

For Ba Vang, the artistic exercise was a way for her to walk a line between what is real and the imaginary. It also proposes that our skin is now as interchangeable as the clothes we cover ourselves with every day—touching on societies collective quest for physical perfection, whether it be for ourselves or projected onto another who perhaps does not meet the unattainable standards that have become the new normal. For now, I’m going to let Ba Vang’s perplexing, thought-provoking photographs speak for themselves.

Very NSFW.
 

A French advertisement for Remington featuring a photo by Ba Vang.
 

 

 
More of her work, after the jump…

Laurence Maillard, town clerk, Ambrief, France. Monthly salary: $657 (part-time work).
 
If you seek out the great quotations on the subject of bureaucracy, you will find that few people have anything positive to say on the subject. Mary McCarthy calls it “the modern form of despotism,” while Edna O’Brien, writing in the New York Times Book Review, asserts that “the fate of the universe will come to depend more and more on individuals as the bungling of bureaucracy permeates every corner of our existence.” A contrary note is struck by James H. Boren, author of the marvelously titled 1972 book When in Doubt, Mumble: A Bureaucrat’s Handbook, who notes that “bureaucracy is the epoxy that greases the wheels of progress.” Surprisingly, Ambrose Bierce’s legendary Devil’s Dictionary has nothing to say on the subject.

Some years ago a Dutch photographer named Jan Banning undertook an ambitious project to shoot a large number of bureaucrats all over the world in their natural setting—their own offices. He selected eight countries to work in, namely China, France, India, Bolivia, Liberia, Russia, the United States, and Yemen, and very importantly, he gave no advance notice that he would be paying a visit, so none of the offices had been tidied up to impress any foreign onlookers. Banning had a writer accompanying him on the project, who was tasked with conversing with the bureaucrat so that he or she would not be able to make the place look spiffy. Banning was intent on showing “what a local citizen would be confronted with when entering.”

Of his project, Banning says that he came to his subjects with “an anarchist’s heart, a historian’s mind and an artist’s eye.” Furthermore,
 

The photography has a conceptual, typological approach reminding of August Sander’s ‘Menschen des 20 Jahrhunderts’ (‘People of the Twentieth Century’). Each subject is posed behind his or her desk. The photos all have a square format (fitting the subject), are shot from the same height (that of the client), with the desk – its front or side photographed parallel to the horizontal edges of the frame – serving as a bulwark protecting the representative of rule and regulation against the individual citizen, the warm-blooded exception. They are full of telling details that sometimes reveal the way the state proclaims its power or the bureaucrat’s rank and function, sometimes of a more private character and are accompanied by information such as name, age, function and salary. Though there is a high degree of humour and absurdity in these photos, they also show compassion with the inhabitants of the state’s paper labyrinth.

 
Banning is surely expressing his opinion of these people in these wonderful photographs—all in all, I find that the faces of these (mostly) humble men and women undercut the negative judgment that bureaucracy invariably gets. Bureaucracy is a means to let the state assist the people, for the most part, and it is also incidentally a primary means of funding the populace. Without these specific jobs, many of these people would have no hope of earning even the paltry sums some of them are obliged to receive.

In 2011 Banning published a book of his bureaucratic portraits under the title Bureaucratics. The print run was apparently not generous enough, as the volume is sold out through regular channels. Used copies will run you $200 and up.
 

Josué Galarza Mendez, police officer, Betanzos, Bolivia. Monthly salary: $122.
 

Roger Vacher, narcotics agent, Clermont-Ferrand, France. Monthly salary: $2,893.
 
Many more kindly drudges after the jump….....
 

 
Georgia O’Keeffe was going to give up painting ‘cause she couldn’t stand the smell of turpentine. She started teaching instead and doing commercial art and making charcoal drawings that she occasionally showed to friends. In January 1916, one friend passed a bunch of these drawings on to photographer Alfred Stieglitz who thought they were the best things he’d seen. Stieglitz included O’Keeffe’s work in an exhibition at his 291 Gallery in New York. O’Keeffe knew nothing about it until the show was opened and the reviews were in. The reviews were great. O’Keeffe turned up at the gallery to tell Stieglitz off. It was the start of a relationship that lasted thirty years until Stieglitz’s death in 1946.

Stieglitz was a pioneer of photography. He has been described as “perhaps the most important figure in the history of visual arts in America,” which is one helluva reputation. He described taking photographs as a method of seeing straight. It was a way to create “a reality so subtle that it becomes more real than reality.” His body of work includes some 2,500 mounted photographs. These, of course, are only the photographs he wanted to be seen. His photographs tended to be artfully constructed and the product of multiple takes. He was a control freak. He was also a hypochondriac.

