William Mortensen’s Wikipedia entry consists of one line: “William H. Mortensen (1897 – 1965) was an American art photographer.” Though he was a well-known and respected Hollywood photographer in the 30s, Mortensen remains relatively obscure today due to his devotion to pictorialism, the Ye Olde version of “Photoshop the shit out of everything” – a style that, while he was living, became quickly supplanted by the straight photograph as the spirit and future of photography. Mortensen was one of the few photographers to champion pictorialism in its battle against “straight” photography, and he lost, becoming a footnote in photo history. But not before it got personal: Ansel Adams went so far as to call Mortensen “the devil” and “the anti-christ.”

An excellent essay and image gallery by Cary Loren on the Journey Round My Skull blog outlines Mortensen’s work against the backdrop of pictorialism’s waning relevance, and uncovers newly-scanned tidbits of Mortensen’s two books: his pictorial manifesto, Monsters & Madonnas (1936) and his more instructional title, The Command to Look. The grainy, sinewy images remind me of Laurie Lipton, Richard D. James (it’s that smile!), and Gustave Doré. Some images of Mortensen’s less creepy work can be found on this page, alongside another excellent bio and notes on his process. [via IO9]

Mario, a magician, and his assistant, Katie, have a 1920s-themed wedding. Kate wears a headband bought on Etsy. Photos by Daria Bishop. More images here.

In Junior High, our Health class had a unit about “basic adult life skills”: how to pay your bills, how your car works & why you really do need health insurance, despite the fact that you think you’re indestructible. One of the final projects we had that quarter was to budget out $30,000 in one of two ways: it was to be either your funds for one year of single living, or your budget to plan a wedding. The teachers assigned this without irony, and kids took it very seriously: it was not a lesson to show us how excessive the average wedding seems when you consider how else the money could be spent, but a lesson in how a proper American wedding was to be done. I was horrified. Years later, the following passage from The Commitment, Dan Savage’s gay-marriage memoir, summed up my perception of The Great American Wedding perfectly. In the scene below, Savage and his boyfriend Terry find themselves at a wedding expo:

Each and every vendor, from the lowliest florist to the highest-end caterer, was selling the fairy-tale princess wedding, the wedding that almost all straight girls grow up fantasizing about. For the women in the room, this was their one and only chance to be the princess in the Disney movie and they were determined not to fuck it up – and “it” refers to the ceremony and the reception, not the choice of a mate, as divorce rates would seem to indicate. (The wedding industry rakes in billions annually at a time when one out of every two marriages ends in divorce. Isn’t it about time some trial lawyers slapped Brides magazine, Vera Wang, and the rest of “big marriage” with a class action lawsuit modeled on the ones filed against big tobacco?)

Back to the boys: As we worked out way up and down the rows of vendors, I caught sight of the same guys again and again. Every time their fiancées or future mothers-in-law looked away, the boys would send out subtle distress signals, like a kidnap victim in a ransom video, blinking messages in Morse code. “Oh my god, what have I done?” As they were dragged from florist to caterer to limo, they looked like pawns. No, it was worse than that: They looked like hostages. No, worse still: they looked like afterthoughts. You don’t need men to have weddings! You need women and their mothers and sisters and their best friends and container ships full of machine-made lace from China and towering ice sculptures and enormous white canvas tents and karaoke machines and stretch Hummer limos and bouquets and chocolate fountains and cover bands and garter belts and veils and trains and engraved champagne glasses and sterling silver cake knives and on and on and on … you need a boy at a wedding like you need a stalk of celery in a Bloody Mary: It looks nice, and it makes things official, but it’s not crucial and probably wouldn’t be missed if you left it out. But a wedding – as currently understood, practiced, and marketed in America – without a bride? Unthinkable.

Clockwise from left: pink-haired bride, casual Arkansas wedding, Lucifire & Dave Tusk’s bright red circus wedding, Han Solo & Leia cake topper

There are, of course, other ways to go, especially this year. More and more people are opting for crafty, creative weddings that either twist around the tired tiara-and-lace tropes, or toss them out altogether. And on the site Offbeat Bride, the Wedding Porn section chronicles the most unusual, inspiring weddings ever to be documented on the web.

These are the weddings of our generation: pixelated 8-bit wedding invites, space helmets, brides as officants, a special category on the blog just for black wedding dresses, a San Francisco bike wedding, and, of course “Wedding! The Musical.” There’s enough love and joy on this site to make you queasy if you’re in a “only stupid people have good relationships” kind of mood, but even then, something on the site will make you smile.  Like these Lego cake toppers, for instance.

