Aspiring photographers and seasoned professionals alike, ready your best work for entries in the New York Photo Awards(NYPA). As part of a new international, annual competition, the New York Photo Festival(NYPH) is calling for entries for the NYPA, accepted from now through April 14. The judges will honor talented photographers from all over the world whose exceptional work breaks new ground, visually, intellectually and aesthetically. This is a great opportunity for visual artists to reach a wealth of influential decision makers in the photographic community and the editorial, fine arts, and fashion worlds.
Exposure for winners will include display at the ceremony, on the NYPA and NYPH websites, publication in leading photo magazines, and eligibility for inclusion in a powerHouse Books annual featuring a selection of the winners. For complete details and submission guidelines visit the NYPA website at www.newyorkphotoawards.com.
Graveyard Tee Pee Records Graveyard’s self-titled debut is a time warp to the 1970s, with psychedelic rock at its peak. Though this seminal music era influenced many bands, few are as committed as Graveyard to recreating it note for note. Songs like “Blue Soul” and “Satan’s Finest,” seem to suggest the quartet was raised together in the middle of an isolated Swedish forest, where their only means for survival were a steady diet of Black Sabbath and Blue Cheer. Although the band does little to reinvent this genre, at times appearing to solely mimic their hash-adorned influences, Graveyard does possess an admirable heavy metal consistency in their music. Their opening track, “Evil Ways,” begins with a pulsing drumbeat, building to a smooth bluesy riff that propels the rest of the song, while “Submarine Blues” is a tight hook-filled little number, short and sweet. The first half of “Blue Soul” has a mellow, almost jazzy bass line, but through the introduction of some beefy guitar chords picks up steam in its second half. Many bands attempting to refashion yesterday’s music embark on an ultimately fruitless journey, but Graveyard delivers a riotous time warp, completely worthwhile.
Flaunt.com, Mind[medium], and V2 Vodka, along with cabaret hosts Adarsha Benjamin, Marc Edouard Leon, and Reverend A. Pogany, presented an evening of bands and bad behavior this past weekend in industrial Downtown Los Angeles. An art-skate warehouse on 6th St. housed an evening of live performances by Voxhaul Broadcast, The Red Hearts, The Pharmacy, DJ Dorion, and DJ Jag L.A.. Guests packed the house, many dressed in their finest corsets, garter belts, bowler hats, and vests; some accenting their costumes with feathers and sequins, others preferring to entice with copious amounts of unfettered skin. Bands performed at the base of the warehouse’s indoor mini half-pipe, and walls and floors shook as the crowd calamitously danced to the rhythms and hooks of the evening’s sweet ol’ rock-n-roll jooks. Other highlights: an ugly photo booth, a cotton candy machine, a grilled cheese sandwich bar, and all the V2 vodka cocktails your tiny heart could ever desire. Despite the torrential rain, this party was definitely one of the most radical Flaunt events of 2008 to date. Rest assured there’ll be more where this came from. Stay tuned for additional pics and Youtube video coverage…Photography by Melissa Manning forTheLookPartnership.comFor additional photos from this party check outTheArabParrot.com.
What better a place than the barren and desolate Salton Sea to stage our raw and panoramic Spring Fashion issue’s cover shoot with Camilla Belle. The young actress and crew battled the wind and gusts of desert sand to capture a truly beautiful story shot by Kurt Iswarienko. The calm sea, the salt-like mounds of barnacles, and the juxtaposed skeletons of mattresses and fish provided a strangely calm and gorgeous setting for our story. Thank you to everyone for the great shoot. Here are some shots from behind the scenes.
For those of you who couldn’t make it to our Sundance soiree, here’s another chance to catch Voxhaul Broadcast in all their glory along with The Red Hearts, The Pharmacy, and sets by deejays Dorion and Jag L.A.. Come enjoy the music, kick it with the Flaunt crew, and show off your finest cabaret inspired regalia.
