When the dust settled from the October Revolution in 1917, diagnosis there was a brief, shining period of uninhibited artistic experimentation in Russia. Before the authorities clamped down on such “decadent” behavior, Russian artists in the 1920s explored communist ideals with more sincerity, hope and optimism than probably at any other time in history in every medium, from architecture to graphic design. In the realm of film, this exploration manifested itself as Kino-Eye, or camera eye. Devotees of this filmmaking style believed that the camera should be used to record the truth of Soviet life without the aid of screenplays, actors, makeup or sets. “I am kino-eye, I am mechanical eye,” wrote Dziga Vertov in the Kino Eye Manifesto in 1923. “I, a machine, show you the world as only I can see it.” The crowning achievement of the movement was the 1929 film Man with a Movie Camera, made by Dziga Vertov (a name that translates to “Spinning Top”) and his brother, Boris Kaufman. The film presents the day in the life of a Soviet city from morning until night, with citizens “at work and at play, and interacting with the machinery of modern life.” The below is Part 6 of Man with a Movie Camera, one of the most dynamic sequences in the film (the entire film is behind the cut). Best if watched with speakers on:
Though the original, which premiered at a planetarium in Hanover at an event hosted by Kurt Schwitters (someone get me a time machine, now!), was silent, the director left behind notes for how music for this film should be composed. Dozens of interpretations have emerged over the years; the Biosphere, In the Nursery and Cinematic Orchestra versions are among the most well-known.
Sadly, things didn’t end well for Dziga Vertov in Russia, though they ended better for him than for most people in his position. When Socialist Realism was declared the “official form of art” in 1934, many of his colleagues were ostracized or exiled. Vertov was able to get away with a couple more films in the 30s, but they were edited to conform to the government’s expectations. After his last creative film, Lullaby, in 1937, Vertov worked on editing Soviet newsreels for the rest of his life. Interestingly, his brother Boris was able to move to America and worked with Elia Kazan and Sidney Lumet as a cinematographer. Kazan infamously named many colleagues as communists to McCarthy’s committee, but Vertov’s brother wasn’t one of them. I wonder if the two brothers stayed in touch, and how they felt about their work and how their lives had diverged. Was Vertov a bitter man as a news editor? Not necessarily; a lot of people, even when robbed of their ability to make art, made up excuses and remained devoted to communist ideals to the very end. And how did his brother Boris Kaufman fare in the paranoid environment of McCarthyism? Who felt that he got the better end of the deal, I wonder?
I have to say, I give major props to The Edison for opening its doors to various influences beyond the typical bar crowd. The Edison could’ve easily stayed a high-end bar for Hollywood Douchebags and done just fine financially, but instead it has, ever since it opened its doors almost two years ago in February of 2007, invited performance freaks (Lucent Dossier), film geeks (for the Jules Verne Film Festival), belly dancers, photographers and musicians into its midst. I cannot think of any place so fancy that’s so inclusive anywhere else in the US. There really is no place on Earth like the Edison. If you’re in LA, don’t take it for granted. And if you’re not in LA, this panoramic tour will give you a chance to experience it like never before.
Yeah… in Russia we had none of that Sleepy, Sneezy, Dopey shit. Penned by Pushkin in 1833, the Russian version of the classic fairy tale, morbidly titled “The Tale of the DEAD PRINCESS and the Seven Knights,” had the princess living with seven “lusty” bogatyrs. I’m sure that many a girl who grew up with this fairy tale thought to herself, “yep, this is how life should be.”
Scanned for your viewing please are some illustrations from my childhood copy of this tale – a well-worn hand-me-down originally printed in 1970 and bought for 18 kopeks (that’s 10¢), with gorgeous illustrations done in 1954 by Tamara Ufa.
There are many similarities between the Russian version (full translation of the poem here) and version that most of us grew up with, including the poisoned apple and the glass coffin. One of the most interesting differences is there’s no kiss, a far cry from the one of the earliest versions of the tale, in which the princess is actually raped and abandoned by the prince, only to be awoken by newborn children. In the Russian version, the grief-stricken prince simply throws himself onto the coffin, and the shattering of the glass is what wakes the princess. Also, it’s interesting that the princess (or Tsarina, in Russian) doesn’t have a name. In fact, the only people in the story who have names are the Tsarina’s suitor, Prince Yelisei, and Smudge, the evil queen’s chambermaid.
