11/02/2011

Mick Jagger. The Photobook.

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Mick Jagger. The Photobook.

Sunday marks the close of “Mick Jagger. The Photobook.” at Fondazione Forma per la Fotografia. Curated by François Hébel and featuring the most iconic shots of Jagger from the gamut of the last half-century’s portraiture greats from Cecil Beaton to Anne Lebovitz and seemingly everyone in between. The exhibition takes a look at his position as the definitive and undying icon of rock stardom. And in the context of today’s musical landscape, Jagger’s seeming permanence in rock iconography is jarring. He is nothing less than a cultural monument.

Movements in culture and art no longer gel and dominate for a decade or so at a time, but ebb and flow by the season, each one borrowing gratuitously from something that came before it. For music, save today’s disastrously bad radio pop (which survives as the last bastion of old distribution models and thanks to the easy manipulation of pre-teen girls), this means no more definitive sound. No more definitive rockstar. Jagger is the last.

And as we listen to ever more sophisticated music in ever more isolated space, lost in noise-cancelling devices and privy to exponentially larger and more eclectic music libraries than were imaginable even a decade ago, one can only wonder what fragmented legacy today’s music will leave. The sound of a decade is no longer galvanised in a style, no longer called to mind by a distinctive song or particular instrument, and also no longer subject to its level of technology. But decades from now we’ll all still listen to Jagger and the Stones. Probably with our grandkids. And our parents. And probably out loud.

Catch the exhibition while it’s still open, together with a parallel show of emotional Marco Anelli works, at Fondazione Forma per la Fotografia in Piazza Tito Lucrezio Caro 1 in Milano.


Tag Christof – Images courtesy of Daniele Testi

10/02/2011

Holga D

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Holga D

With the current ubiquity of so hi-fi-it-hurts in the age of the Blu-Ray and 3DTV, our human sensibilities seem to be crying out for human softness. Maybe even human error. From blaring Neon Indian vinyls to pixellated everything, lo-fi is here to stay. Nowhere is this more evident than in photography, however, from Nicky S. Lee’s insistence on disposable 35mm for her fine art work to the improbable rises of both Lomography and The Impossible Project. And do you know anyone with an iPhone who doesn’t snap Hiptsamatics?

In any case, this relationship goes far deeper than the (mis)use of analog cameras as a medium considered appropriate only for making distant, retro images. The warmth of a botched image, with its erratic light, untrue colours and tentative textures, is extraordinary and human. The plastic iconic Holga, as much a trendy icon in our generation as was macramé for the truly groovy in the 1970s, is of course the paragon. The junky, creaky little monster has been rigged up by enthusiasts for ages and loved for its unpredictable results. Enter now, the Holga D.

Yes, a digital Holga. Finland-based Indian designer Saikat Biswas has tapped brilliantly into the lo-fi zeitgeist, to create a “why didn’t I think of that?” minor masterpiece, that despite its inherent chintz is elegant and desirable. It uses a fixed plastic lens and low quality sensors to make up for its lack of real light-leaks (which wouldn’t play as nicely with a sensor as it does with analog film), and without an LCD actually requires its user to wait for its lush lo-fis to be “developed.” Of course, the wait is only as long as it takes to download the images to your computer, but it’s a welcome design element that controls our instant-gratification reflex and perhaps forces a more well-considered approach to taking images. And those unflattering photos you just took of your friends – they can’t flick through and delete them while they’re ‘just having a look.’ Ha!

Alas, like the DIY tinker toy BigShot that we’ve mentioned before, the electro Holga is as yet just a prototype awaiting development. But its synthesis of lo-fi and digital – probably the most seamless to date – is an interesting take not only on dreamy, fuzzy imaging, but could prove to be a nice friendly camera to re-teach patience and re-instil everyday photography with a bit of its lost magic.

