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http://www.dazeddigital.com/artsandculture/article/26315/1/the-art-zines-you-might-have-missed-but-need-chloe-sevigny-ed-templeton

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True art doesn't date, but it does get lost amongst Twitter feeds, email subscription newsletters and bookshop shelves. In an oversaturated flood of media, from photo zines to art exhibitions, it's easy to find yourself out of the loop - but that just makes stumbling upon such treasures so much more rewarding. Missed Ed Templeton's hormone-fuelled Teenage Kissers from 2011? Or Ken Kagami's bizarre ode to The Simpsons earlier this year? Not to worry because we've asked Antenne - international distributor and publisher of some of the best art books out there - to give us their choice of the timeless publications you should be stocking your shelves with.

"We've had a few books that pay homage to Ed Rushca's amazing books and we love them. This cover typeface alone is an unmistakable nod towards the master of photo books. The repetition of a subject matter makes us smile also."
ARI MARCOPOULOS'S WANDERING + CHLOË SEVIGNY'S NO TIME FOR LOVE
"The unedited and candid nature of Ari's work is perfect for zine format. Wandering takes us through his adopted home of New York. Published by Innen Zines. Chloë Sevigny's No Time For Love is another zine from Innen. Sevigny demonstrates how love is often fleeting with her personal collection of photographs. Anything attached to this iconic face is a sure fire hit."
See more from No Time For Love here
"Published by Seems, Teenage Kissers still remains one of the quickest titles to sell out. Templeton has a real loyal following with the majority of his publications selling out and becoming collectibles. His work celebrates youth, even for its awkwardness, and this book is a really beautiful example of this."

"The first in a series of 'visual self help' guides from Rory DCS. It seems our customers can't get enough of this visual party. We're looking forward to seeing what he has lined up for issue 2."
See more from How To Be Fun here

"We can't talk about zines without mentioning Nieves; the undisputed hero of the ephemeral. Bizarre and amusing, Kagami's distinctive works are characterised by their simple expression of conflicting ideas."

"The smallest of our selection, this little number is published by Harmonica Books. Philippe Weisbecker has been filling old notebooks with themed drawings for years and this book is the result of his fascination with a single building made up of smaller buildings."

"Montezland presents a portrait of the legendary drag performer Mario Montez. This zine is a great snapshot into underground 70s New York."
See more from Montezland here SMOKE ROOM ISSUE 5
"Toronto based Smoke Room functions as a platform for young and emerging photographers. Issue 5 is in the hands of Jon Dragonette. Made in editions of just 200, these are rare imports from across the pond."
BOYO
"BOYO zine presents the periodical obsessions of Patrick Waugh. As a designer at Arena Homme Plus, Waugh created collages with imagery found in the office. This issue pays tribute to one of Antenne's favourite photographers, Alasdair McLellan."

All titles available from Antenne

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The art zines you might have missed, but need

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True art doesn't date, but it does get lost amongst Twitter feeds, email subscription newsletters and bookshop shelves. In an oversaturated flood of media, from photo zines to art exhibitions, it's easy to find yourself out of the loop - but that just makes stumbling upon such treasures so much more rewarding.

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http://www.dazeddigital.com/fashion/article/39259/1/the-new-zine-dedicated-to-model-jess-cole-anna-victoria-best-hanna-kelifa

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Creatives have long opted to self-publish small circulation, not-for-profit zines to showcase their work. In the pre-internet era, they were your one-stop shop for finding out about alternative music and fashion movements - through zines, people engaged with underground subcultures and radical politics.

Even with Instagram, Twitter, Facebook and the like, zines still exist and give artists space to exercise true self-expression - exactly why photographer Anna Victoria Best and stylist Hanna Kelifa decided to create one entitled Jess Cole, after the model of the same name.

The rising star who made her runway debut opening (exclusively, no less) at Phoebe Philo's final SS18 show for C éline, has appeared more recently on the catwalk at Sies Marjan, Tom Ford, and Symonds Pearmain's AW18 shows. Not to mention appearing in the latest issue of Dazed. Meeting at a casting, Best says Cole "is herself and that's what we all should be" - that's without mentioning her smile ("it's contagious").

The series, shot in one day, examines the relationship between muse and photographer when it is stripped back to its bare bones. One of the only elements in flux in the images is the changing light, so Cole's form becomes the focus. Her nymph-like movement and whimsical spirit punctuate the otherwise empty space.

Spreads of the zine, which is available to buy online now, see slightly different frames of each look pasted next to each other, so as to give you an impression of the enigmatic energy Cole brought to the shoot. "I've always loved how precious and collectable a zine feels, its a celebration," said Kelifa.

In addition to the zines, the pair also decided to print one of their photographs onto fabric and display it from a Peckham rooftop. Because why the hell not?! How else to better to show your support, than to literally fly a flag from the rooftops.
Order your copy of the zine here

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The new zine entirely dedicated to a single model

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Creatives have long opted to self-publish small circulation, not-for-profit zines to showcase their work. In the pre-internet era, they were your one-stop shop for finding out about alternative music and fashion movements - through zines, people engaged with underground subcultures and radical politics.

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http://www.dazeddigital.com/photography/gallery/21954/8/taking-back-what-s-ours

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Rarely seen photos of Amy Winehouse on the cusp of fame, street cast models in NYC and London, girls and golden showers and actual dicks dressed up as world leaders

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http://www.dazeddigital.com/art-photography/gallery/24729/3/future-feminine

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Youth and pop culture provocateurs since 1991. Fearless fashion, music, art, film, politics and ideas from today's bleeding edge. Declare Independence.

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http://www.dazeddigital.com/art-photography/gallery/24732/8/giovanni-corabi-s-boys-dont-cry

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Youth and pop culture provocateurs since 1991. Fearless fashion, music, art, film, politics and ideas from today's bleeding edge. Declare Independence.

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http://www.dazeddigital.com/photography/gallery/23620/4/julian-klincewicz-grace-ahlbom-s-pure-desire

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Julian Klincewicz, Grace Ahlbom's PURE, DESIRE

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Rare photos of Andy Warhol outside of New York, one image that tells the story of UK rave culture, teen boys and boredom in Iceland, and toying with notions of sex and gender in China

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http://www.dazeddigital.com/photography/article/35311/1/pixy-liao-photos-of-chinas-traditional-gender-roles

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Photographer Pixy Liao takes notions of relationships and the gender roles often tagged onto them and filters both through her camera lens in a humorous yet poignant exploration of Chinese society.

In 2015 she told us, "The ideas of traditional gender roles are still very strong in China. China is much more open than in the past, and it's common for women to work and have high social positions, but feudal thoughts that have been passed down from thousands of years ago still influence the way men and women are viewed in Chinese society. Growing up I was always told there is no need to work too hard, but more importantly to marry a man who can support me, have kids, be mother and a wife."

Although born in Shanghai, she now resides in Brooklyn and has since taken these ideas with her into adulthood and began to use her camera to ask questions. The result is the series "Experimental Relationship", which details her and her boyfriend Moro's relationship as a heteronormative couple. Moro, Japanese and five years her junior, Liao says, also means that this series becomes a love-hate story due to their respective birth countries' own strained relationships with one another.

Her new exhibition Lady & Gentleman continues this discussion - now on display in Malmö - and Liao's show statement details more about how she has manifested her ideas of love, relationships and gender into her work.

"As a woman brought up in China, I used to think I could only love someone who is older and more mature than me, who can be my protector and mentor. Then I met my current boyfriend, Moro... I felt that whole concept of relationships changed, all the way around. I became the person who has more authority and power. I started to experiment with this relationship (and) I would set up all kinds of situations for Moro and I to perform in the photos. My photos explore the alternative possibilities of heterosexual relationships. They question what is the norm of heterosexual relationships? (And) what will happen if man and woman exchange their roles of sex and roles of power?"
Lady & Gentleman is on show at Sweden's Galleri Vasli Souza until 22 April 2017

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See men and women exchange roles of sex and power in China

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Photographer Pixy Liao takes notions of relationships and the gender roles often tagged onto them and filters both through her camera lens in a humorous yet poignant exploration of Chinese society. In 2015 she told us, "The ideas of traditional gender roles are still very strong in China.

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Maisie Cousins (close up photography inspo)

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Maisie Cousins (close up photography inspo)

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http://www.dazeddigital.com/photography/gallery/related/23808/maisie-cousins-grass-peonie-bum

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Youth and pop culture provocateurs since 1991. Fearless fashion, music, art, film, politics and ideas from today's bleeding edge. Declare Independence.

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Anna Sampson Photography (Role Reversal) 

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Anna Sampson Photography (Role Reversal) 

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http://www.dazeddigital.com/photography/article/36520/1/anna-sampson-playful-photographs-of-friends-dressed-in-drag

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"Think how dull the human race would be if we all thought and behaved in the same way." Photographer Anna Sampson is discussing the broad spectrum of gender that she has been exploring in a soon-to-be-exhibited series, Gender Trouble.

Having first developed an interest in erotic photography during her studies at Chelsea Fine Arts, Sampson decided to employ her then-boyfriend as her model. Already fascinated by the world of drag - citing films such as Paris Is Burning and John Water's Female Trouble - Sampson dressed him up in her clothes "for fun", testing out her camera skills in the intimate setting of her home, becoming more-and-more fascinated by the gender-blurring potentials that photography allowed.

Inspired by the works of Nan Goldin and Boris Mikhailov, Sampson soon expanded her role-play photoshoots, enlisting friends and other acquaintances to pose in drag. The result was a vast collection of performance images which became Gender Trouble - a title borrowed from the 1990 text written by seminal feminist and philosopher, Judith Butler, who Sampson also sites as a key influence.

Agreeing with Butler's theory that feminism requires equality, the photographer subverts the heterosexual male gaze in her photographs, capturing male subjects in women's lingerie. She redefines erotic photography, resisting the objectification of the female figure for male gratification. By doing so, Sampson presents gender as a spectrum, which her subjects traverse across by casting off items of clothing or by simply changing their pose.

