Going to be in St Barts working this week.  Then in London for fashion week.  So there won’t be anything here for a bit.

I’ll try to come back with some pics and a good story.

‘Til then.

One of the canons of the contemporary American canon, John Updike, died yesterday.

photo: “Massachusetts – John Updike, 1962.  ©Dennis Stock / Magnum.

“We do survive every moment, after all, except the last one.”
-John Updike

…though I much prefer,

“Existence itself does not feel horrible; it feels like an ecstasy, rather, which we have only to be still to experience.”
-John Updike

For those of you who didn’t hear, Andrew Wyeth passed away last Fri.  Christina’s World is the one painting I’ll always stop to visit with when at the MOMA.

RIP

photo: “PENNSYLVANIA—Painter Andrew Wyeth, 1991.”  ©David Alan Harvey/Magnum.

Concentrating on a few shoots right now.

In the meantime, this is that something swell:

photo: Avedon, Penn, and Newton, from left to right, © unknown, found here.

Happy Holidays.

photo: © Graeme Mitchell 2008

My friend, Benjamin pointed out that this blog turned two years old today.  So happy birthday, site.  If you click on the categories nyc journal, family, or inspiration, I’ll think you’ll quickly recognize what’s kept this thing going; that is: a love for learning and sharing; there’s never been any motivation or strategy beyond that, and I hope to keep it that way.

And a random pic, b/c a post isn’t a post w/o a picture.

photo: © Graeme Mitchell 2007

Thought I’d offer this up, b/c I’ll have a picture hanging there.

While away for work over the last few weeks I crashed with my close friend, Benjamin, on his couch to be precise, b/c there’s hotel rooms in life and there’s friends in life – and I choose the later.  For work Benjamin is a web director/strategist (i.e. he uses the internet to make people $).  While staying with him, he and I worked together on his new resume/portfolio.  I’m mentioning this for two reasons:  first, simply to help get the word out that he’s on the professional market, so to speak; secondly, and moreover, I bring it up b/c of the strong, dare I say ingenious, use of photography on his site: the utilization of mainstream-culture’s web disseminated imagery (i.e. our generation’s visual idioms) as the backdrop for his portfolio is progressive.  Not progressive like walking to work, not progressive in a clever manner, but progressive in a critical and thoughtful manner that at at the same time gets in your face as it sneaks up behind you.  Furthermore, it’s not often to see a site that’s not photography related at all yet hinges on the very medium.  Benjamin is resituating these images, rewriting them into completely different texts than they were initially intended, and in doing so he speaks much louder and clearer than any amount of copy could.

The people who get it, are really going to get it, and in doing so are going to get the author in a big way.

Smart work, friend.

Check it, here.

Photo: screenshot from www.benjamindiggles.com

Photo: screenshot from www.benjamindiggles.com

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.

Away until early Oct for work, so there’s going to be very little to no action here.

Until then.

All’s quiet work wise and at the same time insane out-on-the-town wise with fashion week in the apogee of it’s swing.  I’ve been laying relatively low, a few smaller parties, a few quiet dinners, no posts here…

Sometimes it’s good to take it in.

I was going to post on Marc Jacobs’ incredible job this season, but I was beat to it, here.  I don’t know who styled the show, but they got’er-dun in a major way

photo: Marc Jacobs’ S09 line.

A revealing-on-numerous-levels interview with Tellar in NY Mag (here).

Teller’s work took a looong time to grow on me; even if it’s a mistake %97 percent of the time for an artist to talk about the why of their work, for reasons ranging from authorial trespassing to just sounding like an asshole, especially dangerous when it’s based largely on their sexuality, as is the case here…even if, I still like his pictures.

Caught onto the Montcler Gamma Rouge line over at the trendphilia Sans Artiface blog.  These are some hawt down jackets, and if they did mens, well, rowyco.  Form and silhouette like this practically photographs itself.

photo: Montcler’s Au Chateau jacket, image from their website.

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.

I’m sure many of you have heard, but I thought it worth mentioning here that Yves Saint Laurent died. He was considered one of the greatest designers of the 20th century, not only b/c of his clothes, but also for his use of Fashion (with a capital F) as a vehicle of transformation of womens’ function in society. He was at the forefront of inventing the modern women in mass culture.

A Visual Society has a nice little summary of some of his ad imagery here, one of which being Helmut Newtons’ deservedly famous take on Yves’ tuxedo suit:

photo: Le smoking, ©Helmut Newton.