March 3, 2010
Natacha Merritt “Digital diaries”. “Anyone who has seen her Digital Diaries has intimate knowledge of Natacha Merritt. And of her friends, male and female, and her acquaintances as well. But Merritt’s favourite motif is herself: she poses almost every minute of the day for her camera, taking photographs of herself in bed, in the shower, having sex with her friend, masturbating with and without accessories, from every imaginable angle and with the camera usually at arm’s length. Merritt, born 1977, works with a digital camera, the Polaroid of the 90s, breaking down the most intimate details into universally accessible bits of information. Eric Kroll came across Natacha Merritt by chance in the internet, where she had put several of her photographs. This was something that left the tradition of classical pin-up and fetish photography, in which Kroll himself works, far behind it. Face to face with Merritt’s photographs one can reflect on intimacy and publicity in the digital age, on narcissism even, or on radical self-exploration with the help of the camera. But this all sounds better as Natacha Merritt herself once put it: in her view, she has found a new mode of masturbating her way into the next millennium.”

Natacha Merritt “Digital diaries”.

“Anyone who has seen her Digital Diaries has intimate knowledge of Natacha Merritt. And of her friends, male and female, and her acquaintances as well. But Merritt’s favourite motif is herself: she poses almost every minute of the day for her camera, taking photographs of herself in bed, in the shower, having sex with her friend, masturbating with and without accessories, from every imaginable angle and with the camera usually at arm’s length. 

Merritt, born 1977, works with a digital camera, the Polaroid of the 90s, breaking down the most intimate details into universally accessible bits of information. Eric Kroll came across Natacha Merritt by chance in the internet, where she had put several of her photographs. This was something that left the tradition of classical pin-up and fetish photography, in which Kroll himself works, far behind it. 

Face to face with Merritt’s photographs one can reflect on intimacy and publicity in the digital age, on narcissism even, or on radical self-exploration with the help of the camera. But this all sounds better as Natacha Merritt herself once put it: in her view, she has found a new mode of masturbating her way into the next millennium.”

1:19pm  |   URL: http://tumblr.com/ZBqPSyPHgas
(View comments) 
(Notes: 15)
  
February 1, 2010
Travis Dove, Skatopia. Travis Dole received his BA from Wake Forest University in 2004. A year later he began freelancing for newspapers in North Carolina’s Research Triangle. “The road to Skatopia is barely two lanes and often unmarked. It winds past a field of sheep, a white clapboard church (Page Free Will Baptist), a yellow highway-crossing sign showing an Amish buggy instead of a deer. A handmade warning at the top of a steep dirt drive — “Skatopia Enter at Own Risk!!!” — lets pilgrims know they have arrived. They come at all hours, most any time of year, from as far away as Argentina, Japan, Finland. The gates are always open. Brewce Martin began building Skatopia in 1996. Skatopia sits on 88 acres of hilly, forested land in Rutland, Ohio, an Appalachian town with a population of approximately 420, about 20 minutes from the West Virginia state line. Martin has been a skateboarding fanatic since he was a kid. That was in the Seventies; he is 42 now. Martin and his girlfriend, Amber Cavender, revel in the chaos of this year’s Bowl Bash, the annual summertime festival that’s Skatopia’s answer to Woodstock. It seems like a dream assignment to be sent to shoot something that you’ve already found compelling— when you accompany it with an incredible story (by Mark Binelli) in a National Magazine, it’s even better.”

Travis Dove, Skatopia.

Travis Dole received his BA from Wake Forest University in 2004. A year later he began freelancing for newspapers in North Carolina’s Research Triangle.

“The road to Skatopia is barely two lanes and often unmarked. It winds past a field of sheep, a white clapboard church (Page Free Will Baptist), a yellow highway-crossing sign showing an Amish buggy instead of a deer. A handmade warning at the top of a steep dirt drive — “Skatopia Enter at Own Risk!!!” — lets pilgrims know they have arrived. They come at all hours, most any time of year, from as far away as Argentina, Japan, Finland. The gates are always open.