There was also a 1951 cartoon by Ivan Ivanov-Vano, “patriarch of Soviet Animation”:
Laurie Lipton’s work reminds me distinctly of two artists who terrified me as a child. There was my parents’ Brueghel book, in which Triumph of Death broke my brain at age 5, and my 3rd-grade discovery of Stephen Gammell’s ink drawings in Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark. (Gammell also illustrated a children’s book about the Holocaust called Terrible Things, which I’ve never read, but the very idea of Gammell illustrating such a thing frightens me already.) Lipton’s hyper-detailed images of lace-wrapped ghost brides, gloating war profiteers and haunted dollhouses are mixed in with images of “ordinary” scenes such as this old man (or woman?) dining alone. In context of the other works (or perhaps, even by themselves), these images hold just as much mystery.
As if Lipton’s work isn’t scary enough, selecting images of hers for this post from her MySpace page led to the most uncanny ad moment of my distinguished internet-surfing career. Even without the corresponding image, the rectangle ad below looks more like an anorexia PSA or a Caryn Drexl photo, but finding it next to Lipton’s depressing Mirror, Mirror drawing takes it to a whole new level of creepy. Click here for the larger version. After seeing it on that one page, I never saw that ad again. Can internet ads become “possessed” by the content that surrounds them? Someone in Japan, make that movie, please.
UPDATE: Read the comments for Mer’s video footage and horrifying account of a face-to-face encounter with a violent group of Yes-to-Prop 8 protesters.
In anticipation of California’s chance to vote on Proposition 8 (which aims to ban same-sex marriage) this coming November 4th, YouTube has exploded with professional and “fan-made” commercials from both camps. How do they compare? Let’s take a look.
While opponents of Prop 8 have a slim lead in California, the Mormon Church has poured millions of dollars into the effort to support Prop 8, which adds just the right touch of irony to the following:
The above ad tries to inject a viewer’s ambivalent attitude towards gay marriage with an instinctive revulsion towards pedophilia/incest. It does so by creating a sequence that’s superficially linear, yet quite visually consistent (and fun to look at), making this the strongest ad on the “Yes” side. Other ads are not so smooth. For example: who in the history of plastic dolls ever made Ken and Barbie marry each other? No, no – this is how every normal girl ages 6 – 8 plays with Barbie (the rest of us blacked out their eyes with Magic Markers before decapitating them). Mattel itself couldn’t have possibly made it more clear than when they released Ken’s buddy, Allan, back in 1964 (note the use of quotation marks on the outside packaging).
Even less realistic is the following ad – who are these people? I love the girl who says that “adoption agencies may be forced to place children in same-sex marriages.” Would they be forced to provide dowry as well? Most baffling of all is this official “Yes to Prop 8” ad, in which an annoying WASPy girl fails not just to produce a convincing argument, but in fact to produce any argument whatsoever. Verbatim quote: “uhh I hate this! You know I’m no good at arguing this kind of stuff… uh, uhm, I tell you what – I have a website, and you can look at it, and we’ll talk about it, OK?” And South Africa and the Iraq and such as. Except this was scripted.
So, what’s the best that the “No” side has got? Despite the fact that lampooning Mac vs. PC ads is a bit 2007, here’s my personal favorite:
I’m going to start using the word “amend” more. My choice for runner-up? Margaret Cho and Selene Luna, the latter appearing in “mom drag” as Margaret’s well-meaning but confused neighbor. The Molly Ringwald ad is also cute. And if it’s Serious Business you want, here’s a touching ad from a straight couple that’s been married for 46 years.
So… Zo, Mer and I are in Issue 02 Deadline Hell. Posting’s slowed down until Issue 02 is sorted, with many thanks to our guest bloggers for keeping the fort. Later today, a very special post from copyranter involving Mexican food and toilet paper. For now, a quickie that I’ve been wanting to post for a long time: one of our paper dolls from the magazine’s back page (a tradition that will be carried over to Issue 02), fully dressed. For those of you who didn’t want to cut out the paper dolls but are still curious about how they look in their outfits, here’s 1 of 2, the lovely Juniper Fusion by artist Paul Komoda:
In the non-limited, non-vaggy version of Coilhouse that’s available in stores, we replaced the offending material with a mini-editorial about piercing. The shoot was a big collaboration: Mildred was the evil genius behind this shoot’s concept (from the preliminary sketches right down to crafting that fan, along with Scar’s phallic flower-skewers in the other photo), I took the photos, Melanie Manson did the makeup, Holly Jones did the hair, and Pia Kaamos was the lovely model in the image above. Alongside the images, there’s an interview with Jenn Rose, the prosthetics artist who made this gory magic happen.