"I see gender identity as a performance at times but I'm not sure about absolutes," she explains. "I think of gender as fluid, even amongst more 'conventional' people, but I do think society and attitudes are a significant factor in the performative aspect of gender and that so many of our gendered tropes are performed."
Gender Trouble opens tonight and runs until 9 July 2017 at Dalston's Doomed Gallery

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Playful photographs of friends dressed in drag

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"Think how dull the human race would be if we all thought and behaved in the same way." Photographer Anna Sampson is discussing the broad spectrum of gender that she has been exploring in a soon-to-be-exhibited series, Gender Trouble .

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http://www.dazeddigital.com/fashion/gallery/22143/20/man-charles-jeffrey-ss17-menswear

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Youth and pop culture provocateurs since 1991. Fearless fashion, music, art, film, politics and ideas from today's bleeding edge. Declare Independence.

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https://www.itsnicethat.com/articles/brodie-kaman-graphic-design-300718

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We've long admired the work of Australian graphic designer Brodie Kaman, with its DIY aesthetic and experimental, dogged visuals. Based in Los Angeles the last time spoke to him, the designer has since spent time in London, before recently settling in Berlin, and has begun to explore self-discovery and human individual suffering within his personal work, both as a coping mechanism and a creative outlet.

"I've been wanting to live [in Berlin] for a while now - a beautiful studio space and a room in a friend's apartment simultaneously popped up, so I jumped at the opportunity," he tells It's Nice That. Born from a process of constant experimentation, Brodie has spent the last year working with musicians, fashion and record labels across everything from flyers and records to textile design and branding.

When it comes to his self-initiated projects, mental health and addiction have emerged as themes within his personal practice. Both have informed his work "from the moment I put pen to paper," he describes, "but in more recent times, I have started to further expose myself. Mental illness and addiction run rampant in my life if left unchecked, they're chronic conditions which have to be worked at on a daily basis; they're never far away."

Earlier this year, Brodie created Shocking Wreck for These Days in LA, which encapsulates a rocky moment in the designer's life. "Low times can inform my best work," he explains, "and I'm thankful for those times in retrospect." Printed on Risograph, the zine utilises this notion, turning a "self-imposed isolation" into a series of poetic, visual elements running alongside Brodie's writings. "Mental illness affects so many of us - within the creative universe and beyond - it can be debilitating and sometimes fatal if not addressed. By shining my own light on it, I hope to further open up the dialogue around such issues," Brodie explains.

Although graphic design forms the majority of Brodie's creative practice, he works across various mediums. "I have a lot of gratitude for self-expression," he remarks, "without trying to sound like an asshole, poetry has been a great source of motivation for me when I'm hitting a wall - the written word is powerful!" The same applies to music, which the designer uses to "douse the spark" or redirect his energy whenever he's feeling deflated. In this sense, Brodie's creative outlets inform each other, creating a synergy between whatever techniques, processes, concepts or motifs he works within.

Despite having clear-cut ideas on what it is that helps keep him inspired, when it comes to his process, "I try to avoid a systematic approach," he explains, "I wouldn't say that there is a blueprint for my practice." It's this spontaneity which produces some of Brodie's most exciting work, even on commercial projects. When producing the artwork for Promiseland's 7", he allowed the music itself to inform his outcome. "I was listening to the tracks super loud and messing around with all these different images and elements one night until the resulting graphic felt done," he recalls.

Whether working on personal or commercial projects, design gives Brodie a reason to be "mentally, physically and spiritually fit," he explains, concluding that "When I notice I'm vulnerable or foresee myself falling back into old patterns, creating gives me a reason to step back and regain composure."

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Designer Brodie Kaman on how creative outlets can help control mental illness and addiction

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We've long admired the work of Australian graphic designer Brodie Kaman, with its DIY aesthetic and experimental, dogged visuals. Based in Los Angeles the last time spoke to him, the designer has since spent time in London, before recently settling in Berlin, and has begun to explore self-discovery and human individual suffering within his personal work, both as a coping mechanism and a creative outlet.

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http://www.anothermag.com/fashion-beauty/7685/charles-h-traub-on-sunglasses-and-jackie-o

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In the late 1970s, photographer Charles H. Traub would spend his lunchbreak with his camera, wandering around the streets surrounding New York's Light Gallery (then, on 7th and 5th in New York) and taking pictures of the people he felt drawn to. During a time long before street style became mainstream and before the world had mastered the graceful art of the sidewalk pose, Traub captured a disarmingly intimate insight into the characters he captured on his Rolliflex. To celebrate the imminent publication of his new book Lunchtime - a catalogue of some of his favourite snapshots from the period - we spoke to Traub to discover why he prefers shooting passers by to Jackie O and what he thinks about dressing to impress.

On the passing show of the street...
"I have the facility to approach people graciously, and they seemed to be cooperative. People want to be recognised, people want to be seen. If someone wears a nice pair of sunglasses, they've picked them for a reason. Most people kind of adored being noticed, and stopped, and taking a brief minute at lunch time to engage. I think there were no caricatures, there was no negative attention involved in it. Just capturing the passing show of the street. And I think we all walk down the street with that same sense of wonderment or curiosity that is expressed within the photos, but we might be afraid to say it."

On sartorial individuality...
"Today, people are suspicious of the camera in a way that they weren't back then, and they think you're exploiting them. People used to love every engagement that I made, and I wasn't interested in any artifice of the camera. These days, everybody looks alike. I was in Italy a few weeks ago, and everyone dresses the same: the same blue jeans, the same shoes. In the 70s, people were still conscious of a sartorial individuality. Today, most people pretend to not be interested, although everybody considers what they put on for a reason. Whether you put on a T-shirt, or whether you put on a coat and tie, you're much more conscious than you probably want people to believe you are."

On the prevalence of sunglasses...
"It was the 70s, and everyone had just started wearing sunglasses because Jackie Kennedy did. She was very famous for wearing sunglasses all the time. She created the style of wearing glasses - well it started in the 60s, but no one started doing it in that way until she did it; that was part of her look. Also, there was this thing in the 70s of wearing big glasses... I understand that look is coming back into fashion!"

On celebrity...
"Back then - not to be ethnocentric - 57th and 5th was the centre of the world; everyone passed through there. One day, I was out in front of the Light Gallery, directly across from Tiffany's, and there was a gaggle of paparazzi crawling all over somebody who was getting into a limousine; it was Jaclyn Smith, a Charlie's Angel or someone. And I'm on the other side of the street with my camera actually on a tripod, and people would say, 'what's going on, what are you photographing?', and I'd say, 'I'm not a part of that, I have no interest in celebrities. I just wanted to capture ordinary people. But then, who walks by but Jackie Kennedy, right in front of my camera, and says, 'if you need to take my picture, please be quick'. I'm stunned! This is the most famous woman in the world at that time, without question."

"The point is, everybody wants to be photographed. Everybody wants to be treated that way" - Charles H. Traub

"All these idiots across the street are crawling all over a minor movie star, but if you just stay in one place long enough, everybody will pass you by. I said to her, 'I'm not here for that purpose' - I really wasn't, I really didn't want to do celebrities. She thanked me and she walked on, and I'm laughing at myself like, 'you idiot, you could have photographed the most famous woman in the world in the same way you're photographing everyone else.' No sooner had I said that, John Lennon and Yoko Ono walked past - I didn't do them, either! The point is, everybody wants to be photographed. Everybody wants to be treated that way."
Lunchtime by Charles H. Traub is out September 7, published by Damiani.

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Charles H. Traub on Sunglasses and Jackie O

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The legendary photographer talks 70s street style and celebrity culture

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https://www.artsy.net/article/artsy-editorial-these-7-photographers-captured-the-fearless-fashion-of-the-70s

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What accounts for the timeless appeal of the 1970s? From Gucci's fringed midi skirts this spring to Missoni's latest bohemian ruffled dresses and Vivienne Tam's flared pants on New York's catwalks this past week, the iconic decade has seen a strong resurgence in the last year of fashion. During an era defined by the sexual revolution, the fight for women and gay rights, hippie subculture, and anti-war movements in the U.S., people began to use their wardrobes as vehicles for self-expression and sartorial experimentation. Urban youth looked to pop icons like David Bowie, in his body-hugging catsuits and fluorescent-hued makeup, and Cher, with her sweeping hair, groovy crop tops and fur-lined sleeves, for inspiration.

While

's and

's glamorous, hypersexual images dominated the fashion magazines of the decade, a burst of street photographers and photojournalists immortalized the era in candid examinations of real people in cities across America and the U.K. Below, we highlight seven photographers who captured the fashion of the '70s, in all its retro glory.

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These 7 Photographers Captured the Fearless Fashion of the '70s

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What accounts for the timeless appeal of the 1970s? From Gucci's fringed midi skirts this spring to Missoni's latest bohemian ruffled dresses and Viv...

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https://www.vice.com/en_uk/article/exkzne/damien-frost-night-flowers-london-drag-queens

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Maxi More at Manor House (All images by Damien Frost)

It's one of those true clichés. By day, London's Soho is a jumble of small-plates restaurants and men with trimmed facial hair and shiny shoes shuffling to marketing meetings. But later, out comes that ever-euphemistic night-time economy. The drug dealers, the club promoters, the twinks fanning themselves with G-A-Y discount wristbands. Loiter long enough on Old Compton Street, though, and you'll see the "night flowers" - as photographer Damien Frost calls them - rise. They're the men and women caked in theatrical drag, swaying haute couture headpieces and stage makeup.

Damien, originally from Australia, took a photo of one of these queens once a day for a year, either trawling Soho, where he otherwise works as a graphic designer, or heading home to east London, where drag exists in pockets of sweaty flamboyance, from the Resistance Galleries to Bethnal Green Working Men's Club. The photos in his book, Night Flowers, are 365 sublime flickers of rare and bright beauty against eerily dark backgrounds. We spoke to Damien about capturing flashes of late-night ephemera and how drag reminds us of London's colourful past.

