Kristy Gordon

Self-Portrait with Headphones, oil on canvas, 24" x 18", 2006 Kristy Gordon

Amber Lia-Kloppel

Transposition, 34" x 38", 2007 Amber Lia-Kloppel

TGIF - "Come Into My Life" - Joyce Sims

This is the first full weekend of Summer - I hope someone full of love comes into your life, wherever you are.

Come into My Life, from 1987, was the debut album of singer-songwriter Joyce Sims. It was the first Sleeping Bag Records album to be released on compact disc in the USA, and it was licensed to London/PolyGram Records throughout Europe. The album contains the full versions of the title track, the hard version of “Lifetime Love,” and “(You are My) All and All.” However, for unknown reasons, the soft version of “Lifetime Love,” despite getting as much radio airplay as the hard version, was not included—but the UK remix of “All and All” was included. Joyce Sims wrote all of the songs except for “Love Makes a Woman,” a cover version of an older song. Singles released were “All and All,” the title track (which peaked at #10 on the Billboard R&B chart), “Lifetime Love,” “It Wasn’t Easy,” and “Walk Away,” the latter of which was released with remixes by Clivillés & Cole.

Come Into My Life
By: Joyce Sims
Come into my life, I got so much love to show you
Come into my life, boy I adore you
Come into my life, I got so much love to show you
Come into my life, boy I adore you

Come into my life, I'll open the door
If you come into my life, boy I adore you
And I will treat you right
And I'll show you sweet mellow days that you want and need
For you hold the keys to my life
Good times will flow if you make our love strong and tight
Together as one not two, we'll shine like diamond ice, uh
And I'll show you sweet mellow days that you want and need

Because I can brighten up your days
And when you're feeling bad I'll put a smile on your face
Can you tell me what price must I pay
To make you see things my way
Don't wait, don't wait, ooh ooh ooh ooh ooh ooh

Come into my life, I got so much love to show you
Come into my life, boy I adore you
Come into my life, I got so much love to show you
Come into my life, boy I adore you

For you hold the keys to my life
Good times will flow if you make our love strong and tight
Together as one not two, we'll shine like diamond ice, uh
And I'll show you sweet mellow days that you want and need

Because I can brighten up your days
And when you're feeling bad I'll put a smile on your face, hey hey
Can you tell me what price must I pay
To make you see things my way
Don't wait, don't wait
Come to my life, coming down for me

Come into my life, I got so much love to show you
Come into my life, boy I adore you
Come into my life, I got so much love to show you
Come into my life, boy I adore you
(REPEAT TO FADE)

Erin Cone

Escape, acrylic, 32" x 48", 2008 Erin Cone

Pamela Wilson

Some Bullets Are Special, oil on canvas, 48" x 36", 2009 Pamela Wilson

"DUDEIDO"

Now Representing Giedre

Patricia Traub

Conservator, oil on canvas, 62" x 60", 2002-2003 Patricia Traub

Anne Vyalitsyna, Photo: Matt Jones (i-D Magazine outtakes)

Matt Jones photographed Anne Vyalitsyna for i-D Magazine on November 19, 2008 at Drive-In Studios, Studio #2, in New York with stylist Tina Chai.

i-D Magazine Febriary 2009 Cover & Editorial
Model: Anne Vyalitsyna
Photographer: Matt Jones
Stylist: Tina Chai
Hair: Ryan Trygstad
Makeup: Francelle

Regina, Photo: Jordan M

Yesterday, model Regina, photographer Robert Nethery, makeup artist Sara Glick, hair stylist Jordan M and stylist (myself) took a road trip in Sara's car to Long Island for a shoot.

Jordan brought his vintage Polaroid Land camera and caught these moments in between shots on precious peel-back Polaroid film:





This was my favorite Memorial Day ever - making pictures in the sun with an amazing, inspired team and a beautiful woman.

Givenchy Fall 2009 campaign preview - Mariacarla Boscono, Photo: Mert Alas + Marcus Piggott

Mert Alas & Marcus Piggott photographed Mariacarla Boscono for the fall 2009 Givenchy campaign on April 8, 2009 in Paris.

Givenchy Fall 2009 Campaign
Model: Mariacarla Boscono
Photographer: Mert Alas & Marcus Piggott
Designer: Riccardo Tisci

A.M. Homes, Photo: Robert Nethery

Robert Nethery photographed author A.M. Homes for Wishful Thinkers, a limited edition book & gallery show at Milk Gallery. Proceeds from sales of the book & prints exhibited at Milk Gallery benefited FINCA International.

