Silence of the Leaves: Your kid looks like Hannibal Lechter.

One of the things I love most in this world are amateur photography contests. Just like a thrift store, these contests ask you to dig through some ugly crap to get to the good stuff. You find ugly cliches, some lovely images, and the occasional accidentally HILARIOUS picture. You can imagine my excitement this morning when I came across the gem above at weather.com's fall photo contest. I can understand how the photographer (who I'm guessing is a loving relative of this child) may have missed the obvious likeness between this adorable child and Hannibal Lechter, but what about the photo editors?

Check it: http://www.weather.com/outlook/photo/read/fallfoliage/B437C983-6EE6-4BA0-92FE-D979A1C38FBF?from=hp_dwp

Is Photography Becoming Painting? Duh.

When painter Paul Delaroche stood before an early Daguerreotype and exclaimed "Painting is dead!" he had no idea that one day a  little organization calling themselves "Adobe" would make him eat his words.  Nowadays, painting is far from death, and it's photography that is regressing back towards painting.  The images above, of Estonian model (and chess champion/entrepreneur/politician who's awful caught-with-her-mouth-open Wikipedia photo I don't feel bad about publishing since homegirl's got a zillion things going for her) Carmen Kass, are a perfect example. Start with a tall, thin, good looking girl who photographs well, add an Adobe Photoshop artist on a high-powered computer, and you end up with a digital painting of a supermodel (and a beautiful Dior advertisement).

When un-retouched Steven Klein photos of Madonna surfaced earlier this year, the blog-o-sphere exploded with criticism of the singer-dancer-adopter-of-African-babies' aging face as well as shout-outs to her well-maintained 50-year old face and form. Regardless of how you think she looked, it should really be shocking that "un-retouched photos" caused such a stir. Aren't photos supposed to be un-retouched? Wasn't photography invented as a way to preserve images of the world around us as it actually existed? Argue as much as you like about how photography even in it's purest form will always distort reality (and I'd tend to agree with you), we've entered an age where photography doesn't even resemble reality.

I'm not trying to tell anyone that re-touching that evil or otherwise.  I'm just saying that its interesting to think that photography, once thought to be the culmination of man's efforts in painting, is moving closer and closer back towards traditional painting every day. 

This New York Times Op-Ed piece thinks we should legislate retouching, as is being considered by the French:  http://video.nytimes.com/video/2009/03/09/opinion/1194838469575/sex-lies-and-photoshop.html

Was Abe Lincoln re-touched? See a History of Photographic Tamering:  http://www.cs.dartmouth.edu/farid/research/digitaltampering/

So you wanna see Madonna un-retouched? We won't tell: http://theblemish.com/2009/01/calling-all-photoshop-experts-madonna-needs-your-help/

I Thought That She Was Bigger: The Traveling Art of Michael Hughes

I think we are all guilty of taking cheap touristy pictures, despite knowing how tacky they are.  Michael Hughes, however, is elevating the tourist photo to high art, and making a career out of those snapshots.  Having captured the Leaning Tower in ice cream and the Eiffel Tower as a key chain, Hughes has trotted the world and has the pictures to prove it.  By utilizing tourist goods as the stand-ins for the landmarks we all know and love, Hughes takes a light-hearted jab at cultural imperialism and the whole superficial notion of a tourist's view of a foreign land.  The pharaohs would have been mortified that their monuments to immortality are now reduced to dinky, plastic, pyramids for slack-jawed visitors, and Hughes makes us realized that maybe we should feel the same way.  In the end, these photographs are as transient and fleeting as the crummy trinkets and renderings that serve as props.

More Lady Liberty By Hughes: http://www.flickr.com/photos/michael_hughes/2998637797/in/set-346406/

Matthew Tischler's Rigourous SCREENing Process

In the spirit of my last post, I'm going to use this forum to promote work by an artist whose art in is my collection, thus increasing its value and making me FUCKING RICHER.

So check it: this past Thursday's 20x200 from blog-o-sphere fave Jen Beckman featured a return by New York photographer Matthew Tischler. Tischler is known for shooting images through screens and other fabrics, focusing in close creating a gridded out image of blurry figures and landscapes. They're awesome, and you should check him out (and try to snatch up a $20 print from Beckman before they're sold out!).

http://www.matthewtischler.com/

Now kids, if you aren't good, I'll subject you to scary scary photography

Alright, so it isn't fine art but you could totally see this up at the Whitney, right?

