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Photography

Vintage Hand-Colored Moscow Street Photographs

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We’ve seen a lot of fascinating photos from old Mother Russia — from the bleak, found WWII documentation to intense, crisp, and surprising color images that are more than 100 years old. Our latest find? This collection of hand-tinted lantern slides by American photographer Branson DeCou, snapped during his 1931 trip to Moscow and plucked from the University of California, Santa Cruz Digital Collection by Retronaut. Meet the broads, the brawlers, the gentlemen of fashionably high-curling mustaches, the fermented bread drink vendors — all presented in unbelievably bright hues. Those are some daring prints on your shit, sir. Daring indeed.  … Read More

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Art

Amazing Original ‘Blade Runner’ Storyboards

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“I have about a hundred of these as well as some unique documents and some are completely hand drawn or written originals. I think that these are one of my favorite items.” Welcome to Ridleyville, one man’s shrine to Blade Runner, brimming with the most gigantic and thorough collection of Blade Runner memorabilia you ever did see. It’s really intense. Props, original scripts, movie clappers… and these storyboards from the film, spotted by Dangerous Minds. Flip through some of them in the gallery below, marvel at the technical notes on transitions and cameras, see the Hades landscapes and the eye close-ups, geek out. … Read More

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Photography

Controversial Photos of Mexican Rich Girls

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“It’s very easy to photograph people that love to be photographed,” Daniela Rossell explains. For her series Ricas y Famosas (The Rich and the Famous) — Rossell took exuberant portraits of the Mexico’s 1%, specifically the super-rich young female spawn of politicians, businessmen and businessmen-politicians. As evident in the portraits, the girls enjoyed it quite a lot, sprawling dramatically in their opulent homes, resting on tigers and other perfectly reasonable domestic pets, posing next to gilded furniture, and pouting surrounded by pomp and glamor. Then, when the essay went public, many of the Mexican people voiced outrage against these “poster girls for corruption.” The photographer explained: “There has been a melodramatic pattern of saying these women are evil; they represent corruption; they represent 70 years of PRI rule.” Some girl requested to be dropped from the series. Alas, as Slate puts it, “poor little rich girls.” Peek inside their rarefied world through our gallery. … Read More

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Photography

Fascinating Prom Portraits from Across America

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Do you remember your prom? Ooh, sorry, sorry, didn’t mean to hit a nerve there. Maybe you’ve moved happily on, but what photographer Mary Ellen Mark (and so many others) dub ”the quintessential American coming-of age ritual” still happens. Over the course of four years Mark took portraits at 13 high school proms held across the country using one of only five existing 20×24 inch Polaroid Land Cameras. The results are exquisite, formal, and composed portraits illustrating a wide diversity of couples (and solos). Emo kids. The young-rich-fashionable. Survivors. Charming geeks. … Read More

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Photography

The Most Controversial Photos of 2012

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R. Umar Abbasi’s shot of New Yorker Ki Suk Han as he was about to be struck and killed by an oncoming train is arguably one of the most controversial photographs in recent memory. The subsequent “DOOMED” news rag cover was shocking, even for the New York Post. Let’s look back and briefly survey some of the biggest media photo controversies of 2012 — some serious, some frivolous. Warning: Many of these images are rather… Read More

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Photography

Incredible Portraits of Cinema House Projectionists

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Photographer Joseph O. Holmes does not have a lot of time left. He has been photographing projection rooms of some of our favorite places in New York — retrospective cinema houses and indie movie theaters like Film Forum and the Anthology Archives — and the quiet magicians who make it all possible. ”I’m working against the clock with the whole series because a lot of these theaters are converting to digital projection — which does away with a lot of the interesting stuff in a projection room,” he tells NPR. Yes, the threading of film onto wheels, the supervision of the spinning clogs, the whirr of this nearly archaic machinery… maybe it all seems a bit archaic in comparison to a push of the button. Call us purists, but let’s enjoy this overdue salute. See the portraits that took Holmes a year of begging to capture in our slideshow.  … Read More

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Photography

Mind-Bending, Surreal Nude Photos by Asger Carlsen [NSFW]

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These beautiful, anonymous black and white nudes from Denmark-born, New York-based artist Asger Carlsen look perfectly real and natural, until… You notice that appendages drip out of bodies in inhuman ways. You can see the skeletons folded inside the taught skin but something is horribly wrong. The way these globs of flesh are stacked on top of legs could sustain gravitational balance but not human life. Elbows sprout out of fists. Torsos are truncated. The heads aren’t even there. We’re not sure what’s more unsettling: The limbs resembling writhing phalluses or the writhing phalluses resembling limbs. Proceed for some explicit love-children of Roger Ballen and Francis Bacon. … Read More

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Art

Bob Dylan’s Art Gallery Will Only Let You See Two of His New Artworks Because They’re Not Very Good

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One does not simply walk into the Gagosian Gallery on Madison Avenue. Inside a luxury multi-office building, you must ask the reception guard which one is the appropriate elevator to the top. The atmosphere is ever grandiose, unlike the Gagosian’s walk-in friendly location in Chelsea. The Bob Dylan “Revisionist Art” room is down the gallery staircase, through a sterile office hallway, and behind a glass door. It is strange. … Read More

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Art

Ridiculous Vintage Posters of Monsters and Maidens

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If there’s one visual cliché in vintage film posters that drives us crazy, it’s a maiden in distress in the arms of a giant monster hauling her up a building, through a cemetery, across the beach of a robot planet, or whatever. Illustrating our point, Swann Gallery Auctions have rounded up a massive collection of posters for films ranging from Ed Wood and Bella Lugosi classics, to A-list favorites like Dracula and Frankenstein, to B-list oddities like the one about the aforementioned robot planet. See your favorite masculine brutes straining their unnatural muscle! Check out your passively flailing leading ladies! Stick around for a totally random maiden-on-monster style poster of Paul Morrissey’s Trash, and a bit of a surprise at the very end. So exciting! Pardon me, I feel faint from all the excitement. Why, hello, sir. Ohh, swoon… … Read More

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Art

Revealing Photos of Crazy Art World Parties

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In honor of Art Basel, click through for photos of the art world’s most notorious parties — from Brooklyn art collective CHERYL’s opulently ridiculous dance shindigs to ragers at the… Read More

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