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Fallen Angel: Evelyn McHale’s ‘Beautiful Suicide’
07.11.2017
11:14 am
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Suicide is the tenth leading cause of death in America. On average there are 121 suicides every single day. Fifty percent of these are achieved with firearms. Just over a quarter are the result of hanging or suffocation. Poisoning makes up about fifteen percent. 

In 2015, seven out of ten suicides were white males, with the highest percentage being middle-aged men. A total of 494,169 were taken to the hospital due to attempted “self-harm.” That works out to an average of twelve people self-harming for every successful suicide. However, most suicide attempts go unreported which means there is an estimated one million US citizens who attempt suicide every year.

For those who have no access to a gun or to poison or worry that hanging might leave them paralyzed from the neck down, then jumping off a tall building or a bridge is the preferred choice for about five percent of all suicides. Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco is the top spot for those who choose to jump. To date, around 1600 people have jumped from the bridge—an average of one person jumping to their death every two weeks. However, approximately one in fifty survives the fall—usually with life-changing injuries. Part of the attraction to jumping is the spectacle, as one Golden Gate suicide survivor Ken Baldwin explained in 2011:

“Jumping from the bridge was going to force people to see me….To see me hurting, to see that I was a person, too.”

The moment Mr. Baldwin let go of the rail and began to freefall downwards, he quickly realized that:

“...everything in my life that I’d thought was unfixable was totally fixable – except for having jumped.”

He was lucky enough to survive to tell his tale after being pulled out of the water by the coast guard.
 
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Suicide has had a bizarre, and let’s be honest, dumb romantic appeal since Cleopatra was bitten by an asp. This notion was further endorsed by the English Romantic poets, in particular, Thomas Chatterton who poisoned himself at the tender age of seventeen—supposedly in fear of having caught a dose of the clap. This trend to romanticize suicide carries on to present day which sadly suggests we never learn from our mistakes. And I can ‘fess up to being that special kind of stupid having survived two suicide attempts. As Dorothy Parker noted—it ain’t worth it and we might as well live.

The photograph that perhaps captures this strange romantic idea about suicide as somehow “beautiful” was taken by student Robert Wiles on Thursday, May 1st, 1947. His photograph shows the body of Evelyn McHale atop a limousine parked outside the Empire State Building on 33rd Street, New York. Evelyn was a 23-year-old bookkeeper with the Kitab Engraving Company. She had just returned to New York from celebrating her fiance Barry Rhodes’ 24th birthday on April 30th, in Easton, Pennsylvania. Rhodes later said he had no idea of Evelyn’s intentions:

“When I kissed her goodbye she was happy and as normal as any girl about to be married.”

At some point on the train journey back to the city, Evelyn made her mind up to commit suicide. Arriving at Penn Station, Evelyn is believed to have entered the Governor Clinton Hotel where she wrote her suicide note which read:

“I don’t want anyone in or out of my family to see any part of me. Could you destroy my body by cremation? I beg of you and my family – don’t have any service for me or remembrance for me. My fiance asked me to marry him in June. I don’t think I would make a good wife for anybody. He is much better off without me. Tell my father, I have too many of my mother’s tendencies.”

The most telling part is Evelyn’s line about having “too many of [her] mother’s tendencies.”

Evelyn was the sixth of seven children born to Vincent and Helen McHale. In 1930, the family moved to Washington D.C. where her father worked as Federal Land Bank Examiner. This was the year Evelyn’s mother Helen quit the family home leaving Vincent to look after the children. It’s not known why Helen McHale moved out.
 
Read more about the ‘beautiful suicide’ of Evelyn McHale after the jump…

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Posted by Paul Gallagher
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07.11.2017
11:14 am
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Gavin Evans’ magnificent portraits of Bowie, Björk, Iggy, and Nick Cave
07.10.2017
11:18 am
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David Bowie.
 
The Monday morning mailbag arrived with its usual gifts of bills, party invites, ransom demands (which I really must get around to paying), and “Dear John” letters. I was about to tip all this largesse into the bin when I noticed a postcard from a dear friend Christopher. It was the usual greetings of “Having a lovely time” and “Wish you were here” kind of thing but what saved it from the trash was the front photograph of David Bowie by Gavin Evans.

