Photo: Glenn O’Brien. Photo by Robin Marchant/Getty Images.
“Andy Warhol died 30 years ago today. I remember thinking “who’s opinion will I care about now?” and I still don’t know. I hope to become more like him every day. He was and always will be my (dear) boss,” Glenn O’Brien wrote six weeks ago in what would prove to be his final Instagram post. He died today at the age of 70.
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Writer. Editor. Renegade. Glenn O’Brien might be best known as “The Style Guy” at GQ magazine, but to those who lived and loved below 14th Street, he will always be so much more than that.
Photo: Ai Weiwei, Study of Perspective, 1995-2011, White House, Washington D.C., USA, 1995, color photograph.
“Art is not an end but a beginning,” Chinese artist and activist Ai Weiwei observes, giving voice to the visual world that, at its very best best, sparks new ideas, experiences, emotions, and above all—dialogue. Art is a firestarter. It provides new perspectives and fresh ways of seeing the world, transcending the limitations of time, space, language, and borders. Art is not content with the status quo; it will upend all expectation in search of the unknown.
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This has been Ai Weiwei’s journey his entire life—a process that began when his father, Ai Qing, was determined to be an enemy of the state for speaking out against the government in 1957. The family was exiled to a labor camp in the remote province of Xinjang when Ai Weiwei was just one year old, and his earliest years were spent bearing witness to the consequences of speaking truth to power. Rather than cower in the face of state-sponsored oppression, the experience emboldened Ai Weiwei, who has since committed his life and his practice to speaking out against the abuses of the government.
When Prince died on April 21, 2016, the world would never be the same. More than an artist, Prince was the living embodiment of the American Dream. One part innovator, one part iconoclast, Prince took pleasure in subverting expectations and trouncing them with a mastery that belied a singular genius and an incomparable soul.
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In 1988, Steve Parke joined the team at Paisley Park after he seized hold of an opportunity and ran with it – for 13 years! Parke collaborated with Prince, helping to create the look of the man whose style and sound was ever-evolving. As art director, Parke was responsible for designing everything from album covers and set design to music videos and merchandise.
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In a world where nothing was impossible, Parke found himself in the unexpected position of in-house photographer. In late 1997, as digital photography came to the fore, Parke taught himself everything he needed to know in order to meet the high standards for which Prince was known.
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Over the next four years, they produced a stunning body of work, most of it never seen until now, with the publication of Picturing Prince (published by Octopus). Accompanying the images is a series of 50 remarkable vignettes written by Parke that pull back the curtain to reveal Prince: the man, the artist, the legend. Parke gives Dazed Digital a look at life inside the fabled halls of Paisley Park.\
Branch-like Forms on the Floor of the Antoniadi Crater, LAT: 21.4° LONG: 61.3°; from This Is Mars (Aperture, 2017)
Mars: The Red Planet. The earth’s twin. The shadow that lurks in our imagination looms larger with every passing year. Fifty years ago, the world set its sights on putting the first man on the moon. Today, science dreams of the day when we will reach the planet named for the God of War.
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Extensive investigations are well underway, mapping the terrain of Mars to see if it would be hospitable to life in the event of disaster here on earth. On March 16, Peruvian scientist David Ramirez announced that potatoes could be grown on conditions that simulate the environment of Mars. Last November, NASA reported the discovery of a large amount of underground ice estimated to be equivalent to the volume of water in Lake Superior.
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At just 238.9 million miles from earth, NASA estimates it would take a vessel with human on it just six months to make the trek through outer space. Last September, Wired reported that Jeff Bezos and his company, Blue Origin, are now working to create rockets that could send the first people to Mars. What seems like science fiction is slowly becoming fact as scientists focus their efforts on colonizing a new planet.
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But for those of us who are unlikely to make the trip but still would love to see it up close and personal, Aperture releases This Is Mars: Midi Edition this month. Edited and designed by Xavier Barral, the book features 150 black and white images of the planet’s extraordinary surface taken by the U.S. observation satellite MRO (Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter) made over the past decade.
This Saturday, April 8, please join Janette Beckman and Julie Grahame at the Bond Street Print Shop (30 Bond Street, 3 Floor, NY) for the a photography exhibition and print sale to benefit The Southern Poverty Law Center.
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The event will feature a selection of prints starting at $100 from New York’s finest photographers and artists including Charlie Ahearn, Joe Conzo, Martha Cooper, Jane Dickson, Godlis, Lisa Kahane, Joseph Rodriguez, Michael Lavine, Danny Clinch, Chi Modu, Sue Kwon, Bill Bernstein, and Jonathan Mannion, among others.
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“Curator Julie Grahame and I decided to organize a photography exhibition and print sale to benefit the Southern Poverty Law Center,” Janette Beckman explains. “The idea is to bring our photo community together in a grass roots way and give some love for a great cause that has been fighting hate and prejudice since the 1970’s. At the same time we hope to do something positive to counteract the gloom that has cast a shadow over our creative community since the election of the president last November. Our ‘rock star’ photographer friends and have donated an amazing collection of images, photographs of Prince, The Clash, Tupac Shakur, the Dalai Lama, Mahershala Ali, John Lennon, Miles David, Keith Haring, Rebel soldiers in Gambia, Nelson Mandela, Nan Golden, and more.”
