Ebay has been a great source of vintage photos and daguerreotypes for years. A haven for those interested in ghostly figures gazing out of time-worm scenes from over a hundred years ago, it’s still got it! This listing features an interesting group portrait – an entire family gathered merrily around a dead girl curled up with her favorite toys. From the description:

This is one of the strangest photos I’ve ever seen. And I can’t believe it’s a post-mortem, what with the smiles on some of the family’s faces. I think it must be a joke of some kind. I really think they’re kind of mocking the post-mortem ritual of showing a deceased child with their beloved toys…but I could be wrong.

I’m not an expert, but I have done my share of googlative research, back when I was still in the stuffing-my-place-to-the-brim-with-vintage-ephemera phase. While this photo is a bit unusual in terms of how many people are gathered around the body, the rest adds up. Children were usually pictured with their toys and family members in post-mortem shots. Really, this photo weirds me out far less than, say, this one:

Imagine being 7 and asked to pose with your dead brother. Guhh.

While I find the Victorians’ acceptance of death as part of life healthy [even if forced by the high death rates of the time], the concept of propping up a corpse to look life-like still gives me the stomach-churnies. However, this doesn’t stop me from continuing to adore post-mortem photos, in all their absurdity! A few links on the topic for you perusal:

• Death in the Victorian Era
• Extensive collection of post-mortem images
• Post-mortem photos at Thanatos [membership required]
• Group Revives Victorian Custom of Post-Mortem Portraiture
• Gild your dead, Harlem-style

The ever-weird EnglishRussia just posted a rare collection of Yuri Gagarin photos. I’m used to seeing this hero of my childhood, the first man in space, smiling like Superman while decked in Soviet bling, so the image above of Gagarin posing with a skeleton and his creepy friend, Russian Crispin Glover, took me by surprise. There are so many things to love about this image. I love the expression on the skeleton’s face! I love the buttons on that coat! This is definitely the kind of pin-up I’d put on my wall.

And below, we have… well, I’m not entirely sure what we have there. It appears to be Gagarin dressed as Neptune for a play. But if he’s Neptune, then who’s the guy in the turban? And doesn’t it look like they’re in a gym locker room? Someone help me decipher this mystery.

Revelation du jour: as much as I adore all things Ye Olde (read: stained, blanched, sepia-tinted, distressed, Dover-collagey… or just plain black) and will undoubtedly continue to incorporate time-honored neo-Victorian aesthetics into my decor and wardrobe, an internal plate has shifted. Lately I’m finding myself –possibly for the first time since I was a toddler cutting my teeth on primary-colored Legos and rubber balls– infected by an entirely different strain of retro: mod-futurism.

Rest assured, no one’s about to run out and buy some garish, orange one-piece pantsuit (though I’ll freely admit to a burgeoning obsession with the OVALIA “Egg Chair”). What I am doing is poring over every last Peggy Moffitt/Rudi Gernreich photo book I can find. Via FIDM:

Hers is the face that launched a thousand ripples through the fashion world when she wore the world’s first topless bathing suit. “Designer of the future” Rudi Gernreich considered Peggy Moffitt to be his muse and model of choice for his controversial designs. With her Kabuki-inspired face painting, Peggy created her own unique look in the Sixties. Gernreich collaborated with super hair stylist Vidal Sassoon to create Peggy’s trademark hairstyle. He gave her a short helmet haircut, with precise geometric bangs cut right to her eyebrows. She also created her own makeup style with heavy black and white eyeliner and long false eyelashes to exaggerate her huge dark eyes. She took the term “strike a pose” very seriously in front of the camera. She made Gernreich’s clothes all the more extreme with her striking presence.

Peggy Moffitt is an icon and innovator of fashion who didn’t just wear designs, she inspired them. Even super sixties model Twiggy said, “She taught me how much more a model puts in her work than just a pretty face.”

A few of those frocks look hideously dated now, but more often than not, Gernreich’s colorful, daring designs read to me like peals of laughter in a musty tomb. And Moffitt always looks smashing; an updated technicolor incarnation of Lulu Brooks; fearless and versatile. I don’t know that 95% of these pieces are something I would ever want wear, but they sure do make me happy.

Click below for more smile-inducing images of the Muse of Mod after the jump.

Dontcha love it when we get it right? I love high-budget, haute-goth fashion editorials and seeing big-name designers go dark on the runway, but there’s something especially satisfying about seeing designers “of the scene” really pull off something spectacular from start to finish, from garment to finished photograph. It’s a pleasure when designers not only produce gorgeous garments, but really get involved in presenting them in a certain way. In this case, Tea Bauer, creator of Slovenian fashion label Degenerotika (previously featured here), borrows a page from Vintage Vogue to give us the wonderfully classic, textured and geometric “when-Leeloo-met-Irving-Penn” fashion image above. I love everything about it! More large-size images from this series, after the jump.

Yellow hair? Yum! Coat’s not too shabby, either. Degenerotika is definitely one to watch.