Now we all have favorite photographers and one of mine is certainly Mr. Evans who has taken some of the most magnificent, gorgeous, and iconic images of the past two decades. The photograph of Bowie shushing with a finger to his lips like he did in the promo for “China Girl” has been used on numerous magazine covers, photospreads, TV documentaries, and pirated for Internet memes, urban graffiti, and even tattoos. Its ubiquity one would hope should have made Mr. Evans a very rich man—but somehow (sadly) I very much doubt that.

Another of Evans’ Bowie photographs—a color portrait in which he wore blue contact lenses—captured a vulnerability that I’d never seen before (see picture above). It was as if Bowie allowed his guard down for just a moment and had unknowingly (or perhaps willingly) revealed a more vulnerable and intimate side. The picture was taken in 1995 for a Time Out cover. A couple of years later, Bowie contacted Evans and asked for a print of this picture to hang in his office. Bowie explained to Evans that this was his favorite portrait.

That’s the thing I like about Evans’ work—he has an uncanny talent for capturing the very essence of his subject matter. His photographs make the gods flesh. Look at his portraits of Nick Cave which reveal something of the man behind the public persona or his series of photographs of Björk which capture a tender and humorous side sometimes lacking from more traditional photo shoots. Or just look at his portrait of John Hurt where you can see the pores of the actor’s skin and peer right into his soul.

Christopher’s Bowie postcard is now pinned to the wall. I browsed for more of Evans work and was happily surprised to find a selection of his most powerful and iconic work is currently on tour. Then something even better, a selection of Evans’ beautiful prints are availble to buy. Now every home can have a Gavin Evans on their wall.
 
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David Bowie.
 
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See more of Gavin Evans majestic photographs, after the jump…

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Posted by Paul Gallagher
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07.10.2017
11:18 am
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The Erotic 3-D Photography of Jiří Růžek (NSFW)
07.06.2017
10:19 am
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Jiří Růžek is one of the word’s best glamor and erotic photographers. He is described by critics and fans alike as an artist who has redefined the genre by producing fine art out of glamor photography.

Růžek considers himself just a photographer who takes nude portraits. He describes his work as Uglamour—a term he made up from the words “Ugly” and “Glamour.” He says his intention is to create “natural and straightforward photographs showing true and believable emotions.” This is what makes his photographs stand out and why many describe his work as fine art.

Born fifty years ago in Litoměřice, Czech Republic, Růžek is now based in Prague where he runs a studio, a workshop, and an exhibition space. His work has been exhibited across the globe and published in magazines and books by the likes of Taschen, Random House, Gmbh, and Constable & Robinson. Even with all this success, Růžek still finds time to run group and one-to-one photographic courses and private shoots.

But you really don’t need to know all this unless, of course, you wanna sign-up for a workshop or maybe be one of his photographic models. What I really want to share is Růžek’s gorgeous erotic 3-D Anaglyphs. These photos are stereoscopic pictures made from two red and cyan filtered colored images. Růžek’s 3-D photos have a sensuous beauty that recalls Edward Weston‘s nudes or Helmut Newton‘s provocative erotica but all are captured with Růžek’s own style. You’ll need your 3-D glasses to get the full effect.

See more of Jiří Růžek’s work here.
 
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See more eye-catching 3-D beauty, after the jump…

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Posted by Paul Gallagher
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07.06.2017
10:19 am
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Smoking babies, toddlers with guns, sex doll love & other hilariously inappropriate stock photos
07.05.2017
10:37 am
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Just looking at these pictures makes me think a stock photographer’s life must sometimes be quite fun. For example, photographing strange and bizarre scenes that at first seem utterly inappropriate but once given a headline almost make perfect sense.

Toddler shoots Mom with loaded .45 found in her handbag

or

Jealous wife stabs husband over dirty texts from his lover

or

Shopping Mall Santa is a Serial Sex Perv!


You get the idea.

What I want to know is there a weird stock photography office where you can apply for this job? Do they have a photographic editor who sits chomping on a cigar like J. Jonah Jameson barking out demands for pix of “Granny Shoots Mugger” or “This Baby Smokes a Pack a Day Just like Daddy!” or “Evil Babysitters let Kid snort cocaine!”

