friday photo

Juergen Teller, “Pettitoe, Suffolk, 2011,” a photograph from his “Keys to the House” series exhibited earlier this year at New York’s Lehmann Maupin gallery.

“I can achieve something in a very quick moment. But it does get very personal. I think I open up a lot too. I don’t come around as the archetype fashion photographer dude, playing the big guy with the horde of assistants. I let them know I’m also nervous or insecure. Then I let them relax. The way I photograph is quite hypnotizing. I found a way to hide my insecurity—I have two cameras and I photograph like this [mimes cameras in each hand moving hypnotically] and this helps me to figure out what I should do, where they should go…it’s so intense, so psychologically draining, it’s like my brain works on overdrive in those minutes—or hours or days—I’m photographing. That’s why I can’t do it so much because I’m really super-concentrated. Other people think it’s a stupid snapshot—I get that a lot—but it’s very precise. And it has to be very fast because if I’m on a job or something, I can’t just doodle around and days go past and I take a picture. Sometimes there’s a lot of money involved and I have a responsibility to the client to get the fucking thing done. A lot of other people say, “Stand like that, stay like that,” and they do a Polaroid and everyone—all the assistants, the hair and makeup, everyone—stands around looking at the Polaroid or nowadays looking at the screen, then they say, “Let’s do it, shoot,” by which time the model is so tense the Polaroid is better than the end product. I ease that up where they don’t feel necessarily, ‘This is the big decisive moment.’”

-Juergen Teller interviewed by Tim Blanks in the fall 2012 issue of Style.com/Print

Launch a social media campaign that will build your brand and deliver results in our online Social Media Marketing Boot Camp starting June 7. Speakers include Abigail Cusick (Bravo Digital), Gregory Galant (Sawhorse Media), Alex Leo (Thomson Reuters Digital), Jim Tobin (Ignite Social Media), and many more. Read the reviews.

A U.K. poster for the 1983 film Wild Style!, directed by Charlie Ahearn.

London-based interaction designer and movie buff Eddie Shannon set out to digitize his massive collection of film posters so he could admire them without the risk of damaging the more fragile specimens. Two years and 12,000 digital photographs later, he has launched Film on Paper, an online movie poster archive that spans film genres, design styles, and countries. “All of the posters were bought because of my liking for the design or artwork and none were added to the collection as an investment,” notes Shannon, who began his collection in 1994 and now limits his acquisitions to posters from the United States, the United Kingdom, and Japan. He’s particularly fond of those that feature original illustrated artwork by the likes of Drew Struzan, John Alvin, and Bob Peak. Meticulous documentation and a handy search box make it easy to find their work and to discover a few new favorites of your own.

Serkan Ozkaya’s “Radisson/Picasso,” a “manipulated ready-made.”

Serkan Ozkaya has made a chair from 15 sticks of spaghetti, lobbied the Louvre (unsuccessfully) to turn the Mona Lisa on its head for a few days, and created hand-drawn replicas of major newspapers. With the help of a 3D rendering program, the Turkish artist made a supersize golden version of Michelangelo’s David for the Istanbul Biennial in 2005, although the 30-foot-tall statue proved impossible to install and ended up shattering into pieces before the exhibition opened. No such tragedy is likely to befall his pocket-size “Radisson/Picasso” (above), a pair of manipulated matchboxes that is among the lots on offer in Storefront for Art and Architecture’s benefit auction. Also up for online bidding in advance of Thursday evening’s NYC soirée honoring Barbara Kruger and Bernard Tschumi are works by the likes of Louis Kahn, James Welling, Vito Acconci, and Robert Venturi, who with Denise Brown contributed a jazzy sketch of a McDonald’s.

(Photos: UnBeige)

Hallucinations are par for the course at the Javits Center, particularly during the biannual New York International Gift Fair (NYIGF, to those in the know), during which the cavernous space is chock full of innovative gizmos, colorful homegoods, and enough “accent pieces” to sink an ably-piloted Italian cruise ship. And so when, shortly after selecting the Chick-a-Dee smoke detector as our pick for a Bloggers’ Choice Award earlier this month, we spied Queen Elizabeth II clutching her handbag and waving regally to passersby, we chalked it up to good ‘ol gift show burnout. But this was no monarch mirage! Kikkerland Design convinced the Queen to get a headstart on her Diamond Jubilee festivities with an appearance at their NYIGF booth, where she helped to promote a new limited-edition version of the company’s “Solar Queen.” Designed by Chris Collicot, the grinning figurine waves daintily when placed in sunlight, and the Jubilee edition is tricked out with a brooch and a crown. Meanwhile, Collicot promises that the Queen will soon have a companion in Elroy the Solar Corgi.

(Photo courtesy Teddy Lo)

Pass the diet cola and Mentos, fire up the 3-D printer, and prepare to be serenaded by Tesla coils, because it’s time for Maker Faire. The bricolage bash kicks off tomorrow at the New York Hall of Science in Queens—take a left at the glowing dragon! Created for last year’s Burning Man festival, “GonKiRin” (Mandarin for “Light Dragon”) is the work of Hong Kong-based light artist Teddy Lo, who constructed the 69-foot-long and 22-foot-tall car-creature from a 1963 Dodge W-300 power dump truck, approximately 2,500 feet of linear RGB LED lighting fixtures, and a massive flamethrower. Artist Ryan Doyle collaborated with Lo on the project. Riders can sit in the dragon’s mouth or relax in a couch on its back as an intrepid DJ spins from a booth on the second story. Can’t make it to Maker Faire? Look for GonKiRin in the New York City Halloween parade later this fall and click below to watch a video of the creature in action.