VICE: Hi Damien. First off, No one in this book looks like traditional ITV-viewer friendly drag. Did you have any hard and fast rules about who constitutes a "night flower"?
Damien Frost: I'm not that interested in the chameleon disguise of men dressed as women. I want it taken further, where gender becomes less of a thing and you get this blurred line where women can do drag queen looks, imitating and reclaiming a grotesque version of a woman. And the best looks come from people who aren't focussed on the scene. If I saw someone great on the street, I'd take a photo because they stand out, but in the context of Sink the Pink [a messy and exuberant drag/dress-up night], I'd try to find out what normality is then see what jumped out at me. I'm more interested in people who have made the outfit they're wearing, something they've spent a lot of time creating that looks like haute couture. Along with the makeup, it's a look they might never repeat again.

Miss Fit on Bourchier Street

The looks themselves seem impermanent. While shooting, how much did you notice a particular age range in your models?
In the few years I've been taking photos in the community, I've seen a lot of people stop doing drag. It's almost a rite of passage for people - maybe they're from a small town and so dress themselves in a way they couldn't back home. Maybe they just want to get it out of their system. But for others it's part of their identity. They commit hours of work before they go out and then they're judged on that look. It's hard work and a constant pressure to reinvent themselves.

With that pressure on, did you ever get people refusing to have their photo taken because they didn't feel they looked their best?
It's rare, but people will say, "Can you not take it from this side because my lashes have fallen off?" or "Can you not put my hand in the shot because I've not got nails on tonight?" Sometimes, though, I'll want to take a photo because their makeup has run.

You say in the introduction that you took photos in "seedy alleyways" - just how seedy did it get?
I was taking a photo of one of my subjects, Simon Shoots, and he said: "There's some guy jerking off over there." We were down this dark alley doing a photoshoot and this guy was behind us jerking off and watching us. Simon managed to keep his composure, every now and then shooting a glance over to make sure the guy didn't get any closer.

What was the reception like from the average passers-by?
People will shout "batty boy" and get quite aggressive towards the queens. Soho's not necessarily as safe and welcoming as you think, especially as the night gets later; people are more free with their abuse, I guess. I've not seen anything eventuate into assault but I do know people who've been assaulted for wearing drag. The thing I find interesting is people who hassle them asking, "What are you?" And the queen is like, "What do you mean, what am I?" and they go: "What are you? A man or a woman?" And they'll get really worked up, they just need to know what side of the fence everyone's on. What's great about the drag community is that nobody even asks that.

Felicity Furore

There were good experiences too, I hope?
Totally. We've even had Ian McKellen walking past taking photos of the queens, and when Bourgeoisie had a wig made of balloons people were trying to pop them for a laugh.

How does the interference with your subjects affect your work?
Well, it makes it hard for the queens to keep their composure and stillness, which I like the shot to achieve. That sense of calm can be difficult to maintain with distractions around.

Soho and east London are full of characters after-hours. Have you ever been tempted to document them in a similar way?
Not really. I mean, sometimes the drug dealers will ask "Take my photo!" but it doesn't fit in with what I'm trying to do. Plus, they give the queens a lot of grief, they're the most intolerant, and it's ironic in a way, like, go sell your wares somewhere else. The Night Flowers project was an accidental thing. I never intended to do a series of the drag community or queer community, but I now find it now harder to go back and look for less colourful or less extreme people to photograph.

The Infamous Boom Boom at Cirque

Playing with gender has hit the mainstream, but do you think this sort of drag will ever "cross over"?
TV shows like RuPaul's Drag Race and the Sink the Pink night on the festival circuit might not normalise drag, but they get it out more. And the more people are aware of it, the more we get used to it. That said, you still get a shot of electricity when a six-foot queen walks down the street at night and everyone's heads turn. I find that power to shock really interesting. They also do things that reference history of other people's makeup. So there's this conceptual look that [one of the book's subjects] Luke Francis does, by copying Boy George who was copying [late performance artist] Leigh Bowery and I like that lineage. Maybe a few people will get that reference but it keeps it interesting.

As for borrowing from previous culture, there's a big ongoing cultural conversation about when it's appropriate, if ever, to reference other people's cultures and histories via costume and dress. What's your take on it?
I'm a middle-class white person, but in the case of people painting themselves black, if they're not mimicking a black person in any other way, not doing the minstrel or mime thing, then it's just the colour that the face is painted. A lot of cultural appropriation happens innocently, a lot of people just want to incorporate things into their outfit. Julius Ruben in the book has a Maasai necklace and decoration that he's put into a headdress. He's part-Maasai so can do that and it would be a shame if someone else couldn't create something out of that, without it being seen as offensive to that culture.

Duo Raw on Ganton Street

What was your experience of photographing people on the fringes of an experimental subculture in a city like London, where so much money flows into certain areas and not others?
A lot of people I photograph don't live in central London where the clubs are - it's just too expensive. Everyone's always going to be pushed out to the fringes, or to smaller towns, and eventually they'll be pushed out when that becomes cooler. It's an ongoing battle with gentrification, but I think culture does survive because you work out a way to do it. The lack of money in the drag community maybe forces people to be more experimental with the materials they're using. So Bourgeoisie will do something with bubble wrap and packing tape that looks incredible.

Yeah, I noticed one of the models made an entire inflatable bodysuit using the same IKEA bedsheets I have.
Totally. I come from an art background and that's what really impresses me with the looks and the makeup: it's often a one-off artwork for the night. The clothing's impractical, the sort of stuff you only ever see on catwalks, but they manage it, just walking down the street.

Thanks, Damien.

Night Flowers is available now, through Merrell Publishers. Here are some more photos from the book.

Lolo Brow at Virgin Extrazavangzah

Meri Karhu at Virgin Extravaganzah

Yozmit on Shaftesbury Avenue

Imma Mess on Brewer Street

Crystal Star on Bourchier Street

@sophwilkinson

More on VICE:

Glitter Beards and Gender Fucking: A Day With London's Female Drag Queens

'Brothel Chic' Is Turning Soho into a Twee, Sex Work Theme Park

Why London's LGBT Community Needs Drag More Than Ever

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Photos of the Rainbow Moustaches and Spiked Leotards of London's Drag Queens

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Maxi More at Manor House (All images by Damien Frost) It's one of those true clichés. By day, London's Soho is a jumble of small-plates restaurants and men with trimmed facial hair and shiny shoes shuffling to marketing meetings. But later, out comes that ever-euphemistic night-time economy.

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https://mashable.com/2015/11/05/david-bowie-dress/?europe=true#aMtqPo0n0gqZ

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In 1971, a photographer for the Daily Mirror visited musician David Bowie at his home in Haddon Hall, an English Edwardian mansion that had been converted to apartments.

Bowie greeted the photographer in a floral-patterned dress created by celebrity designer Michael Fish, who was responsible for many of the flamboyant fashions of the 1960s. He wore the dress on the cover art of the British release of The Man Who Sold the World, his third studio album, which was written and rehearsed at Haddon Hall.

Bowie is famous for constantly reinventing his style and persona, and the dress was a piece of his burgeoning exploration of androgyny and sexual ambiguity. He wore the dress to many of his press engagements while promoting the new album. Many approved - Rolling Stone 's John Mendelsohn described him as "ravishing" - while critics reacted with derision, mockery or hostility at Bowie's untraditional approach.

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David Bowie's dress: A powerful step forward for androgyny

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In 1971, a photographer for the Daily Mirror visited musician David Bowie at his home in Haddon Hall, an English Edwardian mansion that had been converted to apartments. Bowie greeted the photographer in a floral-patterned dress created by celebrity designer Michael Fish, who was responsible for many of the flamboyant fashions of the 1960s.

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https://www.gq-magazine.co.uk/article/david-bowie-fashion

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The early years

A sharp suited and booted mod at the beginning of his career, it was perhaps David Bowie's encounter with avant-garde mime artist Lindsay Kemp that shaped the 20-year-old's lasting belief in the importance of clothes to a performance - indeed Kemp is sometimes credited with having planted the seed that would become Ziggy in his protegé's mind. As The Guardian 's fashion editor Jess Cartner-Morley says, "Bowie made art out of his clothes."

Androgyny

His willingness to push boundaries became apparent with the cover of his third studio album The Man Who Sold The World where he was photographed reclining on a chaise longue in a "man dress" - although the original cover was, in fact, a cartoon. The piece had been designed by Michael Fish who as Mr Fish had been one of Swinging London's leading trendsetters and the inventor of the kipper tie. Bowie went on to wear the dress for interviews. This underlined his early fascination with androgyny a theme echoed on the cover of his next album Hunky Dory, where Bowie was pictured channelling Marlene Dietrich - another influence that stayed with him in various forms throughout his career.

Read next

Ziggy is born

The real turning point in Bowie's fashion progress came with his collaboration with Japanese designer Kansai Yamamoto whom he met when the latter learned that Bowie had been wearing pieces of his womenswear on stage. It was Yamamoto who designed the kimonos and knitted unitards that came to personify the Ziggy Stardust and Aladdin Sane era- and helped invent glam rock. The famous hairstyle was the work of Bowie's mother Peggy's hairstylist Suzi Fussey in Beckenham and was inspired by a model in a Yamamoto photo shoot (Fussey later married Bowie's guitarist Mick Ronson). Not all the tropes of this time were deliberate, however. The famous eyepatch came about when Bowie contracted conjunctivitis before an important interview - he liked the look so much, however, he adopted it. He also claimed that he had shaved off his eyebrows in a fit of pique when Mott The Hoople turned down his song "Drive-In Saturday".

The Thin White Duke

The look, however, had run its course by the time he came to take Diamond Dogs on tour in 1974 and the "cat from Japan" was reinvented as the early soul man in oversized suits, such as the blue Yves Saint Laurent look he wears on the cover of David Live album. Fittingly, when Hedi Slimane took the reins at Saint Laurent he openly cited Bowie as one of his greatest influences and after the singer's death he penned this tribute for the V&A Magazine, "July 1975. I open my birthday present and I meet David for the first time, at the age of seven. David Live, recorded in Philadelphia one year before, is about to change my life."

