“Laurel Canyon,” SOMA, Feb ’09:
photo: ©Graeme Mitchell, 2009.
photo: ©Graeme Mitchell, 2009.
photo: ©Graeme Mitchell, 2009.
photo: ©Graeme Mitchell, 2009.
photo: ©Graeme Mitchell, 2009.
photo: ©Graeme Mitchell, 2009.
photo: ©Graeme Mitchell, 2009.
photo: ©Graeme Mitchell, 2009.
Stylist: Kemal & Karla (w/ The Wall Group)
M.U.: Hung Vanngo (w/ The Wall Group)
Hair: Sarah Potempa (w/ The Wall Group)
Set Design: Chelsea Maruskin (w/ Thomas Treuhaft)
Model: Melina (w/ Trump)
Studio: Shoot Digital
Nearly as an aside, I was at a friend’s apartment last night and she’d just bought an issue of Harper’s Bazaar from 1946. While looking through it I just kept reiterating how little had changed, I mean, aside from improved films and printing technology, the content really remains the same. Actually the design, font, art direction of this Bazaar was more sophisticated and interesting and in a way more contemporary than much of what’s done today – the use of white space alone seemed far ahead of our time. It made me appreciate why Alexey Brodovitch was and remains so lauded.
photo: Brodovitch lay-out in 1945 Harper’s Bazaar.
Brodovitch, you could say, discovered or groomed Avedon, bringing him in to shoot for Harper’s when he was 22. Those two working together became such a seminal time for the magazine and for fashion that they’re now commonly referred to as, The Avedon Years:
photo: 1952 Harper’s Bazaar cover by Avedon.
Brodovitch incidentally was also Penn‘s teacher while he was studying painting at the Philadelphia Museum School. Later Brodovitch hired Penn at Harper’s for design and layout. Penn later moved to Vogue, I believe again with the function as a designer/creative, but Vogue’s Alexander Liberman had him do a photograph for the magazine, and the rest, of course, is history.
(Huh, interesting, I just noticed both that Brodovitch and Liberman were originally Russian…)
In this particular copy of Harper’s my friend had the fashion story was by Louise Dahl-Wolfe, who’ve I’ve mentioned before (here) as a notable influence on the early years or editorial fashion photography.
photo: by Louise Dahl-Wolfe for Harper’s Bazaar, circa 1950s I think.
And that last image goes back to my original point of nothing being new under the sun. Reshoot it on Portra 160VC replace the warmth with a little cyan and it might as well have been Craig McDean that shot it. Okay, not exactly, but you get the idea.
“All intelligent thoughts have already been thought;
what is necessary is only to try to think them again.”
-from Goethe’s Faust
Painter, Alex Steckly, who you’ll be able to catch at the Dietch Gallery in Art Basil Miami come December.
photo: Alex Steckly, at his studio, Sept 2008. © Graeme Mitchell.
photo: Alex Steckly, at his studio, Sept 2008. © Graeme Mitchell.
photo: Alex Steckly, at his studio, Sept 2008. © Graeme Mitchell.
photo: Alex Steckly, at his studio, Sept 2008. © Graeme Mitchell.
Mario Sorrenti (w/ Art Partner) is one of those quickly-becoming-old-gaurd shooters that I’ve always respected but who’s work I’ve personally never enthusiastically anticipated. Lately, though, he’s been doing some sick-o stuff that I think is a departure from not only his usual fare but from the ubiquitous NYC diet of seamless and softboxes. The deconstruction and vintage sci-fi-film-feel here makes me think of buying a digital camera. Props, Mario. Love that you’re still pushing it.
Pics from Japanese Vogue Sept ’08 and Vogue Hommes International Fall/Winter ’08, respectively.
photo: Vogue Japan, Sept 08, © Mario Sorrenti.
photo: Vogue Hommes International, Fall/Winter 08, © Mario Sorrenti.
Flying back to NYC tomorrow, heaps of work and need-to-dos, but I’ll get back to the ol’interweb-postin’ too. Did see this portrait by Amelia Handscomb of the Flight of the Concords duo on the cover of issue #91 of BPM magazine…caught my attention. It’s always a pleasure to be taken by quality in random places; in that, I’ve never looked at BPM magazine until this, and it immediatly reinforced for me the importance of good photography, or even more generally to extrapolate on that line of thought: that doing things well matters.
photo: BPM #91 cover, © Amelie Handscomb.
So I gawked over the new Interview, but most of the other big Sept issues have been leaving me tired. Then I ran into Harper’s Bazaar, which I only ever really pick up to see what Lindbergh is up to, and, woo-ee, great issue with editorials by: Akrans, Sundsbo, Burbridge, Kadel, Lagerfeld, Goldberg, Luchford, Lindbergh, Lubomirski. (Almost all on location too, which seems like the default this fall over the studio. Maybe everyone is worn out on the big Briese Focuses or disenchanted with the death of 8×10 polaroid.)
photo: model Freja in Harper’s Bazaar, Sept 08. ©Glen Luchford.
(Channeling a little Guy in that shot…love it.)
Well, got a good look today of Interview‘s Sept 08 issue and the crew there has in a single issue transformed the magazine from the gasping for it’s last breath’s celebrity rag that Warhol invented so long ago to a fashion force to be reckoned with. Fabien Baron and Karl Templar have gradually been upping the ante with shoots like Mikael Jensen’s Eve Mendez spread last month, but this issue is a big, ballsy, and, I think, excellent move deeper in that direction. To drop some names from it: McDean, Sims, Mert and Marcus, Jensen, Templer, Guido, Moss, oh, and an entire spread dedicated to Margiela! And as if that’s not enough, they added an inch to page size and went to perfect binding.