Brewce Martin began building Skatopia in 1996. Skatopia sits on 88 acres of hilly, forested land in Rutland, Ohio, an Appalachian town with a population of approximately 420, about 20 minutes from the West Virginia state line. Martin has been a skateboarding fanatic since he was a kid. That was in the Seventies; he is 42 now. Martin and his girlfriend, Amber Cavender, revel in the chaos of this year’s Bowl Bash, the annual summertime festival that’s Skatopia’s answer to Woodstock. It seems like a dream assignment to be sent to shoot something that you’ve already found compelling— when you accompany it with an incredible story (by Mark Binelli) in a National Magazine, it’s even better.”

9:02pm  |   URL: http://tumblr.com/ZBqPSyLoN3Z
(View comments) 
(Notes: 3)
  
January 21, 2010

Stanley Green, Black Passport.

“I think you can only do war photography for eight years. For eight years you can still keep the positive. If you stay at it longer than eight years, you turn. And not into a beautiful butterfly. You really turn. I see it in myself, I see it in all my friends and colleagues. I mean they are all victims of post trauma. We’re not the beautiful butterflies anymore. We become moths. We’re like moths flying to the flame. You know, sometimes your wings get singed or you just burn up. Get killed. Or you burn up inside. The drugs and the alcohol and the party and all of this is to push it away, push it away.”

Thanks Ben via La Pura Vida.

11:03pm  |   URL: http://tumblr.com/ZBqPSyKfnS8
(View comments) 
(Notes: 2)
  
January 20, 2010
Stephen Gill, Hackney Flowers. “That day I bought a plastic camera at the market for 50p; it had a plastic lens with no focus or exposure controls. I started making pictures with it at once. Over the next two years I visited Hackney Wick again and again. Hackney has long provided a refuge for immigrants and asylum seekers from all over the world and for me Hackney Wick especially reflects the great diversity of London” “When burying my first batch of prints, a man spotted me and asked what I was doing, not only did I not want to give the location away of some of my buried pictures, but it just sounded a bit weird to say that I was burying my photographs, so I replied I was looking for newts, as soon as said that I found a newt and lifted it up and said look there’s one.”

Stephen Gill, Hackney Flowers.

“That day I bought a plastic camera at the market for 50p; it had a plastic lens with no focus or exposure controls. I started making pictures with it at once. Over the next two years I visited Hackney Wick again and again. Hackney has long provided a refuge for immigrants and asylum seekers from all over the world and for me Hackney Wick especially reflects the great diversity of London”

“When burying my first batch of prints, a man spotted me and asked what I was doing, not only did I not want to give the location away of some of my buried pictures, but it just sounded a bit weird to say that I was burying my photographs, so I replied I was looking for newts, as soon as said that I found a newt and lifted it up and said look there’s one.”

9:54pm  |   URL: http://tumblr.com/ZBqPSyKZ906
(View comments) 
(Notes: 4)
  
January 20, 2010
Max Aguilera-Hellweg, The Sacred Heart: An Atlas Of The Body Seen Through Invasive Sugery 1997. “I was assigned to photograph a neurosurgeon for Savvy magazine in 1990. As a photojournalist, I left any preconceived notions at the door. It was as if Cape Canaveral had called me 15 minutes before launch and said they had a seat for me on a flight to Pluto. It was that phenomenal. As for my health, it’s funny. I had a horseback riding accident right before taking those first photos. Before that, I had my tonsils out and surgery on my arm. A couple years later, when I began this whole thing, I had viral meningitis. Up until that I had no interest in medicine. If someone called me and told me tomorrow that I’d be photographing a neuro and it would make me want to become a doctor, I’d say I don’t think so.” “What am I doing taking organic chemistry? Nobody takes biochemistry orcalculus for fun. The thing about being a photographer is that you’re forever a voyeur, outside experience. When I photographed the president of the United States I thought, “I wanna be president.” When I photographed wars I thought, “I wanna play war games.” When I photographed doctors I thought, “I wanna put on the Band-Aid, I wanna go in there.” I want the direct experience—to get truly inside.”

