graeme mitchell

A few looks we shot for Interview June 09 of Victorinox‘s men’s fashion.

photo: Victorinox for Interview, ©Graeme Mitchell.

photo: Victorinox for Interview, ©Graeme Mitchell.

Stylist: Miguel Enamorado
Groomer: Laura de Leon (w/ Joe Management)
Photo Assistant: Nyra Lang
Model: Michael (w/ DNA)
Location: Fast Ashley’s Studios

In the ages to come man may be able to predict, perhaps even to control, the wayward courses of the winds and clouds, but hardly will his puny hands have strength to speed afresh our slackening planet in its orbit or rekindle the dying fire of the sun. Yet the philosopher who trembles at the idea of such distant catastrophes may console himself by reflecting that these gloomy apprehensions, like the earth and the sun themselves, are only part of the unsubstantial world which thought has conjured up out of the void, and that the phantoms which the subtle enchantress has evoked to-day she may ban to-morrow. They too, like so much that to common eyes seems solid, may melt into air, into thin air.

-from The Golden Bough, by Sir James G. Frazer

photo: ©Graeme Mitchell

photo: ©Graeme Mitchell

photo: ©Graeme Mitchell

photo: ©Graeme Mitchell

photo: ©Graeme Mitchell

photo: ©Graeme Mitchell

photo: ©Graeme Mitchell

photo: ©Graeme Mitchell

photo: ©Graeme Mitchell

photo: ©Graeme Mitchell

photo: ©Graeme Mitchell

photo: ©Graeme Mitchell

photo: ©Graeme Mitchell

photo: ©Graeme Mitchell

photo: ©Graeme Mitchell

photo: ©Graeme Mitchell

photo: ©Graeme Mitchell

photo: ©Graeme Mitchell

photo: ©Graeme Mitchell

photo: ©Graeme Mitchell

photo: ©Graeme Mitchell

photo: ©Graeme Mitchell

photo: ©Graeme Mitchell

photo: ©Graeme Mitchell

photo: ©Graeme Mitchell

photo: ©Graeme Mitchell

photo: ©Graeme Mitchell

photo: ©Graeme Mitchell

photo: ©Graeme Mitchell

photo: ©Graeme Mitchell

photo: ©Graeme Mitchell

photo: ©Graeme Mitchell

photo: ©Graeme Mitchell

photo: ©Graeme Mitchell

photo: ©Graeme Mitchell

photo: ©Graeme Mitchell

photo: ©Graeme Mitchell

photo: ©Graeme Mitchell

photo: ©Graeme Mitchell

photo: ©Graeme Mitchell

photo: ©Graeme Mitchell

Il Conformista, by Bernardo Bertolucci, is one of the most amazingly shot films I’ve ever seen.

Ever.

Period.

I see in it everything from Lynch’s central oeuvre to Missoni’s FW09 campaign.

photo: still from Il Conformista

and Lynch…

photo: still from David Lynch’s Mulholland Drive.

photo: still from Il Conformista

Lynch again…

photo: still from David Lynch’s Mulholland Drive.

photo: still from Il Conformista

Missoni…

photo: Missoni FW 09 campaign, ©Steven Meisel.

——

On a seperate note, get to ICP to see the Avedon show!…or if you can’t make it, at least you can see the NYTimes multimedia feature, here.

I did a quick yet idea provoking walk through the MET’s exhibition “model as muse” yesterday.  The exhibition’s been getting a lot of press, rightfully, as it’s both excellently curated and art directed.  Two things struck me while walking through the show.  First, how incredible Dior has been in the history of fashion (duh), and how it remains to be under Galliano.  The recent Dior Couture they had on display was incredible.  It’s the sort of stuff that makes me want to photograph clothing.  Second, I was amazed at both how many people were at the exhibit and how interested they were in it.  Which seems like a silly thing to say, but I’m not sure I’ve ever seen so many people so interested in any exhibit I’ve been to.  It was a reminder of how fashion and this aspect of our culture really is mass, and while it feels like it can become isolated to the little bubbles of NYC, Paris, London, etc, it’s so much larger than that. Maybe Penn summed it best in stating, to paraphrase, I take photographs for the housewife in the mid-west.

The museum also posted it’s curator talks in 9 parts, which are a nice history of models and fashion’s social/cultural functions in general:

1 of 9:

2 0f 9:

3 of 9:

4 of 9:

5 of 9:

6 of 9:

7 of 9:

8 of 9:

9 of 9:

I think Roger Ballen‘s new book, Boarding House, takes the previous themes he’s explored and winds them into the most coherent vision of his work yet.  It’s dark stuff.  It’s scary stuff.  It digs deep, surfacing forgotten recesses of the psyche, troubled archetypes your mind does it’s best to loose in the furthest and deepest mine shafts of your soul.  But it’s also brilliant stuff, some of the most real and touching work I’ve seen in a while, all at once sublimely terrifying and terrifyingly sublime.

photo: “Fragments, 2005″ ©Roger Ballen.

photo: “Cornered, 2004″ ©Roger Ballen.

photo: “Boarder, 2005″ ©Roger Ballen.