Our tale starts by remembering back to your Elementary school days.... do you remember studying Mexico? Do you remember how Mexico City is built on a swamp (remember the eagle on a rock in the swamp with the snake, thing? and then the Aztecs... anyone, anyone, Bueller?)? OK, so Mexico City is still on a swamp. Just outside the city are a series of islands connected to the rest of the metropolis by canals and other watery goodness. One of these islands is simply referred to as 'Island of the Dolls.' Years ago, a young girl drowned in the water and so one man started hanging up dolls to appease/comfort her spirit. Thus, the nightmare pictured above (from trazzler). for more bad dreams: http://www.trazzler.com/trips/island-of-the-dolls-in-mexico-city

Moooove over horses: More Livestock in Wigs

Since livestock and other unusual bodies in wigs appears to have become the new theme of this blog, I give you cowabduction.com. At left, you see a lovely photo of a cow in disguise (a saucy little blonde wig) underneath what appears to be a flying saucer--just one of many gems to be found at the site dedicated to eliminating alien abductions of cows.

I would love to see some sort of exhibition or documentary be the culmination of this site's research. It's got all the right ingredients to one day become a cult favorite: internet exposure, conspiracy-theory espousing rednecks, and animals in costumes.

Pass me the Cool Whip: A Jello Installation

OK, I can't make this photo any bigger because it will BLOW YOUR MIND. Yes.... it is JELL-O. This stunning beauty is by Liz Hicock. She does many buildings and installations, all from that staple of picnics and church socials. This photograph documents the cityscape of San Francisco, and I must say, the city has never looked so delicious. Actually, if you squint at the picture, it does that magic-eye thing, and you can kinda see a smiley face with angry eyes. Or is that a repressed, childhood memory?

For more glorious wiggles: http://www.lizhickok.com/index.html

Wigging out in Response to horse photography...

Number one: Daren Rabinovitch.

Aside from his photography, Rabinovitch is also one of the three members of Encyclopedia Pictura, a directorial triumvirate under the employ of Ghost Robot production studios. Encylopedia Pictura is responsible for Bjork's "Wanderlust" music video. Wait, what? YOU HAVEN'T SEEN IT?! Get the popcorn and the doobies, this is some bizarre-ass cinematography. You can even opt to watch it in 3-D, provided you have 3-D glasses. Would you expect anything less from Bjork? 

Wanderlust:  http://www.encyclopediapictura.com/

Ghost Robot:  http://ghostrobot.com/

Number two: Julie Jackson, crazy cat lady and... fiber artist?

http://kittywigs.com

Hey, I want a pony!!

Photographer Julian Wolkenstein has some interesting pictures, mostly urban landscapes. Something magical must have been slipped into his orange juice (besides the usual additives so adored by artists and other crack whores) to inspire a series of photographs with hair styled fillies. One particularly brilliant picture features a stunning black mare with Rick James-style, beaded braids. Still, I am a particular fan of this lovely lady named Florence. First of all, you all are looking at my hair style all through the 90's (really just like me; the only things missing are the blemishes and the surly facial expression). Additionally, it looks like a grisaille painting, or maybe something that came out of the English Regency period. Classy, yet lowest common denominator.

GO HERE: http://www.julianwolkenstein.com/

Slim Aarons + Leni Riefenstahl's love child: Photojournalism

On the front page of the New York times today, was this photo, shot in Pyongyang, North Korea at a celebration of the late leader Kim Il-sung. It reminded me of the work of society photographer Slim Aarons and also that of notorious Nazi propagandist Leni Riefenstahl. An unusual combination of influences for a really beautiful photo. While I'm not usually a fan of the self-important masterbatory nonsense we like to call "photojournalism," this photo is one of a handful of exceptions. Maybe because it looks so much like a painting, and those of you who know me know I'm just a little partial to that particular medium.

Art World's Big Bad Boys Club look stupid. Again.

I went and saw Guest of Cindy Sherman this weekend to scratch the artworld catiness itch I'd been having. Filmed documentary-style by Ms. Sherman's former lover, Paul H-O, I expected the film to make the notoriously lime-light-avoider Cindy Sherman look like a phoney, but to my surprise and delight, Ms. Sherman was portrayed as a sweet, creative, beautiful, and kind artist. Paul films her working in her studio where she pensively and unfussily dresses and makes herself up, sitting on the floor surrounded by brushes, wigs, and dresses, almost like a child playing dress-up. Even as the relationship between Paul and Cindy sours, she maintains her appeal while Paul looks like a whiner whose ego can't handle having a girlfriend who outscores him in terms of money, fame, and power.

Not everyone in the artworld, however, walks away unscathed. The always easy-to-hate Julian Schnabel behaves like a beastly egomanic, chastizing the documentarians who dare make light of the gallery scene, in particular, one of Mr. Schnabel's solo shows. Later in the film, Eric Fishl proves to be similarly boorish, discussing the career of his wife, less renouned artist April Gornik, and admitting that if her career had outshined his, he would have not been able to stay with her. The big, maturbatory paitings of the so called bad-boys of the '80s become the butt of videographer's Paul H-O's jokes. Unfortunately, those bad-boys let their egos get in the way of the jokes just rolling off; by getting immediately defensive and returning good-hearted jabs with much harsher words, the "bad boys" appear afraid of being caught wearing the emperor's new clothes, or is it the emperor's new "broken plates?"