Slimane's biggest influence came from Bowie's [i]Thin White Duke[/i] look from Station To Station in 1976 that carried on through to the Berlin period of Low and Heroes. Monochrome, brooding - taking a simple white shirt and a black waistcoat to create what has to be one of the coolest looks in the history of both menswear and music and one that still informs countless catwalks and campaigns.

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The Eighties

Another designer Bowie worked with was Willy Brown, who worked for the massively influential London fashion store Demob on Beak Street in Soho that is credited with helping to shape British fashion in the late Seventies and Eighties. It was Brown who created the pink jumpsuit and duster coat that Bowie wore in the video for the 1979 single "DJ", which sees the singer pushing through London streets as strangers grab and try to kiss him. Today Brown lives and works in rural Norfolk with his iconic Old Town label.

After the Lindsay Kemp inspired Scary Monsters moment, Bowie made what in retrospect looks like one of his rare sartorial missteps with the pastel shoulder-padded suit moment of the Let's Dance era in the mid-Eighties - although his besuited appearance at Live Aid proved to be one of the greatest musical moments of the decade. While reporting on his "Serious Moonlight" tour Time magazine deemed it noteworthy to comment on the fact that he wore a wristwatch while performing - apparently a very unusual thing at that time.

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The later years

By the late Nineties Bowie started to work with the then upcoming fashion wunderkind Alexander McQueen who created costumes for his 1996 tour, as well as the Union Jack coat Bowie wears on the cover of the 1997 album Earthling.

In August of that same year Bowie was shot for British GQ by fashion director Jo Levin in Paul Smith suits and brown Grenson brogues - the singer had long been a fan of Smith's work and the designer recalls, "He once came into the Fifth Avenue shop and bought every shirt in his size. It was mind-blowing. Thrilling." One of the images from this shoot is still on the wall outside the GQ fashion office and looks as fresh today as it did 20 years ago. Not surprisingly in a BBC poll in 2013 Bowie was voted the best-dressed Brit in history. He won 48.5 per cent, beating Elizabeth I into second place.

Sadly, the very last project of Bowie's life was a collaboration with his old friend Smith on a limited-edition Dark Star T-shirt design. Smith had them hanging on the installation he had created for the January 2016 London Collections with the Pace Gallery - it was, by coincidence, the day that the news came through that Bowie had died.

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David Bowie influenced the fashion industry like no other. In recognition of the first anniversary of his death, we take a look back at his distinctive style and the impact it has had, from the beginning of his career to the last project of his life.

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https://www.itsnicethat.com/articles/dr-me-fin-publication-190418

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We can only imagine the downtrodden feeling that comes with losing a pitch or some of your favourite work being cut out of a brief by a client. Feeling excited about a concept and seeing it shift is just a part of creative working, and more often than not it works out for the best. But to tackle this feeling DR.ME, the Manchester-based creative studio who consistently create projects with heart, take hold of the pieces and ideas they're fond and publish them in their own zine, Fin?

Regularly published digitally as a PDF zine edition on the last Friday of every month, Fin? collates "unfinished, unrealised, killed client and personal work alongside forgotten work found in drawers or hard drives," DR.ME tells It's Nice That. This digital version is free for fans of the studio, but limited to 100 downloads, "with the idea being that people can P.I.Y (print it yourself)," he says. Each of these monthly editions includes around 20-40 pieces of DR.ME work, amassing a bank of 100 bits and bobs over a few months. Once the bank is full, the studio design a print edition twice a year, "a selection of the greatest hits" of around 35 pieces. "Simply, it's an experiment and an outlet for the studio so that we avoid becoming too precious over an idea, pushing us to constantly make new work rather than regurgitate and re-contextualise old work," the studio explains.

The latest printed edition of Fin? features a bunch of brilliant snippets from the projects DR.ME have worked on recently. A wide variety of graphic design, it features "outcomes that fell on the cutting room floor for people like Mick Jagger to Young Thug, The Tate to Hivern Discs," DR.ME points out. "Commercial works aside, we really want to continue to publish Fin? as we find it hugely beneficial as a studio to have this outlet in order for us to constantly create new work and for us to share and give insight into the inner workings of the studio."

Personality is the first thing you notice about Fin? whether scrolling through a PDF version or flicking through the printed zine. Considering DR.ME dip in and out of working on so many different disciplines, "it's a real show of our studio in microcosm, from collage to painting to photography and illustration," the studio continues. "It allows us to show some personal work which otherwise might seem strange or random on its own, taking in curation and publishing on the way. It also gives a bit of an insight into the heavy outlay of work we create when working on a project and we hope gives a deeper insight into the inner working of DR.ME as a collaborative studio, although most of the work is either one (Ryan) or the other (Mark) which is also a fun game to play."

Asking the studio which bits from the most recent edition of Fin? are personal favourites, more often than not its work that was cut from a client brief that is still playing on the mind of DR.ME. "We had a lot of fun working on the single campaign for Mick Jagger and actually prefer the killed work from this project as opposed to the final artwork which was used, so that's included in there." Another is a few rejected pieces from recently working on an exclusive print with The Tate, hinting at how many staples of the creative industry the studio have worked with this year. "Because they're such household names it was exciting on a very basic level, but also because these huge cultural characters came to us and asked us to make work in our visual language and allowed us complete freedom to do what the fuck we wanted, which we did! The fact that we can garner this level of trust from such influential institutions is humbling." Other bits include an on-going project the studio is doing with Crack magazine, killed t-shirt ideas for Hivern Discs and a rejected book cover from its collaged focused book Cut That Out.

On asking DR.ME if it has any plans to expand on the work included in the studio explains that there isn't. "Once it's in Fin? the life of that piece is over, time to think of something new. You could say Fin? is the graveyard of DR.ME, but at the same time, it gives the work a new lease of life and still exists for people to enjoy. And it smells great."

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DR.ME release the latest issue of Fin? filled with killed projects and ideas that never made it

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We can only imagine the downtrodden feeling that comes with losing a pitch or some of your favourite work being cut out of a brief by a client. Feeling excited about a concept and seeing it shift is just a part of creative working, and more often than not it works out for the best.

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https://www.itsnicethat.com/news/print-club-choose-love-help-refugees-illustration-200618

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Artists including Jake and Dinos Chapman, Rob Ryan, Noel Fielding, Mr Bingo and Sara Pope have created exclusive prints for a week-long exhibition as part of Refugee Week raising funds for the charity Help Refugees.

The work is inspired by artist Katherine Hamnett's Choose Love slogan and together with Print Club London, 30 artists have created individual pieces using illustration, collage and photography, which will be shown at Print Club London's Dalston gallery this week.

The collection includes hand-drawn figures from Alexandria Coe, a crush of blooming lipstick kisses in pink and red from Sara Pope, and a state of the nation address from Rob Ryan's signature cut-outs. Other contributing artists include Stanley Donwood, Quentin Jones, Lauren Baker, Dan Hillier, Ben Allen, Bonnie and Clyde, Newton Blades, Magda Archer, Adam Bridgland, Donk, Celia Warnants, Edd Pearman, Kate Gibb, Patrick Thomas, Rose Stallard, Hayden Kays, and more being announced soon.

Refugee Week aims to celebrate the contributions of refugees globally, in an effort to educate, teach and amplify the voices of marginalised communities and recognise their challenges. Each artist has taken these ideas and reworked the iconic pop symbolism of Hamnett in the context of of our current political moment.

All prints will be available to buy via Print Club from 21 June and via the Dalston gallery with all proceeds directly supporting the work of Help Refugees.

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Noel Fielding, Rob Ryan and Mr Bingo among artists creating prints for refugee week

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Artists including Jake and Dinos Chapman, Rob Ryan, Noel Fielding, Mr Bingo and Sara Pope have created exclusive prints for a week-long exhibition as part of Refugee Week raising funds for the charity Help Refugees.

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http://www.dazeddigital.com/fashion/article/41852/1/berhasm-fashion-art-music-queer-collective-lgbtq-tbilisi-moscow-kiev-paris

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At the end of Paris Fashion Week, emerging design collective Berhasm threw a rave. As far away from the typical champagne and small talk-heavy industry receptions as it's possible to be, the party was thrown in collaboration with ADULT's Emmanuel Caurel and Julien Bizarrelt, and took place in the heart of Le Marais, at Le Depot - the iconic gay sex club well-known (and loved) for its dark techno, darker corners, and all-out, hedonistic debauchery.

It was, as founder Beso Turazashvili explains, a place that the Berhasm family felt right at home, given it was in clubs like these that many of them first met.

Hailing mainly from Georgia, Russia, and Ukraine, the collective is made up of a new generation of creatives who grew up under the shadow of Soviet rule. Drawing on their experiences of this time, members come together to create fashion, art, and music, as part of a statement against political and sexual oppression, and the suppression of human rights - all ongoing issues in these regions, despite the fall of the Eastern Bloc almost three decades ago.

"We're transforming the suppression of rights, expression, and love into a vibrant movement that will not stand for censorship," says Turazashvili. "The one thing that unites us and all of Berhasm's collaborators is the fight for freedom and equality. And yes, there is still much to fight for in our part of the world."

Alongside Turazashvili, members of the group include Moscow-based creative director Nikita Egorov-Kirillov, Ukrainian photographer Alan Dorodnyh, and artist Elene Metrevell, who lives in Tbilisi. Dorodnyh is known for his intimate portraits of masculine beauty, and says that many of the men he photographs come to him as a type of therapy, as, in front of his camera, they can be what they can't be in real life, while Metrevell creates art with the concept of 'closed eyes' in mind - after a short illness left her temporarily blind. Egorov-Kirillov, meanwhile, is the man behind one of Moscow's best-loved queer techno parties, Popoff Kitchen. Dubbed 'The Gay Warrior' by his friends, owing to the scars on his face and head, he set out to create a safe space for those living in a country known for violent homophobia and brutal attacks on its LGBTQ+ community.