Is there any better way to spend Valentine’s Day than watching masked Mexican wrestlers like El Chupacabra, Shamu Jr., and Dirty Sanchez pile-drive each other, while curvaceous burlesque dancers toss around their tassles? Of course not. This Valentine’s Day at the beautiful Mayan Theater in downtown L.A., Lucha Va Voom’s inimitable spectacle of acrobatic body slams and buxom beauties once again brought the sideshow to center stage.
PUMA serves up custom made shoes at the W Hotels through November. Inspired by the Mongolian BBQ tradition of personalized style meals, the German brand has created shoe style trays for their ‘Whatever/ Whenever’ concierge program. Call up, get a tray delivered to your room, and customize a pair of PUMA shoes. www.puma.com/whotels
In Issue 90, Flaunt ran Chicago is Burning, an electric photo essay by culture-capturer Drury Brennan. To showcase the story, we traveled to the windy city to throw a party at the Debonair Social Club where bundled guests braved weather conditions to dance and drink. Brennan canvassed the walls with video projections displaying hundreds of his images documenting the illustrious Chicago vogue scene in action while DJ Stretch Armstrong pumped out so much bass dust fell from the antique ceiling.
Adidas may have taken the cake for hosting the most creative show during NY fashion week with its Lower East Side installation project. The multifaceted installation curated by Douglas Little and Justin Theroux entitled Sometimes Comes Mother, Sometimes Comes Wolf, was one of the first projects of the year for the adidas Originals Celebrate Originality campaign, and brought together the work of Scott Campbell and Obscura Antiques, with taxidermy, borrowed art, and surrealism with pop culture. The week long spectacle (February 2-9) drew viewers who also had the pleasure of an oversized metal adidas Originals blue shoe box dropped in their neighborhood.
Bob Dylan: The Drawn Blank Series Prestel Publishing
Separating the images in Bob Dylan: The Drawn Blank Series from the legend himself is hopeless. His mythos is unmistakable, especially due to a recent surge in Dylan obsession and fetishization spurred by the film I’m Not There. Coinciding with the first ever exhibition of his paintings at the Kunstsammlungen Chemnitz in Germany, the book reveals over 170 never-before-published fully painted variations of genre sketches he created while on tour in America, Asia and Europe between 1989-1992.
The drawings reveal similarities between his visual and musical aesthetics, sharing quirky yet pensive qualities, thereby unmasking his artistic perspective as observant yet surreal. Using a color palette similar to Matisse (though his actual skill is a scratch on the surface of the aforementioned master), Dylan’s paintings of landscapes, nudes, and portraits, are each infused with specific emotional tones that solicit various feelings ranging from melancholy to amusement.
By digitally transferring his drawings; Dylan colors the same image repeatedly using different hues in watercolor and gouache, exploring how color can denote a vibe, while usually forgoing natural representations. His figures are full of character and life, such as Portrait of a Woman Smiling, while the fluidity of his curvilinear strokes suggests motion or a sort of dance between the figures. His Corner Flat paintings are particularly intriguing as he switches both the colors and the figure from each painting to the next, drastically altering each narrative within the same setting.
The distance between himself and his subjects suggests non-involvement, perhaps connecting us to his previous personal experiences while beckoning reflection. The featured essays further analyze Dylan’s works, drawing valuable parallels between his paintings and his life, rounding out yet another attempt to grasp the inner workings of this mastermind.
-Claire Presthus
Fifty Thousand plus attendees gathered this weekend at the Los Angeles Coliseum in Downtown Los Angeles for the 15th Annual Entertainment Industry Foundation (EIF) Revlon Run/Walk for Women. Attendees poured onto the stadium grounds by the thousands to run or walk in support of breast cancer research, many donning the names of loved ones that have been affected by the illness. Prior to the start of the race participants were treated to a kick-off ceremony hosted by Tom Selleck, and Carrie Ann Inaba, and Revlon celebrity brand ambassadors Halle Berry and Beau Garrett. Performances by Jesse McCartney and Melissa Manchester segued into the lighting of the Olympic torch and the gunshot that started the race.