Old Stieglitz was a 52-year-old married man with a family when he first met young 29-year-old O’Keeffe. She was smitten by another, which made Stieglitz more determined to win her over. He organized an apartment for O’Keeffe to live and work in and paid the rent. He started taking photographs of the young artist. He took pictures of O’Keeffe at work, outside her studio, in close-up, her hands at play, throughout her strong natural iconic beauty. By the 1920s, O’Keeffe was the most recognizable female artist in America. Stieglitz also shot a series of seemingly “intimate” photographs of a naked O’Keeffe which he exhibited in 1921.

These photographs were considered shocking and deeply intimate but they were actually carefully staged and the result of dozens of shots. O’Keeffe said she posed for hours to get the image Stieglitz wanted. These pictures suggested the pair were having an affair. O’Keeffe was apparently mortified that anyone should ever think she was the photographer’s mistress.

Eventually, Stieglitz’s wife caught the pair together. A divorce followed. O’Keeffe and Stieglitz married. Soon, O’Keeffe found Stieglitz’s demands for her time and energy left little for own life and career. She quit New York. Moved to New Mexico and set up her own studio. O’Keeffe spent around six months a year doing her thing. Other lovers came and went. Paintings and photographs were produced, but still, the pair remained married, and O’Keeffe was always ready to be photographed by her husband.
 

 

 

 

 
I spent my teens living in Edinburgh. At weekends, I avoided people, spent my time wandering around the city taking photographs of the expected fare: historic buildings, monuments, and the always busy streets. I guess I was trying to fix, as much in my head as in black & white and color, how I fitted into all of this—other than by a mere accident of birth.

When a roll was finished, I waited the obligatory three days to a week for the magic to be done and a slim paper wallet filled with photographs to be returned. The finished pictures offered something I thought I could call my own. But a lot of the time, I wondered why the hell I’d bothered. The pictures were all too often backdrops—little more than mere representations of what already existed. That’s possibly why I always liked the pictures that came back with a quality control label attached. The ones that stated the image was blurred, or out of focus, or the subject was too close to the camera or camera shake. These poorly-taken pictures were far more appealing to me as they were a starting point for imagination rather than biography.

“Bad” photographs are sometimes like the best illustrations to weird tales of horror and nightmare. The woman who happily sat in her garden waiting for her picture to be taken oblivious of the small approaching beast, its flash of teeth and claws, ready to pounce and eat. Or, the family of monstrous shapeshifters captured unraveling in front of an unsuspecting tourist. Or, the demon held proudly aloft in its mother’s arms burning with the flames of Hell. Or, that strange Lovecraftian light moving purposefully across the creased waters of a lake.
 

 

 
More weirdly wonderful photographs, after the jump…
 

‘Columbus Circle, Manhattan.’
 
Berenice Abbott was born in Springfield, Ohio, in July 1898. Springfield the “Home City” then best known for its Masonic Lodges and farming equipment, Her parents split when Berenice was young, leaving her mother Lilly to raise her daughter on her own.

Abbott grew up wanting to be an artist. She figured she’d be a sculptor and signed-on for classes at Ohio State but dropped out after two semesters in 1918. Ohio was dullsville compared to the bright lights of Paris with its freedoms and long list of bohemian artists, writers, and dancers who’d made the city their home. Abbott skipped town. Moved to Europe. Spent a couple of years studying art and sculpture in Paris and Berlin.

She arrived in Paris at the right time. With the end of the First World War, a whole new generation of artists and writers moved in to stake their claim on immortality. The cobbled boulevards were bordered with scrums of “creative types” expounding their revolutionary thoughts and ideas between gasps of Gitanes and vin rouge.

Abbott hooked up with a band of men and women who were in the process of making history. One introduction led to another and another and so on. She hung out with Djuna Barnes—who herself had arrived in Paris with an introductory letter to James Joyce. It was Barnes who told Abbott to change her birth name Bernice to the more exotic Berenice. Abbott met Man Ray, Sylvia Beach (the American owner of the famed bookshop Shakespeare and Co.), Jean Cocteau, and photographer Eugène Atget, among many others.

