The Fish Eye

When I was young I remember when fish eyes lens album covers were a big deal. Generally meant to depict the effect of a distorted, drug-induced hallucination, the fish eye lens was developed in the early 20th century but didn't become available on the marketplace until the early Sixties.

The popular fish eye lens is the circular lens, best explained by Wikipedia:

The first types of fisheye lenses to be developed were "circular fisheye" — lenses which took in a 180° hemisphere and projected this as a circle within the film frame. Some circular fisheyes were available in orthographic projection models for scientific applications. These have a 180° vertical angle of view, and the horizontal and diagonal angle of view are also 180°. Most circular fisheye lenses cover a smaller image circle than rectilinear lenses, so the corners of the frame will be completely dark.

By the mid to late Sixties it was de rigeur for every popular band to have a cool fish eye lens photograph of themselves. Several bands released iconographic album covers employing this exciting new look.

Three album covers which immediately come to mind are Are You Experienced? by the Jimi Hendrix Experience (shot by Karl Ferris), Safe As Milk by Capt. Beefheart & His Magic band (shot by Guy Webster), and Mr. Tambourine Man by The Byrds (shot by Barry Feinstein). These particular shots expand on what would have been considered average stock rock photos.

The fish eye camera lens craze enjoyed its heyday in the Sixties and its use in the decades to follow slowly dropped into obscurity. I think we're due for a revival any day now....

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Speaking of a revival I've been listening to the Edgar Broughton band a lot lately. Talk about your overlooked geniuses, they were so far ahead of their time they couldn't even catch a break in their own home country.

The band's first album Wasa Wasa inaugurated their sound in 1969. While it recalls classic stoner rock like Black Sabbath, it sounds more like what would be considered The Birthday Party's signature sound over 10 years later. Case example: Love In The Rain, shown here on Beat Club.

Although the Broughton Band was more song-oriented compared to, say, the more freeform Deviants, the lyric content from Broughton was far more outrageous. One of the more extreme examples is “Psychopath”, the recalling of the rape/murder of a young teenage girl. The track unsettled rock fans with the way the crime is recounted with more than a trace of humor. This twisted sense of humor earned the band more than their fair share of enemies and made the band fairly reviled in a scene that accepted just about everyone. The Edgar Broughton Band stepped over the line and fans were not amused.

Nor did they endear themselves to the vegetarian hippie corps by posting a photo of a line of slaughtered cattle in an abattoir on the cover of their second album. They were pushing buttons far ahead of the punk rock bands of 1977, but nobody was ready for it yet.

While the band weren’t about to unseat Donovan in the peace and love sweepstakes, they still managed to be as eclectic as possible. One of the earliest bands to cover a Captain Beefheart song, they merged Dropout Boogie with Jorgen Ingemann’s instrumental hit Apache.

But if you want to hear the proper precursor to The Birthday Party, I recommend tracks like Evil (“Evil, evil, black as night…”), Crying and Love In The Rain, where the trio play distorted acid rock with swinging jazz time signatures. And for those of you who like ballads, you may never hear a ballad more gorgeous about suicide than Hotel Room.

On the other end of the spectrum is Elysian Fields, a band led by New York couple Jennifer Charles (vocals) and Oren Bloedow (guitar and piano). Their sound is very slow, moody and torch song influenced. For the past twenty years they have produced a line of albums that sound like Julie London transmitting messages from the dark side of the moon.

Bearing an uncanny resemblance to Sixties-era Jane Birkin, Charles sings in a low whisper while the band, a revolving group which included members of Jeff Buckley’s backing group play behind her. Bloedow and Charles write haunting melodies that are both erotic and romantic, Songs for Really Modern Lovers.

Some of their more haunting torch songs include The Moment, When, and Climbing Up My Dark Hair. If you go for more of a rock sound, they do rock out in a Romeo Void-kind of way with songs like Timing Is Everything, Jack In The Box, and Bend Your Mind. You owe it to yourself to discover this great band. You won’t be sorry.

Self-Portraits and Soda Water

Somehow somewhere someone thinks that posting pictures of themselves holding a cell phone into a mirror shooting a pic of themselves with bottles of cleaning fluid and dirty towels is a great idea of a self-portrait. Thank you, Instagram. Somehow the owners of Flickr aren’t losing sleep. Believe it.

