Yeah. Hurray for “alternative beauty.” Photo by Mojokiss.

Catwalk Tragedy 4, the East Coast’s biggest “alternative beauty pageant,” took place in Philly last weekend. Having been to the first Catwalk Tragedy, which was the closest I’ve ever seen my beloved goth scene morph into a drunken frat party in a trailer park on Mardi Gras weekend, I was curious how this larger-scale endeavor would play out. With more of everything – sponsors, judges, contestants – would it be a be a creative talent show or an even bigger sleazefest?

The judges this time were a respectable and diverse bunch, which gave me hope: my friends Kambriel, Apnea and Philip (Lithium Picnic) were on the panel, as well as two individuals less known to me; Jayla Rubinelli from America’s Next Top Model and Joey Martini, a burlesque emcee/performer.

Kambriel: “I think Joey’s face pretty much says it all with whatever was going on in that moment!”

With such a mix of judges I hoped that the event would be more classy this year, but alas! This year, it was the contestants dropped the ball. A belly dancer Tempest tells it:

The competition was set up boys and girls – meaning each gender had it’s own category. The contestants were given a top from one of the sponsors to alter as they wish, as long as the logo was intact. There was somewhat of a slut factor involved in the presentation of some of the girls, but I didn’t think much of it. Short micro-mini’s are rampant (or were, they seem to be going out from the latest batch of Gothic trends), but it was mainly a lot of boob gesturing, but hey, if you got ‘em, flaunt ‘em right? The boys were more tame in general. Both groups seem rather inexperienced with the concept of modeling, especially with walking, but hey, competitions can be nerve-wracking right?

The third round was freestyle – the model’s own choosing and to really show off their stuff. It was here that my brain had nothing short of a minor meltdown. Out of perhaps 20 girls, no more than 3 didn’t do something akin to stripper routine, and even then, they were borderline. Again, I don’t have anything against strippers, and I love burlesque, but this wasn’t burlesque, and I’m sure better strip shows could be had at the Foxy Lady’s “Legs & Eggs” morning strip events. (New Englanders everywhere just cringed massively.) Apparently “crowd reaction” was a judging category for this round, and the great majority figured that the best way to do this was to strip. After the first few, it was “oh look, another set of boobs and pasties” again and again. I was surrounded by male colleagues and they weren’t impressed in the least (and yes, they were mostly straight). I wondered what the boys would do…

The boy’s third round was a much different story. Yeap, there were a few strip routines in there, but the majority of them danced and really showed off their moves, their agility, and their PERSONALITY…mainly, it was a reversal of the girls’ round.

Oh, Philly girls. How you disappoint! Unless you were all from Jersey, in which case I understand. But the story has a happy ending. “In the end,” Tempest writes, “the winners were the ones who showed personality and really showed off the clothes in how they presented themselves (and for the most part, kept their clothes on.)” Kudos to the judges for making that call. And don’t get me wrong; you know we love hot girls in corsets! It’s just when those crucial ingredients of creativity and ownership are missing that it becomes a little sad.

To end this on a light note, here is a video of male stripping from Catwalk Tragedy that made me want to laugh and weep at the same time.

Two images by photographer Janieta Eyre, featured at [FAT]

If you’re in Toronto, check out [FAT], or Toronto Alternative Arts & Fashion Week. The annual festival, which takes place from April 8 to April 11 this year, combines art, fashion, photography and performance. From their website:

Toronto Alternative Arts & Fashion Week is a multi-arts festival with a mandate of showcasing artistic disciplines rooted in fashion, and their exploration of the human body in today’s time. The festival aims to emphasize this mandate through the artistic disciplines of fashion design, photography, installation, video, performance, music and dance, in an effort to push forward and redefine our perception of the fashion phenomenon. When presented jointly, the underestimated social force of fashion is showcased, redefining its role in contemporary Canadian society as not only an economic colossus, but also as an engineer of social practices and vehicle for personal expression. The Toronto Alternative Arts & Fashion Week intends to introduce a broader audience to these related creative fields, building public interest while simultaneously creating a forum where artists can learn from and collaborated with each other.

Photographer Anna Ross and fashion label Plastik Wrap.

[FAT] Official Website

Unicorn tank illustration by Roman Papusev. Larger here.