Abbott began her career as Man Ray’s photographic assistance in 1923. She took to photography like “a duck to water,” she later said and never looked back. Man Ray was impressed by her flair and skill in the darkroom. Abbott was taking portraits and soon had a series of small exhibitions of her own work. But after looking at flâneur photographer Atget’s work, a whole new world of possibilities opened up to her.

Atget was a highly eccentric individual with weird notions about food and cleanliness. He lived off a diet of milk, bread, and sugar most of his life. Abbott essentially “discovered” Atget and realized he was a brilliant photographer. After his death, she snapped up as much of his work as she could, fearing it would be lost to the public forever. Atget took photographs that triggered memory. He wandered the streets of Paris with his camera and tripod and snapped those seemingly odd, inconsequential moments that when captured resonated with a potent tension and hidden drama.

When Abbott traveled to New York in 1929, she instantly saw the potential of photographing the city as Atget had captured Paris. She started documenting New York as it changed from an old 19th-century city to the high-rise, skyscraper city of the future. The buildings changing from statements of individual wealth and success to the collective growth and worth of the thousands of people who lived and worked together in the city.

Abbott called her project Changing New York. She supported herself during the six years while she walked the streets of Manhattan carrying her Century Universal camera taking pictures of the “fantastic” contrasts between the old buildings falling into ruin and the modern blocks rising like a New Jerusalem. Abbott’s photographs of New York during the 1930s were described by pioneering documentarian and filmmaker Ralph Steiner as “the greatest collection of photographs of New York City ever made.” Her photographs redefined the city and influenced generations of photographers and filmmakers on how they represented New York.

Berenice Abbott was one of the handful photographs whose work not only captured life in the twentieth century but changed our appreciation of it.
 

‘Brooklyn Bridge, Water and Dock Streets, looking south-west, Brooklyn.’
 

‘Manhattan Bridge.’
 
See more of Berenice Abbott’s New York, after the jump…
 

Fashion of a woman, wearing a long gown, floating in water, Weeki Wachee Springs, Florida, 1947.
 
Toni Frissell (1907-88) was one of the greatest photographers of the 20th-century. During her lifetime, Frissell produced a staggering amount of diverse work including fashion photography, photojournalism, and portraiture.

In 1971, she donated her entire photographic collection of some 340,000 items to the Library of Congress. This included “270,000 black-and-white negatives, 42,000 color transparencies, and 25,000 enlargement prints, as well as many proof sheets.” Some of her work has yet to be processed for public use.

Frissell came from a well-established and fairly affluent family. Her grandfather was the founder and head of the Fifth Avenue Bank in New York. Having the stability of a wealthy family allowed Frissell to pick and choose what she wanted to do. She originally trained as an actress then worked in advertising before taking up her career as a photographer. Her brother Varick, a documentarian and filmmaker, taught Frissell the basics in photography. After Varick was killed in a freak explosion (along with 26 others) during the making of his feature film The Viking in 1931, Frissell started her career as a photographer in earnest. She apprenticed herself to Cecil Beaton (whose influence can be seen in her early photos) and began working as a fashion photographer for Vogue.

It was more than obvious from the outset Frissell was a natural photographic talent. Her fashion work pioneered the use of outside locations, often photographing models in a highly cinematic style against famous monuments or exotic locations. She claimed she preferred working outside as she didn’t “know how to photograph in a studio.” Whether this was her being disingenuous or not, Frissell did shoot the majority of her work outdoors using natural light.

When America entered the Second World War in 1941, Frissell volunteered her services as a photographer to the American Red Cross. She worked with the US Airforce then became the official photographer for the Women’s Army Corps. After the war, Frissell still continued with her fashion work but mainly concentrated on photojournalism and portraiture—capturing some of the most famous names of the day from politicians like Winston Churchill and the Kennedys, to artists like Frida Kahlo, and Hollywood stars like Elizabeth Taylor and Rex Harrison.

Unlike many other photographers who find one style and keep reproducing it time and again, Frissell developed, changed, and pioneered many different styles throughout her career. Her work is now rightly regarded as among the most influential and iconic imagery of the 20th-century.
 

Fashion model Lisa Fonssagrives poses with an English bobby in background on a railway station for Harper’s Bazaar in 1951.
 

Fashion shoot, Washington DC, 1949.
 

Back view of fashion models in swim suits for Harper’s Bazaar, 1950.
 
More iconic photographs, after the jump…
 

 
Salvador Dali once appeared as the mystery guest on a long-time-ago TV show called What’s My Line? in the 1950s. You know the show, the one that featured a panel of well-known celebrities guessing the occupations of various members of the public by asking them a series of yes/no questions like “Do you work with your hands?” or “Do you tell jokes for a living?” and so on, until the occupation was revealed.