Now, following the party at Le Depot, Berhasm launches its first clothing collection. Based on the concept of rave clothing, it's is basically what the collective want to see you wearing at one of their events. For SS19, this means oversized sweatshirts, boxy, cropped tees, cut-off tank tops, and loose, shell suit-style pants, most of which bear photography and artwork created by the collective's members. Alongside tongue-in-cheek slogans ('I fucked your boyfriend') are more poignant styles - including a hoodie designed in tribute to anti-Soviet activists killed in Georgia in 1989, and garments bearing Dorodnyh's personal, tender imagery.

Here, we talk to Turazashvili about the label's debut collection, the ongoing fight for freedom among Eastern Europe and Russia's young, queer creatives, and how he sees the collective growing.

How did the idea to form Berhasm come about?

Beso Turazashvili: I started thinking about it earlier this year during a conversation with some of my friends. Many of them are great artists, musicians, and photographers whose voices I respect, and I wanted them to be heard globally. I didn't study fashion but I worked for Stella McCartney after I graduated from NYU, and then started my own fashion line Beso Turá, but I wanted something more, and to be closer to the audience that's closer to me - the audience that uses fashion for self-expression rather than as a statement on their social status. The concept of Berhasm is based on many capsule collaborations with different artists who each have something to say, linked by their shared fight for expression and freedom.
How did you all meet?
Beso Turazashvili: Most of them I actually met at parties, but I think life brings some people into your life for a reason. A party isn't just a temporary moment of fun, it's the life we fantasise about, and Berhasm is not just a fashion brand: it's a party, a way of expressing yourself, and of living. Usually, from the first time I meet someone, the message we will spread together is clear to us.
How often do you get together?
Beso Turazashvili: Actually, a lot of what we do is done digitally. The beauty of our era is that you can have soulmates without ever having met them. Some of the group I became friends with through social media: I just messaged them and asked if they wanted to do something together. Everything has become digital - digital marketing, digital sales, digital models. I call the collaborators 'digital designers'.

Music is a huge part of what you do. What tracks sum up Berhasm, and the label's debut collection itself?
Beso Turazashvili: Music is the way everything we do as part of Berhasm comes together - we are united when we dance, and in dance, we remember the past, celebrate the present, and look to the future. If I had to sum up Berhasm in one track, it would be Emmanuel Top's "Acid Phase", which is rough and brutal, but at the same time emotional and free - and it brings memories of the old days. Berhasm makes collections for the present, though, as we express our past in contemporary ways, so the track for the new collection would probably be Amelia Lens's "Stay With Me".
Tell us a little about the campaign - what was the concept behind it?
Beso Turazashvili: We shot the campaign in a former Soviet apartment with three characters: one from Moscow, one from Tbilisi and one from Kiev who have all just arrived back from a party. They are sharing love, sexual connection, and unity - physical and emotional. Aside from being a promotional campaign, it's also a political statement on the conflicts that are still ongoing in these three countries, where people just want to love and be loved freely. The campaign was shot by Alan Dorobnyh, who's also known as i2406. He has a very special aura around him that lures everyone who stands in front of his camera out of their comfort zone.
You talk about the conflict many of Berhasm's members face in creating. How do these issues inform what you are creating as a group?
Beso Turazashvili: Coming from a 'troubled background' is so normal for people of our generation in our part of the world, and it's also one of the greatest inspirations for me. When I tell my foreign friends about Georgia in the 90s, when we used to have access to electricity and water for only a couple of hours a day and food for many was scarce, no one can believe where my country is at now. But that's a big part of our history and heritage, it's what made people fight for everything we have now, and it's only the beginning. Our generation has a strong voice.

"We are united when we dance, and in dance, we remember the past, celebrate the present, and look to the future" - Beso Turazashvili

Why is throwing parties so important to you as a collective?
Beso Turazashvili: We throw parties to bring the Berhasm community together. We want our audience to feel that they are a part of the family, and we are always open to new collaborations with new parties, too, since each party is its own small world. It's a way to grow as a collective, and bring new voices into the fold. Following on from the PFW rave at Le Depot, our next party will be in Moscow in collaboration with Popoff Kitchen, where we'll be taking one of my favourite Berlin parties - Herrensauna. Hosting international and intercultural parties is very important for me and for the brand since they break down walls, prove how similar we all are, and show that we aspire for the same things in life.
What's next for Berhasm?
Beso Turazashvili: Now we've launched our first collection, we're going to grow our pool of collaborators, and bring in more diversity since that's what we stand for. The next showcase will be in Paris at Men's Fashion Week in January, and I hope to have a show and a rave in Georgia next spring as well. And we will continue telling our story and growing the Berhasm family - there are many more exciting things to come.

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The collective using fashion, art, and music to fight for freedom

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At the end of Paris Fashion Week, emerging design collective Berhasm threw a rave. As far away from the typical champagne and small talk-heavy industry receptions as it's possible to be, the party was thrown in collaboration with ADULT's Emmanuel Caurel and Julien Bizarrelt, and took place in the heart of Le Marais, at Le Depot - the iconic gay sex club well-known (and loved) for its dark techno, darker corners, and all-out, hedonistic debauchery.

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https://www.itsnicethat.com/news/unsplash-unporn-photography-130718

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Stock library Unsplash have created a free-to-use collection of imagery that aims to convey taboo subjects in a "more safe, creative way". Sex as a subject is not going away, and in a world where communication has become predominantly visual, we need images other than limited "medical diagrams and porn".

"Today, many sexual subjects considered 'off-limits' have a growing need to be communicated", Mikael Cho, founder and CEO of Unsplash explains. "Unsplash is a safe space for all creators. So we made a new kind of 'safe for work' photography to cover the 'not safe for work' creative needs of the world". Playing on the company name, Unporn is for those naughty, suggestive moments where you cannot be explicit; it is also for those points where you need humour and playfulness to discuss a taboo. Sexuality can be fun, and these ambiguous images, when used in the right context, are precisely that.

There are currently 77 photos in the Unporn collection, which features spiky, erect cactuses, juicy fruits, sizzling sausages and melting ice lollies. The series was available for a short time while Unsplash prepared for the announcement, in that time publishing companies went bananas for the photos. "They were downloaded 64,000+ times and used by Elle, Playboy, Women's Health, GQ, and Newsweek", Cho comments. GQ's article humorously features a chunky aubergine next to the title "What makes the 'perfect penis'", a cheeky wink at girth and size. The company is looking for more images for the collection and is asking members of the public to contribute.

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"Unporn" is the photo stock collection for those suggestive, naughty moments

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Stock library _Unsplash_ have created a free-to-use collection of imagery that aims to convey taboo subjects in a "more safe, creative way". Sex as a subject is not going away, and in a world where communication has become predominantly visual, we need images other than limited "medical diagrams and porn".

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https://www.itsnicethat.com/articles/john-yuyi-photography-060818

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John Yuyi wants to change how we think about the internet as an artistic space. Instantly recognisable for her images that use temporary tattoos, Yuyi explores the role social media plays in our everyday lives.

If you've never used Facebook, congratulations. Most of us have, and most of us have used it to show the virtual world images of ourselves or our friends. Yuyi thought it'd be fun to subvert that by placing social media stickers on her face, and posting the results online, creating a continuous layering of skin on skin, Facebook upon faces and faces on Facebook.

Yuyi also uses her body as a canvas, becoming a work of art whilst simultaneously being an artist. "I think a lot of people use themselves to build a persona on social media", she explains. "It's trendy for people to show not only their work, but also their faces". We all have bodies, which is why when we look at Yuyi's work, it is instantly relatable.

Yuyi is obsessed with skin, its uniqueness and individuality. Each of us has a defining feature; a crease in their skin, a dimple or a freckle below the mouth. Working with the body is an exploration of this intimacy; it is lying next to a person and tracing them from toe to forehead. "I always try to remember the people I am close to, like my family or my ex-boyfriend", Yuyi explains. "The position and placement of a mole on their skin". These markers feed into her art, which is personal and detailed.

Yuyi has a background in fashion; she studied it at University when in Taiwan and has worked as a stylist for over three years. It was only once she moved to New York that she genuinely considered herself an artist. However, it wasn't her that first initiated this title, rather the people that followed her online. The work that she does has a strong connection with the fashion industry, having recently worked on campaigns for Gucci and Nike, producing images that emphasise the familiarity of logos and how advertising can seep deep into the psyche. When we look at her instant tattoos, we recognise what brand she's eluding to, yet she does it in a contemporary and exciting manner.

"I realised I was terrible at expressing myself with words", Yuyi tells us. "Images are how I express my feelings. This idea of communication or relationships with friends, lovers and society plays a strong role in my work".

A recent project for Nylon, China sees Yuyi temporary tattooing food with QR codes and the Chinese Yen. When the artist visited Shanghai for her exhibition, she realised how advanced the city was concerning technology. "Every time I tried to use cash in a convenient store, they rejected me; they asked me to use the QR code to pay". Phones have replaced cards and cash as the preferred payment system. The series for Nylon explores this idea, how even the most basic product has become modernised.

Yuyi's work explores how humans can no longer be separated from digital technology; our way of life has become so enveloped by it, that it has almost become like an extra limb.

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John Yuyi's images highlight the interrelation between humans and digital technology

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John Yuyi wants to change how we think about the internet as an artistic space. Instantly recognisable for her images that use temporary tattoos, Yuyi explores the role social media plays in our everyday lives. If you've never used Facebook, congratulations.

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https://www.itsnicethat.com/articles/michael-marcelle-red-strawberry-ii-photography-280918

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Despite being based in Brooklyn we always imagine that photographer Michael Marcelle lives in a hyper-real world full of the shiniest objects which he pops together and photographs for us all to gawp at. New York is still a world away from our studio in Haggerston but really, the result of his eye-opening photographic works are solely his conceptual imagination.

New Jersey-born, Bard College and Yale University-educated, Michael's work may be one you've seen before as it's been exhibited at Aperture Foundation, featured in publications such as The New Yorker and Vice, and had his very own book, Kokomo published via Matte Editions. However, the work Michael's shared with us is a little newer and part of an ongoing series by the photographer titled Red Strawberry II.