If you want to take a good picture of yourself invest in a damn tripod and then learn how to use the timer on your camera, yes those funny things that Canon and Nikon make. You can’t make phone calls on them. Sorry. Once you hit that button for the 10 second timer get in the shot and pose.

Let’s talk about posing. I know you think you look awesome from every angle, otherwise why are you posting pictures of yourself on Instagram? Unfortunately, and even movie stars know this, is everyone has a good side and a bad side, or rather, one side of the coin looks like a head and the other side looks like a donkey’s tail. Check your face from both sides and then decide which one looks the least ghastly. It won’t take very long.

Your face isn’t the whole story, thank God, you need to pose your body, too. You can’t just stand there like a slab of Grade A Sirloin, even Michelangelo’s David struck a pose. You need to learn how to pose, let’s start with your legs. One leg should be in front of the other or spread apart if you’re standing. Put your hands on your hips or have them hang on your belt buckle, or even go for the proud farmer pose with your hands holding your jacket lapels. It worked for Jefferson Airplane!

Getting back to the face, always leave your mouth slightly open so people can see your lips. Keeping your maw closed gives you a dumb, surly expression on your face. (Great advice from Vicki Berndt when she shot my album cover).

Another disgusting habit people have is overdressing for a picture. The world doesn’t need to see your entire wardrobe in one shot. It’ll look outdated in two years, anyway. Avoid wearing a coat even if you’re posing in a Canadian park in December. And keep your accessories down to one per wrist and a small necklace if you have to. There once was a recording artist on IRS Records in the Eighties who thought it was New Wave to wear ten watches on his wrist, and needless to say he never sold any records and got dropped. All because he wore ten watches in his photos.

Thick, stocky, sturdy, and/or husky people should never be shot from the ground up or they’ll look like a human balloon. In fact, our heavier neighbors should be shot from the waist up. Which brings me to another subject: unless your taste in footwear is impeccable and your pants are from a high-end designer nobody needs to see you from top to bottom. Editing your photos is your best option, or more bluntly, check your ego at the door.

So if you’re going to thrill us with more hot, smoky photos of yourself on Facebook please follow some of my advice so you won’t look like a trailer park Dita Von Teese. There’s already too many of them on television, and TV’s losing money every day.

Gotterdammerung

Several weeks ago Jack White was in town for a two night engagement at The Shrine Auditorium, which is located near the USC campus. A friend of ours was handling wardrobe duties in his crew so we managed to get backstage. It was a pretty weird situation.

Jack White’s show is divided in two parts, the first being his back-up band being all female and the second half his back-up band is all male. While his intention may have been liberal there was something sexist about that concept, but that’s the least of my concerns.

Not only did both bands have to conform to a dress code – Forties vintage pin-up girl dresses for the gals and suits for the guys – but the light and sound techs also had to conform to this stringent Sunday churchgoer look. There was no choice in colors, either, as White mandated that everyone dress in the color blue. This was his witty way of vanquishing the red and whites that his previous persona in The White Stripes had to adhere by on stage. His eccentricity achieved Batman villain proportions when the light gels that hit the stage also had to be the color blue at all times.

This would be fine and dandy if Mr. White (dig the irony) adhered to his own dress code but he didn’t. He was boringly swathed in a black bowling shirt and black slob pants. How much does it suck to be ordered to dress like Napoleon Dynamite with the corduroy suit when the boss doesn’t even follow his own rules? And I thought the bossy Board of Supervisors sucked ass.

By the way, the music was the dirgiest hippie shit I’ve ever heard.

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Further proof that people have lost their minds can be found on lamp pole banners strewn across Los Angeles courtesy of the Annenberg Space for Photography, currently exhibiting rock and roll photographs of the past fifty decades, entitled “Who Shot Rock & Roll?”

The banners are ridiculously offensive and tasteless, as images of John Lennon and Kurt Cobain, both handgun fatalities, are posted next to the title, “Who Shot Rock & Roll?”

Would it really pain the Annenberg if they chose non-gun victims like Prince, Bob Marley, Pete Townshend or Janis Joplin, to name a few, next to the sensational title? It would probably sell the show a lot better and prove that art people might be almost as intelligent as they think they are.

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It’s always fun to discover a new writer you’ve never read before. In the past few years I’ve discovered John Dos Passos, Sebastien Japrisot, and Joe R. Lansdale, among others. My latest find is Robert Cormier, known for writing “The Chocolate War” but also the author of many other great YA (Young Adult) titles. I recently finished “Tenderness” and “Heroes”, and they’re some of the darkest teen novels ever written. I recommend all of them highly.