Every week, the show also featured a mystery guest. The same yes/no rules applied but this time the panel wore a selection of dainty blindfolds to make it more fun.

When Dali appeared he insisted on answering “Yes” to nearly every question he was asked, like “Are you a performer?” “Yes.” “Are you a leading man?” “Yes.” (The show’s host John Daly disagreed with that one and marked it as a “No.”) “Are you a writer?” “Yes.” “Do you draw comic books?” “Yes.” (Again, Daly struggled to agree with this answer but Dali was having none of it.)

I am sure if one the panel had asked, “Do you paint pictures on rockfaces while juggling elephants with your knees and wearing sea otters on your hands?” Dali would have said “Yes.”

But the thing is, despite the anchor’s wearying cavils, Dali was absolutely right—he could do everything because he never lived within other people’s expectations. He was boss of what he did and how he did it and this is why he could do anything.

Though I guess I should add the caveat that there was one thing the great artist could not do—Salvador Dali could never be boring. A bit repetitive yes, but never boring.

Take for example, a simple project like that time Picture Post magazine sent over photographer Charles Hewitt to take some snaps of Dali and his wife Gala, at their home in Portlligat, Spain. The resulting pictures were imaginative works of art worthy of inclusion in the Dalit’s ouevre. The finished spread was published in Picture Post on January 8th, 1955, and it’s still utterly impressive.
 

 

 

 
Marvel at the wonder of Dali at home, after the jump…
 

 
There was once a strong belief among many Iranians that if they wanted something, then they just had to go out onto the street and demand it. This idea was fostered by the role many Iranians had in deposing Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi and bringing back the radical Muslim cleric Ayatollah Khomeini from exile in France in 1979. This ended 2,500 years of Persian monarchy, replacing it with an Islamic Republic.

The Shah was seen as an autocratic, brutal, and oppressive dictator, who was attempting to westernize the country against the will of the people. The opposition to the Shah and his alleged evil western ways brought together an odd mix of Marxists, socialists, Islamic fundamentalists, and even the misguided media outlet the BBC. Together this unlikely coalition succeeded by demonstrations, strikes, marches, and news propaganda in forcing the Shah (and his supporters) to flee Iran and to bring in the Ayatollah and his Islamic revolution.

Many Iranians thought they were taking back control of their country for themselves. It wasn’t quite so simple. Political coalitions, no matter how well-meaning, only ever work in favor of those who appear to have the most power. The Ayatollah Khomeini was a figurehead around whom the country could unite. Therefore, Khomeini appeared to have the most power. Rather than working together to curtail the Khomeini’s influence, the socialists and the Marxists and the liberals all tried to win his support. This only confirmed to the Ayatollah Khomeini (and the Muslims who supported him) that he was in control.

An estimated one million people greeted the Ayatollah Khomeini’s arrival in Iran by Air France jet, in February 1979. By the end of March, the people had voted by an overwhelming margin of 99% to make Iran an Islamic Republic.

Though women were credited by the Ayatollah Khomeini for their essential role in bringing about the Iranian revolution, in early March 1979, he paid back their actions by implementing an edict that made it compulsory for all women to wear the hijab (veil) in public. Suddenly, any promise the Ayatollah offered of a new, better, fairer Iran was revealed as nothing more than a chimera. Khomeini was a hardline fundamentalist and he had no time for individual freedom—not when he knew what his invisible friend wanted. And Allah apparently wanted women covered up.

On March 8th, 1979, 100,000 women marched on the streets of Tehran against the mandatory wearing for all women of the hijab. Photographer Hengameh Golestan was present that day and believed it was her responsibility to document the demonstration as she was witnessing “something historic.”

It was a huge demonstration with women – and men – from all professions there, students, doctors, lawyers. We were fighting for freedom: political and religious, but also individual.

~Snip~

“They were demanding the freedom of choice. It wasn’t a protest against religion or beliefs, in fact many religious women joined the protest, this was strictly about women’s rights, it was all about having the option.”

~Snip~

I was walking beside this group of women, who were talking and joking. Everyone was happy for me to take their picture. You can see in their faces they felt joyful and powerful. The Iranian revolution had taught us that if we wanted something, we should go out into the street and demand it. People were so happy – I remember a group of nurses stopping some men in a car and telling them: “We want equality, so put on some scarves, too!” Everyone laughed.