Pulling away from "the familial background of Kokomo into a wider brutal perspective," Red Strawberry II features the mind-altering eye of the photographer's his fans will know and love while offering something new. By "deconstructing the line between fantasy and reality, desire and danger, and the natural and the synthetic, the work focuses on the intersection of queerness and science-fiction in the physical world," Michael describes. "Rather than the traditional visual description of queerness that is regulated to the body, this work instead builds an entirely queer world. Desire is stretched and muted across bodies, and still lifes, invoking revulsion and attraction in equal terms."

In a more direct sense what Michael describes is that the images as a whole, despite featuring varying objects, display a "contemporary landscape that is both primordial and futuristic, nostalgic for everything at once," he says. "Everything is too bright, too colourful; a cloying hyper-ripe piece for fruit from another dimension, or a hallucination of a CGI rendering."

Considering Michael's use of objects, which range from decorated chimneys to uniquely framed portraits of people, each photograph of his begins by being "firmly grounded in our own physical reality," the photographer explains. The image then goes through retouching and post-production, although "most of these pictures were created in-camera using practical special effects, often the same techniques used in b-grade science fiction films of the 1970s and 80s," Michael reveals. "The result," as he describes, "is an uncanny inversion of our own world, reflecting and emphasising the emerging dystopian elements of our cultural-political climate into a strange new kingdom, blossoming all around us."

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Michael Marcelle uses photography to build a "strange new kingdom"

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Despite being based in Brooklyn we always imagine that photographer Michael Marcelle lives in a hyper-real world full of the shiniest objects which he pops together and photographs for us all to gawp at. New York is still a world away from our studio in Haggerston but really, the result of his eye-opening photographic works are solely his conceptual imagination.

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https://www.itsnicethat.com/articles/dan-solbach-graphic-design-051018

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Having worked almost exclusively for artists and galleries for a decade, Berlin and Switzerland-based graphic designer Dan Solbach has a solid portfolio of cultural ephemera. Working largely with material provided by others, he has learned the value of comprehensively getting to know his client's work. With an always thorough understanding of each artist or institution's concepts and goals, Dan's rigorous process sees him producing considered and deliberate work with a deceptively simple finesse.

Dan works on his own, although often with the help of an intern. As a result, he relies on the collaborations and relationships he fosters with artists and curators. "Of course knowing a client before the projects - better even through friendship - leads to a better and stronger collaboration," he tells It's Nice That. "So I always try to educate myself about an artist's work, visiting exhibitions, searching for catalogues, going to gallery openings, to understand the work and its context."

Design, as a profession and interest, has always been a constant in Dan's life as his father is a furniture designer. "My first real interests started with a Verner Panton exhibition in 2000 though," he explains, "paired with second-hand vinyl records that I would search for in flea markets." With the introduction of the internet to his daily life, Dan progressed to designing basic websites, inspired by these record covers as well as "flyers, gig posters, skate shirts, etc". By the time he reached the end of his high school education, "it seemed pretty clear that I wanted to become a graphic designer, so I started to look for internships in ad agencies and studios before eventually applying to the Basel University of Arts and Design."

Now, his work exhibits the restraint of someone with a wide understanding of graphic design. Clean, sophisticated and never over-designed, his output understands the rules but adeptly chooses which ones to utilise. "My visual language is fairly simple," he adds on the topic, "it's strongly influenced by Swiss typography. Then there is often a second element - image, shape, or just an idea - that I apply without hierarchy, in order to break-down my own language. I don't want to create unique masterpieces, but results of a continuous process, so it's very important to me, that I don't fall in love with a single application or project."

Dan's recent redesign of Kunstal Aarhus' visual identity demonstrates this notion. Having met the team when previously working at the institution as part of the editorial team of Starship Magazine, he was asked to come back and develop a system which could be taken forward and designed in-house. With this in mind, Dan produced a flexible and unexacting typographic structure which involves the combination of elements in varying degrees of complexity. As the identity is rolled out, Dan will continue to consult on the project, "checking the files and always adding a second image layer, which is freely associative based on the respective exhibition."

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Dan Solbach's sophisticated designs exhibit restraint and understanding

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Having worked almost exclusively for artists and galleries for a decade, Berlin and Switzerland-based graphic designer "Dan Solbach":https://www.itsnicethat.com/articles/denmark-born-dan-solbachs-intelligent-simple-and-inspired-designs has a solid portfolio of cultural ephemera. Working largely with material provided by others, he has learned the value of comprehensively getting to know his client's work.

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Assemblage

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Earlier this week Oskar Smolokowski oversaw the integration of Polaroid and Polaroid Originals, with the result being a newly-formed parent organization called Polaroid BV, of which he is the CEO. Which must have made him pretty happy.

He'll still be smiling this afternoon as the instant camera behemoths have announced a new analogue camera that makes full use of recent technological advancements, meaning the device can be controlled from the comfort of your own phone via Bluetooth.

The OneStep+, which hits UK stores in early September, is the follow up to last year's 80th anniversary celebrating OneStep 2. The camera itself features a new portrait lens, while the app throws up a whole host of new features, including double exposure, a scanner, and manual mode that allows the user to have total control over aperture, shutter speed, flash intensity and photo ejection.

In fact, when we talked to Oskar about the release, it was the latter function that seemed to excite him most: "Once you understand those things it's hard to settle for anything less than full control if it's at your fingertips," he says.

For Oskar at least, Polaroid's contemporary innovations aren't necessarily about making people better photographers so much as making sure people take photos that mean something to them, photos that, "you want to look back at when years have passed, and you want to smile about fun a certain moment was."

Despite the retro styling of the new camera, Oskar stresses that as a company Polaroid never pushes to be nostalgic. "It just happens to be that there's these amazing timeless designs, so we get inspired by some of that work, particularly as a lot of it is in our own heritage at Polaroid," he tells us.

He goes on to say that the app is intended to make photographic techniques accessible, fun, and simple. Talking about that ethos, he quotes Polaroid co-founder Edwin Land, who said of the company's iconic SX-70 model, "What we have tried to do is to provide a medium for artistic expression to anyone with only a reasonable amount of time." Oskar relates Edwin's idea to the app, noting that, "we put a lot of effort for the app to do just that, and because it directly controls the camera it can explain and let you experience the effects at the same time."

The app can be used without the camera, and is available for download on both iOS and Android devices via Google Play the App Store right now.

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Polaroid announces accessible, fun, and simple app-integrated instant analogue camera

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Earlier this week Oskar Smolokowski oversaw the integration of Polaroid and Polaroid Originals, with the result being a newly-formed parent organization called Polaroid BV, of which he is the CEO. Which must have made him pretty happy.

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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l7NG6zcNuN0

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Is Fashion Becoming Gender Non-Binary? | i-D

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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XQIGLPCQevk

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https://hiskind.com/15-club-kids-to-obsess-over-on-instagram/

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It took nine seasons of RuPaul's Drag Race to truly pay homage to the brilliance of club kid drag, an art form that sees femininity as not the end product of drag, but one of many tools used to create a character, a facade and - above all that - a piece of art.

Drag Race has historically favoured pageantry and beauty drag, often having a queen of club kid origin in each season to seem diverse, only to knock them out mid-season. But with New York comic artist Sasha Velour and Chicago favourite Shea Coulee winning the hearts of this year's audience, club kid artistry refuses to be silenced, but championed and seen by the millions. Icons such as Leigh Bowery and Amanda Lepore have championed that set form in the late 20th century and their legacy still lives in across America and Europe. In London, clubs like WUT?Club and Sink the Pink have called for a reprise of the club kids, while New York and Chicago's legacy lives on, inspiring new artists across Scandinavia and France.

Commemorating the club kids of today, we've picked out a few of our favourite night artists giving the middle finger up to gender and convention and living in a refreshing, reinvigorating and booming bubble of drag. From East London's glitter fanatics to Chicago's adoration for 'more is more', we've got the perfect recipe to liven up your Instagram feeds.

A Chicago night flower through and through, it doesn't get much better than Imp. A multi faceted queen, Imp has just dropped her EP (which you can listen to here). Chicago has birthed the likes of Trixie Mattel, Kim Chi, Pearl and Shea Coulee, all boasting the craziness of Illinois' centre of creativity and desire for something new and exciting. Often lurking in the shadows of the iconic Berlin nightclub, Imp is a queen of integrity, serving looks and longevity. An Instagram without Imp's creativity is a sad Instagram indeed. Imp also appeared on Dorian Electra's 2,500 Years of Drag.

Yet another heart-throb from the depths of Chicago's gritty night streets, Nico is that club kid known for her strong contour, performance capabilities and messy aesthetic. A self proclaimed alien street walker, Nico has won the hearts of thousands of fans across social media with her powerful - and often terrifying - looks.

Nobody does it as good as Creme. Proving that gals are just as valid, accepted and respected in queer spaces, Creme is San Fran's crown jewel, blocking that face in every shade of blue, green and violet and adored from head to toe by Illinois' party goers. Trying to find fault in any part of Creme is near on impossible.

One of the brightest new stars to be emerging onto the midnight streets of London, Tyler is not one to shy away from blocked looks, bursting in colour and concept. The club kid serves boldness through baldness and is an obvious fan of using geometry, elements of technology and primary colours in his work. An art student through and through, Darke immerses himself into his art and quite literally becomes it. A joy to see darting and dancing through London's queer scene.

See a sneak peek of the interview/photoshoot with Sussi, now up on the website. A post shared by HISKIND Magazine (@hiskindmagazine) on Mar 5, 2017 at 9:57am PST

A recognisable face from issue one of HISKIND, SUSSI is the monochromatic walking art gallery drafting between continents, in search of the biggest and best clubs. You can check out our full interview and photoshoot from the fierce (and often terrifying) club kid here.

Pretty much the UK's answer to Creme Fatale, Lacey is a diverse and versatile bio-gal who slays the game with club kid and beauty looks. She can give you fierce one week and freaky the next. Birmingham's dream girl, Lacey dedicates her life to ensuring the West Midlands' LGBT scenes are diverse and not just Ariana Grande playing 8 times in the row. As a homage to her love of sparkles, her night Glitter Shit is a favourite amongst outer-London party goers.

