Tono Stano

Sense, 1992

I guess by now you already know what kind of photos that i love. Yes, i'm obsessed with black and white photos. Why? i don't really know, but maybe the simplicity of it. It's dark, full of secrets and mysteries. I always impressed by how the photographers can create magnificent photos just by using two colors. There's nothing better than black and white photos that shot with a film. It's a common knowledge that digital camera can never capture BW photos as good as film cameras. I'm not saying that colored photos are not good, no, there's certain mood that BW photos can't produce, of course.

So, this time i want to show you works by Czech photographer, Tono Stano. Have i told you that tumblr is a really great source? Right, i found out about this man from tumblr (God bless David Karp!)

This photo brought me to this man :

Sumptuous Hair, 1990

The highlight of Stano's photography is his wonderful vision of body's composition, eccentricity and expressive movement in his works. I can see that he's heavily influenced by performance art, body sculpture and theatrical drama. Light is also a take a big part, as you can see in the first photo (Sense, 1992) lightness and contrast made and defined an abstract figure.

Women Reject White, 1991

What's a good photo without a story? There's always a message or something that the photographer want to achieve with their photos. There's always something that will make our imagination wander and try to analyze those photos. What's the story behind it? What is it that the artists trying to tell us? Symbolism. They're all presented with symbolisms.

Kiss, 1986

"If I want a picture to 'have a life' and to radiate energy, it has to be done in a way that people can connect their own story to it. It has to be a photo that you can make part of your own 'album of life'. If it doesn't fit in, you won't like it," Stano said. I can feel it, that Stano's photos are personal. Thats what it is with staged photography. You create your own world. You choose the symbols, the beauty, the meanings, you're the 'God' where nothing is impossible. You can play with it, throw you dissatisfaction of the 'real' world in it.

Documentation of a Promise II, 1994

Who's That? , 1984

OKAY, if you're offended by provocative images, i guess you can leave now and find another blog. Because, i LOVE provocative images. I LOVE pornographic art. In my opinion, there's nothing more beautiful than human's body and there's nothing more meaningful than human's interaction. Art or pure porn, that depends on your personal point of view.

"That's not something I would bother about. I do things according to my conscience and the way that I think they should look. How people perceive them depends entirely on their personality,"

Portrait of Ana Geisler, 1998

Art Nouveau Too Late, 1986

Don't Fall, 2002

Lamentation, 1986

Fairytale Creatures, 1995

In his earlier years, he took photos in a studio but later he moved out of his studio and dare to taking photos in an open landscape.

"It may seem that my models have perfect bodies but nobody is perfect. I think I choose average people. They are not mutilated, but they are no beauties either. I don't want the viewer to be concerned about whether somebody is a cripple or that he is old. I want my pictures to look like the photographs in a book on anatomy or a fine art book,"

Romantic Background, 1992

Well, that's it. I could go on and on but now my mom bitching at me. Fuck it, you can find more of his works here

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"When I lie, I am closer to the truth than documentary photography." -Tono Stano

Guy Bourdin

I'm in a rush and my mom told me to take a shower. Well, its 7:55 AM and i havent even close my eyes yet, i stayed up all night.

I want to write more about this phenomenal photographer, but i have no time but i want to fill this blog before i publish this to my friends, so i'll just leave you with some pics and articles copied off the internet. I will edit this post later (maybe)

Guy Bourdin (1928-1991) was an obsessed man. And that is to put it slightly. Working for Vogue, he made his heavily made-up models twist to uncomfortable positions in surreal, absurd, gloomy images. He loved red-haired women - who reminded him of his long-lost mother. His estranged wife committed suicide by hanging herself.

Guy Bourdin's pictures haven't been publicly displayed for twenty years since he didn't want to separate them from their original context for exhibitions or books. WhereasHelmut Newton's pictures for Vogue were stylishly monochrome and sadomasochistically erotic, Bourdin let his glaring and bright colours do the talking. Both Newton and Bourdin have been accused of misogyny. Both photographers competed in trying out the endurance of their models. The images are flooding with fetishistic elements, high-heel shoes, corsets and skin-tight leather outfits. Women twist in doll-like make-up and most curious postures. When one of the models said that his images almost resemble pornography, Bourdin snapped: "Don't make me laugh, this is art."

The cinematic narrative of Bourdin's images has something reminiscent of Cindy Sherman's photographs. It felt like something had already happened before the picture and would happen even after that. The pictures had certain suspense in them.

Guy Bourdin's reputation was that of a difficult and demanding person, and one of his former models admits that it took a bit masochistic character to be able to work for him.

Hermit-like Bourdin was more into tragedies than happy endings, which could often well be detected from his photographs; even those seemingly most filled with sunshine always had a slightly macabre tone, combining death and glamour. It has been said of Guy Bourdin that he was a complex personality and a gloomy genius who had just chosen a ladies' magazine as his way of expression.

This is what David Bowie's got to say about Bourdin:

"Since the advent of AIDS and the new morality, and, of course his death, his dark sexy fatal style had fallen out of Vogue. An uncompromising photographer, he had found a twisty avenue through desire and death. A white female leg sticking gloomily out of a bath of black liquid enamel. Two glued up babes covered in tiny pearls. The glue prevented their skins from breathing and they pass out. 'Oh it would be beautiful,' he is to have said, 'to photograph them dead in bed.' He was a French Guy. He had known Man Ray. Loved Lewis Carroll. His first gig was doing hats for Vogue. He'd place dead flies or bees on the faces of the models, or, female head wears hat crushed between three skinned calves heads, tongues lolling.

What was this? Fine Arts? The surrealists might even think his work passé. Well, it was the `50s, that's what it was.