Wishful Thinkers is a project by Blackstar, a new design collective founded by creative director Marie Suter and photographer Viki Forhsee, to benefit the Foundations for International Community Assistance. FINCA International's mission is to provide financial services to low-income entrepreneurs in an effort to help create jobs, build assets and improve standards of living. Started in 1984, the microcredit organization reaches nearly a quarter of a million clients in more than twenty countries. FINCA International lends primarily to women in accordance with the belief that the surest and most direct way to improve the welfare of the world's children is to bolster their mother's ability to care for them.

-Melinda Anderson

Happy Memorial Day Weekend

Summer has officially started

Natasha Poly at the Inglourious Basterds premier at the Cannes Film Festival

Natasha Poly attended the opening of Inglourious Basterds at the 2009 Cannes Film Festival yesterday, May 20th. It is in competition to win the festival's most prestigious prize- The Palme D'Or.

Natasha getting dressed in Roberto Cavalli:

Natasha on the red carpet, wearing Roberto Cavalli:

Inglourious Basterds is an upcoming epic ensemble war film written and directed by Quentin Tarantino, set in Nazi-occupied France during World War II. The Weinstein Company has stated August 20, 2009, as the tentative U.S. release date.

Inglourious Basterds poster:


Inglourious Basterds trailer:

Wishful Thinkers - A.M. Homes & Jennifer Venditti

According to Wikipedia, The Foundation for International Community Assistance (FINCA International) is a non-profit, microfinance organization, founded by John Hatch in 1984. Sometimes referred to as the "World Bank for the Poor" and a "poverty vaccine for the planet", FINCA is the innovator of the village banking methodology in microcredit and is widely regarded as one of the pioneers of modern day microfinance.



Milk Gallery is hosting "Wishful Thinkers", a photography show of 50 Inspirational Women, to benefit FINCA International tonight, between 7 to 10pm.

Filmmaker & Casting Director Jennifer Venditti is amongst the 50 Inspirational Women photographed for "Wishful Thinkers". Her debut film, Billy The Kid, won numerous awards, including the Jury Prize at the South by Southwest Festival.



Author A.M. Homes was photographed by Robert Nethery for Wishful Thinkers. A.M. Homes is the author of the novels, This Book Will Save Your Life, Music for Torching , The End of Alice, In a Country of Mothers , and Jack , as well as the short-story collections, Things You Should Know and The Safety of Objects , the travel memoir, Los Angeles: People, Places, and the Castle on the Hill , and the artist's book Appendix A. I've written before how much the books & short stories of A.M. Homes mean to me.

Allure June 2009 - Shannan Click, Photo: Patrick Demarchelier

Paterick Demarchelier photographed Shannan Click for Allure on March 1-2, 2009 at Paris Studio, Studio H&I, in Miami with stylist Siobahn Bonnouvrier.

Allure June 2009 Editorial
Model: Shannan Click
Photographer: Patrick Demarchelier
Stylist: Siobahn Bonnouvrier
Hair: Damien Boissinot
Makeup: Fulvia Farolfi

RIP Octavia Saint Laurent

From The New York Times:

R.I.P. Octavia Saint Laurent
By Horacio Silva

The world is a decidedly less chic place this week with the passing on Monday of the legendary transgendered beauty Octavia Saint Laurent, who won hearts and an honorary place in the pantheon of the fabulous with her star turn in Jennie Livingston’s 1990 voguing documentary, “Paris Is Burning.” Octavia, who later changed her name to Heavenly Angel Octavia Saint Laurent Manolo Blahnik before settling on the more recession-friendly Octavia Saint Laurent Mizrahi, will be remembered not only for her encyclopedic knowledge of feminine allure — her deconstruction of the many of the looks of Paulina Porizkova in “Paris Is Burning” should be required viewing for every drag artiste in training heels — but also for having lived a glamorous life worthy of tens across the board.

Acne Paper Spring/Summer 2009 - Anne Vyalitsyna, Photo: Daniel Jackson

Daniel Jackson photographed Anne Vyalitsyna for Acne Paper on December 4, 2008 at Pier 59 Studios, Studio #6 with stylist Mattias Karlsson.

Acne Paper Spring/Summer 2009 Editorial
Model: Anne Vyalitsyna
Photographer: Daniel Jackson
Stylist: Mattias Karlsson
Hair: Esther Langham
Makeup: Pep Gay

Two Of Hearts

At Women, the soundtrack is usually ipod playlists, a mix of Sparklehorse and Band of Horses.