A hunk out of drag and a piece of walking art in drag, Milk is the Drag Race alum still pulling look after look on New York's dance floors. Though we originally planned NOT to include a RuGirl in this, how can we not admire and adore the insanity behind this dairy queen's aesthetic. A model famed by the likes of Marc Jacobs, Milk is what drag is and should continue being in 2017.
This list is in no way exhaustive of our favourite night crawlers and face artists, but simply a sample of who we admire. There's so much to see out there, beyond your social media. Douse yourself in sequins, glitter, paint and support your queer scenes, dance with your favourite club kids and be part of that iconic narrative.
Featured Image: Pat McGrathrea
To keep up to date with the latest at HISKIND, follow us on Twitter & Instagram and like us on Facebook.

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15 Club Kids From Across the Globe to Follow on Instagram

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It took nine seasons of RuPaul's Drag Race to truly pay homage to the brilliance of club kid drag, an art form that sees femininity as not the end product of drag, but one of many tools used to create a character, a facade and - above all that - a piece of art.

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http://www.dazeddigital.com/photography/article/28858/1/the-photographer-reversing-the-male-gaze

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Many female identified artists use sexuality and body image as tools to liberate the female body and a starting point to discuss feminist ideas. But what happens when the female gaze is viewed in the same context as the male gaze? For some, an image of a semi-naked woman may be liberating, but others may not read the same photograph as needlessly sexualising a woman, or representing female bodies as objects.

When questioning her own approach to shooting through the female gaze, Vancouver based photographer Megan Magdalena Bourne found herself interested in the different approaches to shooting men and women. "I was angry about having to censor my photos of women, and about gender in general. I was constantly getting my photos reported and deleted because they were 'offensive'. So, I began recreating the photos I've had deleted from social media sites using boys."

As Bourne began photographing more and more men for the series, she found herself less caught up in social media politics and more concerned with the hyperbolic representation of gender roles in photography and the needless sexualisation of women. At times the series, entitled BOYS BOYS BOYS, seems hilarious as opposed to deep rooted social commentary. Yes, men with roses held in their mouths or straddled between an open bag of flour may seem ridiculous, but why is it any less ridiculous when women are told to pull the same poses by male photographers?

Casting boys from within her artistic community and social group, Bourne allowed her models complete creative control of their shoot, and took the decision to interview each person alongside taking their portrait. "I wanted them to interpret this project in their own way and find where their own personal vulnerability lies. Some took the project literally, some found it funny, and some really took it to heart, with each person capturing a different mood and highlighting a different aspect of gender."

Available online only for now, Bourne hopes to widely release the series of images and interviews as a zine in the future. But, despite finishing the project more concerned with gender roles than social media censorship, does Bourne feel any less frustrated that her too hot for instagram imagery - when using a female model - is still being deleted? "I just hope that seeing these men and reading what they had to say will cause one man to think differently before he sexualizes a women, or a man".
Check out more of Megan Magdalena Bourne's work here

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Using the male gaze to call BS on gender roles

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Many female identified artists use sexuality and body image as tools to liberate the female body and a starting point to discuss feminist ideas. But what happens when the female gaze is viewed in the same context as the male gaze?

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Interesting articles

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[cycloneslider id="laurence-me-vs-others"]
A new series by Laurence Philomene, featuring Hobbes Ginsberg and Chloe Feller.
I've always been a self portrait artist but at some point over the last couple of years for the first time in my life I started to feel uncomfortable with showing myself online... something about vulnerability that started to freak me out, so I stopped taking self portraits. But I still felt that every picture I took WAS a self portrait, a projection of myself onto others - I wanted to explore that idea more, and push it to the extreme, literally putting what I see of myself/my identity on other people, blurring the line between what is me and what is not, how would I look in other people's skin, etc. Not just clothing but also colours, poses, mannerisms. I've been photographing this series since December (2014), doing a couple of shoots a month, usually it's been quite unplanned, I've photographed people who are very close to me as well as people I barely know. These ones were shot on a rainy afternoon in Brooklyn, Chloe and Hobbes were flying back to LA that day and we had a couple of hours to kill before they had to go to the airport.

Images from this series will be featured in an exhibition in Bushwick in August curated by Molly Soda, but I think that's all I can say on that for now!
Words by Laurence.

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cycloneslider id="laurence-me-vs-others"] A new series by Laurence Philomene, featuring Hobbes Ginsberg and Chloe Feller. I've always been a self portrait artist but at some point over the last couple of years for the first time in my life I started to feel uncomfortable with showing myself online...

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https://www.vice.com/en_au/article/av4yb5/matte-magazine-presents-hobbes-ginsberg-405

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MATTE magazine is a photography journal I started in 2010 as a way to shed light on good work by emerging photographers. Each issue features the work of one artist, and I shoot a portrait of him or her for the issue's cover. As photo editor of VICE, I'm excited to share my discoveries with a wider audience.

Hobbes Ginseberg is a 20-year-old Los Angeles-based photographer who doesn't want to make a big deal about their gender but prefers the pronouns she or they. They moved to Seattle after completing high school, and a year and a half after that followed their dreams to Hollywood. We met when I was in LA visiting artists on official VICE business last month, and I was immediately struck by Hobbes's alert, inquisitive presence. After having known each other for no more than five minutes, we decided we should work together on an issue of MATTE magazine to be released at the New York Art Book Fair this week at MoMA PS1, and went to the roof of the hotel, where I made the above cover portrait. I only had four frames left on my roll of film, but somehow each picture turned out to be interesting. Hobbes is someone who uses their self-image as their art, so this wasn't actually that surprising. A mix of politically engaged self-portraiture in photography in the tradition of Catherine Opie, Cobain-scented soft grunge internet phenomena, and something indescribably glamourous and completely their own, Hobbes's Selfies made me want to find out more about them.

VICE: How did you start taking pictures?
Hobbes Ginsberg: I used to do a lot of street photography. Taking pictures started for me on a trip to New York in the summer of 2010 and I had this "professional" point-and-shoot camera that I borrowed from a friend. I started taking photos of all the people I saw on the street who interested me visually. I had a vague idea of what street photography was at that point from deviantART, and on that trip I saw an exhibition by Henri Cartier-Bresson and some other old guy I dont remember. It took off from there. I did a lot of street work in Nicaragua.

When did you start taking pictures of yourself?
About two years ago I stopped shooting outside for a long time, and felt a need to turn inward so I just took a ton of selfies. It was easier for me to try new things that way. I borrowed some lights from the yearbook team at my school, and thats how I first got into studio work.

What kind of role does taking pictures of yourself play in your life?
In terms of my oeuvre, most people care the most about my selfies, and its what cemented my current aesthetic. It also the work I make that is the most cathartic for me. I get into these moods where I feel really shitty, and the way to fix it is to take photos.

There seems to be some element of performing for the camera-does the need to make new selfies ever effect choices you make about how you present yourself?
I like this question. It made me think about something I hadn't before. Theres a definite connection between the performance of the photos and how I present myself IRL. I play things up in photos because its a safe space to experiment, to do crazier makeup or outfits and to take the styles and vibes I'm interested in to the next level. But I also like to think of them as a documentation. Whenever I get a new hairstyle or a new piece of clothing I'm really into, that will prompt a selfie. I think the need to be constantly changing up my look is related to the photographic process but not an effect of it. My girlfriend says its the other way around, though, so who really knows. They are undoubtedly intertwined.

You're very active on Tumblr-how do you feel about releasing these pictures of yourself to such a wide audience?
Having my photos seen and shared is just as important to me as the process of making them. I post everything to my Tumblr, for better or worse. I love the attention though-I want my work to be seen by as many people as possible. I feel like this method has also made my work more polititcal. In a lot of ways its a part of this new collection of work by young women and minorities who are using this space to define and empower themselves. I like being a part of that movement.

How do you define your gender? It seems, like that is one of the subjects at play in the work.
I identify as queer and use she/they pronouns. I wrote a whole thing about that on my blog.

Dealing with gender identity is definitely a part of my work, in the same way that it is inherently a part of myself. The selfies are about documentation and about depression, and about beauty and positivity and all of the personal issues people deal with. I create them for myself, and gender comes along with that organically, but I am not trying to "say" anything about it. I like that my work can be important for visibility and for the success of queer artists but its important for me that the work is seen through a broader lens than just "gender."

Do you see this as a lifelong project?
I hope I do it for a long time. I really love portraits of older women, and I really admire long-term dedication, but to be honest I can't even fathom what lifelong would mean to me at this point.

Hobbes Ginsberg is a Los Angeles-based dreamer. See new work on Hobbes's blog.

Purchase physical copies of issue 26 of MATTE magazine featuring pictures by Hobbes Ginsberg on mattemagazine.org, or at Printed Matter's New York Art Book Fair at MoMA PS1 this weekend.

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'MATTE' Magazine Presents Hobbes Ginsberg

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MATTE magazine is a photography journal I started in 2010 as a way to shed light on good work by emerging photographers. Each issue features the work of one artist, and I shoot a portrait of him or her for the issue's cover.

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The Velvet Rage: Overcoming the Pain of Growing Up Gay in a Straight Man's World

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The Velvet Rage: Overcoming the Pain of Growing Up Gay in a Straight Man's World

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https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/49418.The_Velvet_Rage

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The Velvet Rage has 2,887 ratings and 315 reviews. Hannah said: The Velvet Rage provides a three-stage model for the journey gay men are encouraged to ta...

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Loverboy show

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The White Interview

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Singing from the RooftopsDirected by Häns

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Singing from the RooftopsDirected by Häns

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A portrait of self-love and freedom through the story of a nonagenarian drag queen—aptly named Gilda Love.