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“New Work #42” by Jordan Tate

If a picture’s worth a thousand words, what does a picture of a picture—of photography equipment—go for these days? Ponder this and more borderline tautological questions about image-making and the role of novel technology in contemporary photography with “New Work #42” by Jordan Tate, who when not photographing photographs (and myriad other things) works as an assistant professor of art at the University of Cincinnati and edits the feast-for-the-eyes blog I Like This Art. Aperture Foundation, which selected Tate as a finalist in its 2010 Portfolio Prize competition, is now offering this meta-photo as a limited-edition print. The image is part of Tate’s New Work series, which he describes as “an exploration of visual language and process.” Notes the photographer, “In a sense it is an examination of how we see, what we see, what merits being seen, and how images function in contemporary visual culture.” Click here to view more from the series.

Earlier this year, the Metropolitan Museum of Art issued a call for photos that highlighted a detail of a single work of art from its permanent collection, setting off an epidemic of close-looking (who knew Edouard Vuillard‘s canvases were so mesmerizing in extreme zoom?). Having yielded hundreds of submissions—and a gorgeous Tumblr—the “Get Closer” contest has concluded with the announcement this week of five winning entries, including this intriguing close-up taken by Ruth Rogers. We like the elementary school science bookishness of it, teasing the viewer as to its appropriately scaled identity. Is it a colonial textile? The braid of one of Ghirlandaio‘s girls? A intricate rendering of wheat? Nope, it’s the tightly wrapped torso of the Mask of Osiris mummy (305–30 B.C.), acquired by the Met in 1944 from one Mrs. Goddard DuBois. “I can sense the artisan’s hand in this work,” wrote Rogers in her entry. “Look how perfect this wrapping is, thousands of years later. The time, the effort, still projects through time and space.”

(Photo: RISD)

This year’s Rhode Island School of Design commencement ceremony takes place tomorrow afternoon at the Rhode Island Convention Center in downtown Providence, and in addition to diplomas and the well-designed wisdom of commencement speaker Bill Moggridge, the 611 graduates will each take home an “artrepreneur kit.” Stocked with tools to help artists and designers present their portfolios, take credit card payments, and market their work online, the practical parting gifts include goodies from companies such as Square, Behance, YouSendIt, and Etsy, which is offering an Etsy RISD Fellowship to the 2011 graduate whose shop on the recently launched RISD Etsy Team Page shows the most promise. “A new kind of art-and-design-led leadership is needed to innovate in the current global economy,” said RISD President John Maeda in a statement issued by the school. “Artists and designers bring their intuitive, creative thinking to a broad array of fields, and with our artrepreneur kit, we are providing them with just a few of the tools and resources that can help launch their work into the public spectrum and help them make a living, in whatever way they choose.”

An untitled 2008 photo by Liz Craft.

A royal wedding is an excellent excuse to trot out the carriages, and while our garage is lacking in 1902 State Landaus, Ascot Landaus, or Semi-State Landaus (full disclosure: we do not have a garage), we can delight in artist Liz Craft‘s solo approach. In her untitled 2008 photo, a fashionably dressed adult takes a break in “Carriage,” an outsized bronze baby buggy that looks plucked from the forest home of giants. Craft created the sculptural work in 2008, and when not in use, the carriage holds an enormous porcelain egg on a bed of raffia. This image of the eggless carriage out for a urban adventure is among the artworks on offer in an online auction to benefit the Los Angeles Nomadic Division (LAND), the non-profit public art initiative founded in 2009 by Shamim Momin and Christine Kim, in the run-up to its Thursday bash at Palihouse in West Hollywood. The online auction also includes works by John Baldessari, Barnaby Furnas, Dennis Hopper, Hanna Liden, and Raymond Pettibon. Bidding is open through Wednesday: register here and prepare to get carried away for a good cause.

Fasten your fascinators, design fans, because the royal wedding is but a week away. Bidding is still open for those mod takes on commemorative plates we told you about earlier this month, and today we bring you a window into the highly anticipated nuptials from Liberty, the 136-year-old London department store. This week saw the debut of “A Right Royal Affair,” a window of Liberty’s iconic Tudor building that features such wedding finery as a Mini filled with gifts (homegoods, rose-scented toiletries, a couple of rather creepy ceramic cats), flags, stuffed Corgis, and a three-tiered, Liberty-print cake topped with a figure of the Queen, who clutches her handbag and offers a signature wave. The car is adorned with cheeky bumper stickers, including “Granny Knows Best,” “My Other Car is a Horse and Carriage,” and “Have a Nice Day…Off.” Meanwhile, inside the store, there are plenty of souvenirs on offer. We like London-based designer Simeon Farrar‘s “God Save The King and His Queen” tote bag, a riff on Jaime Reid‘s famous Sex Pistols album cover. At £85 ($140) price, think of it as an Earth Day present to yourself.