The tight-collar `50s seen through unspeakable hostility. He wanted but he couldn't paint. So he threw globs of revengeful hatred at his nubile subjects. He would systematically pull the phone cord out of the wall. He was never to be disturbed. Disturbed. Never. Everything and everyone died around him. One shoot focusing pon a woman lying in bed was said to be a reconstruction of his estranged wife's death. Another picture has a woman in a phone booth making some frantic call. Her hand is pressed whitely against the glass. Behind her and outside are two female bodies partially covered by the autumn leaves. His dream, so he told friends, was to do shoots in the morgue, with the stiffs as mannequins. I don't know. I just read this stuff. Now his spirit was being resurrected. We're mystified by blood. It's our enemy now. We don't understand it. Can't live with it. Can't, well... y'know?"

• Studying painting in his youth, makes the minimal composition of his photographs unique.
• He did not collect his works or make any attempt to preserve them.
  
• Bourdin wanted all of his work destroyed after his death, in 1991
  
• Unfortunately for him, and fortunate for this post, the fact that he did not collect all of his work make it difficult to destroy, in the end.
  
• Bourdin was a close friend of Man Ray, who wrote the introduction for the catalogue of his first show in the late 1950's.
• Bourdin, along with Helmut Newton, is considered to be one of the most revolutionary fashion photographers of the second half of the 20th century.
  
• I feel like Bourdin is the Ying to Helmut Newtons Yang. Although his work is much more saturated and action based, it is also obvious to see that he was much more morbid and serious than Newton
• He worked with French Vouge for nearly 30 years, yet not much of his work was published.
• He is well known for his timeless photographs advertising Charles Jourdans shoe collections in the 70's.

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MOMO tags the width of Manhattan

This is what teenagers should do when they're bored. Instead of surf porns (ahem! :p) or just hang out in the mall (pffft!). Why don't you create something creative (like.. blogging?).

Have you ever been to Manhattan? no? well, me neither! (but i know sometime i will!). If you have, did you noticed this trail of paint?

Do you think thats just a meaningless line? If you follow the line and mark it on your map, it will appeared the word 'MOMO'

About 3 years ago, one of my friends in school decided to follow the trail around and noticed that the trail produced the image that you see above; a strange-looking rendering of what appeared to be the word “momo.” MOMO, we found out, was the name of an artist that used to be based in NYC, and sure enough, the one responsible for tagging his name across the width of Manhattan.

After requesting a meetup, MOMO told my friend that he accomplished this task by fixing 5 gallon paint buckets to the back of his bike, poking a hole in the bottom of the containers, and riding though the West Village, SoHo, Greenwich Village, East Village, and Alphabet City. Momo made the tag in 2006. Some parts of the line have been covered up by roadwork and redone sidewalks but most of the line is still visible.

To me, the interesting thing about the line is how both similar and different it is to regular graffiti. Essentially, most graffiti writers enjoy seeing their name on things. The bigger they can paint it and the more visible their tag is, the more people will notice their conquering of the city. MOMO created the largest tag in New York, yet the scale of his work here, so massive that it can’t all be viewed at once, means that thousands of people will walk on it each day and never even notice it. It’s simultaneously the biggest and smallest artistic statement I have seen in my time here.

bestrooftalkever.com

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amazing ,right? maybe we could do the same in Jakarta. Who knows maybe sometime we might beat them and be the largest in the world XD

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Herbert Behrens

Kralingen Popfestival, Rotterdam (1970)

I came across this photo on tumblr and i thought this is really amazing. A good method to identify great photos is, when you look at them, you have to take a second look or more. To be honest, i thought that this is a photo from some fashion editorial, then i checked and its not! Its a candid that Herbert Behrens took when he was at Kralingen Popfestival. The girl is just look like some high fashion model. Whats so special about this photo? i guess its the girl's expression and the contrast of her gesture with the guys around her. Its seems like she was high.. like, floating.. dazed or just enjoying the music. The best thing is.. its candid.

I read somewhere that journalist photographer is capable to capture candid photos with strong character. Imagine if a fashion photographer and a journalistic photographer work together? the result must be very mesmerizing. Maybe i should try to learn more about journalistic photography? ;)

enough rambling, now lets focus on the person who took it.

HERBERT BEHRENS

In 1951, on completing a course in photography at the Fotovakschool, Herbert Behrens obtained a post as office boy at the Anefo press photo agency in Amsterdam. In 1957 he moved to Rotterdam to set up a branch office of the same agency, but decided four years later to strike out on his own. In the sixties and seventies, partly because of his first wife, fashion designer Fong Leng, he moved in unusual circles for a press photographer. He developed a keen interest in art, and photographed the Japanese artist Kusama as she painted the naked body of artist Jan Schoonhoven on November 3 1967. Today this is regarded as an important art-historical document from the early years of the happening.

As a photographer for the Rotterdam Hilton, Behrens took pictures of a host of famous hotel guests. Another important category in his archive consists of photos and slides of the 1970 Kralingen pop festival. A regular photographer for the magazine Sport Express, he witnessed the successes of the now legendary footballer Coen Moulijn and of Feijenoord, the Rotterdam team. Among the newspapers he worked for were De Rotterdammer, the Algemeen Dagblad, the Nieuwe Rotterdamse Courant and de Volkskrant. In 1947 he went to France and more or less abandoned photography. In 1975, back in the Netherlands, he taught at Crea and De Werkschuit in Amsterdam and at the Foundation for Art Education in Groningen, where he settled in 1978.

Central Station, Rotterdam (1964)

Cliff Richard and The Shadows in the Energiehal, Rotterdam (1964)

The Beach Boys in the Hilton, Rotterdam (1969)

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