These pictures all scream National Enquirer, if not the Daily Mail. Not enough aliens or Elvis to be of much use to the Weekly World News.

Andy Kelly is a video games journalist who, quite understandably, finds this kind of stock photography hilarious. One day while browsing through the “perfect, smiling models eating salad, high-fiving each other, and pointing at flipcharts in boardrooms” Kelly came across the image of an obese man by a Christmas tree cradling a bottle of booze and pressing the barrel of pistol against his head. The photo was intended to represent some very serious issue like say, seasonal affective disorder or maybe the rise in suicides at Christmastime. But, as Andy noted, the image was “presented so bluntly, in such an absurdly literal manner that it accidentally became funny.”

So was born Kelly’s Dark Stock Photos—“Extremely fucked up stock photography.”

Kelly started his Twitter feed last month. It already has a healthy following around 81k. Kelly’s careful as to which photographs he shares as many are just waaaay too depressing and a “disproportionate number” feature violence against women—which sadly reflects the kind of world we live in.

Yet, the darkly comic photographs Kelly does share raise plenty of questions like who buys this stuff? Why do they exist? and is there really a place where I can apply to get this dream job?

If this tickles your funny bone (and why wouldn’t it?) and you want to see more then follow Dark Stock Photos.
 
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More weird stock photo pix, after the jump…

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Posted by Paul Gallagher
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07.05.2017
10:37 am
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Painting with Light: Incredible portrait photographs of young outsiders
06.23.2017
06:19 am
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‘Iris’ (2011).
 
At a cursory glance, I thought I was viewing some small figure detail from a Baroque painting or maybe a canvas by a Dutch Old Master. The richness, depth, and subtly of light fooled my eye. This was the photographer’s intention—to make the viewer re-examine what is seen.

The photographer is Pierre Gonnord. He previously turned his talents to photographing the last coal miners working in the pits at Asturias and Castilla y León, Spain. His portraits gave these men a dignity and nobility. They were “a tribute” to the lives being destroyed by economic cuts and governmental indifference—or as Gonnord described it “social genocide.”

Now Gonnord has thrown focus on to a series of painterly portraits of young people. He is specific in who he chooses to photograph, selecting “the person, the individual, alone in the margins of his social group…”

‘When I travel and meet a community, I have time enough to establish contacts and connections, to know individuals that move me for their charisma, sensitivity, intelligence, shyness, beauty … and this is why I decide to invite them (and no others) to do a portrait’

Gonnord takes his time photographing his subject and almost makes it sound almost like a forensic process:

‘Installed in the silence of a room, generally a very small space, sometimes with daylight, sometimes with a lamp, a flash, just one spot … in a short distance, in the same living area, I can talk with the individual, my fellow, a chosen human being, and looking at him I repeat once again this old ritual. A very short moment. Probably the most ancient since man has been on Earth. Strip little by little all the details, and in silence try to catch what maybe is under the skin’

His passion for portrait photography offers Gonnord the chance learn what he describes as “life experiences” allowing him to:

‘Learn from others, listen, watch, see, feel, express. It’s to open one’s eyes to the world, to know other universes, other realities in order to go beyond one’s own small frontiers in the urban environment and enter little by little into the sharing and the understanding of humanity’

and

‘To look into the eyes of these models is to feel in a certain way that we are looking at our own essence as human beings.’

See more of Gonnord’s portraits here.
 
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‘Attia’ (2010).
 
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‘Sophie’ (2012).
 
See more of Gonnord’s beautiful portraits, after the jump…

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Posted by Paul Gallagher
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06.23.2017
06:19 am
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Almost Grown: Sublime photographs of American teenagers 1969-1984
06.09.2017
09:08 am
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Charlie, Jones Beach, 1976.
 
Teenager: that tricksy time when you’re no longer a child but not quite yet the adult. When hormones light fires and the good ole triumvirate of sex ‘n’ drugs ‘n’ rock’n'roll drop by to shake everything up.

