Enchantments like Spices Embalming the Air by Adarsha Benjamin

Enchantments Like Spices Embalming the Air is an editorial photographed by Adarsha Benjamin featuring We Are Handsome's 2013 Enchanted Collection. Starring Breanna Box and Nana Agyapong. Make up by Bethany McCarty.  

Breanna Wears The Potion Corset Bikini

Breanna (right) wears the Guardian Corset Bikini 

Ethically Compromised and Culturally Richer: Basel 2012

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"What strip mining is to nature the art market has become to culture." Robert Hughes

This is the quote I was turning around in my mind as I flew towards Miami. Your virtuous young narrator had a lot of preconceived ideas about this colossal, annual art happening. More specifically, I was expecting a total shit show, with a who's-booth-screams-louder mentality and corporate tie-in's down to the toilet paper level - all in the neon-lighted, silicon-augmented context of South Beach, Miami. A place fittingly described in my Wallpaper guide book as 'a sunny place for shady people.'

Fresh from the emphatically not-commercial Documenta exhibition in Kassel, Germany, your virtuous young narrator arrived with a lofty air of skepticism about this base spectacle of consumerism and celebrity. A thin veneer allowing for unguilty participation in activities that fundamentally offend ones better judgement. There aren't many opportunities to see this scope of work, I reasoned and I have good friends flying in from all over who I'm happy to see. As one gallerist later put it, 'a nice chance to see some art, go to some parties and get a tan before the holidays.'

I arrived at the (not quite) freshly opened Freehand Hostel in Miami, helmed by the hotel group behind the NoMad and the Ace New York, featuring a maritime-meets-flea-market ambiance by the gifted interior designers Roman & Williams. We had secured a private 'quad' for our variable group, with bunk beds and a sleep away camp for 20-somethings vibe. In the morning, I borrowed one of the communal red beach cruisers and made my way down to the press preview of the main Art Basel show. I checked in, received my credentials and sat uncomfortably through some profuse thanking from the mayor and entirely unmemorable comments from the directors and a wealth management fund or something. By the time the show opened at 11, the motley cast of press, adorned in wreaths of ostentatiously colored credentials, were drinking complimentary champagne beside a gaudy cigar brand pavilion and perusing artist-embellished luxury-brand racing cars.

Allora & Calzadilla / Gladstone Gallery

It's with mild exaggeration that one could describe the full scope of Art Basel and it's countless satellites as byzantine. Art Basel being the official epicenter, orbited by fairs like Nada, Untitled, Pulse, Art Miami, Design Miami, Scope, Miami Project and Aqua; and permanent collections like the Rubel, Margulies and De La Cruz; and museums like the Bass and Moca; and special installations, exhibitions, conversations, screenings and events in myriad hotels, stores, clubs, mansions, boats, airstreams, and airplanes.

Your virtuous young narrator began methodically traversing the fair, row by row, sparingly rationing attention for the pieces with the loudest siren song. Several hours later, feeling significantly reduced, I recessed for a bathroom break, some deep breathing and a recalibration of what could realistically be accomplished in my time here. I gave up on my methodical approach and proceeded with a liberating, follow the wind, work, crowd, light, feeling, friend or pretty girl approach - which closer resembles the way I proceed through life.

The art was world class. Established artists shown beside emerging artists and galleries from every corner of the world. Almost on par was the people-watching and eavesdropping. Fashionable art world insiders, wealthy collectors, celebrities, aspiring artists, scenesters, snowbirds, obvious locals (with tanned, overflowing breasts and muscles), and beautiful and seductive gallerinas with names like Salame (I'm not making this up).

 Jason Middlebrook / Dodge Gallery

I collected some memorable vignettes and impressions; A tour of shiny, wide-eyed sexagenarians nervously fingering their pearls as a docent/consultant type assured them you can find an Anish Kapoor in the dining room of any serious collectors home (I heard the same anecdote a half an hour later substituting fireplaces for dining rooms). A technical and tedious conversation about a Bill Viola new media piece, centered on logistical installation, maintenance (tech support?) and international tax code. A fairly constant ratio of 2:5 people on their cellphones. Unprecedented, for me at least, volumes of floral print and loafers. And children, seeming to enjoy the art and experience exponentially greater then their adult counterparts, in sync with the child-like abandon requisite to create great works of art in the first place.

