JUMP!

You still have couple of days to catch Philippe Halsman's exhibition JUMP in Laurence Miller Gallery, New York.



Quirky and fun-filled series of fifty vintage photographs were taken by Philippe Halsman five decades ago of movie stars, politicians, royalty, entertainers, artists, and authors, all jumping before Mr. Halsman’s camera. He called the series “Jumpology.” The extended series has never before been exhibited in New York.


Philippe Halsman, with an unsurpassed 101 LIFE magazine covers to his credit, had the bold and unconventional idea back in the 1950’s to ask the famous and prominent people he was commissioned to photograph for the likes of LIFE, LOOK and the Saturday Evening Post, once the formal sessions were over, to jump! The results were amazing, as each subject interpreted this bizarre request in their own unique way, often defying their typical public image. We see Richard Nixon as he floats twelve inches above the floor with a peaceful smile on his face, a far cry from the scowl many of us ultimately remember him by. And there is the rather large Jackie Gleason, in a handsome dark suit and his fingers extended wide, defying gravity as he lifts off, and from somewhere off-camera we can’t help but hear “To the moon, Alice.”



Marilyn Monroe, Brigitte Bardot, Audrey Hepburn, Sophia Loren, Salvador Dali, Weegee, Jack Dempsey and even the Duke and Duchess of Windsor agreed to take a leap of faith. In that era of live television along with the popularity of the big glossy magazines, one’s image was not nearly as protected and shaped by handlers as it is today. There was a feeling of innocence, a desire for spontaneity, and Halsman, with his playful and charming personality, knew he had to get almost everyone to oblige his demand: JUMP!




Philippe Halsman was born in Latvia in 1906, and began his photographic career in Paris in the early 1930’s. He emigrated to New York in the fall of 1940, as Paris fell to the Nazis. He soon became one of the most prominent photographers in America, his photographs published widely and regularly. He died in 1979. His photographs have been collected and exhibited by museums around the world.

No Sweat - Exercises for Gentlemen

The reprint of a century old fitness manual for working man "Exercises for Gentlemen. 50 Exercises to Do With Your Suit On." inspired a fashion shoot inside the headquarters of The New York Times. We love the photo shoot and idea, photos by Matthew Kristall.



About the book:

Laugh your way to a better you! For those too busy to go to the gym, try some of the fitness advice provided in this 1908 classic revisited. In today’s challenging business environment, the achieving executive needs every possible advantage, fitness included.



If gym fees and personal trainers do not fit into your schedule or budget, Exercises for Gentlemen offers just what the trainer would have ordered. With excerpts and original illustrations from The School of Health—the classic health reference of the early 1900s—here is a "practical course in physical culture" designed as a fitness program not even requiring a pair of exercise shorts, let alone joining a health club.



What results is both an entertaining glimpse of times gone by, and an exercise regime ideally suited to the modern man with neither the time nor the inclination to change clothes when he steps out from the busy office. This book contains detailed guidance on everything from knee bends and arm bends to proper posture, bathing, and homeopathic remedies—all to be taken with a suitable dose of humor.



A daily regime of a mere fifteen minutes of be-suited exercise is guaranteed to "reduce undue fullness at the waist, square the shoulders, round out the arms, improve leg development, and, in short, make a more graceful, strong, and symmetrical man."

TAXI

Taxis in Tokyo, they glow with a sense of urgency in the business of someone’s journey playing out. The way the landscape of the city can interact with the reflective surface’s of the taxi is often overlooked, these images aim to capture that light play with the energy and bustle of city life and the stillness of the individual within it.











The taxi series was mostly shot in dark backstreets, isolating their graphical elements and bringing everyday neon signs to centre stage. They were shot hand held on medium format from some precarious locations such as on highways and at lane intersections. As with all personal projects by Distil Ennui studio, they are presented as shot. This is how they describe the 'shot' photography process: "We see the process as cathartic rather than a critical one, and this dedication to ‘in-camera’ purity establishes a predominant focal point for our personal practice."

Distil Ennui is a collection of works that attempt to capture the beguiling beauty of life’s everyday confinements, re-proposing the ordinary, the displaced and the overlooked.

Photography Copyright © 2010 Alexander James.
The Taxi series is available to order in fine art print or license for print and web use through alexanderjamesstockphotography.com website.

Spring by Plein Sud

While fashion weeks in fashion capitals all over the world are showing the trends we'll wear this fall and winter, i'm looking forward to spring. If it's gonna look as half as good as the spring by Plein Sud, it's gonna be just beautiful!

We love this Spring-Summer Plein Sud collection!


















Dark-haired model: Valerija Kelava.