I wanted to join in all the protests during the revolution, but I knew I had to go as a photographer. My first thought was: “It’s my responsibility to document this.” I’m rather small, so I was ducking in and out of the crowd, constantly taking photos. I took about 20 rolls of film. When the day was over, I ran home to develop them in my darkroom. I knew I had witnessed something historic. I was so proud of all the women. I wanted to show the best of us.

This turned out to be the last day women walked the streets of Tehran uncovered. It was our first disappointment with the new post-revolution rulers of Iran. We didn’t get the effect we had wanted. But when I look at this photo, I don’t just see the hijab looming over it. I see the women, the solidarity, the joy – and the strength we felt.

The women lost. The demonstration ended with the women being attacked and some even stabbed on the streets of Tehran. The men and their sexist, superstitious beliefs won. It’s a way of having power over women that continues to this day in many different forms.

Pioneering photographer Hengameh Golestan has been documenting life in Iran for 28 years, see more of her work here.
 

 

 
See more photos, after the jump…
 

 
I’m reliably told that photographs are polysemous—that is they have multiple meanings which can change depending on mood or understanding of what the image represents. Seems legit.

So let’s take, for example, the picture posted above of three long-haired guys hanging around some city street in the 1970s. It kinda looks like a regular snap of buddies hanging together. But, as soon as we realize its a pic of John Deacon, Roger Taylor, and a rather cool-looking Freddie Mercury of Queen, this picture takes on a whole new meaning.

Now that we know who it is, we probably want to know where this picture of Freddie and co. was taken. The trio was photographed standing outside 143 Wardour Street, Soho, London, in 1974. Next, I suppose we might ask, What were they doing here? Well, from what I can gather, it was taken during a break in the recording of the band’s second album, Queen II at Trident Studios directly opposite. Then we might inspect the image to glean what feelings these young nascent superstars are showing.

Photographer Watal Asanuma beautifully captured the personalities of these three very different individuals (and to an extent their hopes and ambitions) in a seemingly unguarded moment. Queen was on the cusp of their chart success with the “Seven Seas of Rhye” and the imminent release of “Killer Queen.” This photo now has a historical importance because of what we know this trio (and Brian May) went on to achieve.

I guess some of us might even want to go and visit the location to see where exactly Freddie or Roger or John stood and maybe even recreate the photo for the LOLs. It’s a way of paying homage and drawing history into our lives.

For those who can’t make it all the way to London, Music History, the Twitter presence of Rock Walk London, has been compiling selections of such pictures and making composites of the original image with a photo of what the location looks like today. Okay, so it saves the airfare but more importantly It’s a fun and simple way of bringing to life London’s rich history of pop culture in a single image.

If you like this kinda thing and want to see more, then follow Music History here.
 

 

 

 
More then and now pix of Jagger, Clash, Floyd, and more, after the jump…
 

 
Witness, if you will, these photographs of young teenage girls from the mid-19th-century.

Some of the girls look happy. Some look troubled and apprehensive as only teenagers can. These youngsters will grow up into a world where women have limited rights. Where they have no vote. Where a man is always head of the household. Where, in some instances, they will not be allowed to own property or even keep their own money.

These girls will be expected to marry and have sex with only their husband. If they have sex with other men, they will be ostracized from their society and quietly described as “fallen women.”

Witness too, their limited range of pastimes. Reading, embroidery, and music. Sporting activities were generally frowned upon as damaging to a woman’s health. For example, riding a bicycle was thought to cause orgasms which could inspire an unhealthy interest in sex.

It’s a strange, distant world, but one that is still closer than we think. Yet, each of these portraits is filled with a sense of hope. Each of these young girls (and millions of others like them throughout the years), made a difference just by existing. They were part of a progression, a slowly changing (r)evolution, that furthered the reach and ambition, and eventually lead to the world we live in today.
 

 

 
More teenage girls from 19th-century, after the jump…
 

 
Every morning I get up, look in the mirror and say “How the hell did you get to be so handsome?” Well, if I don’t think I’m good looking, then who the hell will? Not that many would ever agree with my unbiased assessment, but what do I care? I know at least with a face like mine I can scare the kids every Halloween with minimal effort.

According to a recent survey, it’s estimated women will spend an average of $300,000 on face products alone during their lifetime. Beauty may be skin deep and in the eye of the beholder but it’s also a very BIG business.