Tag Christof – Images courtesy Saikat Biswas

09/02/2011

Guest Interview N°22: Karlie Gartner

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Guest Interview n°22: Karlie Gartner

Desired, evocative, esteemed, and no two are alike. Organic creations merging past and present to tell an individualistic tale and yet simultaneously continuing anew for the one who wears a jeweled piece made by Karlie Gartner. The beauty of these one of a kind jewels, is that they originate from another time and place and find their way to Karlie, are deconstructed, and made to order as her eye and creative hands see fit. Extravagant and bespoke melodies to be adorned, each with its own special story to tell, and upon first sight, it’s love. We crave what no one else has, and Karlie gives this special gift. These are transformation pieces, and they all carry the whimsical, the royal, and a never-ending dream… which is in fact the key in fashion that is so intensely sought out. We caught up with Karlie to get into the details of what makes these hand-made historical jeweled pieces so delightfully inviting to the eyes.

What inspired you to begin jewelry design?
I love fashion accessories and have always dreamt of converting my vision into an accessories empire. Growing up I taught myself how to make my own jewellery, so I could improvise and replicate the amazing pieces I longed to own without the funds to finance my caviar tastes. I figured jewellery was the perfect place to start as it’s something that I innately understand and appreciate.

Your pieces are extraordinary…each with its own special identity. What is the ‘behind the scenes’ process that each undergoes?
The process of designing varies greatly from piece to piece, but once I’ve come up with a specific design, I set to work on deconstructing the original components by removing pins and backings etc. and reworking them together into a new design. This too can be completely different for each piece, weather it requires re-stringing, drilling, sewing, hand wiring, beading or cold connecting.. I sort of consider each piece on an individual basis and work it out as I go along.

How long does each piece take to create? What is your feeling once you have completed a piece?
Each piece depends completely on the design.. and of course the time it takes to source all of the components. Generally the more intricate the design, the more time it takes to create, owing to the fact that it’s all assembled and wired by hand. Of course it is for this reason that the feeling of completing a piece is tremendous. Seeing your vision come to life is so satisfying in itself, and that feeling is compounded by people who appreciate your work.

Not one piece is identical. Is this something that was intentional from the beginning? Which do you prefer – the mass production of pieces? Or keeping them as individuals, one of a kind?
It’s actually not something that was intentional from the beginning, but as I became more and more interested and inspired by vintage jewellery and designs, it very quickly became apparent that I wanted to maintain the integrity of the components I was collecting, and that has become very important to the theme of my collection -that they should remain one-of-a-kind pieces.

I believe that the fashion world is heading more and more in this direction. With high street stores competing so fiercely to churn out the latest trends and catwalk looks on mass, I think people are beginning to explore other avenues to express themselves through fashion, and are willing to pay that little bit extra in an effort to break the cookie cutter mould and wear something that celebrates individuality and an appreciation for traditional craftsmanship.

How long have you been collecting pieces? Where do you go to add to the massive collection – will you share your special vintage spots?
I have been collecting really since I was a young girl. I would trawl through my grandmother’s jewellery box and play with her vanity set and powder compact on weekly visits. I think my hardcore addiction kicked in, however, when I started travelling. Moving to the UK, I discovered London to be a vintage playground which is what ultimately inspired my current collection. I visit markets on a weekly basis.. Some of my favorites include Spitalfields, Camden Passage, and Portobello Road (when I can face the crowds!)

Who do you create these pieces for?
I create for women who appreciate fashion but like to set themselves apart from the crowd. For women who celebrate individuality, sentiment and nostalgia.

Your primary focus is accessories – do you plan to extend the Karlie Gartner label? In which direction do you feel would be additionally beneficial to the existing collection?
I would love to expand the label into a full range of accessories! I think 2nd to jewellery is my love of handbags.. I would like to design a handbag range next. I’m currently working on hair pieces under the existing theme of restyled vintage, and I plan on developing that into a full bridal and fascinator collection. Watch this space!

These statement pieces are representations of you. Can you describe what they mean?
I believe that accessorizing is the easiest way to transform a person from the mundane to the spectacular. For me, my pieces project an image of whimsy and fantasy.. Something to transport you into a fairytale world. They represent my vision of a fairytale world and my way of linking the past with the present.

In what city is your heart? Where do you find yourself most creative in flow and inspiration?
My heart will always belong to my hometown -Melbourne. My favorite city though is definitely New York! Its got such a cool vibe and has so much to offer in terms of inspiration. I would love to live there one day!

