is a great word. i googled it and now it's mine. what, oh what, shall i do with it?
Tuesday, December 28, 2010
El Dresses
Some more shots from the fashion shoot from earlier this month. I did some photoshop homework while home for Xmas. I'm still light years from knowing fractions about all this, but feel better than I did a week ago regarding it all.
New Video from TTMTTS
Today the Moon Tomorrow the Sun have recently released a freakin' cool video for their song "Autonomic" aka "Traits of a Traitor."
They're new album is coming out in early 2011 and the record release party is in...Norfolk! Yes!
I wrote this about them long long ago (well, a year ago).
I wrote this about them long long ago (well, a year ago).
Monday, December 27, 2010
1915
95 years ago. Adam's grandmother was born.
And some other things:
pic: teachingamericanhistorymd.net
Typhoid Mary. I never knew her story. It's crazy....and sad.
pic: yesterdaygirl
American women are denied the right to vote. Again. Only a few more years ladies!
Neon is invented and changes a certain type of storefront advertising.
pic: guardian.uk
World War I. Here's some other cool pics.
The Birth of a Nation premiers. It's often called the most controversial film ever made. It holds the record (today, 95 years later) as the most successful silent film ever made. It's racist (its other title? The Clansmen--yep, those clansmen), yet forward-thinking (when it comes to film making--not civil rights).
The Moving Arts Film Journal's Eric M. Armstrong said it "is as revered as it is reviled...perhaps the single most important film ever made.
pic: Milt Hinton
Norfolk, Europe
This pic was on AltDaily's facebook. I don't know who took it, but it's gorgeous. Norfolk gets more beautiful every minute. I like living here (even in yucky snow).
Thursday, December 23, 2010
Off
Heading home for a few days, so probably no new posts through the weekend. Merry Christmas to all!
Sunday, December 19, 2010
Music is Life.
Great music conversations lately. I've got to start thinking of my favorite shows of 2010. It made me think of previous lists like this. Two things I thought I'd share, as I kept thinking back to all the music I've been lucky enough to experience in my life. First, here is my top ten shows of 2009, written when jESiowastaken was just a baby blog.
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Saturday, December 18, 2010
Boottch
How did I never know this album cover existed? It includes:
1. The freakin' Beatles
2. Raw meat
3. Decapitated baby dolls
Wow. Long live rock and roll.
Wednesday, December 15, 2010
Pee-wee's Playlist
Yeah, this is gonna be fun. Know what the best part is? I'm getting to create the playlist for the afterparty (with Colley Cantina's booker du jour Will Colson). Here's a small sampling of what you'll hear:
Be Your Own Pet: "Bicycle, Bicycle, You Are My Bicycle": Cuz, well, Pee-wee loves his bike and so do these punk rock lovelies. And this song makes me D-A-N-C-E!!!
Franz Ferdinand: "The Dark of the Matinee" Cuz, well, Pee-wee spent some time in the dark of the matinee, and this song also makes me dance.
I'll post the full playlist this weekend. Good times. Hope to see any of you from Norfolk at Cantina.
Stylin'
I just did my first fashion shoot for a local boutique called The Style Shoppe of Ghent. Here are some of the pics and here's the link to them online. There's more, but these feature the dresses I want to buy, haha! I have tons more that didn't make it to this ad, and am editing them now for practice, etc.
Saturday, December 11, 2010
Four track? Meet fast track.
pic: guardian.uk
Damon Albarn just announced through the Gorillaz Xmas calendar (which is a really cool, innovative way to interact with fans and should be checked out in its own right) that the Gorillaz will be the first band to ever record and release a full album on an iPad. Albarn, who is creative crackjuice and fronts both Gorillaz and Blur, among other musical projects and is someone I stand in awe of in many ways. It's not at all surprising he's got the innovation to be the first at this. Holy crap that device is insane.
Only last week I wrote about iPad art, and now it's music. Get to the website Dec 25 to download the entire album for free.
Merge?
Grace Jones
I just finished watching Smash His Camera, a recent HBO documentary on pioneering paparazzo Ron Galella. He's probably most famous for his 1970's court battles with Jackie Onassis and his getting punched in the face (suffering a broken jaw and five lost teeth) by recluse extraordinaire Marlon Brando.
The film discusses these and other recognizable or sensational incidents, using one of his most recognizable Jackie-O images as its DVD and Netflix cover. What interested me, though, was less the flash or the first-amendment arguments regarding paparazzi, and more the idea that his work is now ending up in important galleries around the world. The same work that was originally published in things like National Enquirer.
John Lennon & David Bowie
A group of what can only be described as old school artsnobs are portrayed sitting around a table discussing how meritless Galella's work is--how it's an embarrassment to the art world that his shots are being curated at places as prominent as the Tate and MOMA.
Galella is interviewed and followed around as he and assistants sort through a warehouse of over three million shots (digitizing them one by one). He attends The Changeling premiere, standing in a long line of other photographers, all less than half his age (which is 79) shouting "Angelina!" "Brad!"
He doesn't really yell or go out of his way to accomplish unique shots of the red carpet. Then, after the event, he sits in his car painstakingly handwriting a letter to the world's (current) most famous celebrity couple, expressing his "regrets" for not meeting them in person and hoping they will take time out of their New York trip to meet him for a more personal photo session. He goes back and forth on how to word it, and hand delivers it to the lobby of their hotel. He must be aware this is for naught. He is aware, though, the pictures he already took aren't anything special. Looking in a People magazine today, one photog's work doesn't stand out from the next.
The humanity director Leon Gast shows us in Galella (his 30+ year marriage, his love of bunny rabbits) as well as the fondness with which older celebrities refer his way (in comparison with today's paparazzi) make the watcher recognize the difference in this man and the generic, desperate, invasive "paparazzi" we often think of when hearing the word.
At the same time, recognizing the difference in Galella shadowing the Kennedy's or Grace Kelly versus the throng of anonymous, buff flash throwers chasing starlets and heiresses only goes so far. If he hadn't thought about innovation when he started out, a time in Hollywood where the studios would stage photo shoots meant to look natural, the craziness surrounding people like Britney Spears and co. wouldn't exist.
Madonna
Galella realized his pictures (from shoots and red carpets) looked a lot like everyone else's and stared employing decoys and stalker-like tendencies to ensure true candid and natural shots. They, of course, were more interesting, providing the audience a real sense of what these unreachable glamazons were like at 3 am stumbling out of Studio 54, or riding bikes with their kids in the park. Galella invented that kind of celebrity documentation. Magazines and newspapers loved it. Celebrities, not so much.
Getting back to the question at hand. Is his work art? As I've said before regarding documentation of a scene, it's valid for its time; and if what was going on the pictures from a cultural standpoint sustains beyond a fad, and becomes instead an era, the photos become the gateways to the essence of a time passed.
I think this is in agreement with Gast's portrayal. He ends the documentary with footage of a young, pretty attendee at Galella's gallery opening. She poses for paparazzi, flirts, mingles. When asked about the photographs, she doesn't recognize candid, unscripted shots of Elizabeth Taylor, Marlon Brando, John Belushi, and on and on. She pronounces Bardot "bar-dot" and asks if Steve McQueen was "like, a director or something?"
Crazy. He captured a time in popular culture (celebrity culture, really) that will never be available to an audience again. There weren't TMZ's and Perez Hilton's and there weren't digital cameras with ultra-zooms and Photoshop. His subjects and his technique are primitive in comparison, which is a valid collection to view.