Joseph Szabo was teaching a bunch of such teenagers at Malverne High School, Long Island in 1972. Szabo was 28-years old—ancient to most teenagers—and was finding it a hell of a difficult to connect with his young charges. He had all but given up trying when he decided to start taking photographs of the kids in his class. This then led to his photographing all the kids in the school. Then all the kids in the neighborhood. He didn’t discriminate. He just wanted to document every kind of student he could find and let his photographs tell their story.

The kids responded to Szabo’s interest. They soon let him follow them down to the beach, or out to their hangouts and homes after school. Szabo’s pictures moved from posed portrait against wall or on beach to youths caught unawares like nobody was watching.

These kids lived in a world they described as “doing nothing” because they were neither at work or at play. It was this unselfconscious spontaneity that Szabo captured so perfectly that made his photographs stand out. They are beautiful and sublime depictions of a golden season when the world is still magical and mysterious before the first frost of adulthood brings cynicism and fear.

Szabo’s work has inspired movie directors like Sofia Coppola and Cameron Crowe and a shopload of fashion directors on shoots for every glossy magazine you can think of. Now in his seventies and retired from teaching in 1999, Szabo still takes photographs of the teenagers and adults he meets on his travels. But nowadays people are more cagey about having their picture taken and it ain’t so easy to connect in the same way. But Szabo still manages to capture those unguarded epiphanic moments when no one else is looking.
 
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Three Friends, 1976.
 
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Anthony and Johanna.
 
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Priscilla, 1969. It became the cover for Dinosaur Jr’s album Green Mind
 
See more of Szabo’s iconic pictures, after the jump…
 

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Posted by Paul Gallagher
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06.09.2017
09:08 am
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Playboy Playmates recreate their iconic covers 30 years on
06.07.2017
09:57 am
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Monique St. Pierre, Playmate of the Year, June 1979.
 
Marilyn Monroe was the first Playboy cover girl featured in the magazine in December 1953. That copy of Playboy wasn’t actually dated as publisher and editor Hugh Hefner didn’t know if there would ever be a second issue. Marilyn was also the magazine’s first “Sweetheart of the Month,” a title which changed to “Playmate of the Month” with Playboy’s second issue in January 1954 when Margie Harrison became the magazine’s first ever centerfold. Marilyn’s iconic photo spread only appeared over pages 16-18. Since then, Playmate of the Month has continued right on up to present day with Elsie Hewitt featured as Playmate of Month for June 2017 and Brooke Power featured on the cover as Playmate of the Year.

There was a well-told urban myth about the glamorous Playmates featured on the cover that claimed they were given a marking, out of twelve, according to Hefner’s tastes. This was based on the stars printed on the cover either on or next to the letter “P” of Playboy. This rumor alleged Hef was giving “stars” for either the cover girl’s looks, or performance in bed, or even how many times the old goat had slept with her. This was never true. The stars which appeared on the cover between 1955 and 1979 denoted regional or international advertising for that particular issue.

Playboy is now synonymous with America and American values as Mom’s apple pie, the Stars and Stripes, and Abraham Lincoln. That Hefner’s magazine and his multi-million dollar porn industry have achieved such a strange (shall we call it?) respectability says much about the dynamic changes in culture and morals over the past six decades.

A selection of Playmates was recently offered the opportunity to replicate their iconic covers some thirty years on from their original appearance. Playmates Candace Collins, Monique St. Pierre, Cathy St. George, Charlotte Kemp, and Reneé Tenison, among others, were photographed by Ben Miller and Ryan Lowry as part of this project. As can be seen from the photographs below, the results are quite incredible.
 
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Monique St. Pierre, 2017.
 
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Candace Collins, Playmate, February 1979.
 
More then and now Playboy Playmates, after the jump…
 

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Posted by Paul Gallagher
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06.07.2017
09:57 am
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Cum for Me: Intimate photographs of men and women at the point of orgasm
05.18.2017
09:04 am
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Kristina.
 
We reveal ourselves in unguarded moments. Those instances of joy, happiness, fear, and anger—when emotions burst forth uncontrollably. Photographer Alina Cara Oswald had been thinking about such times and thought of creating a photographic project that captured women and men at their most intimate, unfettered, and emotionally reflexive moment when reaching orgasm.