Do little moments and experiences in your life influence the designs of the pieces?
Definitely! I pick up inspiration from all over the place. I think I’m having a ‘Black Swan’ moment right now.. Im getting very into dark and moody pieces and black Victorian lace.

Who are your favorite accessories designers? Dream collaborations?
My favorite Vintage jewellery designer is Miriam Haskell because her pieces are like works of art – so incredibly intricate and beautiful! Contemporary designers I love are Tom Binns and Michelle Jank because they create statement accessories that are bold and unique.

I would love to one day collaborate with Sass and Bide…

Which direction do you think the future of jewelry design is moving in?
Jewellery design is becoming increasingly experimental and conceptual which is very exciting. Contemporary designers are pushing the boundaries in terms of materials that constitute foundations for jewellery and accessories. I once read an article about a designer who used human bone tissue to create a ring, coining it ‘bio-bling’. I love that!

What do you want your clients to know when they wear your pieces? What should they take away with them?
That when they wear a piece from the Karlie Gartner collection, they are not only wearing a hand worked, one-of-a-kind accessory, but also a piece of history, reviving and re-loving treasures from years gone by.

Interview and introduction by Coco Brown. Photos courtesy Karlie Gartner.

09/02/2011

Stockholm Fashion Week

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Stockholm Fashion Week

Most recently the fashion spotlight was set on northern latitudes, all the way up to Sweden’s capital city, for the Stockholm Mercedes-Benz Fashion Week.

In fashion, the Swedes are known for their less-is-more lines lines combined with grand focus of on function and wearability. First out, opening the week was Filippa-K, who has shown to stick to these principles most rigorously through the years. With shooting star models like Frida Gustavsson working the runway, Filippa K’s new collection had us all longing for the autumn season. Can we just skip summer?


Throughout the week though, we were exposed to some pleasing surprises with Whyred showing more colours than the Swedish runways have seen in seasons and up and coming talents shaking things up with a touch of animal kingdom influence. Though the smooth Scandinavian designs are highly appreciated, we can’t help but love stepping out of our comfort zone every so often. In addition, the styling of the Whyred runway is probably the best ever seen at Stockholm Fashion Week, topped off with well appreciated Alexander McQueen inspired hairdos!

Among other highlights were Tiger Of Sweden, with an extremely strong collection (especially the menswear), upbeat music and a nice dose of adrenaline. Rodebjer’s collection was also excellent, with colourful… Newcomer altewai.saome was cutting edge, and is a hard act to follow for new talents. Annsofie Back’s invitation was also way cool – less is more in action! However, Cheap Monday let us down a bit with a weak collection and ho-hum show.

Saba Giliana Tedla

08/02/2011

Instant Design

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Instant Design

Instant Design’s second act is up tonight at the Triennale DesignCafé. Exploring, like its first edition, the outer limits of function and materials, this second edition is “an investigation of the theme of ephemeral and transient design as an act of consumption.” And quite an investigation it is, featuring some of the most intriguing pieces of functional design in recent memory. Far too often product design outside the realm of the purely practical defaults to preciousness and flash to lend itself meaning, but a newfound vigour driven probably by a greater general knowledge of materials, a reawakening of design education and pressing social imperative has sparked a mini-revolution in which, at long last, polymers, metals and woods are only part of a designer’s material consideration. Today, the awareness, flexibility and inventiveness with which materials are being used by the best designers – nowhere more evident than in the work here – is downright inspiring.

On display will be pieces from Icelandic designer Hafsteinn Juliusson’s Growing Jewellry line (which I’ve been dying to see since it started making the rounds in the designosphere last year), Makoto Azuma’s delightfully Japanese flower robot implant, Sinwei RhodaYen’s biomorphic “Mushrooms Ate My Furniture” collection (live mushrooms are an integral part of it) and the prosthetic ear jewel “Earshell” by Kawamura and Ganjavian. Other highlights include off-the-wall materials combinations and hybrids of schools of thought, such as Lucia Sammarco Pennetier’s rationalist sculpture hats, the morphing “RGB” upholstery manufactured by Carnovsky, the olfactory “Bloom” jewellery of Rafaella Mangiarotti and several other treats.