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nowness，生活创意 ，艺术设计，时尚奢侈平，创意，生活，美食，模特，艺术，设计，时尚，奢侈品，nowness.cn

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Polari, a secret language for queer survival

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Polari, a secret language for queer survival

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Dazed Article

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Last summer marked 50 years since the 1967 Sexual Offences Act, a landmark ruling which decriminalised homosexuality in the UK. In this relatively progressive year of 2018, fully understanding the extreme social stigmatisation and police persecution which reigned at that time is difficult. The threat of being outed was so dangerous that a secret language, Polari, emerged in order to help queer men speak freely of their desires and to identify other members of their community while in public.

Combining Italian and other Romance languages with Romani and London slang, Polari is a linguistic hodge-podge - noted for its camp, theatrical tendencies. Although queer women may have used the language, it is mostly associated with queer men and drag queens. Existing aurally, it was passed from queer person to queer person as an initiation into LGBTQ+ culture. Now, most likely due to the decriminalisation of homosexuality, it has nearly ceased to exist. Unlike other 'dead' languages once spoken in the west - such as Latin and Ancient Greek - no official surveys of the language or dictionaries exist in Polari due to its intrinsically subversive nature. As times goes on, it may be lost forever. Despite teetering on the edge of extinction, recent efforts have been made to revive Polari, for example, the release of a short film in Polari in 2015, entitled Putting on the Dish.

"Polari played a major role for gay people during the oppressive decades of the early 20th century" - Dr. Justin Bengry

So why the renewed interest in Polari? Surely, queer individuals in the UK would want to forget a time when their forebears were denied the basic right to love - or shag - whoever they wanted? To find out more, Dazed spoke to Dr. Justin Bengry, the head of Goldsmiths University's MA in Queer History and an established authority in the field of Queer Studies. As he explains, Polari is a testament to the resilience of the LGBTQ+ community and other marginalised groups, and an important reminder to not take today's freedoms for granted. "Polari allowed queer men to communicate and find each other when they couldn't do so openly - when it was too dangerous for others to know that they loved and desired other men. This creative use of language, slang, and wordplay demonstrates how innovative marginalised groups can be, and just how rich our histories are. But it must also remind us just how fraught life could be for queer men in the past."

While it's important to respect the past and be conscious of contemporary privileges, it's also worth considering what a language like Polari could offer for Britain's queer individuals now. This, at least, is something which George Reiner and Penny Burkett, both 23, considered in the creation of their new book cruising for lavs, written predominantly in Polari. Raising questions about belonging, and how the queer experience varies across rural and urban settings, cruising for lavs explores ongoing LGBTQ+ issues through a historically queer language. Launching on the 27th of September, at London's queer bar, Dalston Superstore, all proceeds from the publication will go to the charity Lesbians and Gays Support the Migrants.

Reiner has long been a fan of Polari, coming to it via an insatiable interest in Romance languages, and as "as a queer person who came across it on my various searches online". Burkett was made aware of the language through Reiner, a classmate on her Fine Art and History of Art course, when she presented a piece of artwork examining the word 'fishy' during a crit. Intrigued by queer linguistics and the use of 'fishy' as part of an essentialist discourse of femininity within drag, she was not aware of its roots in Polari until Reiner informed her - sparking a conversation about the language in front of their peers, as well as an enduring mutual interest in exploring the language's possibilities in contemporary use. After securing funding from Goldsmiths University (where they both studied) for an extracurricular academic project, Reiner and Burkett began a period of intense research. As Burkett describes it: "We started out with a bunch of questions, like "what does it mean to take an oral language and write it down on paper?" and "where do we get our words from?".

At the end of their research project, Reiner and Burkett were still looking for answers to some of their initial questions, but they decided early on that they would rather write a book in the language, than about it. As Reiner explains: "We were wondering what it was like to write in Polari, to find another way of experiencing this issue without the problematics of trying to objectively say 'this is what it is' and without us being kind of gatekeepers of that knowledge." Speaking the language amongst themselves and recording versions of these conversations in cruising for lavs has allowed Burkett and Reiner to think about the benefits of renewing the language. As Reiner says: "With the dematerialisation of queer bodies through dating apps and the gradual disappearance of queer physical spaces like gay bars or gay clubs, the revival of a language like Polari offers the possibility of an alternate queer linguistic space." This notion of a queer linguistic space, in lieu of a secure physical one, has long been an attraction of Polari. As Dr. Paul Baker, a professor at Lancaster University and acknowledged Polari specialist puts it: "Polari played a major role for gay people during the oppressive decades of the early 20th century. As well as enabling them to identify and reach out to one another, it allowed them to communicate in public, creating a kind of linguistic 'safe space'."

In this sense, Polari is like Swardspeak, a queer argot currently spoken in the Philippines. Given that the Philippines is one of the more LGBTQ+ friendly countries in Asia, the use of Swardspeak is about survival, but also about creating a separate queer subculture. What Polari may not have in common with Swardspeak, however, is that it comes from a moment in UK history which is renowned for its misogyny and racism and reflects this in racist and misogynistic words. As Burkett points out, their engagement about Polari was also a process of critiquing the language through a contemporary lens. "Does Polari represent the myriad of ways to be queer? Put simply, no, it doesn't. However, we wanted to see if it was possible to take this language which was predominantly a white, cis, man's gay language and stretch this linguistic space to see if it could make room for the both of us."

Due to language's open-ended nature, a representational Polari is surely a possibility, even if it's a distant one. The real question is whether the individuals who Polari traditionally excludes - people of colour and women - will want to participate in recuperating a language which has alternately shunned and ridiculed them. Even if Polari does eventually fade from use, its legacy will live on in the ways that it has filtered into mainstream British English - with words such as 'naff', 'muck', 'bevvy', and 'blowjob' all tracing their origins from Polari. Without straight, cis society even realising, Britain's historic underground community has shaped the language we all speak today.
cruising for lavs launches on Thursday 27 September 2018 at Dalston Superstore, more information here

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The new book written in Polari, a secret language for queer survival

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Last summer marked 50 years since the 1967 Sexual Offences Act, a landmark ruling which decriminalised homosexuality in the UK. In this relatively progressive year of 2018, fully understanding the extreme social stigmatisation and police persecution which reigned at that time is difficult.

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The Gondry brothers on Las Vegas and falling in love in 8.2 seconds

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The Gondry brothers on Las Vegas and falling in love in 8.2 seconds

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Dazed Article

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We're all feeling it - in a sprawling vortex of content it's increasingly difficult to focus on one thing. Even when we watch Netflix we're scrolling Instagram and in a bloated platform era, our attention spans are reducing; in fact studies say human beings can only concentrate for a meagre eight seconds, one second less than that of a goldfish. One thing that goldfish aren't capable of is love (we think), and research also shows that it takes just 8.2 seconds to fall in love. While our focus might be diminishing, our primal instinct for passion isn't going anywhere.

In response to these findings, Michel and Olivier Gondry have shot a series of incredibly short films (yes, 8 seconds long) called Las Vegas Love Stories, all shot in the Park MGM, Paradise, Nevada. The surreal shorts pay tribute to the magical feeling of falling in love, snapshots of different couples in different romantic situations.

In anticipation of the six films being released, we caught up with the Gondry brothers to ask them about love, the impact of technology on our brains, and what they'd do if they only had 8.2 seconds left on Earth.
Do you think that in your life you've ever fallen in love within 8.2 seconds? If so, can you describe it?
Olivier Gondry: I definitely projected myself in a whole life of love in the first 8 seconds of seeing someone. Many times. Actually fallen in love? No.

Michel Gondry: I fall in love every 8.2 seconds. It's very complicated.
Do you think that Joel and Clementine fell in love within 8.2 seconds, on that train?
Michel Gondry: They are in love already, but they don't know it because they erased each other from their minds.

"Melancholy comes after love is finished and it grows and grows. Melancholy shines light on the love we didn't know was there" - Michel Gondry

While the films are about love - the most magical feeling we are capable of - there is a sadness to some of them, the music lends them an air of melancholy. Was this deliberate? Is love, in and of itself, sad?
Olivier Gondry: Melancholy and sadness definitely brings some depth to love. In eight seconds you fall in love, yes, then you get the next yeeaaarrrsssss of....love.... through the music.

Michel Gondry: Melancholy comes after love is finished and it grows and grows. Melancholy shines light on the love we didn't know was there.

I went back to watch the films on repeat, to check for any detail I had missed. Each time offered something a little different, but did you find it hard to tell a story in 8.2 seconds?
Olivier Gondry: Yes, it worried me a bit, until two days after starting the edit when I saw everything coming together, some better than imagined.

Michel Gondry: It's hard to define what a story is. Some pretend they know, but I think they are showing off.
Do you notice, in our online era, your attention span shortening? How does it affect your work?
Olivier Gondry: The online era made "crazy" the quiet times and helped "quiet" the crazy times. It's great for crazy work.

Michel Gondry: Yes. We don't know if our short attention span made us create this technology or the technology created the short attention span.

"We don't know if our short attention span made us create this technology or the technology created the short attention span" - Michel Gondry

Do you think there's a romance to hotels, and Las Vegas itself?
Olivier Gondry: I have great memories of Las Vegas. A few trips with American friends 20 years ago. Through my French eyes, I loved it. I keep these memories warm. I don't want to analyse them.

Michel Gondry: I used to go in Las Vegas with my son when he was six. He would go with two girls his age and spend time in the arcades to win tickets.
If you had 8.2 seconds left on earth to tell someone you loved them, who would it be?
Olivier Gondry: If I had only eight seconds, I won't have time to call anybody, so I would say "I love you" to the person I am talking to, because with eight seconds to live, I love every single human being.

Michel Gondry: I'm not telling you.
Were any of the films based on true stories, and real accounts of falling in love?
Olivier Gondry: No true stories, but true emotions, yes. What they lived in the elevator in Room 802, is definitely something I lived.

Michel Gondry: Olivier, stop thinking of Lili. You drive me crazy.

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The Gondry brothers on Las Vegas and falling in love in 8.2 seconds

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We're all feeling it - in a sprawling vortex of content it's increasingly difficult to focus on one thing. Even when we watch Netflix we're scrolling Instagram and in a bloated platform era, our attention spans are reducing; in fact studies say human beings can only concentrate for a meagre eight seconds, one second less than that of a goldfish.