The race took anywhere from fifteen minutes to two hours for participants to reach the finish line inside of the Coliseum where they were greeted by an energizing performance from The Go Go’s. Upon completion, in addition to a personal sense of accomplishment, every person received a gold medal and complimentary snacks. In it’s massive size it was quite evident that this illness affects everyone and is not restricted by race, class, or gender, making it all the more empowering to be a part of such a massive charitable event.
In Support/In Memory of Kathy Hawthorn, Jean Henderson, Cheryl Gross, and all the women in our lives that have been affected by this illness.
depARTed: Inspired by the Expired
May 1st, 2008 by Andrew Dimpfl
While much of Los Angeles had fled to the desert to party like it was the 70s, the ticket-less donned their most festive attire and trekked to the World of Wonder storefront gallery for depARTed, an art show Inspired by the Expired. Flaunt.com joined curator Daniel Franzese in hosting the opening night bash serving up Karma California Brut and FIJI water to attendees. Everyone from Tupac to Elvis to Anna Nicole Smith were memorialized through mixed media as part of a collective pop-culture remembrance project. The show runs through May 19th at 6650 Hollywood Blvd. in Hollywood.
Check out the new Reap/Sew video on Flaunt’s YouTube page documenting the runway show during our recent L.A. Fashion Week event at Elevate Lounge in Downtown Los Angeles.
Stay tuned for more videos at www.youtube.com/flauntmag!
Behind the scenes with Mila Kunis
April 14th, 2008 by Nora C.
On our recent photo shoot for issue 93 at Smashbox Studios in West Hollywood, Mila Kunis wasted no time on polite phrases, jumping right into calling our photographer Don Flood a d-bag in the most endearing way possible. The lovable Kunis is a total sweetheart, funny, and very afraid of heights. With her 70s Show shoes retired, Kunis hits the big screen in the new Judd Apatow flick Forgetting Sarah Marshall in theaters now. Here are some behind the scenes photos of Mila in action. Thanks to everyone who worked on the shoot!
Stylist Johnny Wujeck getting Mila into some great pieces.
Mila was not into this crane at all!
Additional photos courtesy of Johnny Wujeck and Marcus.
Who You Thought You Were You Probably Aren’t But Almost Are If You Say So
April 8th, 2008 by Elliott David
blur blur blur. Teen angst is the new old new aesthetic, made tactile and visceral by all our own personal brands of self-loathing and the celebration of pity, parties and photoblog mobs. Not to mention recent artist’s/web-baby’s infatuations with: ambiguously young drop outs in oversized flannel with oversized bank accounts underplaying their beauty, smoking by oversized LA pools following their tiny perky tits and social ladder steps, stumbling drunk and sexy and blind by their bangs, knees tangled in too long t-shirts and isn’t the Sun so obnoxious and don’t we just not give a fuck. Then there’s the easy East Coast parallel aesthetic mentality: there are no backyards in NYC and we are on the street and we’re in small bedrooms and we’re in small bars and we’re naked at night, and nudity and the street and smallness means something about something and we don’t know what but isn’t everything here the best thing ever; It’s-always-summer-on-the-internet when we love ourselves in pictures and we hate to love love. I mean like GAWD. there is NOTHING to do in [hometown]. Let’s get fukkkd. I need soft focus. I need soft tongues. I need to wake up having forgotten I fell asleep. Are you getting all this on camera?
As M83, Anthony Gonzalez’s first three magnificent albums have been flirty if not infatuated with romanticizing teenage romance. His latest album, “Saturdays = Youth” is a love letter to the death of love letters, a full-blown dedication to our memories of youth: invented, lionized, repressed, reckless and totally unremarkable. For the new video to the album’s single, “Graveyard Girl,” Gonzalez brought back the director for his previous videos, Matthew Frost. And Frost brought with him his own fixation on popularity and cute outcast girls who say, “who needs popularity when I’ve got myself all to myself. Point me to the pet cemetery.”