Curated by the always ahead of the curve PS • Design Consultants, with design by Armando Bruno and Studio Blanco, Instant Design is not to be missed. Opening at 6:30 tonight at Triennale DesignCafé, and running until the 3rd of April.

Tag Christof – Special thanks to Michela Pelizzari

07/02/2011

1° Atto / Opus Creative

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1° Atto / Opus Creative

And so a new chapter is opened. The Blogazine, together with exceptional, young, artisanal brands, crafts high-quality, bespoke collaborations to creatively amplify and tailor their distinctive messages and brand qualities. Our inaugural collaboration, launching today with SALAR, is the first in a lofty line.

04/02/2011

Bill Cunningham Is A Dirty Paparazzo

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Bill Cunningham Is A Dirty Paparazzo

As the release of Richard Press’ documentary “Bill Cunningham New York” nears, the fickle fashion world is abuzz. “His work is pure art!” they cry. “He is a seminal genius!” they proclaim. And as part of the fickle fashion world ourselves, we too are waiting like nervous teenage girls for its release. But while we neither dispute the niceness of his work nor his extraordinary work ethic, it must be said that Cunningham is a dirty paparazzo.

And everyone knows what we think about the paparazzi. They killed Princess Diana! They won’t leave let poor Lindsay Lohan be! And we eat their images voraciously, without so much as a grain of salt. But if, say, Anna Wintour was to stumble into a manhole to her untimely death while desperately posing for Mr. C (or Scott Schumann for that matter), would the world collectively blame the photographer? Probably not. They’d deride poor Anna’s clumsiness.

Yet, from Marcello Gepetti’s gorgeous immortalization of the likes of Liz Taylor and Brigitte Bardot to the dolce vita imagery of Elio Sorci to the risk-taking Ron Gallela’s hard-to-get photos, the great paparazzi languish in obscurity. It would be cultural heresy to consider their images art, reduced, as they always are, to voyeuristic violations relegated to trashy websites and disposable publications. It seems that Cunningham, has managed to subvert praxis to function as a paparazzo, photographing fleeting moments in the lives of celebrated people, all while being something altogether different to the wider world. And therein lies his seminal genius, it would seem. There would be no The Sartorialist without Bill Cunningham.

Now, this critique is not a cheap shot at Cunningham himself. For his almost complete lack of pretence, compellingly modest lifestyle and genuine journalistic interest in the capricious world of street fashion, he’s a bang-up kind of professional. And nothing can be said about him if not that he’s an extraordinarily dedicated, hard worker with a particularly charming personality (like most great photographers whose principal subject is people). His photos themselves are almost beside the point, however, as he occupies the enviable position of paparazzo-nobody-would-dream-of-calling-paparazzo, comfortably inside the bounds of the velvet rope. After all, his lengthy career was unknown outside New York fashion circles until personalities like the aforementioned Schumann burst onto the e-scene…

True, a great deal of the people he shoots are actually street-level hoi polloi with penchants for style. But as the majority of his work was mostly before the era of hourly blog fixes and the cocaine-like collective addiction to self-promotion, his crescendo of fame has mostly been a function of who (and that’s who’s who, for lack of a better term) he’s been able to photograph. Consider that the same people who might run away from the flashes out of exasperation flock to Cunningham because they’re dying to be validified by his lens.

Bill Cunningham New York Trailer from Gavin McWait on Vimeo.

And this in turn makes it abundantly clear that genuine celebrity has become an anachronism. Even today’s most famous face becomes lost in the crowd without constant reminders of its importance, both because fame is now more democratic and because our attention spans have crashed and burned. The flame of celebrity thus requires constant stoking to (transitorily) cement its tenuous existence. And as many an art critic might muse, instead of the paparazzo’s camera-as-assault rifle, Cunningham wields his camera-as-Midas’ phallus. His subjects are just begging to have a go at it. His fame and that of his celebrity subjects are mutually beneficial, much like the beautiful friendship your stomach has with lactobacillus. Susan Sontag would have had a field day with this one.