Mer is incapacitated this morning from too much music-making, so it’s fallen to me to deliver you this segment of Better Than Coffee in her stead. What’s going on in the clip above has been described by photographer and Issue 01 contributor Clayton James Cubitt in the following terms: “Champagne, Wii Fit, Love, Cold NYC Nights, Nerds. In no particular order.” Looking at the clip, I recognize a few faces: Siege himself, his muse KT, Molly Crabapple, Ellen Stagg… the clip may be full of talented hotties, but its true beauty is the dizzy, dorky exuberance. Siege may be a brilliant photographer, but as this clip demonstrates, his video-editing prowess is not to be denied.

They say that how you spend your New Year’s Eve is how the rest of your year will go, and if that’s true, it looks like the folks in this clip are set. Has this belief held true for you? How did you spend your last night of 2008?

There is only one Paul Komoda in this world. Our first mention of this artist came back in October of 2007 when we first launched – we featured the piece “Blind Love.” This time, I’d like to share with you Paul’s creepy, emotional take on Joseph Merrick, the Elephant Man. In addition to being a fantastic artist, Paul also happens to be my best friend in the world. He was there the night that Zoe, Mer and I were all together in the same place, at the same time, for the very first time. ComicCon 2007, Dr. Sketchy’s. Nobody knew each other well at all then, yet. They had us drawing an imaginary George Takei for some reason, in addition to the posing Sketchy’s model. We recognized Mer (whom I’d met only once before) on the street due to her green dreads. Zo was the model, and had a terrible cold. Her usual, high-pitched voice sounded so low that weekend that it was as if she’d been smoking 10 packs a day since she was 2. She was talking to Mer for the first time and I kept saying “this isn’t really what she sounds like!” It was a magical night. Warren Ellis (drink!) was at that ComicCon too, and Molly Crabapple was at Dr. Sketchy’s. That one night had 2 magazine contributors and all 3 editors… before anyone even knew there’d be a magazine.

Anyway, so here’s Paul. Many years ago, we watched David Lynch’s The Elephant Man (see full movie here) together. Now we quote that movie at each other all of the time. Paul just moved to California – 5 minutes away from me! – after living on the East Coast his whole life. The first thing he said when he entered his new room: “this… is my home. I have a home.” Expect great things from this fellow East Coast expatriate, who has finally become one of us, one of us, gooble gobble.

With new alt-fashion blogs Haute Macabre & Stylecunt churning out post after post of inspirational eye candy each week, there are now enough places covering extravagant, dark fashion for me to start compiling little round-ups of my favorite discoveries! These may be weekly, monthly or completely irregular, and the first one is coming at you now:

1. Metal purses by Frank Strunk, via Haute Macabre. 2. Photos by Nicole Marnati for de Bijenkorf catalog, via Haute Macabre. 3. Some haute runway hair inspiration by Chanel, via Stylecunt. 4. Helena Hörstedt, via Haute Macabre. 5. Odette Bombadier, via Haute Macabre.  6. Your Winter Exoskeleton (written by Zo), via Haute Macabre. 7. Chantal Thomass Spring 09, via Haute Macabre. 8. Healing Heart, via Gala Darling. 9. Beyonce’s Sasha Fierce’s titanium robo-glove, via Alternative Fashion Blog (apparently, her 2009 tour is going to be directed by Thierry Mugler – complete with a runway strip!)

Photo: Jeff Hui. Makeup: Giancarlo Intini. Model: Engel Schrei.

This catalogue photo was buried deep in the Artifice Clothing website, but I found it so arresting that I had to share. There’s something both calming and surreal about it. Between the lack of eyebrows, the plastic-looking skin, the serenely knowing expression and the pointy, B-movie-villain-looking hood, this picture tells a story, despite the complete lack of background and props.

Good fetish clothing/photography has always been 90% about the imagination and maybe 10% about sex, to me. For that reason, I’ve found most fetish fashion to be disappointingly banal in recent years. Barring a few notable exceptions, most designers are too busy cranking out the same tired pin-up trappings to make any effort at reinvention. And even if the outfit’s shapes in this photo aren’t necessarily new, there’s something refreshing about it. It’s the kind of photo that can inspire a filmmaker, a painter, a science fiction writer: is she a diver in Offworld Olympics, getting ready to execute a perfect octuple jump?

Clockwise: fantastic finds via Haute Macabre, via Haute Macabre, via Stylecunt, via Stylecunt

Finally – a classy gothic fashion blog! Via Gala Darling comes news of Haute Macabre, a vibrant, well-designed blog devoted to all things stylishly darque. “As you can guess from the title,” writes Gala, “it’s about high-end gawthick living. It’s for those of us who never really outgrew our goth sensibilities — the ones who idolised Wednesday Addams as an adolescent heroine, the ones who like things dark but don’t take it too seriously, the ones who can’t resist when fetishy fashion comes sashaying down the catwalk in Paris.” The blog’s primary authors are Samantha (whose site appears to be down) and Nixon Sixx, and other contributors so far include Gala herself, Courtney Riot (in a design capacity) and last but not least, our very own Zo!