[Insert applause].
photo: Interview Magazine Sept 08 cover, Kate Moss shot my Mert and Marcus.
It seems like I’ve brought up Helmut a number of times recently for one reason or another, and after seeing his book, Helmut Netwon: Pages from Glossies I can’t but help to hash him up again.
There’s a lot of work of Newton’s that is ubiquitous and that we all know: the nudes, the Yves Saint Laurent campaigns, the more classic Vogue stuff, but this book brings up en masse Helmut’s not often shown editorial work he did through his career. And my suggestion is for anyone interested in shooting fashion to look through this book at least once. It will show you both how incredibly inventive and creative Newton was, even for simple, single page Vogue shots, and also how very many editorials and aesthetics alive and well today were born from the style he brought to the mainstream. It makes apparent that Steven Klein and LaChapelle and many others are Newton’s children. Not to suggest this is a bad thing at all, on the contrary. We are all made from something and come from someplace(s). But I think it’s important to attempt to understand what those somethings are and where the someplaces are. This book is a excellent hand in that attempt.
It’s eye opening, humbling, and inspiring.
photo: cover of the book Helmut Newton: Pages from the Glossies.
photo: Cindy Crawford in Vogue (don’t have the issue date), ©Helmut Newton.
Unfortunately, this story was nixed by the mag we shot it for, so for the time being it’ll be exclusively published…right here!. Yes, here, where you can’t see the grain and blacks that’d make an old-timer proud, but I guess you’ll have to take my word for it that all that is nitty and gritty resides within.
As far as protocol if your story ever gets canceled: I’ve no idea. In this case, I simply told my team sorry since they wouldn’t be getting tears from it, which I felt bad about. Then I started working on something else.
Keep struggling; it is what matters. Is what my old friend Mr. Diggles tells me in his earnestly paternal voice every time we talk. Indeed.
photo: © Graeme Mitchell 2008
photo: © Graeme Mitchell 2008
photo: © Graeme Mitchell 2008
photo: © Graeme Mitchell 2008
photo: © Graeme Mitchell 2008
photo: © Graeme Mitchell 2008
photo: © Graeme Mitchell 2008
photo: © Graeme Mitchell 2008
Credits:
Styled by Sara Dunn
Hair by Sarah Potempa w/ The Wall Group
Make-up by Ralph Siciliano
Model: Ania w/ Supreme
Location: The Hotel Chelsea
Some finals from the beauty story shot two weekends ago (Polaroids here). These three girls are with Ford NYC. If I recall their names correctly, Catlin, Matta, and Laine. Respectively.
Imported from the future.
photo: © Graeme Mitchell 2008
photo: © Graeme Mitchell 2008
A Polaroid sheet from a beauty and hair editorial we did yesterday, working title is marble androids, or maybe robo-statues. Hair was by Sarah Potempa and M.U. by Meredith Baraf, both at The Wall Group. More to come on this once the film is souped and dried.
This is a welcomed accolade for a photographer. PDN’s 30.
A thanks to PDN for the opportunity, specifically staff members: Jeanine Fijol, Jacqueline Tobin, and Anthony LaSala.
PDN March 08, contents page, photo © Graeme Mitchell
PDN March 08, feature page, photos © Graeme Mitchell
The Imagist has a video post up of the model Natasa Vojnovic (w/Women) at work.
See the video here.
She’s tremendous, and I can’t iterate enough the affect a girl who moves like that and works that hard has on the final images. Models can make or break a shoot.
Down to brass tax, I want to photograph her.
Speaking of Sims and Natasa, here’s a peek of there up coming spread in V #52 (March, ’08). Styling by Karl Templer. And that (wicked) hair by Guido.
photo: model Natasa V. in V #52, © David Sims.
I wish to continue the theme of August and giving mention to photographers doing work I’m impressed with. Richard Burbridge (w/ Art and Commerce) is another name I get excited to see in the by-line. Mainly b/c the guy can light, and lighting that is both creative and proficient seems a bit rare these days. This spread is from Another Magazine.
(On a complete tangent, you can see by the watermark that I pulled the jpegs from Art and Commerce’s website. I’m always surprised when big reps have lousy scans covered with watermarks on their sites.)
photo: story for Another Magazine, jpeg from Art and Commerce. ©Richard Burbridge, 2007.
photo: story for Another Magazine, jpeg from Art and Commerce. ©Richard Burbridge, 2007.
Mert and Marcus (w/ Art Partner) rarely produce anything but noteworthy and well realized fashion stories. They dabble in some celebrity portraits, but I liken them more to Meisel and those few others who are thoroughbred fashion shooters, photographing clothes really really well w/o the all too common pretensions of fine art or books or gallery shows. This seemingly, but all but so, simple concentration is something I admire. The photos here, from Mert and Marcus’ “Into the Woods” story in W (Aug 07), are an example of this exemplary work.
For me, these are the sort of photographs that exude an uncompromising method; you can see the effort on all fronts that went into making them this good.
This matters.
photo: “Into the Woods,” W (Aug 07), styled by Alex White, photo © Mert Alas and Marcus Piggott.
photo: “Into the Woods,” W (Aug 07), styled by Alex White, photo © Mert Alas and Marcus Piggott.