Tag Christof

01/02/2011

Backstage At Men’s Fashion Week

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Backstage At Men’s Fashion Week

Photographer Luca Ascari, a friend of 2DM, was a busy bee at the men’s shows a few weeks ago. His up close and personal behind-the-scenes shots of the frenetic preparations and post-show relief just hit our screens. He shares a few here, for the viewing pleasure of our lovely readers. Enjoy!

Giorgio Armani


Gucci


DSquared

Etro

Tag Christof – all images by Luca Ascari

01/02/2011

Art In Detroit

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Art In Detroit

If our times have known a city’s fall from grace, Detroit is it. Motor City, Motown, American Dream maker, with its signature feel-good music and once-sparkling factories and skyscrapers, has been long in precipitous decline. America’s industrial crown jewel until the disastrous unraveling of American manufacturing in the latter half of last century, Detroit was in its heyday a grand city with exorbitant riches and well-distributed prosperity. Nowadays, the white-collar blue-collar paradise has been reduced to a blighted and half-empty inner city with a crumbling infrastructure, droves of abandoned buildings, a plummeting population and a disproportionately high crime rate.


As the city decays, however, valiant photographers from the world over have arrived in droves to immortalise its grand old buildings as they crumble and rot. Although a nuisance to residents eager to sweep their city’s problems under the rug, for worry of scaring off the outside world, their photos have garnered attention the world over and likely provide a much-needed boost to the economy. And as urban planners, designers, sociologists and politicians have grappled unsuccessfully with the city’s myriad problems for decades, the photographers meanwhile portend a quiet renaissance (naissance?) of the city’s art scene.

Unbelievably cheap real estate, abundant warehouse space (abundant space in general) and a (rickety but functional) urban infrastructure has attracted gritty, true-to-their-craft artists keen to strike out new territory. And Motown’s tenuous socioeconomic setting should provide jarring and raw inspiration, as well as allowing artists to work inside the art world yet partially outside the normally vicious (and arguably counterproductive) circle of work-sell-work-sell. Successful communities such as the Motown are doing well, and several standouts have made names for themselves far beyond the city, such as Frenchman cum Detroiter Romain Blanquart and Detroit-native Brian Widdis’ together with their ‘Can’t Forget The Motor City,’ and KT Andresky with her DIY ‘World Headquarters’ art space.


With a perfect climate for upstart galleries, good schools nearby, and many well-lined pockets still populating the many verdant suburbs of its periphery, the art scene only looks fertile for more and better work. And with a host of still world-class cultural institutions around the city such as MOCAD and Detroit Center For Contemporary Photography, Motown’s role as a gritty art outpost is an auspicious bookend to one of the 20th century’s, and America’s, greatest industrial successes.


Tag Christof – All images from ‘Cant Forget The Motor City’

28/01/2011

Mattia Biagi – Black Tar

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Mattia Biagi – Black Tar

Officine dell’Immagine, a newborn art space in Milan, opens with the solo show by Mattia Biagi (b. 1974), an Italian artist, who has been living in Los Angeles for the past decade.

For the first time, Mattia Biagi comes back to Milan, the place where he emarked upon his artistic path with the designer Giulio Cappellini, who helps him – together with his wife – to increase his passion for art, fashion, design and architecture.

Visiting that area, Biagi started to use tar as his main medium of expression. The carefully selected objects, covered by black moulded tar, lose their original function and gain a new social value. Biagi, dipping the objects, is able to preserve their shape and recall feelings and events chosen from his private life, crystallising them. In his work, the artist tackles different issues: he gets back to Christian religion, like in Heaven and Hell or Confession; and tells about his memory – from the childhood till the life in USA, as in Den of iniquity and American grinder. Weapons, musical instruments and all the objects selected by Biagi, after the “Rite of Tar”, cease to be what they were made for and transform themselves into symbols, which have the power to recover memories, feelings and thoughts.

The exhibition, “Black Tar”, at Officine dell’Immagine, Via Vannucci, 13 in Milan, will run until March 7.

Monica Lombardi – Images courtesy Mattia Biagi

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