Oswald didn’t believe she would find any models willing to masturbate in front of her and the camera. However, after talking about the idea, she did photograph a good friend and then herself reaching climax.

I started talking to people about my project and asked them very open and directly if they want to take part. And more and more people said yes. So I started photographing them. The project became bigger and bigger. I put my whole energy and thoughts into it. I was organizing everything and made many appointments. Most of the time I went to the model’s home, I brought some wine and some relaxed energy with me. I talked a lot to the person and then I setup my equipment. Then it was time for a hand-job.  Mostly I was in the same room, sometimes I went out and just came in at the end to take the photo. Sometimes I had couples and they helped each other. Sometimes the people watched porn or looked at erotic pictures. Afterward, we laughed and talked about it.

What fascinated Alina was not the photograph of someone cumming but “the process of how it arises and how a content can be presented and communicated.”

How can a piece of paper, which has just two dimensions, influence the third dimension? Can I communicate emotions and content through pictures without you knowing what it is about?

Alina titled this series of portraits Moments.

Based in Munich, Germany, Oswald studied photography, screenprinting, digital animation and communication at the city’s art college. She graduated in 2016. You can see more of Alina’s work here and here.
 
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Joel.
 
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Sarah.
 
See more forthcoming attractions, after the jump….

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Posted by Paul Gallagher
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05.18.2017
09:04 am
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Crowning Glory: Incredible vintage photographs of beautiful and intricate Nigerian hairstyles
05.18.2017
08:11 am
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‘Coiling Penny Penny’ (1974).
 
Each day photographer J.D. Okhai Ojeikere went out into the streets and photographed women’s hairstyles with his Brownie D camera. Ojeikere wasn’t just documenting the latest trends in hair fashion—he thought hairstyles were an “art form” that were created by “precise gestures” in the same way an artist sculpts the intricacies of a statue. Ojeikere was also aware these individual hairstyles reflected the major changes in Nigeria’s post-colonial politics and culture, together with the growth of personal freedom and the shift towards personal identity.

Ojeikere took thousands of photographs of women’s hairstyles from 1968 onwards. He captured the different weaves and braids on street corners, offices, bars, and at parties, He took his picture then noted down the name of each design. Ojeikere started his photographic career as a darkroom assistant at the Ministry of Information in 1954. In 1959, he was appointed staff photographer with the Western Nigerian Broadcasting Services. He then joined the Nigerian Arts Council in the 1960s when he began photographing and documenting Nigerian life and culture. His work has been exhibited throughout the world, including the 55th Venice Biennale d’arte in 2013, and his work is still exhibited and sold as prints today. J.D. Okhai Ojeikere died at the age of 83. in 2014.
 
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‘Ojo Npeti’ or ‘Kiko’ (1968).
 
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‘Pineapple’ (1969). 
 
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‘Fro Fro’ (1970).
 
More of J.D. Okhai Ojeikere’s photographs, after the jump…

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Posted by Paul Gallagher
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05.18.2017
08:11 am
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Moon shots: Showing your butt in public is the latest craze, apparently…
04.27.2017
09:43 am
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No ifs or buts, the end is nigh, quite literally it seems for bright young things from across England (and now the world) who are taking pictures of themselves baring their buttocks in public places and uploading the resulting image to Instagram.

This kind of exhibitionism or mooning it we used to call it, is not new. It has been a well-used way of showing disrespect to an enemy or scorn to nobility for centuries. Now, showing your butt in some beautiful landscape is the latest jolly wheeze for firm-buttocked young people to entertain themselves. This was what the Internet was made for…..apparently

Well, three cheers for that.

It all started with the Instagram page Cheeky Exploits which has been encouraging people from across the globe to upload snaps of their bare butts in suitable lush or unusual envirnoments. And people have been sending in moonshots from Australia, Brazil, America and alike—and you can check them out here.
 
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More butts from around the world, after the jump…

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Posted by Paul Gallagher
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04.27.2017
09:43 am
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Strangely satisfying photos of food coordinated with monochromatic clothing
04.13.2017
07:27 am
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‘Licorice’ and ‘Zero Bar.’ Two of the photos from the series ‘Wardrobe Snacks’ by Kelsey McClellan and Michelle Maguire.
 
