You are currently browsing the monthly archive for April, 2008.
Kate Moss
Michel Comte’s 1993 photograph of Carla Bruni: $91,000.
Irving Penn’s 1996 photograph of Kate Moss: $97,000.
Avedon’s 1968 photograph of Lauren Hutton: $127,000.
Avedon’s 1959 photograph photo of Brigitte Bardot: $181,000.
Irving Penn’s 1999 photograph of Gisele Bundchen: $193,000
Having a curiously titillating sought-after collection of nudes in contemporary photography: priceless no more!
Oh, and: David LaChapelle’s 1994 colour photograph of “Naomi Campbell: Have You Seen Me?”: a mere $29,800. However, earlier this week, Sotheby’s auctioned an Edward Weston nude photograph of his spouse, Charis, which sold for $325,000! That’s still more than the highest-selling image form the Elfering collection: Helmut Newton’s Sie Kommen, which sold for $241,000.
Despite all this interesting math, Carla Bruni is on everyone’s lips. Fact: Bruni’s photograph cost half the value of a photo of frozen vegetables, at the same auction and from the same collection. True, they’re not just any frozen vegetables: they’re styled by Irving Penn, and the cover of his book: Still Life : Irving Penn Photographs, 1938-2000
Erin O’Connor and Viktor & Rolf by Tim Walker for a Vogue fashion editorial.
Even Better: Tim Walker Pictures
Kylie Minogue by Vincent Peters for German Vogue. One of the reasons I find this cover spectactular, is how well the typography plays off the photograph. I think anyone could put the barcode on the bottom left, where it “belongs”, but instead, a conscious decision was made to retain a fluidity of the body. I especially like how shades of off-white and white were employed. Design-wise, this is a great cover. I wish there were as few cover lines in US Vogue!
The fabulously expressive Atong by Mark Pillai for Russian Vogue. WOW.
A fig, on a cube of Tofu, on a cut of salmon. Remember that Irving Penn photograph for Vogue magazine? Because I’ve been researching British photography, I came across an image in Elle magazine of a lemon squeezer in the shape of a spider, a Phillipe Stark piece de résistance evocative of Louise Bourgeois. It was an innovatively styled photograph, graphic and strong. It was by Matthew Shave, a portfolio I bookmarked a while ago, but haven’t seen in a long time. I revisited and, much to my delight:
Driven by wit and well-executed with a sophisticated sense of conceptual integration, these images are great examples of evocative textural contrasts. Matthew Shave has a great sense of gestural wit. Refreshing…
Oh, and that previously classic: the fig, the Tofu cube, the salmon, and the photographic sarabande they together create can be found in the book Still Life : Irving Penn Photographs, 1938-2000
John French’s photograph from 1965. Anna Wintour, anyone?
The Victoria & Albert museum had a show of John French’s photography in the late 80s. The exhibition catalog from this show is marvelous
Because of the recent post about Jonathan Singer, and my current work for the Caelum Archive, I’ve been looking at these photos. This book is still available at amazon, but for how long?
Flora by Nick Knight
And the photoshop award goes to…?
Need to pick up this magazine, and need to find another Barnes & Noble location for advanced visual perusal…
On March 18th Penguin Books UK launched a new service. teamed up with Six to Start, a gaming company, to create classic stories using Google Maps, Twitter and other web tools. Every night at 6:30 pm London time, readers can witness authors writing a ‘webisode’ of a classic story, in real-time.
This is amazing. Incredible value in this service:
– Reading. Engaging current and future generations into literary classics
(What served this purpose until now? The overacted and overdressed on PBS Masterpiece Theater series? The HBO specials on Rome, and Showtime’s The Tudors?)
– Storytelling. This is important. The partially-scripted direction of current format is not the most compelling format for story-telling. Between Fiction and Documentary, there is a great space to explore in story-telling, and the partially-scripted ventures that have sprouted since MTV’s The Real World have been reflective of something other than mere story-telling. With Penguin’s new venture, I’m looking forward to how a good concept/story transitions into a variety of mediums (maps, visuals, words, photos) in a modern way.
- The classroom. How easily could this be integrated into existing teaching methodologies?
- Propagation. How long will it be until contemporary authors using this format to tell their own stories?
The potential is here for so much more: consider reading biographies within a timeline format supplemented with interactive maps of relevant locations and voyages? Learning about history can be positively impacted by this: I’m currently reading, for pleasure, the Autobiography and Other Writings of Benjamin Franklin, and I wish I could look at that book from a visual prespective: an interactive timeline of where, what and when.
The world is beautiful!
I’m impressed! Thanks to Vanity Fair, I learned of this amazing photographer, Jonathan Singer, a podiatrist who loves qualities of light and how they are captured. His website, Botanica Magnifica, offers a preview of his upcoming show at the Washington Museum of Natural History. Can’t wait until that show is in NY!
Although I have only found out about Singer’s work, I will admit that some of the still-life images I’ve been directing for The Caelum Archive look similar to his style. I guarantee you: it’s pure coincidence.
George Lois is a marketing power house. Perceptive and visionary. His two books $ellebrity
Here is an interview with George Lois by Kurt Anderson for NPR’s Studio 360.
Since George Lois is famous for his work on Esquire magazine, a related note:
“There’s not one path anymore,” David Hirshey, executive editor of HarperCollins and former longtime deputy editor of Esquire magazine, said the other day. “Thirty years ago, you worked at a newspaper, you moved to a magazine, and then you wrote books or screenplays. Today you can be a blogger who writes books or you can be a stripper who wins an Academy Award for Best Screenplay.”
Ha! Excerpted from this month’s Magazine Issue of the NYO.
“Life is 10% what happens to you and 90% how you react to it.”
-- Charles R. Swindoll
Is this really enough of an equation to encapsulate an improved approach to the events, big and small, in our lives? This 10/90 rule focuses on reaction; 90% reaction to a 10% action.
But what happens between action and reaction?
That’s the important part. There’s no room in this analogy for that which converts the perception of those 10% into 90% reaction. The equation needs to include this critical stage, the conversion process. So now we have: Life is 10% what happens in the world, x% of how you perceive it and x% of how you react to it. However, now that we have an action and a perception of this action, we’re no longer merely reacting. We’re building an intelligent response to the initial action. That’s much more valuable than reacting. So, my final equation is:
“Life is 10% what happens in the world, 50% of how you perceive it and 40% proactive effort.”
There. Isn’t that better? Doesn’t that make more sense? It does to me! And yes, you can quote me on that. (Should I be so lucky…)
Elle USA (left) and ELLE UK (right). As shown on her new album cover
Can’t believe it’s closing – they had the best selection of large-format art books out of all their locations. Nestled between three major art schools, this location was definitely their best one. Wonder what will pop up there next…there’s already an Olive Garden a few blocks away, and a Home Depot. Whole Foods Chelsea?
I love it when photographers are open to experimentation!
Money Creates Taste, 2007
International Silver 1810 Cream Soup Spoon, in sterling silver
Edition of 100 with 10 artist proofs