Max Aguilera-Hellweg, The Sacred Heart: An Atlas Of The Body Seen Through Invasive Sugery 1997.

“I was assigned to photograph a neurosurgeon for Savvy magazine in 1990. As a photojournalist, I left any preconceived notions at the door. It was as if Cape Canaveral had called me 15 minutes before launch and said they had a seat for me on a flight to Pluto. It was that phenomenal. As for my health, it’s funny. I had a horseback riding accident right before taking those first photos. Before that, I had my tonsils out and surgery on my arm. A couple years later, when I began this whole thing, I had viral meningitis. Up until that I had no interest in medicine. If someone called me and told me tomorrow that I’d be photographing a neuro and it would make me want to become a doctor, I’d say I don’t think so.”

“What am I doing taking organic chemistry? Nobody takes biochemistry orcalculus for fun. The thing about being a photographer is that you’re forever a voyeur, outside experience. When I photographed the president of the United States I thought, “I wanna be president.” When I photographed wars I thought, “I wanna play war games.” When I photographed doctors I thought, “I wanna put on the Band-Aid, I wanna go in there.” I want the direct experience—to get truly inside.”

5:19pm  |   URL: http://tumblr.com/ZBqPSyKY39x
(View comments) 
(Notes: 7)
  
January 19, 2010
Dash Snow Polaroids. Snow ran away from home and began living on the streets at 13 or 14, and began taking photographs, he said, as a record of places he might not remember the next day. The artist’s photographic work is in a thematically similar mode to photographers Nan Goldin, Larry Clark, Ryan McGinley and Richard Billingham, often depicting scenes of a candid or illicit nature. Instances of sex, drug taking, violence and art-world pretentiousness are documented with disarming frankness and honesty, offering insight into the decadent lifestyle associated with young New York City artists and their social circles. Snow died on the evening of July 13, 2009 at Lafayette House, a hotel in lower Manhattan.His grandmother Christophe de Menil was quoted as saying that he died of a drug overdose. A New York Times article commented that Snow “met a junkie’s end but did so in a $325-a-night hotel room with an antique marble hearth. -Wikipedia

Dash Snow Polaroids.

Snow ran away from home and began living on the streets at 13 or 14, and began taking photographs, he said, as a record of places he might not remember the next day.

The artist’s photographic work is in a thematically similar mode to photographers Nan Goldin, Larry Clark, Ryan McGinley and Richard Billingham, often depicting scenes of a candid or illicit nature. Instances of sex, drug taking, violence and art-world pretentiousness are documented with disarming frankness and honesty, offering insight into the decadent lifestyle associated with young New York City artists and their social circles.

Snow died on the evening of July 13, 2009 at Lafayette House, a hotel in lower Manhattan.His grandmother Christophe de Menil was quoted as saying that he died of a drug overdose. A New York Times article commented that Snow “met a junkie’s end but did so in a $325-a-night hotel room with an antique marble hearth.

-Wikipedia

6:16pm  |   URL: http://tumblr.com/ZBqPSyKS0Mb
(View comments) 
(Notes: 2)
  
January 17, 2010
Bill Daniel, Texas Punk Pioneers 1980-1984.

Bill Daniel, Texas Punk Pioneers 1980-1984.

10:34pm  |   URL: http://tumblr.com/ZBqPSyKFpJO
(View comments) 
January 17, 2010
Nick Knight, Skinheads, 1982. “The skinhead thing came about because i was living on the continent and came back to England. My brother was 3 years older than me and all his mates were skinheads. This was in the beginning of the 1970’s and you just admire your brother friends, I think. It was when skinheads started making a reappearance around 1977 that i decided it was what i wanted to do as well as how i wanted to look. I was working in an off-license in London at the time and there was another skinhead guy working there. We used to go and see the Specials together or whoever was playing.” “Violence is a part of our everyday lives in any case, especially when growing up in Britain. You’re not exactly unaware of it. I guess it was a testing time for me. I was getting into my late teens and a lot of people impose some sort of cultural testing upon themselves. Although it did not seem to be at the time. Especially as for me it was just the coolest way to dress, the best music around and the sort of girls i wanted to go out with. But if you look back at it now I suppose it was some sort of social testing.” Interview by David Wood, Body Probe 1999.