These steam-powered unicorn tanks belong to the world of “Black Ice Heart” a Russian novel-in-progress by Leonid Alekhin. The plot of the book is not yet fully known; Alekhin releases only snippets of scenes and dialogue on his journal. From what I’ve been able to translate, the story takes place on the fictitious continent of Akemon, which is devastated by technological revolution. The continent’s technology runs on a combustible mineral called Phlogiston, and its scientific secrets are based on the learnings of four ancient tribes. The inheritors of this knowledge became the houses of four different territories (Diamond, Emerald, Ruby and Sapphire), and each house developed its own pattern of technology as a result. The steam tanks belong to the Diamond territory, and they use it to defend themselves against aggression from the south (from the Ruby and possibly other territories).

Another take on The Unicorn by Boris Kharlamov. Larger here.

Most of the novel’s illustrations come from the talented Roman Papsuev. Here are the other illustrations from the story so far:

• Lord Belin, the driver of the unicorn tank
• Miha, the boy-hero
• “Hammer-beaters”: giant attack robots
• Driver of the attack robot; though barbaric in appearance, is actually highly-educated and skilled

This looks like it’s going to be an interesting story! The atmosphere reminds me of what Philip Pullman created for the amazing His Dark Materials Trilogy, on which the film The Golden Compass was based. As Alekhin reveals more of the story, I’m really hoping to see some interesting female characters as well.

Hot on the heels of its coverage of Anonymous and its commentary on Suicide Girls, Fox News goes where only mainstream news outlets the Boston Globe and Newsweek have gone before – coverage what they call the “SteamPunk Underground.” This morning, Fox made associations between steampunk and Columbine, describing the burgeoning movement as a “trenchcoat mafia for adults.” Concerns were raised by a team of “analysts” about the disturbing elements of steampunk fashion (rayguns, gas masks) and Steampunk Magazine’s unpatriotic attack on the TSA. Watch the clip below:

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Venus Wept: “Justice is blind and, apparently, naked.”

Antiseptic is relatively new, and over the past year I’ve watched their designs get more and more complex. Their riveted leather corsets look aggressive by themselves, but when coupled with Venus Wept Photography’s hyper lighting, the augmented sharp edges and textures show you something even more dangerous and pleasurably painful-to-wear. A stylistic joyride that weaves through 80s dystopia chic, medieval armor, medical fan lacing and many other real and imaginary places from different times, the designs owe a debt to alt-fashion predecessors AMF and Mother of London, with Antiseptic’s designers on a fast track to a voice that’s completely their own.

The San Francisco-based duo behind Antiseptic doesn’t seem to be interested in commercial manufacture, and focuses on showing off their designs on runways and in elaborate fashion shoots. Most recently, they staged a fashion show the San Francisco Fetish Ball that brought together some of my favorite models for the first time.

Models, clockwise: Alex LaMarsh, Scar13, Eden and Kumi.

• Antiseptic Fashion
• Venus Wept Photography

One technique from the book “The Art of Kissing,” published by Hugh Morris in 1936, lends itself well to some sort of steampunk re-imagining:

“Some few years ago, a very peculiar kissing custom arose which deserves mention here because, from it, we can learn how to adapt the method to our modern devices. At that time, when young people got together, they held, what was then known as, “electric kissing parties.” Young people are ever on the outlook for novel ways of entertaining themselves. In fact, when ether was first developed as an anesthetic, the young bloods of the town used to form “ether-sniffing” parties in which they got a perfectly squiffy ether “jag.” But to return to the “electric kisses.” An excerpt from a contemporary writer will, perhaps, give us some idea of what happened: ‘The ladies and gentlemen range themselves about the room. In leap year the ladies select a partner, and together they shuffle about on the carpet until they are charged with electricity , the lights in the room having been first turned low. Then they kiss in the dark; and make the sparks fly for the amusement of the onlookers.’ The same sort of experiment could be performed nowadays, on cold, dry nights when the air is overloaded with electricity.”

You can read the rest of the experiment here. It starts off gently, suggesting that you generate static electricity from the carpet in order to make a spark fly between yours and your lover’s lips. Then things take a more dramatic turn! “Once you have practiced this for some time, you will become so innured to the slight shock that you will seek more potent electric shocks. These can be obtained with the use of an electric vibrator or in fact, any device that is worked from a battery and a coil which steps up the weak 3 volts of the battery.” You can see where this is leading… read on.