The photos in this post are the result of a joint venture by set and prop stylist Michelle Maguire and photog Kelsey McClellan who came up with the idea to coordinate various kinds of foodstuff and people wearing monochromatic outfits with a distinctly 70s vibe.

The series, Wardrobe Snacks, is oddly satisfying to look at and the pair are offering up prints of all twelve photos from the series for $145 a pop, here. Warning: the images in this post might make you both nostalgic and hungry at the same time. So maybe have a polyester pantsuit and some potato chips handy while you look at them.
 

‘Biscuit.’
 

‘Filet o’ Fish.’
 

‘Strawberry wafer.’
 
More after the jump…

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Posted by Cherrybomb
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04.13.2017
07:27 am
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The ‘private’ photographs of Marie Høeg and Bolette Berg: Questioning gender roles circa 1900
02.27.2017
11:41 am
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Marie Høeg (1866-1949) had short cropped hair. Bolette Berg (1872-1944) kept hers long. Marie was short. Bolette was taller. They were known to the people of Horten, a busy naval port in Norway, as the two ladies who ran the photography studio called Berg & Høeg. They made their living taking portrait photographs, landscape pictures and the occasional picture of ships. In the late 1800s and early 1900s photography was the latest craze where those who could afford it had their picture taken. There were many such photographic studios in Horten. Berg & Høeg may have been long forgotten had it not been for the discovery some thirty years ago of some 440 of their glass negatives in an old disused barn in Oslo.

Among these glass plates was a box marked “Private.” Inside this box was a set of images featuring Høeg and Berg playing around with traditional gender roles. Høeg dressed as a man with a waxed mustaches, or as a boy with white shirt, cap and cigarette, or in fur pretending to be an Arctic explorer like Roald Amundsen, who led the first expedition to traverse the Northwest Passage in 1903–06.

Berg & Høeg posed with their women friends indulging in some of the worst kind of vices usually attributed to men—smoking, drinking and playing cards. Høeg also posed as husband to an unknown male friend as wife and in a rowing boat as a bowler-hat-wearing suitor to Berg’s elegant object of desire.

The finished photographs would have been shared among their small coterie of friends in Horten. Their friends no doubt laughed at these daring, subversive images which cocked a snook at the strict conventions surrounding sexuality, gender and identity at a time when women were called the “weaker sex,” and forbidden the vote.

Marie Høeg was the main subject of these “private” photographs. During her life she was best known as a pioneering activist for women’s rights. She founded the Horten Branch of the National Association for Women’s Suffrage, the Horten Women’s Council and the Horten Tuberculosis Association. Bolette Berg worked more behind the camera. The two women are believed to have met while studying photography in Finland during the early 1890s. They moved to Horten where they set up a studio together in 1895.

In 1903, the two women left Horten and set up a new studio in Oslo (then called Kristiania) where they had a career producing scenic and portrait postcards. They bought a farm and at some point stored their glass negatives in the barn where these images remained long after both Berg’s and Høeg’s deaths until their discovery in the 1980s.
 
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More of Høeg and Berg’s cross-dressing pictures, after the jump…

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Posted by Paul Gallagher
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02.27.2017
11:41 am
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They Live by Night: Photos of gangsters, prostitutes & drag queens from Tokyo’s red light district
02.23.2017
11:04 am
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Kabukichō is the red light district in Shinjuku, a commercial and administrative ward in central Tokyo. Apparently Kabukichō took its name from plans to build a kabuki theater in the district sometime in 1940s. This never happened. Instead the area became a busy red light world of nightclubs, hostess clubs and love hotels. It’s estimated there are some 3,000 such enterprises operating in Kabukichō today. At night, the busy neon-lit streets thrive with the curious and the criminal—around a thousand yakuza are said to operate in the area. All this relentless activity gave Kabukichō its nickname as the “Sleepless Town” (眠らない街).