Brown v. Board of Education, Topeka (1954) was an historic moment in the course of the United States. In a unanimous decision of 9-0, the Supreme Court declared state-sponsored segregation in public education was inherently unequal, and a violation of the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment.
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The ruling came as the first major step in ending apartheid in the United States, which had been operating under conditions of extreme malevolence since the Court legalized segregation in 1896. It was a major victory for the Civil Rights Movement, which had begun taking shape in its wake. Together, they united as one, their voices lifted and amplified for the first time in American history.
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On May 17, 1957, to honor the third anniversary of the decision, more than 25,000 African-American activists answered the call for a Prayer Pilgrimage for Freedom in front of the Lincoln Memorial, in Washington, D.C. Here, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. gave his famous address, “Give Us the Ballot,” in which he exhort the President Eisenhower and members of Congress to ensure voting rights for African Americans.]
“I’m a very passionate guy. I’ve always been passionate about photography. I started in 1970 and I’m still doing it,” Moshe Brakha reveals. “Day in and day out: you have to be committed and crazy in love with it.
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That love and passion appears on every page of L.A. Babe: The Real Women of Los Angeles 1975-1988 (Rizzoli New York), his phenomenal first book that showcases the sexy, stylish beauty of the era. Brakha’s crisp black and whites and luxurious color photographs transport you back to an era that was equal parts sensual and glamorous—and all the way loose.
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Born in Israel, Brakha enlisted as a sailor in the Navy and arrived on the shores of Los Angeles in 1969 at the height of the countercultural movement. From Easy Rider to Midnight Cowboy, the spirit of radical freedom filled the Southern California air. Sex, drugs, and rock & roll were everywhere. At night, Brakha took his camera and hit the nightclubs and bars just as the punk scene took hold, finding himself in the company of beautiful women who became the perfect subject for his photographs.
Poster For Blondie’s 12-Inch singles ‘Denis’, ‘Contact in Red Square’ and ‘Kung Fu Girls’, February 1978, 42.5 x 30.4 cm, 16¾ x 12 in. Courtesy of The Mott Collection
Poster for The Slits’ album ‘Cut’, September 1979, 50.8 x 75.5 cm, 20 x 29¾ in. Courtesy of The Mott Collection
Forty years ago, a revolution took shape and stormed the shores of the U.K. Punk had arrived—and it could not, would not, refused to be denied. It took everything the nation held dear and turned it upside down, then dropped it on its head, with the aim to break it open and find freedom. Gone were the polite niceties, the veneer the nation upheld while the empire crumbled. Punks knew there was nothing nice—or civilized—about it all. No pretense could cloak the truth about the subjugation of the world.
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As the U.K. struggled to rebuild, a new generation came forth calling out the fraud, the perpetrators, and the imposters. The took shots at the establishment from the outside, embracing their place as upstarts, rebels, and anarchists. From nothing came something—one of the greatest cultural movements of all time: the ethos of Do-It-Yourself that fueled their drive. From music and fashion to art and design, D.I.Y. became the a force of liberty, equality, and modernity. It produced some of the most iconoclastic images of the time, which are beautifully showcased in the new book Oh So Pretty: Punk in Print 1976-80 by Toby Mott (Phaidon).
In the wee hours of Sunday when the night breaks into morning, a curious cast of characters can be found on Manhattan’s streets and sidewalks. From nightclubbers, circuit bots, and prostitutes to garbage collectors, custodians, and drunks, the sun’s early light shines down upon a diverse array of personalities going about their business.
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Intrigued by the possibilities of what he could find in the ever-changing fabric of New York, photographer Richard Renaldi began to set his alarm for 3 or 4 am, dragging himself out of bed while it was still dark, in order to take portraits of perfect strangers with an 8×10 camera.
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The result is Manhattan Sunday, a collection of portraits, streetscapes, and still lifes that capture the witching hour in perfect black and white. The work, first collected for a book by Aperture, is currently on view at the Eastman Museum in Rochester, New York, now through June 11, 2017. Renaldi speaks with Dazed about a New York that few know well.
Michael Jordan was the GOAT on the court—he staked his legacy on this. And when it came time to be inducted into the Basketball Hall of Fame, decades of emotion poured forth, and suddenly the king of the game was as human as the rest of us. It was a moment as heartrending and it was unexpected, his man who had always dominated was suddenly vulnerable.
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A moment like this might have slipped into the annals of history, only to be remembered by those truly dedicated to his legacy. But then, the Internet came along and it unearthed a still image of Jordan at his most red-eyed, as tears covered his face, and transformed it into the greatest meme ever to troll the earth. On the court or on the screen Jordan simply cannot defeated: his power is just that great.
Artwork: Jean-Michel Basquiat. Defacement (The Death of Michael Stewart), 1983.
Art is not a crime—but that doesn’t stop police departments and D.A. offices nationwide from pursuing the capture, arrest, and prosecution of graffiti writers and street artists to make a political point. Crave has compiled a list of some of the most high-profile street art and graffiti arrests in the United States.