Cosa Nostra: Juergen and Missoni

The fashion buzz of today seems to be around the new campaign for Missoni, photographed by Juergen Teller. Opposite to expectations (by some), Missonis have kept this one for the family. Feels as if we had been invited to an Italian home with all the cheese, pasta & vino that comes with it. And we like it.

The ads were shot at the family home in Sumirago, Italy, near the company’s headquarters and feature three generations of Missonis mugging for the camera. Not that it was hard to coax any of them to say “formaggio.” “For us home and factory have always been very close,” explains the label’s designer Angela Missoni. “It just felt like the right moment to propose something real.” And an even better time to cut back on modeling fees. (via T Magazine blog)

 

 

ARCHITECTURE OF DENSITY

Today while having a beer after closing the studio, i was watching Paul McCartney’s “Band on the Run” video, and i started to realize how much cities have grown and changed in the last 30 to 40 years. Those early images of Singapore or Sidney that are shown in the video made me mentally juxtapose them to the photography of Michael Wolf, and here we present you his work. Wolf is a photographer born in Munich, Germany. He grew up in the USA and studied at UC Berkley and at the University of Essen in Germany.

Wolf views ordinary things in extraordinary ways. Culturally astute, Wolf’s artistic inspiration comes from the local culture in which he immerses himself. Michael Wolf has been fascinated by China’s complex urban dynamics since moving to Asia as a contract photographer in 1995 and his photography focuses on the idiosyncrasies of the Asian way of life. Insightful and absorbing, for example, his book “Hong Kong, The Front Door/The Back Door” deals with the SAR’s cultural identity through depictions of the city’s architecture.

“I love the visual chaos of China. It is a photographers dream,” says the photographer. Wolf’s poignant portrayals of the lives and living conditions of his cultural environment are subjective and personal and have earned him international acclaim. As described by Art Critic Kenneth Baker, “By their formal intelligence and acuity of observation, Wolf’s Hong Kong pictures easily earn the status of art works.”

“…Buildings that begin as monoliths are slowly humanized by their inhabitants; architecture becomes a framework upon which people can hang their personal personalities…” -Douglas Young about the work by Michael Wolf

Wolf stands by his motto: “If you are a vision and real conviction, you will find success.”

*this blog contains a text extract by Rebecca Walker

Like birds on the wire

Birds... They can be scary, dirty, big, small, cute, colorful, cheerful, chatty... but they can also be a big source of inspiration... Shanghai furniture and product designer Zhili Liu has designed a series of ligthing inspired by birds. The bone China sockets, called Bird, hold each bulb at an angle. They can be hung in clusters, attached to a perch or displayed with a shade that represent bird's cage.

 

The cheap bakelite bulb sockets have been widely used in China for over 4 decades without any change. The bird lamps were designed to inherit the simplicity of the bakelite sockets but at the same time offer the user some more room for imagination.

Birds were source of musical inspiration to Jarbas Agnelli, who once saw a photo of birds sitting on the electric wires. He decided to make song, using the notes on the exact locations as the birds were sitting. And you'll have to admit, it sounds pretty cool, too.


Birds on the Wires from Jarbas Agnelli on Vimeo.

And to me, i could say it was the opposite. I wasn't inspired by birds firsthand, but when i took the pictures below, i thought of brids as well.

Pictures for Photographs, Miles Aldridge

Miles Aldridge is famous for his decadent colour-saturated fashion photography in magazines such as Vogue and Numéro, but the sensual sketches that inform his photographic work are scarcely known.



Book Pictures for Photographs addresses this discrepancy by exploring the delectable relationship between the sketches and photographs. The book opens with the manic drawings with which Aldridge fills sketchbooks in preparation for fashion shoots. Scrawled in pen or pencil, these black-and-white sketches generate ideas for potential photographs and map out series of pictures like a film storyboard. Sometimes dotted with raunchy hand-written notes such as “green/yellow bra” or “painting nipples with lipstick”, Aldridge’s sketches are crucial to his photographs.



The second half of the book presents Aldridge’s photographs, which are often as much about sex as they are about fashion. Here we experience the opulent onslaught for which Aldridge is known: a blonde woman eating lobster and caviar with an exposed breast, an erotic couple in a darkened limousine, a school girl surrounded by her teddy bears, and even crying Madonnas. By setting Aldridge’s monotone drawings and the amplified, Pop-inspired colour of the photographs against each other, Pictures for Photographs offers an as yet unseen insight into Aldridge’s imagination and working processes.



Miles Aldridge will be signing copies of Pictures for Photographs at Colette on the 19th November.The signing will take place between 6-7pm. Colette / 213 RUE SAINT-HONORÉ / 75001 PARIS











Book is published by Steidl and you can buy it online here.