After hours, anything goes. Lately, all I listen to is freestyle music.

Stacey Q has been on my mind a lot recently. Her look set her apart from other freestyle artists - her hair was bigger, her clothes brighter, and her accessories more baroque. Stacey was a California girl, who began studying classical ballet at 5 years old. Her entertainment background included being a cast member at Disneyland and performing as a showgirl & riding elephants for the Ringling Brothers and Barnum & Bailey Circus



How did she end up having a top 5 hit, performing freestyle music, a predominantly urban genre of music?

Where did her look come from?

According to programmer Keith Walsh :

“this impossibly stylish former Ringling Bros. elephant girl and veteran of the Disney Main Street parade possessed star qualities perfectly compatible with electronic music, a genre Stacey also adored. She was enamored with the obscure Japanese band The Plastics and The B-52's, and simply could not get over David Bowie. As a student of style, Swain could literally turn rags into a fashion statement. On one occasion she went to the renaissance fair in Agoura, California dressed simply in two
large pieces of soft leather she bought from a shop in Anaheim."

I would love to see what Stacey Q looks like today.

It was announced on April 16, 2009, that the title of the new Stacey Q album will be "Color Me Cinnamon." It will be released this summer by Hydra Productions. The first single will be "Trip."

Wikipedia Background info:

"Two of Hearts" is a song by artist Stacey Q, from her debut album Better Than Heaven.
The song was one of the highest-selling singles of 1986 (at over a million copies), reaching #3 on the Billboard Hot 100. The single also did well in the Hot Dance Music / Club Play list, landing at #4, and was a top 10 hit in Australia where it reached #7 on the ARIA chart. It also made the top 60 for the Hot R&B / Hip Hop Play list. Stacey Q performed the song on the television show The Facts of Life, in character as "Cinnamon," a rival of Tootie's.

The song was played on the TV show It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia in the "The Gang Gets Whacked Part II" episode when Dennis becomes a male prostitute.

The music video was featured in Beavis & Butt-head, in which the duo mistake it for a telethon.

Stacey Swain was born on November 30, 1958 in Fullerton, California. She is the youngest of three children.

She is best known for her 1986 hit single "Two of Hearts". On one occasion she went to the renaissance fair in Agoura dressed simply in two large pieces of soft leather she bought from a shop in Anaheim.

Swain's first guest appearance on The Facts of Life was an episode titled "Off-Broadway Baby", first airing on November 1, 1986. The episode was set in New York City, where Tootie applies for the lead singing part in a Broadway musical, using "Two of Hearts" as her audition song. She is befriended by Cinnamon (played by Swain), a talented but "kind of ditzy" aspiring singer competing for the same role. When Tootie discovers Cinnamon is also auditioning with "Two of Hearts", she tries to talk her out of the competition, in the process causing Cinnamon to miss her audition entirely. By the episode finale, Tootie allows Cinnamon to audition in her place, and Cinnamon goes on to win the part ahead of Tootie. Swain performed "Two of Hearts" in character in the episode.

This is the most sincere form of Metafiction I have seen in quite a while: Superstar Stacey Q, performing as a struggling actress, lip synching to her own hit song.

It's very Betty Elms/Diane Selwyn.

10 Magazine Summer 2009 - Valeria Dmitrienko, Ph: Marcelo Krasilcic

Marcelo Krasilcic photographed Valeria Dmitrienko for 10 Magazine on March 23, 2009 in Paris with stylist Sophia Neophitou.

10 Magazine Summer 2009 Editorial
Model: Valeria Dmitrienko
Photographer: Marcelo Krasilcic
Stylist: Sophia Neophitou
Hair: Laurent Philippon
Makeup: Stephanie Kunz

DC Magazine pre WHCAD party at the Finnish Embassy

Women Management New York now represents Regina Feoktistova

Impact First Amendment Party at L2: Photos by Stirling Elmendorf

Richard Avedon opening tonight at the International Center of Photography

Tonight I will be attending the opening of the Richard Avedon exhibition at the International Center of Photography.

