photographic roundup: christina ricci, amazing hats, forests and lights.

because it’s been a while, the friday photographic roundup works like this:

1. i post the most amazing images i’ve found in the week just past

2. you comment with links to/your favourite pictures from about the place

it’s a bit like a weekly game of exquisite corpse crossed with a weekly visual resource list. enjoy (and please do participate).

christina ricci, pop magazine, 2004.

this whole shoot is pretty gorgeous – or perhaps it’s just me and my love of messy doll makeup. foto_decadent wins again.

Vconfession.com, moscow, russia, november ’09.

a tribute to slava zaitsev, who i didn’t know before, but sure do now. i love hats. i adore hats. i need more hats just like this one.

Emergence: A Life in Ten Chapters, ABOVE Magazine, September ’09.

lights in a forest. no explanation needed. though the vaguely creepy/gorgeous hatchling story in this is worth a mention for its own sake…

photographic roundup: 1950s children’s books and a brief hiatus

i’m on a bit of an impromptu hiatus (major electricity disaster in my house – i have to choose between plugging in the internet and my computer.  it’s terribly inconvenient).  it’s got perks, though; i’m doing a lot of thinking about what i want out of this blog, what i really want to write about.

image from anatole written by eve titus, illustrated by paul galdone, 1957.

this weekend i’m doing magazine illustrations, for which my fallback inspiration is 1950s children’s books.  i’m also having Issues posting images (surprise surprise) so it’s just the one this week.  if you’ve got beautiful pictures to add to the roundup, you know what to do.

photographic roundup: ben hassett, bec winnel, daisy lowe, and yayoi kusama.

so, this is my list of enchantments for the week – what about your sweet readerly selves?  had any thrilling visual encounters over the past seven days?  i’m so looking forward to your links and pictures in the comments!

ben hassett for vogue germany, 2008.

this week i got…

eyeliner inspiration from ben hassett for the photoshoot i’m planning.

bec winnel.

inspirational blurry lines between realism and artistic license from australian artist bec winnel.  the lack of eyelashes is what i love, here.  like the weary-lidded eyes of some marble renaissance madonna.

daisy lowe’s 21st birthday dress, 2010.

a party dress to be diy-ed (because who doesn’t want a dress with a skirt/tutu comprised entirely of false flowers?!)

yayoi kusama, dots obsession (installation shot), haus der kunst, 2007.

and an installation of violently pink lanterns and mirrors, because at present i am involved in an intense love affair with bright and brilliant colour.  (this is pretty much a visual revolution for me.  i tend to go in for black and white, with maybe a little gray when i want to shake things up.)

photographic roundup: all about tim burton

tim burton on (or in front of) the set of the corpse bride, 2005.

this is the image that lodged itself most firmly in my mind this week – i’m looking forward to seeing everyone else’s in the comments!  last week rendered some pretty gorgeous results in that department (if you haven’t yet, check out some of the links people left – just beautiful).  for anyone who missed it, the photographic roundup is a weekly post of images that have captured my fancy over the past seven days – and an open call for any visual wonders my readers may have uncovered, as well.  please don’t be shy.  i’m fascinated by the photographs that enchant other people, and i’d also like this to become a sort of resource, over time – a whole section of my blog devoted to wonderful, magic-inspiring pictures.

 

film still of jonny depp in sleepy hollow, 1999.

this week, though, i need to apologise for being late with the roundup; i tried so hard to get this posted yesterday, but to no avail.  i tried on 4 – 4! – separate occasions to get this post up, but the gods of the internet were against me, had deemed friday the 26th as a day without published designs on fragility.  ah well.  the internet is like that, sometimes.

 

publicity shot of the white rabbit, alice in wonderland, 2010.

anyway.  this week’s photographs are all about tim burton, because frankly, most of the images i’ve encountered have had him to blame.  i went to the opening of his ACMI exhibition the other night, and henceforth my mind has been full of his work.  this week has also had a lot to do with kittens, but i just can’t bring myself to post meaningless (albeit cute) pictures of random itty bitty cats, so that one will have to wait until next week when hopefully i can post photos of my own.  i’ll put up a proper review of the burton exhibition+opening night tomorrow, but fridays (or rather make-up fridays) are image-focused, so images it is.

 

mary ellen mark, christina ricci on the set of sleepy hollow, 1999.

so.  any pictures that really amazed and enchanted you this week?  please do post them in the comments!

photographic roundup: miu miu, lady gaga, vanity fair, and a reader request

 today i have a bit of a reader request.  the idea is this: that those who see this post leave a beautiful picture (or collection thereof!) of their own in the comments, or a link to a picture roundup of their own.

shoes by miu miu, source unknown, via shoelust

without a doubt i spend most of my time on the internet looking for beautiful, fascinating, or inspiring images.  in fact i find so many each week that i’ve decided, instead of posting willy-nilly, to pull together my favourites every friday and post a weekly ‘photographic roundup’.  images are pretty much the reason i started using the internet.  i have thousands on my computer, and i organise them more obsessively than i do anything else in my life.  i’m not sure whether it’s the art history background or my own special brand of crazy, but i get terribly upset when i can’t figure out who made an image, where i sourced it from originally, etc., etc..  i have so many fantastic visual pieces on my computer that it seems a shame to let them just gather digital dust.  i feel like they should go back out into netspace for others to look and wonder at.

in the same vein i would love to see what other poeple have stumbled over and wondered at this week, and to create in the comments a sort of digital exquisite corpse.  the beautiful thing about this is that everybody wanders the net differently, seeks out different things, uses different searchwords; i’m fascinated by the bredth possible in an image collection put together by different people and the things they find lovely. 

   

still from alejandro, by lady gaga and steven klein, 2010, via fatshionista 

(i love this photograph.  it is, incidentally, not a photograph at all, but rather a still from lady gaga’s video for alejandro, depicting the artist with one of the actor/dancers in the clip.  it’s such a fantastic image, though.  this incredibly intimate pose, but with assigned gender-roles thoroughly reversed.  i know people make a fuss about the fact that the men in this clip wear heels a lot, but (as i will likely get around to exploring further in another article) i don’t think clothes actually count for that much subversion on their own.  it’s the body language that makes this subversive, not the garments; the publicisation, in a popular forum, of a queer reimagining of nominally heterosexual sex.  plus it’s just beautiful.  i don’t find much of klein’s work particularly engaging, but i have to admit, i love this video.  and i think the madonna comparisons really fail to take into account such blatently queer moments as this.  fatshionista, by the by, has quite an interesting comparison between alejandro and madonna’s express yourself on her blog.)  

 

naomi watts for vanity fair italy, may 2010, via outsapop 

so – any lovely pictures to add?