“Flowers” – an image from the Edwardian Ball by Eric Gillet

Last weekend, I decided – at the last minute, on a whim – to drive to San Francisco from LA to see my beautiful co-editor Mer play violin and theremin at the Edwardian Ball. The Ball itself was a dream come true; I witnessed Gorey-inspired circus routines, swishing crinolines, and epic handlebar ‘staches. No one was taking themselves seriously at all, and the goofball atmosphere had a rare romance about it.  Well, due to some unfortunate traffic, I missed the chance to see Mer play that night. But I’m in luck, for – again, it seems, at the last minute – it was decided that Mer would be coming down here for the second week of the Edwardian Ball, to LA! Here is the description from the Edwardian Ball site:

The Edwardian Ball Los Angeles – a splendid San Francisco tradition flies south for the winter, presenting an elegant, turn of the century celebration of music, theatre, dance, circus arts, DJs, ballroom dance, fashion, technology, and of course, the art and stories of Edward Gorey.  Held in the historic Tower Theater, and hosted by LA’s own big top phenomenon Cirque Berzerk in partnership with Edwardian Ball co-creators Rosin Coven and Vau de Vire Society, the night promises an unforgettable blend of audience and performance with humor, darkness, and style.  Also featuring Helios Jive, DJ Xian, Jill Tracy, Miz Margo, Dark Garden Corsetry, and many special guests.

One of the first portraits I ever took: Edwardian Ball DJ Miz Margo.

LA readers, you’d better not miss this. It’s the first time that the Edwardian Ball is happening here in LA, and it’s literally a circus blowing through town – one that we should welcome warmly, and in style (read Mer’s article California Carnival Spirit for more on what to expect). It’s also the first time that Zo, Mer and I will be in the same place at the same time since our launch party, and we’ll have Issue 02’s on hand for anyone who wants to check it out. See you there!

Saturday January 31st, 2009
Tower Theater
Doors and show 8:00pm, all ages welcome
$30 general, $75 VIP (includes reserved balcony seating & hosted absinthe bar)

It’s time for another tribute to the greatest photo-sharing experience the Web has to offer, Flickr. This installment does not showcase one of the many talented photographers and artists decking Flickr’s halls with their creations, but a different breed of flickr-er [flickree? flickroo?] – the curator. Flickr user MyVintageVogue uploads hundreds of incredible scans from vintage fashion magazines. These images, dating between the 1920s and 60s, fill me with daily awe of the elegance of old-school photography.

The immaculate make-up and hair, jaw-dropping composition and strict tailoring not only hold up but are excellent examples of Doing It Right. Some of these actually remind me of Nadya’s work, which brings me to another observation: fetish themes. My opinion is colored by years of admiring fetish photography, but just look at this image from Vogue Magazine, 1957!

And how about this Horst P. Horst shoe revelry from 1941?

And there is so much more! Between the impossible silhouettes, futuristic elements and avant-garde designs you’re guaranteed to slip into a trance while browsing this photo-stream. Tread with caution before you click the jump – a bounty of MyVintageVogue eye candy awaits!

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]

All photos in this post are © Laura Kicey. Please do not repost without permission and a credit.

“I take the things I see in these places out of their realm and ask the viewer to see what has been overlooked. I prefer to use what I encounter in raw form, creating visual order by giving new context to what I have singled out.”

–Photographer Laura Kicey

Laura Kicey and I both joined the now-thriving shutterbug site Flickr aeons ago when it was still in beta, and Laura hit the ground running. She’s been uploading all manner of strange beauty captured with her camera –from off-kilter self-portraits to innovative “Construct” collage work to ongoing documentation of an abandoned asbestos factory— for several years now. Laura’s also a terrific memoirist, so living vicariously through her stealthy, sometimes dangerous adventures is quite the visceral thrill.

She says “my goal for every image is to build an experience that invokes all the senses as intensely as I witnessed,” and with her astute attention to texture, gradations of color, and composition, she succeeds. Really, the only thing missing is Smell-O-Vision.  (Scratch n’ sniff truck-stop motel charnel, anyone?)

Her portraits of derelict, hollow houses remind me again and again of the creeping, wistful quality of certain passages from House of Leaves by Mark Z. Danielewski, or the long, lonely, thriving takes in a Tarkovsky film.

Living Rooms, a series of her photographs of abandoned home interiors, will be showing through the month of January at Café Estelle in Philadelphia. Locals who stop by Laura’s reception today (Friday) between 6 and 9pm will get a chance to meet the flame-haired swashbuckler in person. Pass on a fist-bump from her old chum Theremina, won’t you?

• laurakicey.com
• A slideshow of Kicey’s Flickr portfolio
• Her online photo blog and journal

Click below for more haunting images.

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?

Photo by Elisabet Davidsdottir.

Julia Frodahl is a dreamy dove, a love, a healer, and dare I say, the most precious of precious snowflakes. When I use the word precious, I don’t mean it in a cloying or derisive manner. Julia is truly precious in the incalculably valuable, rare and astonishing sense of that word, like the Baroda Diamond, like a unicorn found wandering the streets of Greenpoint, Brooklyn.

Music video for Edison Wood’s “Last Night I Dreamt I Would Last Forever” directed by Alicia Reginato, 2008

As an accomplished yoga instructor (according to some, she’s one of the best inversion teachers in New England), her serene approach to the yoga asana practice is paired with a deep working knowledge of human anatomy and alignment. As lead songwriter, singer and keyboardist for the chamber orchestra Edison Woods, she infuses her music with a pensive, wintry grace that makes me think of pure white things: falling snow and eiderdown, powdered sugar, frost, pearls.

Listen for yourself. Here’s Edison Woods’ “Shirts for Pennies”:

Photo by Sebastian Mlynarski.

Click through for more photos of the exquisite Mme Julia, and a rave review of Edison Wood’s album Seven Principles of Leave No Trace from All Music Guide.