Our strange obsession with attaining some kind of artificial ideal of beauty is the focus of Latvian photographer Evija Laiviņa’s series of portraits Beauty Warriors. With each photograph, Laiviņa presents a portrait of a woman wearing some kind of bizarre beauty product which promises the wearer instant perfection. These gadgets were bought on eBay and range from lip-enhancers and nose straighteners, to devices for measuring just how out of whack our faces are. Which reminds me, I once interviewed a plastic surgeon in LA for a TV show, who offered to straighten my nose (broken in a barroom fight with a cop—long story) and remove the over-stuffed suitcases from under my eyes for some obscene amount of money. I kindly demurred—but in not so many words. He wasn’t too impressed with my reply.

Laiviņa took up photography in 2007. As soon as she got her hands on a camera, she knew this was the thing for her as a camera offered unlimited possibilities for creating art. In 2009, Laiviņa emigrated to Inverness, Scotland where she studied Contemporary Art Practice at the University of Highlands and Islands. She took an interest in identity, psychological problems, and human relationships. She also studied portraiture and staged photography. Which brings us back to Laiviņa’s critically-acclaimed series of portraits Beauty Warriors which questions our relationship with the beauty industry. As Laiviņa explains:

To be successful, you must be perfect and look perfect—these are our society’s rules, which we all follow without even realizing how ridiculous the standards are. We often forget about the importance of inner beauty.

The finished photographs go beyond being just amusing (or sad) to a point where we recognize the real beauty that’s in all of us. See more of Laiviņa’s work here.
 

 

 
See more beauty portraits, after the jump…
 

 
Previously on Dangerous Minds, m’colleague Cherrybomb highlighted the amusing trend in Asia for wearing wildly offensive t-shirts and wondered whether the wearers of such sartorial eloquence knew what their shock tops actually meant?

The answer is: probably not.

These fashion statements are like those unfortunate Chinese tattoos hipsters sport which identify the wearer as being “Ugly,” or “Unclean,” or a “Pimp.” But at least with a t-shirt, the offending words are not so permanent and can be easily replaced with something more suitable.

Certainly, it’s unclear whether all of these fashion faux pas are worn by accident rather than by design. I doubt the children know what they’re broadcasting (“I ♡ Female Orgasm”—but of course you do!), though do think a few of the college students just might (“I may not be Mr. Right but…” etc.). It’s probably just “cool” to wear something written in English. Like when I was a kid, I thought it cool to wear a fashionable dress shirt covered in pictures of Steve McQueen and various quotes from the film Papillon. The text was tiny but on closer examination, discovered it contained a litany of “fucks” and “fuckings” and a paragraph all about masturbation and how it sapped strength. Who knew? I certainly didn’t, nor did my parents—until it was too late. But knowing that this shirt may have caused offense or have people think I was some kind of compulsive masturbator never once stopped me from wearing it. Why would it?

All of these pictures are the work of street photographer Alex Greenberg, who documents every day life, its quirks and fashions, on Shanghai’s busy streets. He shares his pictures via his Shanghai Observed Instagram and Facebook accounts and for amusement purposes alone is well worth following.
 

 

 
More sartorial eloquence, after the jump…
 

 
It’s a fair bet that a large part of many (most?) record collections includes a good percentage of covers by the legendary London-based graphic designers Hipgnosis.

Storm Thorgerson and Aubrey Powell who were the original founders of Hipgnosis turned out a massive array of iconic designs for bands as varied as Pink Floyd (who had been the first band to commission the duo), T.Rex, Hawkwind, Led Zeppelin, Elton John, 10CC, Wings, AC/DC, Black Sabbath, Genesis, Jon Anderson, Depeche Mode, XTC, ABC, Megadeth, and even England’s former poet laureate John Betjeman.

Apart from album covers, Hipgnosis also designed a series of fashion spreads for the softcore porn mag Club International and its more hardcore American edition Club.

Club International was founded by porn supremo Paul Raymond, who ran the legendary strip club the Raymond Revuebar in London’s seedy Soho district and a series of best-selling porn mags. Under its first editor Tony Power, Club International was intended as a high-quality adult entertainment magazine mixing the best of writers with the finest photographers and designers.

Hipgnosis was hired to add a classy touch to the magazine’s fashion spreads. The gig allowed Thorgerson and Powell to try-out a few ideas which they would later re-use on album covers—the flasher who would reappear on Pink Floyd’s A Nice Pair, for instance, while the water-in-the-face shots would feature on Peter Frampton’s Something’s Happened. See more Hipgnosis glorious work here.
 

 

 
See more of Hipgnosis’ fashion work for Club International, after the jump…