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Things that I’ve designed lately:
1. A striped lurex dress for Rebecca (long sleeved)
2. A faux Custo Barcelona velvet top for Rebecca
3. A leather tote bag, influenced by Dior Homme
4. Two large leather travel bags influenced by All Saints

I’ve laid off making tops and jeans for now and see myself hovering more towards designing accessories (mostly bags) because they’re quicker to make and quicker to sell, too. Pictured below is a partial shot of the bag sitting in front of my new Kenneth Cole New York Fashion Guide shoes. What a pair of beauties! I may die tomorrow but let me die in style, baby!

By the way, if you are interested in seeing some of my accessories on sale, you can visit the Funny Crow store at Etsy. Here is the link:
FunnyCrow Shop on Etsy
More items will be added in the weeks to come, and yes, I do take requests.

Pret-A-Poseur

Clothes might make the man (or woman), but selling them in editorials make the clothes more exciting for all of us. An editorial can be an amazing collaboration between a magazine’s art director, the photographer, and even the models themselves. Three recent shoots really made a big impression on me, and they’ve also made quite a splash in the fashion world, too.

Oyster Magazine recently published a terrific photo shoot by Benny Horne starring Tati Cotliar modeling Prada, Derek Lam and others playing a hysterical 1964 Beatles-English Invasion fan. The shoot, titled “Baby It’s You” is wild, stylish and very funny. Benny Horne’s photography brilliantly recaptures images of the British Invasion and their hysterical fans with dazzling accuracy. I also detected some badass Weegee flash photography action in many of these shots.

On a personal note, I think it’s pretty awesome Tati was born on my 34th birthday (October 31, 1990).

Stav Strashko (last week’s blog cover boy) is in the Andrej Pejic tribe of androgynous models, meaning he does quite a bit of drag. One of his most infamous photos showed him dressed as a French maid on his knees doing a bit of dusting with a cig dangling impudently from his lips. Very drag badass.

In this group of pictures he’s modeling some cool rock wear and probably some ladies wear, too, and styled to look like an elegantly wasted rock star, down and out in the streets of Paris and London. Just like the Tati photo shoot we’re seeing some great vintage rock imagery showcasing some brilliant new fashions.

One of the most controversial and outrageous photo shoots in recent memory is the “Battle of The Sexes” for Forward by Elyse Walker shoot featuring Andre Pejic as the abused girlfriend and Erika Linder as the abusive boyfriend.

Photographed by Sara Saric in Robert Longo style, this would be a fairly offensive editorial were it not the fact that both parties are absolutely brilliant in their gender-reversed roles.

Fashions worn by Ms. Pejic are from designers as diverse as Proenza Schoeler, Stella McCartney, Lanvin, among others. Erika’s modeling Givenchy and Rick Owens.

If there is one thing these models all have in common, it's style, and style is the invisible cosmetic they wear that captures our imagination. Bottom line, whether fashionistas run out to buy these designs or not doesn’t matter because once again, the sizzle’s usually a lot better than the steak. Presentation is everything, and the audacity of these rock-inspired images make an enormous impression that lasts.

Every Picture Tells A Story

Rex Reed once remarked in his review of the film “Out of Africa” that the cinematography was so beautiful that every frame was a picture suitable for framing. The same thing, in my opinion, could be said of Kenneth Anger’s films. Unfortunately, at his show “Icons” currently exhibiting at the Museum of Contemporary Art (MOCA) you don’t get huge printed stills from his films, but rather a few screens erected in a dark room playing his films on a loop.

Kenneth Anger's films have influenced a wide range of directors from Terry Gilliam to David Lynch to Tim Burton, and artists that have appeared in his films include Anais Nin, Donald Cammell, Marianne Faithfull, Anton LaVey, and Manson Family killer Bobby Beausoleil. Titles to some of his films are "Kustom Kar Kommandos", "Invocation of My Demon Brother", "Rabbit Moon" and "Scorpio Rising".

I thought the installation somewhat deadened the impact of a great artist who pioneered images that amalgamated fetishism with male sexuality and threw in the dark arts (read “occult”) for good measure. Let me just repeat, a bunch of cool blown-up stills from his movies would have made a much better show.

