New Alice in Wonderland Trailer

Dust Book

Two French photographers flee Paris and come to Arizona with a Polaroid and Leica and document what they see with photos and words. That is what I can gleen of Dust Book by Aline Diepois and Thomas Gizolme.

Lens Culture describes the book as being, "Part photobook, part travel journal, part hallucinatory fantasy and stream of consciousness... Both indulge in drugs, alcohol and other substances while they encounter a very strange cast of characters in remote communities and random encampments of outcasts and misfits, real or imagined."

The book is available from Steidl. The authors' website is here where you can download a sample pdf of the book.

Michael Caine War Movie Weekend

I watched a pair of Michael Caine movies this weekend. First up was 1968's Play Dirty, a very cynical film about a group of misfit soldiers sent behind enemy lines to blow up a fuel depot in North Africa. I saw this when I was kid, missed the cynicism but remembered the ending for 30 years. The ending is still powerful as is the entire film if you overlook a couple of unanswered questions.



Next up was 1970's Too Late the Hero in which Caine and Cliff Robertson join a team of British commandos going behind Japanese lines to take out a radio tower on an island. I saw this as a kid as well and remembered only a couple of scenes. This one has a distinct, 'This is a really a Vietnam movie' vibe too it. It too has a powerful ending that I remembered for decades. It too holds up.



Of the two I'd say Too Late the Hero is a bit better but both are worth seeing.

Michael Caine photo is by the seminal 60's photographer David Baily - one of the main people in Ready, Steady Go: The Smashing Rise and Giddy Fall of Swinging London & alleged inspiration for the classic film Blow Up.

Paolo Ventura on Winter Stories

Via Conscientious

W. Eugene Smith on Iwo Jima

Tag 26 (Day 26)

Watch TAG 26 in Entertainment | View More Free Videos Online at Veoh.com

Andreas Samland's 3rd film was made in the German countryside in 2002 and is about 2 survivors of an unspecified biological plague. The film is about 18 minutes long.

Stop Motion is Cool

From YouTube: This is the ESCP Europe stop motion! More than 300 ESCP Europe students have worked together to express the values and spirit of ESCP Europe in a fun, imaginative and entertaining way. Key figures: 316 actors, 658 tee-shirts, 9m2 of cardboard, 4198 photos, 123m of gaffer tape for 3645 markers. To bring you face to face with their world, no need for words, the stop motion says it all. Share this link with your network! /// Plus de 300 étudiants d'ESCP Europe se mobilisent pour partager de façon ludique, originale et inattendue les valeurs et l'état d'esprit ESCP Europe. Les étudiants utilisent la technique du "stop motion" pour nous plonger dans leur univers résolument humain. Quelques chiffres : 316 figurants, 658 t-shirts, 9m2 de carton plume, 4 198 photos, 125m de gaffer pour 3 645 repères marqués.

Man in a Clock

via videosift.com

Via Videoshift: From YT description: "This clock does not actually have a man inside but a flatscreen that plays a 24 hour loop of this video by the artist watching his own clock somewhere and painstakingly erasing and re-writing each minute. This video was taken at Design Miami during Art Basel Miami Beach 2009."

Happy 93rd Birthday to Kirk Douglas

LAPP

Light Art Performance Photography (LAPP) is Joerg Miezda and Jan Leonardo Woellert, two Germans who do long exposure photography using the movement of light to enhance the image. Each image is a single shot with no photo manipulation done. The lights are specially designed. From a very in depth article: "The vivid colours and light effects are created with a range of different sources, including fireworks, lightsticks, flash and specifically developed luminous tools."

See more images:
LAPP
Daily Mail
io9

Roswell Angier

From PsychSkull:

Born in 1940, and exhibiting since the mid-70’s from when most of the images featured here were taken, Roswell Angier is another vital documenter of a rapidly-vanishing America. He captures the world romanticised by the likes of Tom Waits, Barry Gifford and David Lynch, be it the downtown dreamsumps of all-nite bars, strip clubs and long shadowy corridors, or the wind-stripped low desert wastelands of rusted muscle cars, gutterdogs chasing tumble weed, and smashed Tequila bottles twinkling under the flickering neon.

Much of his work involves strippers. I did not include any here due to the prevalence of nudity that's been popping up in the blog.

Photos available at the Gitterman Gallery.

Gratutitous Steven Meisel

Steven Meisel's provacative image of Natalia Vodianova rolling her own via Lolitas.

Paolo Ventura

Photographer & diorama maker, Paolo Ventura released his second book a few weeks ago. It is called Winter Stories and is about the memories of an old circus performer remembering day-to-day scenes in Italy. Ventura using dioramas to tell his tale. The colors are muted, the scenes are menacing. Even in scenes that should be joyful there is an undercurrent of tension. As a former fashion photographer, Ventura understood the power of posing people in just the right way. He carried this skill to the dioramas he builds. An excellent interview can be found here and an article about his work here.



I'm totally blown away by his work. And then to find that he spends only $30 or so per shot... extraordinary.

Danilo Rhodies

All the bio I can find on Danilo Rhodies is this from the above video on YouTube: "Danilo Rhodies is a visual artist that specializes in the exploration of various movements of 20th century art, combining them from a design perspective to make work that is relevant to today's aesthetic sensibilities. Geometry Symmetry and Color play a major role in this evolution. Influences of Paul Klee, Piet Mondrian, Vasily Kandinsky, Giacomo Balla, Kenneth Noland, Jasper Johns, among others, can be identified in this process as well as the Pop Art, Bauhaus and Futurist movements of the early to mid 20th century." Oh, he's apparently Canadian.