Regretfully, all of the illuminating 10am conversations between the directors of the worlds finest art institutions were invariably slept through. My Basel was an ebb and flow of dilatory, diurnal culture consumption and nocturnal moral negotiation. Exclusive events seemed to overshadow art as a conversation topic. It felt as though many conversations were a variation on the theme of exclusivity, espoused to status, in a self-policing, relationally-determined social hierarchy. From the hysterical throngs of guests throwing designer-purse-embellished elbows, vying for entree through the velvet rope, to admonitions like 'to really experience the fair you have to get into the closets, all the best work is kept in the closets,' this refrain kept resurfacing like a ritornello. As unpleasant as it may be, there is a genuine reason for this exclusivity. In a word, finiteness. There are only so many works of enduring beauty and significance to collect, only so much space at that momentous party, and only so many places in those of upper echelons of social strata that shape the contemporary art landscape.

Jon Kessler / Salon 94

In this frenetic milieu, I found moments of absolute serenity. Glithero's Lost Time installation of hanging illuminated pearls reflected in a cool black pool at the design Basel show - tucked away in dark stillness from the anxiety-generating opening ceremonies. 12 Gordon Park prints at the Margulies collection that say more about civil rights in America, than I learned in my entire formal education. Adarsha Benjamin's Kurt Cobain-centric performance, featuring a superlative cast of artist friends and a resounding battle cry to choose love over fear. A saintly portrait of Marina Abramovic, in breathing white linen, cradling a goat, that will likely reside permanently in my mind. And many other moments of joy and fascination. Dap's impeccably curated selection of art books. Meals at the wondrous Haitian eatery (and informal cultural center) Tap Tap. Unscheduled and regenerative dips in the glowing, saline Atlantic. A forward looking exhibition of GIF's staged in a giant pitch-black warehouse space. Jon Kessler's insane mind. A swirling, stop-and-go Kentridge video piece. 4am, shiny, undulating disco bliss at Chez Andre. And plenty of impromptu conversations and jaunts with new found friends.

Your virtuous young narrator's Basel experience concluded with a slippery, alcohol-lubed nocturnal capitulation into a hazy cab ride towards a strip club in downtown Miami hosting a closing party. Not long after, fending off lap dances and watching naked daughters and sisters rub against one another in a violent precipitation of dollar bills and brown liquor. Sigh. Onwards, through my sui generis moral Manichaeanism, ethically compromised and culturally richer.

And now I sit and reflect in McNally Jackson bookstore on a crisp and chilly afternoon in Nolita, listening to baroque classical music, sipping hot hibiscus tea and typing these impressions. Outside, familiar faces, in their familiar context, walk by on Prince street and I idly envisage my return next year.

Text and photography by Perry Shimon for Pas Un Autre. See more photographs below. 

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Brice and Regis Abby

Snarkitecture's Drift Pavilion for Design Miami

 Art Basel Main Fair 

Marina Abramoviฤ‡ / Gagosian Gallery 

Taryn Simon / Gagosian Gallery

Rad girls outside Moving the Still GIF Exhibition 

Glithero x Perrier-Jouet / Design Miami

Holton Rower / The Hole Gallery
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Beautiful young lady at the Design Fair behind a Corbusier mural (super cool parents not pictured)
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Beach Babe
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Ed Ruscha  / Plane Text 
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Onlookers
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Retna / Michael Kohn Gallery
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Adarsha Benjamin / KURT / Olympia Theater  
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Gordon Parks / Margulies Collection 
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Fried Yucca, Okra and Plantains, Avacado Salad / Tap Tap Restaurant
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International Art Police, issuing citations for infractions like 'excessive tax on audience time,' 'famous artist, but not for this one' and 'who cares?'
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Steve Powers / Joshua Liner Gallery

[Wait In Vain] by Adarsha Benjamin

Wait In Vain is a new series by photographer Adarsha Benjamin shot in the Bowery Hotel in New York that explores the loneliness and longing of waiting. Starring artist and actress Nina Ljeti, Annakim Violetteโ€“daughter of Tom Petty and talented artist in her own right, and make-up artist Jordan Bree Long this  series is an introspective view of solitude, femininity, strength and beauty. Set in informal and natural lighting, Benjamin's subject inhabit the hotel room's walls like beautiful and romantic ghosts. 