Among the curious drawn to Kabukichō was photographer Watanabe Katsumi (1941-2006). During the 1960s and 1970s, this seemingly quiet and unassuming character prowled the streets camera in hand offering to take pictures of the sharp-suited yakuza, the pimps, the prostitutes and the drag queens who lived and worked in and among this red light district’s narrow streets. Watanabe thought of Kabukichō as his theater and the men and women who posed for him as his actors.

He approached each of his subjects and offered to take their picture.  He took the pictures quickly. But whatever he said to make each individual sufficiently relaxed worked. His photographs captured something unguarded and utterly spontaneous about his subjects. The next night he would return, deliver three prints of each photograph for 200 yen—roughly around a dollar back then. This was how he made his living.

In 1973, the first volume of Watanabe Katsumi’s photographs The Gangs of Kabukichō was published. This book was reissued in 2006, details here.
 
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More after the jump…

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Posted by Paul Gallagher
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02.23.2017
11:04 am
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Upside down photographs of faces become intriguing, introspective works of art
02.17.2017
07:21 am
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A photograph from the series ‘Alienation’ by South African artist, Anelia Loubser.
 
Anelia Loubser is a photographer from South Africa who has only been working in her chosen medium for fewer than ten years. During that short time period, her photographs have been seen in publications all over the world.

According to Loubser, she credits her twin sister with providing her with much of the inspiration that enables her to continue to create her art. In 2014 her fledgling photographic series Alienation created quite a stir as it featured unconventional black and white images of people—including members of her own family—taken at close range allowing them to become something other than what they are. Loubser’s composition of her subjects and their faces cut off just before you can see the formation of their noses—creating a powerful, otherworldly way for something as common as a human face to be perceived by the viewer. While the seemingly simple-sounding concept of photographing someone’s face upside down may seem uninvolved, Loubser’s enigmatic results are impossible to ignore. Here’s more from Loubser on the photographs you are about to see from Alienation:

I saw eyes on unfamiliar faces, and in them lies a whole galaxy of tales to tell. In their eyes, I saw happiness, sadness, excitement, pain, love, curiosity, wisdom and wonder - all these familiar human emotions on unearthed faces. This had such a tremendous impact on me because symbolically they summarized how I seldom feel living in a conflicting inner and outer universe with my own being. And it made my madness seem less messy.

A selection of Loubser’s topsy-turvy faces for you to lose yourself in follow.
 

 

 
More after the jump…

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Posted by Cherrybomb
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02.17.2017
07:21 am
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Waterworld: The man who photographed pin-ups… underwater
02.01.2017
11:28 am
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In 1938, a young photographer named Bruce Mozert was on his way to a shoot in Miami when he got word Johnny Weissmuller was filming his latest Tarzan flick at Silver Springs, Marion County. Mozert took a detour on the off-chance he might get a few good snaps of the former Olympic champion and box office star—or at the very least shake his hand. He managed both. When he shook Weissmuller’s hand, the Tarzan actor lifted the twenty-two year off the ground and straight up into the air. This incredible feat of athleticism wasn’t the only thing which impressed Mozert on his day trip. In Silver Spring he had found a beautiful and idyllic location in which to make his career as an underwater photographer. 

Silver Springs is the site of one of the largest artesian spring formations in the world. It is said to produce an estimated total of some 550 million gallons of crystal-clear water daily. The beauty of these waters was the kicker for Mozert. They appeared so perfect, so beautiful, so clear that he knew he had to devise a unique and original way to incorporate the springs into his photographic work.

He moved into nearby city of Ocala where he set about building a box-like waterproof housing for his camera. He then started taking subaquatic pictures of employees from Silver Springs Park, who acted as his underwater models. Mozert photographed his models doing everyday things underwater—frying fish, drinking a champagne cocktail, reading a paper, and so on. He used various homemade special effects to make it all seem almost real. Condensed milk was used to create smoke for barbecuing fish—“The fat in the milk would cause it to rise, creating ‘smoke’ for a long time.” Alka Seltzer provided the bubbles for the champagne. Anything was possible—“All you got to do is use your imagination.”
 
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Dive into the subaquatic life of Bruce Mozert, after the jump…
 

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Posted by Paul Gallagher
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02.01.2017
11:28 am
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