The site is still “in beta,” but there are already six pages of eye candy to feast on. From luscious scans of thousand-dollar gothic-themed magazine shoots to practical lists of gothy items under $10, there’s something in store for fashionistas of all stripes.

Image from Elle Italia shoot, spotted by Haute Macabre. More here.

While we’re on the subject of alternative fashion blogs, it’s also worth mentioning Stylecunt. While that name makes me cringe, I’ll say this: the blog’s anonymous author has a keen eye for fashion and doesn’t shy away from cold-eyed, Gawker-style snark. The tone is apparent from Post Number One, where the author explains the blog’s raison d’être:

Remember when alt fashion was… fashionable? At least we thought it was. Alt fashion exploded in the nineties, fulfilling those of us that were not content with shopping at Old Navy. Time has passed, fashion is evolving, but are we? Years later and here we are, covered in the same black vinyl and cheap fishnet. One day, I had enough.

The writing on Stylecunt is hard to follow at times due to the careless grammar, and seems to be most lucid when we find the author chastising clothing labels for perceived bad choices. “Why are you still doing this to those poor goth kids who don’t know any better?” laments the author at this Lip Service catalogue photo. And it’s great to finally see someone tell Junker Designs, “it’s lovely that Alice Cooper is wearing your overly detailed and distressed leather pants, but it might be nice to actually see what they look like.”

Refreshingly, both blogs pay attention to men’s fashion, an oft-neglected topic in the alt fashion press (sorry, this doesn’t count). At Stylecunt there’s a nice post about Plazmalab, and over at Haute Macabre there’s even a well-populated category titled “For the Gents.”

Here’s hoping that 2009 will bring tons of new fashion to keep both these blogs busy. Enjoy!

New research has uncovered the origins of Earnst Haeckel, the turn-of-the-century German biologist/artist revered to this day by both scientists and designers alike for his awe-inspiring biological engravings (if you’re unfamiliar with Haeckel, click here immediately). His surprising origin: greeting card designer! Historian John Holbo elaborates:

Ernst Haeckel’s 1904 “Kunstformen der Natur” [Artforms of Nature] is a classic of biological illustration. What is less generally known is that the artist started as a Christmas card designer. The book was originally simply an album of holiday designs.

“All the sweet things that the Squiddies/Twittering in the dewy spray/Wish each other in the springtime/I wish you this happy day.”

During the Victorian era Christmas was indeed regarded as a ‘happy’ day, but one of uncanny terror; accordingly, cards and ornamentation featured strange creatures with too many tentacles. But then Santa Claus became popular, and many of these older designs ‘fell out of fashion’.

Commercially marooned, unable to draw anything except tentacles and congeries of pustules/bubbles, Haeckel wandered into natural ‘science’ – almost as an afterthought – when he discovered that the stuff he had been drawing actually existed, give or take a tentacle. Isn’t that interesting?

It also turns out that Ada Byron Lovelace was his mom. History is awesome! You can see the Haeckel greeting cards Holbo’s Flickr stream, and purchase reproductions here.

1. You can’t go wrong with intestine hair on a bug-eyed, lumpy-necked carapacial giraffe. Especially on that powder-soft, baby-pink background. It’s like someone crossed this painting of Shirley Temple with this painting by Brom. Well-done. The mask here was crafted by Manuel Albarran. Photographer unknown. Larger image here.

2. Found this image on Flickr one night while doing research for a photoshoot. I know this is completely fake, but hey: I am tagging this post “Architecture,” just on account of this epic masterpiece of engineering. Anyone who can identify the source of this image gets a free can of Aquanet Extra Super Hold when they order Issue 02.

3. My favorite image from Japanese artist/designer Nagi Noda’s “Hair Hats” project, which we blogged about a few months ago. Tragically, between that blog post and this one, the talented Nagi Noda passed away at the young age of 35. Perhaps this is a sad way to end a fluffy and fun post, but I’ve been wanting to mention this for some time – may as well be this post, which I hope brings much merriment. Nagi, you’ll be missed.

This glorious galleria of gilded gays was created by Spanish photographer David Arnal. The two images here are part of a bigger set of polaroids; see the rest of them here, and some more here (scroll down). I also admire Arnal for this cyberpunk goodness (here is the other one from that series), depicting Spain’s house music legend, Rebeka Brown.

I’m not sure about the identity of the gentleman in these images, but the lady in the center above is most definitely model and musician Polly Fey, #4 from the Coilhouse List of Alien Beauty. The shiny headpieces are the handiwork of metal couture designer Manuel Albarran. What a killer combination of talents! I love the polaroids, how gritty and poorly-scanned they are. What a wonderfully unexpected choice for this kind of shoot, those washed-out cyans and golds. Bravo.