All apparel provided by Condor

Munch Ado About Nothing

Edvard Munch (pronounced Moonk) is best known for The Scream โ€“ the painting itself is an expressionistic exclamation point marking an emotional era in art. After walking through the recent Munch exhibit at the Centre Pompidou in Paris, The Scream seemed to me to be the culmination of a life's work; an exasperated attempt to express the entirety of life's frustrations and anxiety. The exhibition portrayed the work of a man gripped with the beauty and fatality of every moment. Images of vampires, sick women, and the famous painting entitled "two lonely ones" standing by the water's edge (pictured below).

Munch was also obsessed with self-portrait photographs. I was overcome with a sense of earnest loneliness walking past his 4 x 6 washed out photos of Munch in bed, or gazing sternly out the window, or of his own profile. Was he trying to see if others' saw his paintings like he saw them: full of color, visceral objects in constant motion, jumping off the frame, still for a moment, and then gone?

He seemed to be overwhelmed with the beauty and solitude in life โ€“ using color and exaggerated reference points to impose a sense of urgency, of tragedy and stillness at the same time. Figures with faces stand out in great detail โ€“ serving as the proverbial punctuation marks, while the supporting roles stand as auxiliary auras โ€“ holding still in space. Munch instills the unbelievable power to feel within one figure the emotion of the entire room โ€“ with empathy to the all-to-common human experience of standing alone in a room and with many.

Edvard Munch: The Modern Eye just concluded at the Centre Pompidou in Paris, but will resume at the Tate Modern in London this summerfrom June 28 to October 14, and in the meantime Edvard Munch's Masterpieces is on view now until May at the Munch Museet in Oslo, Norway which houses a majority of his works including 1,100 paintings, 4,500 drawings and 18,000 prints. Text by Angelina Dreem for Pas Un Autre. 

Photo by Angelina Dreem

September: RENO โ€“ The Biggest Little City In The World

Presenting a year in the life of Adarsha Benjamin, part nine: September: Reno โ€“ The Biggest Little City in the World. 

July: Here, There, and Everywhere

Presenting a year in the life of Adarsha Benjamin, part seven: July: Here, There, Everywhere. Photographs from Venice, Paris, and New York with a smattering  of self portraits and a visit to Hebrew summer school.

June: Lost Weekends and Love At First Sight

Presenting a year in the life of Adarsha Benjamin, part six: June: Lost Weekends and Love At First Sight. Take a trip to Brooklyn to see the So So Glos, who we featured in the first issue of Autre, and then to the Berkshires โ€“ North Adams, Massachusetts โ€“ where Wilco curated the Solid Sound Festival at an old electrical sprocket factory.

May: The Month of Solitary Sunshine / Summer is Almost Here

Presenting a year in the life of Adarsha Benjamin, part five: May: The Month of Solitary Sunshine / Summer is Almost Here. This time Adarsha takes us to New York City and Coney Island.

March : Rebel Walk โ€“ Los Angeles, CA

Presenting a year in the life of Adarsha Benjamin, part three: March : Rebel Walk โ€“ Los Angeles, CA which includes behind the scenes photographs of Aaron Young's contribution to James Franco's Rebel where a replica of the car the killed James Dean was dropped from an 80 foot crane in a ditch and motorcycles were crashed along a lonely stretch of highway.

February : Nostalgia for the Light โ€“ Los Angeles, CA

Presenting a year in the life of Adarsha Benjamin, part two: February: Nostalgia for the Light โ€“ Los Angeles, CA. "I am a February baby. The month of my birth. The month of my new born existence; every year. Its my sacred time of unraveling and unveiling. I did't take a lot of photos that month, just shots of people and the streets of LA on black & white. I listened to this song every day."

January: The Fool of Illusion โ€“ BIG SUR

As the end of the year nears we'll all undoubtably be taking a look back on our lives during last twelve months. Luckily, photographer and Autre creative director Adarsha Benjamin has visual documentation. During the next twelve days we'll be rolling a out a series, a retrospective of sorts, of photographs by Adarsha Benjamin and a specially selected song for each month of her life in 2011. Presenting a year in the life of Adarsha Benjamin, part one: January 2011: The Fool of Illusion โ€“ BIG SUR.