Nick Knight, Skinheads, 1982.

“The skinhead thing came about because i was living on the continent and came back to England. My brother was 3 years older than me and all his mates were skinheads. This was in the beginning of the 1970’s and you just admire your brother friends, I think. It was when skinheads started making a reappearance around 1977 that i decided it was what i wanted to do as well as how i wanted to look. I was working in an off-license in London at the time and there was another skinhead guy working there. We used to go and see the Specials together or whoever was playing.”

“Violence is a part of our everyday lives in any case, especially when growing up in Britain. You’re not exactly unaware of it. I guess it was a testing time for me. I was getting into my late teens and a lot of people impose some sort of cultural testing upon themselves. Although it did not seem to be at the time. Especially as for me it was just the coolest way to dress, the best music around and the sort of girls i wanted to go out with. But if you look back at it now I suppose it was some sort of social testing.”

Interview by David Wood, Body Probe 1999.

6:00pm  |   URL: http://tumblr.com/ZBqPSyKESbB
(View comments) 
(Notes: 2)
  
January 14, 2010
Nick Knight: “I don’t think photographs are best displayed in galleries. I really don’t enjoy the experience of seeing them there. The most exciting way to see a photograph is passing a billboard in a car, flicking past it in a magazine or seeing it out the window of a tube. That’s how it delivers its power: when it becomes part of the vernacular of everyday life.”

Nick Knight:

“I don’t think photographs are best displayed in galleries. I really don’t enjoy the experience of seeing them there. The most exciting way to see a photograph is passing a billboard in a car, flicking past it in a magazine or seeing it out the window of a tube. That’s how it delivers its power: when it becomes part of the vernacular of everyday life.”

6:07pm  |   URL: http://tumblr.com/ZBqPSyJxOO-
(View comments) 
(Notes: 12)
  
January 12, 2010
A Chronology of Crime in the Keystone State.

ahappening-photographs:

http://www.squareamerica.com/mugshots/

A slideshow of 20 mugshots of hapless criminals from the town of New Castle, PA. from the 1930s through the 1960s. Expect drunks, larcenists, and even a peeping tom!

6:29pm  |   URL: http://tumblr.com/ZBqPSyJjxEH
(View comments) 
(Notes: 21)
  
January 8, 2010
Tsurisaki Kiyotaka, Revelations. “Being opposed to the fantastic practices of Witkin or the justificatory ones of Nachtwey, Tsurisaki Kiyotaka proposes his own method of presenting the dead person in contemporary photography: an attitude without concession, where the corpses take back their rightful place in social space and symbolic systems.”

Tsurisaki Kiyotaka, Revelations.

“Being opposed to the fantastic practices of Witkin or the justificatory ones of Nachtwey, Tsurisaki Kiyotaka proposes his own method of presenting the dead person in contemporary photography: an attitude without concession, where the corpses take back their rightful place in social space and symbolic systems.”

12:08pm  |   URL: http://tumblr.com/ZBqPSyJGqS1
(View comments) 
(Notes: 38)
  
January 8, 2010
Antoine D’Agata, Home Town. “This book is less about showing a transgressive world of sex, drugs, and errancy, than it is about a transgression of the boundary that usually separates the photographer from the subject. It is a candid autobiography in which desire, the unconscious, risk, and luck are its essential elements. Partly taken in Marseille, in the south of France, where Antoine D’Agata was born, these pictures conjure up an interrupted departure, obstructions, and emotional shortcuts. Here photography born out of a raw experience is also its forever-hedged condition of possibility. This tension between the self and the world, this impure relationship between document and subjectivity, are what “Home Town” ultimately affirms.”

Antoine D’Agata, Home Town.