Anger made a very rare public appearance on November 19th playing theremin in a two-man performance group called Technicolor Skull. I missed it, as usual, but I heard it was very visual and very DTLA. The room adjoining it was dedicated to his legendary book “Hollywood Babylon”, displaying movie stills, newspaper clippings and other memorabilia showcasing early Hollywood movie stars and their various vices and deaths.

I hope the next time Kenneth Anger exhibits his work it’s done in a more satisfying format. If you really want to experience Anger at his fullest, invest in the two DVD compilations, “The Films of Kenneth Anger, vols. 1 and 2”. Both volumes have great commentary from the master himself and provide a much more exciting audio than the dreary doo-wop and syrupy orchestral tracks dedicated to those films.

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Far more satisfying down the hall was Weegee’s “Naked Hollywood” show. This exhibit was significant in being the very first exhibition of Weegee’s photography in a major museum. Weegee, if you don’t know by now, was a crime photographer named Arthur Fellig who could usually be counted on to be the first guy on the crime scene to take snapshots.

Crime reporting lost its glamour for him so he turned to Hollywood, shooting intense pictures of stars and their manic fans. He even pioneered the tabloid photographer strategy of shooting movie stars blowing their cool in public, i.e., Dean Martin jamming food in his face, Jackie Gleason writing down horse track faves on a pad, and Shelley Winters putting the “fug” in fugly.

Weegee had quite an ego for a reporter, titling himself “Weegee The Famous”, even rubber-stamping this weird handle on the back of his photos. He was a bit of a Rodney Bingenheimer-type, too, posing for photos with a newly married Tony Curtis and Janet Leigh, a ravishing Leslie Caron, and many more.

The best part of the exhibit, however, was an ultra-cool documentary of Weegee pounding the pavement, Hollywood Boulevard, to be exact, looking for “interesting” people to shoot. He seemed to great delight in hounding some old coot with long, white hair and an even longer beard - a “hermit” by his description. The thing that killed me was his way of prepping a shot. He spit on the lens and then shook his camera like an unruly child, which may ne the first time in photography that abusing your gear guarantees a great shot. And yes, he still used flash in broad daylight which is also pretty weird. So that was the show: Kenneth Anger and Weegee, a billing that could have been curated by James Ellroy.

Tramping The Galleries

Saying that the Autumn 2011 season on the gallery scene is the hottest in years would be an outrageous understatement. There’s something for everybody: “Pacific Standard Time”, the most sprawling retrospective of Modern Art In Los Angeles, dozens of photography shows featuring the most outrageous American shutterbugs, and even some wild lowbrow favorites. If it wasn’t happening at the movies or in the nightclubs it was definitely popping in the galleries!

Late October set the stage for the opening of the Ellen Von Unwerth show at the Fahey/Klein Gallery on trendy La Brea Avenue. Her new show coincided with the release of her new Taschen book, “Fraulein” ($500 – cheap?). The pieces featured were black and white - no color shots this time, and looked like some kind of Louise Brooks porn shoot complete with “Story of O” masks, making the models look like off-duty steampunk superheroines getting into sexual mischief. In the smaller room was the incredibly awesome fashion surrealism of Melvin Skolsky, showcasing his “Paris 1963” work. Skolsky is the photog who shot those insane “Model In A Bubble” in the streets of Paris series. The limited edition book was on sale there, also. One of the best Fahey/Klein shows I’ve been to.

Mid-November got even crazier starting with Travis Louie’s “Curious Pets” show at the Merry Karnowsky Gallery. The pieces were black and gray acrylic portraits with static white backgrounds fabricating the illusion of old turn of the century engraved photographs, but naturally with a wicked twist. Pieces included “Martin and His Bat”, a young man with a vampire bat sitting on top of his head. Then there’s “Agatha and Her Beetle”, a frail, anemic lass with a big, gnarly beetle resting in her wiry hair. Each piece was accompanied with a short fable telling a tale of these folks and their strange pets.

Pictured above is "Uncle Six Eyes", a great resin bust created in two versions: a white version and a black version. It's a great parody of the Ludwig Van Beethoven bust that was de rigeur in every home during the 1950s and 1960s. Overall the style of the pieces in the show was like an ungodly union between Mark Ryden and Basil Wolverton. By the way, a quick scan of the upcoming show schedule at Karnowsky’s gallery shows every indication that she will be the mid-city lowbrow capitol of Los Angeles.