Veruschka with Richard Avedon, dress by Kimberly, New York, January 1967


From the ICP:

Richard Avedon (1923–2004) revolutionized fashion photography starting in the post-World War II era and redefined the role of the fashion photographer. Anticipating many of the cultural cross-fertilizations that have occurred between high art, commercial art, fashion, advertising, and pop culture in the last twenty years, he created spirited, imaginative photographs that showed fashion and the modern woman in a new light. He shook up the chilly, static formulas of the fashion photograph and by 1950 was the most imitated American editorial photographer. Injecting a forthright, American energy into a business that had been dominated by Europeans, Avedon's stylistic innovations continue to influence photographers around the world.

This exhibition will be the most comprehensive exploration to date of Avedon's fashion photography during his long career at Harper's Bazaar, Vogue, The New Yorker, and beyond. Working closely with The Richard Avedon Foundation, ICP curator Carol Squiers and guest curator Vince Aletti will present new scholarship on the evolution and extraordinary, ongoing impact of his work. The exhibition will feature more than 200 works by Richard Avedon, spanning his entire career, and will include vintage prints, contact sheets, magazine layouts, and archival material.

Several Women models were fortunate enough to work with Richard Avedon, including Veruschka, Kylie Bax, Christina Kruse and Karen Elson.

Veruschka, dress by Kimberly,New York, January 1967


Veruschka, Photo: Richard Avedon


Kylie Bax


Kylie Bax


Kylie Bax


Kylie Bax



Christina Kruse



Christina Kruse

Karen Elson

Karen Elson

Karen Elson

From The New York Times:

How Avedon Blurred His Own Image

By CATHY HORYN
Published: May 13, 2009
ON a morning in April 1967, Twiggy, the doe-eyed British modeling sensation, sat on a stool before Richard Avedon in his studio on East 58th Street. She had on a plain black dress and black fishnets, and it was her first session with the fashion photographer. She was 17.

As Avedon stood behind a Rolleiflex camera mounted on a tripod, the Kinks blared from a phonograph nearby. Since he began photographing beautiful women in the mid-1940s — first for Harper’s Bazaar, then Vogue — Avedon made it a practice to ask his models what music and food they preferred. This more than contributed to the relaxed atmosphere of the studio. “They all wanted to please him,” said Polly Mellen, the Vogue editor on that shoot.

Bending over the Rolleiflex, Avedon said, “All right, now, very straight,” and Twiggy sat up straight and turned her gaze to the camera.

Despite the hullabaloo she caused, which the writer Thomas Whiteside described in a profile that year in The New Yorker, Twiggy’s career was actually brief. It is Avedon’s pictures that make us think of her as the definitive ’60s child.

His gift was not merely for the alive moment — the model, her chin up, leaping cleanly over a puddle. Rather, it was for knowing which of the myriad of gestures produced the truest sense of the moment. Whiteside found Avedon’s process utterly unique, explaining he “exercised meticulous control over his model, almost as though he were working from a blueprint.”
That blueprint is, broadly, the subject of a retrospective at the International Center of Photography, from May 15 to Sept. 6.

From his earliest, sun-splashed pictures in 1944 to portraits in 2000 that convey his fashion fatigue, the I.C.P. exhibition is the largest survey of Avedon’s fashion work since the Metropolitan Museum show in 1978.

In both appearance and personality, Avedon cut the ideal figure of a fashion photographer, and five years after his death, at age 81, he remains that. His photographic style has been widely imitated, not least by Steven Meisel. Generations of models have sprung across mid-tone seamless backdrops, or sat pensively in cafes, or pretended to be in love or quite alone — all because of Avedon. And yet if his images retain their special power, if the experiences and emotions they present seem lived and not merely imitated, it may be because he is the more complete photographer.

A twice-married man, whose energy and trim, compact looks seemed to embody the word “flair,” Avedon often harbored doubts about his next project, yet recovered quickly. His great passion, outside of picture-making and his family, was the theater. A friend, the writer Adam Gopnik, reckoned that Avedon saw Mandy Patinkin’s one-man show 35 times in the space of a summer. “He lived for performance,” Mr. Gopnik said.

It’s probable that as a teenager in New York in the early ’40s — Avedon dropped out of DeWitt Clinton High School and enlisted in the merchant marine, where he learned basic photography — he saw not so much the fashion in the streets as the cosmopolitan gestures that animated it. Movement entered his pictures for Harper’s Bazaar soon after he arrived there. Storytelling followed, especially once he began shooting the Paris collections and invented street scenes for models like Dovima and Dorian Leigh, or his first wife, Doe Avedon.