“This book is less about showing a transgressive world of sex, drugs, and errancy, than it is about a transgression of the boundary that usually separates the photographer from the subject. It is a candid autobiography in which desire, the unconscious, risk, and luck are its essential elements. Partly taken in Marseille, in the south of France, where Antoine D’Agata was born, these pictures conjure up an interrupted departure, obstructions, and emotional shortcuts. Here photography born out of a raw experience is also its forever-hedged condition of possibility. This tension between the self and the world, this impure relationship between document and subjectivity, are what “Home Town” ultimately affirms.”

12:18am  |   URL: http://tumblr.com/ZBqPSyJDEk6
(View comments) 
(Notes: 10)
  
January 6, 2010
Ikko Kagari - Adult Shashin Jutsu Nozoki. Complete Set. Volumes1-5. Hama Shobo, Tokyo, Japan. 1981-1982. “Volumes #1 to #3 act as a guide to taking hidden photos of women with an infrared camera with images such as car sex, office sex, lovers going into love hotels, night sex in the park, upskirt shots on the train; on escalators and at clubs. Volume #4 focuses on taking self portraits while having sex (mainly with prostitutes) and volume #5 is a guide to taking photos at the pool, public bath or onsen with most photos being of women bathing underwater, washing and dressing or undressing.”

Ikko Kagari - Adult Shashin Jutsu Nozoki. Complete Set. Volumes1-5. Hama Shobo, Tokyo, Japan. 1981-1982.

“Volumes #1 to #3 act as a guide to taking hidden photos of women with an infrared camera with images such as car sex, office sex, lovers going into love hotels, night sex in the park, upskirt shots on the train; on escalators and at clubs. Volume #4 focuses on taking self portraits while having sex (mainly with prostitutes) and volume #5 is a guide to taking photos at the pool, public bath or onsen with most photos being of women bathing underwater, washing and dressing or undressing.”

10:25pm  |   URL: http://tumblr.com/ZBqPSyJ5ua5
(View comments) 
(Notes: 2)
  
January 6, 2010
Ikko Kagari, How to take hidden photos of women, Goma Shobo 1983. “A guide to taking hidden photos of women with an infrared camera with images such as car sex, office sex, lovers going into love hotels, night sex in the park, upskirt shots on the train; on escalators and at clubs, all shot in infrared.”

Ikko Kagari, How to take hidden photos of women, Goma Shobo 1983.

“A guide to taking hidden photos of women with an infrared camera with images such as car sex, office sex, lovers going into love hotels, night sex in the park, upskirt shots on the train; on escalators and at clubs, all shot in infrared.”

9:41pm  |   URL: http://tumblr.com/ZBqPSyJ5ffo
(View comments) 
(Notes: 11)
  
January 6, 2010
Jessica Dimmock, The 9th Floor. “I was studying at the International Center of Photography at the time. I was on the street fiddling with a digital camera because as of then I had not used one before. I was approached by a cocaine dealer who made it clear that he was a dealer. Over the course of the conversation he made it clear that if I wanted to follow him and photograph him I could. He took me to a variety of places – parties, people’s apartments, the owner of an escort service. The last place he ever took me was the apartment where the project starts. He was arrested shortly thereafter, and I have never seen him since, despite trying to find him. But because he brought me to this apartment and made the initial introduction I went back with prints from my first visit. After that, and some slow starts, I was allowed to return at any time.”

Jessica Dimmock, The 9th Floor.

“I was studying at the International Center of Photography at the time. I was on the street fiddling with a digital camera because as of then I had not used one before. I was approached by a cocaine dealer who made it clear that he was a dealer. Over the course of the conversation he made it clear that if I wanted to follow him and photograph him I could. He took me to a variety of places – parties, people’s apartments, the owner of an escort service. The last place he ever took me was the apartment where the project starts. He was arrested shortly thereafter, and I have never seen him since, despite trying to find him. But because he brought me to this apartment and made the initial introduction I went back with prints from my first visit. After that, and some slow starts, I was allowed to return at any time.”

8:33pm  |   URL: http://tumblr.com/ZBqPSyJ5MOF
(View comments) 
(Notes: 5)
  
Liked posts on Tumblr: More liked posts »