The image above — this is what I imagine a successful electric-kissing experiment might look like — comes from a book of alchemical collages by artist Max Ernst called “A Week of Kindness”, which was published only two years before “The Art of Kissing,” in 1934. Coincidence? I also want to mention that I searched high and low for this particular image for maybe 10 minutes before finally finding it on Mer’s Flickr Page. Even while she’s off adventuring in the American Wild, Mer finds a way to contribute to the blog. Mysterious forces are at work.

Agnieszka Chyli?ska is a Polish hard rock/metal singer. As one of the only outspoken, strong and aggressive female performers to emerge from Poland during the 90s, Chyli?ska was frequently criticized by the public and by the media during different phases of her career. What makes her stand out to me isn’t so much her music – it’s her screeching, vigorous vocal style.

My favorite song by Chyli?ska remains the song through which I discovered her, Nienawidze (I Hate). She recorded this song with her old band, O.N.A. The particular remix that I like isn’t popular among many of her fans due to its electronic treatment by Coptic Rain, but I much prefer it to her rock and nu-metal stylings. The video is eerie and reminds me of the Brothers Quay-directed Can’t Go Wrong Without You masterpiece, created for His Name is Alive. It’s just little things that give me that association, such as that bouncing water-filled ballon egg-creature. Watch:

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Her voice just pulls everything together. Some more examples of Agnieszka’s unique singing style:

• O.N.A. – Cover of Madonna’s Material Girl (live)
• O.N.A. – Hystoryjka

Most recently, Chyli?ska channeled Nina Hagen in her performance as The Evil Queen in a Polish film called 7 Dwarves. I have no idea what anyone is saying in this clip (other than the word “Pumpernickel”), but it is hilarious. I hope there’s a version with subtitles!

Placid nuns with milky alien-beauty faces, glowing children with otherworldly skin conditions, and the most ordinary faces made strange by details such as a chalk-white complexion, a subtle change in proportions, overly-glassy eyes. These are the images of Russian artist Oleg Dou, who combines conventional photography with graphic rendering techniques to produce matching portraits of unsettling consistency.

Like many other good things, Oleg Dou’s art was introduced to me by Elegy Magazine. Elegy just released Issue 52, which features Alexander Hacke, Thurston Moore, Tim Burton/Johnny Depp, Nick Cave and Lisa Gerrard.

Restoring this post after this weekend’s spam-fest; apologies if it appears in your RSS Reader twice.

Here’s something that won’t be around forever: a French MySpace page that catalogues 1,428 images devoted to the bob hairstyle and its derivatives. Brooksie would be proud!

Looking through the images in rapid succession was like shaking a grayscale kaleidoscope of eyes, lips and hair angles into constant new configurations, a delightful experience that left me feeling awed and inspired. I wondered if I should be feeling a twinge of guilt for ravenously going through what can be classified as “stolen images” that have been gathered from the web, scanned from magazines and even manipulated without credit. And then it hit me: I don’t care.

Of course knowing the artists’ names would’ve been nice, but I accept that it may have been impossible to compile that information. I enjoyed the site anyway. Was that wrong? Depends on where you think the line of theft gets crossed. Of all places, I’ve observed that the most embarrassing attitudes towards image theft come from within the alt photo/modeling scene. What I mean to say is: no one has bigger or uglier watermarks than alt photographers.

Peter Ashworth’s website just went through the first overhaul it’s had in years. It’s great to see the English photographer out and about, putting up new images on a site that looks like it’s easy to update. Above are two classic images that had a huge influence on me when I first began to do studio photography. The image of performer Lucifire with a gauze “veil” over her eyes pinned to her face by hypodermic needles will always remain, in my mind, one of the greatest fetish portraits ever taken. The image on the right, with its high contrast and clear space, was the first to show me a kind of abstracting isolation that I find crucial in producing a strong fetish image.

Below are two new works by Peter Ashwroth from a series called in excelsis. The models are Ulorin Vex and Viktorya, wearing the recognizable hairstyles of Robert Masciave. There’s a stark economy going on in his Ashworth’s older work with alt models that’s been replaced by high glam, and while I definitely enjoy these new images, I also hope to see more of the reductive, slightly-raw imagery that made such an impression on me in the past.

• Peter Ashworth’s Photography Site
• Murray and Vern – fetish fashion label where more Ashworth work can be seen