Already on the masthead at Bazaar was Martin Munkacsi, the Hungarian-born photographer whose action shots impressed Henri Cartier-Bresson, among others. In later years, when he discussed his beginnings, Avedon often made Munkacsi out to be a more distant figure than he was, according to the exhibition’s curators, Carol Squiers and Vince Aletti.

Then again, Avedon always maintained that in every picture he was photographing himself. When Ms. Squiers asked the photographer Lillian Bassman, who spent summers with Avedon and their families on Fire Island, why he had his models running — or laughing — she replied: “Did you ever meet Dick? He was always jumping around.”

Outdoor shots and innovative photography were part of the terrain at Bazaar in the ’40s and ’50s. The cultural life in New York similarly enriched the work of other photographers, notably Irving Penn, who was at Vogue and who would be Avedon’s friend and rival for the next 40 years. So what made Avedon different?

HE was keenly aware that beauty had an element of tragedy — it faded, for one thing, or it came at a terrible loss of self. Growing up, Avedon heard his mother say to his sister Louise, who would eventually die, at 42, in a mental institution, “You’re so beautiful you don’t have to open your mouth.” This notion that beauty can be intoxicating but, equally, impoverishing to the soul, Ms. Squiers said, tinged Avedon’s early pictures with a feeling of compassion.

And it may never have completely left him. A photograph he made in 1998 of a robotic-looking model wearing a mouth plug seemed to circle back to his sister. Such pictures, made when he was a staff photographer at The New Yorker, suggested Avedon’s long view of fashion, but also a distinct side of his personality. “There was a real sadness about him,” said Norma Stevens, who joined his studio in 1976 and today runs the Richard Avedon Foundation. “He loved working, and he would be up for that. But it was like a performance. After that there would be a drop.”
Drawn to theatrical performers, Avedon took numerous portraits when he was at Bazaar, and, like Penn, derived a lot of artistic satisfaction from them. Yet into the ’60s, influenced by the Civil Rights movement and the poets of the counterculture, the portraits acquired a hardness that made critics question Avedon’s right to be more than a fashion photographer. An eviscerating review in 1964 by Robert Brustein of “Nothing Personal,” the book Avedon did with James Baldwin, left him unable to do serious projects for the next five years.

The crisis also affected his fashion work. “You can see he’s been knocked off his game in a lot of those pictures,” Ms. Squiers said. In 1965, Avedon left Bazaar and followed his close ally, Diana Vreeland, to Vogue. As at Bazaar, Vreeland gave him free rein and, more important, said Mr. Aletti, the curator, protected him from the interference of Vogue’s art director, Alexander Liberman.

Surprisingly, Avedon’s pictures in the ’60s of models like Twiggy and Penelope Tree were seen by some critics as anti-fashion. Avedon — the ’50s golden boy, the inspiration for Fred Astaire’s suave character in the movie “Funny Face” — was now savaging beauty and elegance. Not only was he fleeing from the confines of fashion magazines, he was also seeking revenge.

COMMENTS of this sort make you wonder how much the critics knew about fashion. If anything, Avedon’s stripped-down aesthetic and motion are representative of the era’s frenetic energy.

Mr. Gopnik, who first met Avedon in 1985 when the photographer was completing his series of portraits called “In the American West,” believes the attacks were motivated by jealousy and envy. People resented the famous, good-looking man who took such delight in his work and, at the same time, kept exploring new areas. “I don’t think it’s any more complicated than that,” Mr. Gopnik said.

Avedon’s photography has always amounted to a plea for beauty — to see it mysterious, to see it raw but ultimately to see it whole. To view his portraits in the ’50s and ’60s is to see the flip side of the decades’ stylish obsessions. And whether the faces were beautiful or ravaged, famous or not, the portraits relentlessly informed the fashion images, and vice versa.

Certainly by the ’90s, with notions like Prada’s ugly beauty, the categories of beauty had dissolved. For Avedon, though, the lines had faded long before, if they were ever that clear. Perhaps the famous “Avedon blur” expressed the futility, even the tragedy, of permanent beliefs.

“I certainly think — I know — that the apparent line between his fashion photography and his portraits was false, that he saw it as continuous work,” Mr. Gopnik said, adding that Avedon was amused at how people could look at the empty face of a model and find it more beautiful than the worn face of a coal miner. “It was not an affectation on his part,” he said. The I.C.P. exhibition, picking up where the 1978 Metropolitan show left off and allowing the first complete view of Avedon’s fashion photography, strips away the last shadows on his art.