We certainly wouldn’t discourage anyone from wanting to own both versions, but those of you who happen to spot Coilhouse at a store but aren’t buying, could you do us a huge favor? Move it where people can see it, so that someone new can discover it. My parents found it on the very top shelf in the somewhat messy Art section of the Deptford Barnes & Noble and moved it, snapping the picture below. Lo and behold, the next time they visited the store two days later, one copy from the stack was gone.
Just don’t put them in those stand-alone special display cases – magazines pay a lot of money to be there. Just find a nice, prominent spot for it, ideally without displacing anything good. It would help us out a lot, and hopefully bring interesting new people to this blog. Thank you!
On May 1, 1947 Evelyn McHale leapt to her death from the observation deck of the Empire State Building. Photographer Robert Wiles took a photo of McHale a few minutes after her death.
I will never forget this image, which I discovered on the found-image photo blog riotclitshave. In fact, I’ve found many unforgettable images there. A little bit of everything: humor, horror, beauty, ugliness, joy and everything in between. Sometimes, the blog curator, Bean Noneya, will go through phases. One week, she’ll be obsessed by the texture of old people’sskin. Another week, she’ll be taken byIslam. Preceded by: cute piglets! Another perennial RCS fixation is the interactionbetweenpeopleandanimals. There is also a wealth of incredibleblack-and-white gemsfrombygoneeras. If you’ve never seen this blog before, start looking. It’s a blog you can get lost in for hours; by the time you finally close the browser, the world will seem infinitely stranger.
When I told my roomate that I interviewed Bean for this blog, she didn’t seem that excited: “it’s just a popular photo blog where someone reposts images that they found elsewhere! It’s not like she takes them herself or anything.” But I’ve seen many photo blogs, and none impact me as strongly as RCS. In order to assort images so profoundly, one has to have a good eye, a sense of humor, a degree of subtlety and a unique perspective of the world. I’m constantly impressed by how the blog makes strong points simply by posting images in a certain order – a good example of that is the day she decided to post only images of female couples.
So who is the person behind riotclitshave? Why does she do this every week? Full interview after the jump.
Why “riotclitshave”? It’s called riotclitshave as a play on “right click save” and the three words just felt rather lovely together.
Where do you find the images that you post? I search for my images in a handful of ways. I watch a bunch of photo posting communities on livejournal, which include some Russian photodump blogs RSS’d into my LJ, I search terms on Google that I’m interested in and think will garner good pictures. I use the Flickr and LJ random image grabbers too. The Russian sites really give me some great stuff. It’s SO random and has so many pictures.
Have you ever posted an image that you later wish you hadn’t? I have definitely posted pics that I wish I hadn’t. I don’t like posting photoshops- but I won’t usually delete them if I find they are. I get very annoyed with the comments whenever I post a skinny girl- people just can’t seem to help themselves. After the hundredth “sammich” comment I just want to delete the post. Which is why you’ll never see me post a picture specifically pointed at making fun of a fat person. People are cruel and I don’t want my journal to be a place for people to get hurt.
The separation between advertising & editorial was likened by Henry Luce to the division between church and state; a vital, necessary wall that keeps a magazine honest and pure. We’ve had to turn down several advertisers so far because they pressured us to blog or run print features about them as part of the deal, and will continue to do that as time goes by.
That said, I’d like to dedicate a special blog post (though none of them asked for it) to our four main Issue 01 sponsors: people who decided to place an ad in the first two issues of a magazine that wasn’t yet even published, with a relatively small print run and no proven track record of print success. For a business to give their ad dollars to a such a new publisher, especially in 2008’s economy, was asking a lot. But these guys took the leap, and it’s because of them – as well as all of you, who ordered Issue 01- that we’re able to make Issue 02.
Photographer Chad Michael Ward is known for his visceral photos of haunted hospitals, evil girls with eyepatches and scary priests. Yet somehow, whenever he photographs Mother of London clothing, a completely different side of Chad emerges. All his Mother of London images are delicate and nostalgic, reminiscent in a way of of Paulo Roversi. Ward’s ethereal fashion sensibilities emerged strongly in his first Mother of London collaboration, a portrait of Chinagirl Lily, and appear again in this recent set with the stunning Bad Charlotte.
And yeah, the legendary neck corset in the picture above has made its rounds. I, for one, am never tired of seeing it! That piece manages to look like a completely different garment through every photographer’s lens. Here was my take on it, and here is Allan Amato’s. But this new shoot is not just about the older clothing; there is also a brand-new dress – revealed for the first time on Coilhouse! Behold – and beware of boobies after the jump.