Getting back to photography I saw the Hedi Slimane show, “California Song” at the Museum of Contemporary Art (MOCA) at the Pacific Design Center. Slimane’s right up there with Von Unwerth, Richardson and LaChapelle in the new breed of crazy fashion shooters that’s burning up the editorial fashion magazines internationally. The show appealed to my deadpan sense of humor: on the ground floor his photographs (all black & white) were on display, all unlabelled and mounted on drab wooden crates, as one-dimensional as you can possibly get.

Upstairs was another matter entirely: slides of the very same shots and more were projected on a three-sided wall over 10 feet tall, creating a much more satisfying and, dare I say it, moving experience. It sort of makes you question the whole gallery system in one fell swoop. There were enough showbiz photos to keep you happy (John Lydon smoking, a rotting Brian Wilson, and LOTS of Michael Pitt, maybe too much), but the best shots of all, ironically, were his surfing photos.

That’s ultimately a true testament to the brilliance of Slimane’s artistic eye. Taking exciting surfing pictures makes you a good photographer, but shooting awesome ones in BLACK & WHITE makes you a GENIUS.

Masters of Illusion: Jewish Magicians

The Skirball Cultural Center is a museum located far up the Santa Monica Mountains, so high up it’s located beyond Bel Air and The Getty Museum. The museum is located in an area is so remote it defies credibility but there is nothing so incredible as the world of magic, which is why I went there. The Skirball hosted an exhibit on Jewish magicians of the early 20th century titled “Masters of Illusion”. I thought it was a wonderful show.

In addition to beautiful show posters for magicians as diverse as Kellar, Jean-Eugene Robert Houdin, Goldin and the great Houdini there were props from the original acts, including magic wands, trick cards and balls, restraints and the inevitable strait-jacket. Magic as a form of popular entertainment was at its peak around the late 19th-early 20th century thanks to Vaudeville, Music Halls and Carnivals. Their greatest rival was this new thing called movies, which eventually signed up Harry Houdini who starred in several mystery-sci fi serials, which were screened at The Skirball that afternoon.

A lot of pieces were on loan from Ricky Jay, a great magician who’s worked in millions of movies like “House of Games” and “The Grifters”, the ultimate sleight-of-hand movies you need to catch up on. Others were loaned out from The Magic Castle, an invitation-only club that exclusively showcases magic acts.

Many anecdotes on Houdini were posted at the exhibit, but my favorite was the one about Houdini’s attendance at a séance at writer Arthur Conan Doyle’s home. Doyle’s wife was a big fan of the occult and conducted a séance where Houdini’s mother supposedly contacted him from the grave. Houdini was skeptical of the ceremony and patiently sat through the whole bogus affair. Needless to say, the ceremony reached a new pitch of outrage when after the séance Mrs. Doyle handed him a letter “written” by his mother from the great beyond. It was in English; strike one, Houdini’s mother only spoke to him in Hungarian, their native language. It also had a crucifix scrawled on it; strike two, Houdini was a rabbi’s son, so he came from an orthodox Jewish home. Houdini exposed Mrs. Doyle as a fraud and doubled his efforts at exposing fraudulent séances, many at the time targeted at bilking rich widowers of their money, as fictionalized in the great movie “Nightmare Alley”.

I don’t think magic will ever leave us as a major entertainment form. We still have conjurers like Penn & Teller and that weird TV goth guy whose name escapes me still doing the sleight of hand, and some people are dumb enough to believe Harry Potter’s a real magician, so the art of magic still lurks among us.

Another exhibition recently attended was the “Beauty Culture” show at the Annenberg Photography Space in Century City.  I thought the Annenberg was a gorgeous space to view photography. On display were diverse images from the past century with icons either represented by movie stars, i.e. Marilyn, Bardot, Harlow, Audrey, etc. or supermodels, i.e. Twiggy, Jean Shrimpton, Lauren Hutton, Heidi Klum, etc.  I enjoyed discovering photographers I was previously unaware of, like Horst P. Horst and the amazing Marvin Sokolsky = check out his floating balloon series, absolutely amazing. And as I said there was diversity in images of beauty, whether it was photos of tribal beauties, mid-century models still working into their seventies and plus-sized beauties, to name a few. The show runs through November, admission is free, and is highly recommended.