And as a wonderful treat of wonderfulness, Frost casts for his new video, playing his go-to-role of Popular Girl/Stay Away From My Boyfriend, Freak (But Inside I’m Sad And Alone And Not What I Seem And You Don’t Know What I Have To Go Through) is a Flaunt favorite: model/angel Ruby Corley (myspace.com/rubycorley). One of the video’s main faults though is simple: As if the redhead Graveyard Girl who mourns the death of her domestic pet wouldn’t be the coolest fucking chick around.
In spite of all this: who we did or did not fingerbang, how bad it hurts when it hurts the worst, the insufficiency of exclamation marks, etc. it’s important to remember one thing: all dogs go to heaven. m834eva
Murakami Mania
April 8th, 2008 by mhenson
A retrospective work of the Japanese artist Takashi Murakami was unveiled at a star-studded dinner at the Brooklyn Museum, followed by a crowd pleasing performance by Flaunt’s own past cover boy, Kanye West. The exhibit primarily focused on Murakami’s works from 1991 to 2000, where he went through a personal exploration of his own reality through branding and identity. Within the exhibit there is a fully functional Louis Vuitton store, including the “Monogramoflauge” created by Murakami, available exclusively at the Brooklyn Museum.
Photos by Ashley Walker.
Behind the Scenes: David LaChapelle captures Emile Hirsch in Hawaii
April 8th, 2008 by Nora C.
Returning to magazine work after years of only shooting fine art, the renowned David LaChapelle recently photographed Emile Hirsch in a poetic cover story for Flaunt’s Issue 93. Hirsch made the trek to Hana, Hawaii, a remote hippie town, and David’s home turf, where he was met by a very intimate crew who captured the talented actor among the tropical landscape. Check out David’s first Flaunt cover in years, on stands soon. Thanks to everyone at the David LaChapelle Studio!
Photos courtesy of Claudio Conti.
This Whole World’s Wild At Heart and Weird On Top; or, I’ll Fuck Anything That Moves
March 31st, 2008 by Elliott David
David Lynch is a lunatic genius with a killer haircut and either a rad or shitty attitude, depending on how you look at things. Not only has he focused the aesthetics of predecessors like Alain Robbe-Grillet and Kenneth Anger into a singular cumshot of spectacular velvet mindfucking, but he’s also a pretty prolific weatherman.
News to yous is a PSA directed by Lynch: a heartwarming black-and-white film about how he hates your stupid New York faces, as well as his feelings re: littering and rats, which we learn he’s either for or against. Enjoy.
Also: hear Lynch wax articulate on the common brainwashing technique of product placement in movies and television.
Converse Conversations
March 31st, 2008 by mhenson
Downtown Manhattan was definitely talking last night at Conversations: Celebrating Converse 1HUND(RED) ARTISTS event at Open House Gallery. This soiree was part of ongoing celebration for the 100th anniversary of Converse, and the 1HUND(RED)ARTISTS program, that asked over 100 artists from around the world to lend their creativity to help fight AIDS in Africa. The gallery was packed wall-to-wall with NY’s A-List, who rocked out to beats by DJ Thurston Moore and Simian Mobile Disco. For more information on 1HUND(RED)ARTISTS visit www.converse.com/#100ARTISTS.
Photos By Ashley Walker
Lizzie Fortunato Jewels + TIMO! Wallets Preview
March 27th, 2008 by Elliott David
Droves of socialites, designers, artists, haberdashers and the birds & gents about town gathered at Piero Lissoni’s stunning showroom space By New York to preview Lizzie Fortunato Jewels and TIMO! wallets by Timo Weiland. Flaunt sponsored the exclusive event hosted by Alexandra Richards and the adorable-cum-gorgeous Anabelle Dexter-Jones. The venue was packed with beautiful people gawking at the jewels, the wallets, Flaunt’s spring fashion issue, and at each other. The crowd was so overwhelmingly filled with charm, chattiness and social camaraderie, that the party went on a good hour after the liquor ran out, a miracle for a Tuesday night in Manhattan.
Photography by Ashely Walker. Additional photography courtesy of GuestofaGuest.com
