Chasing Mirrors Through A Haze

'Graham Nash, NYC' © Graham Nash, Date Unknown

Sir Graham Nash was not only a prolific singer-songwriter, as the proverbial "and," in the band Crosby, Stills, and Nash,  he was also a brilliant photographer who, for the last five decades, has captured beautiful, haunting imagery of his own life with his camera.  Nash was born in Blackpool, Lancashire, England in 1942 at the tail end of World War 2. In the early 1960s Nash inadvertently entered the musical phenomenon known as the British Invasion with the band The Hollies.  In 1968, upon a visit to Los Angeles, Nash would meet David Crosby in Laurel Canyon and the rest was, as you say, history.  Looking through Graham Nash's photography I am reminded of thefragility of a true artist - an artist that seems entirely unaffected by his fame.  In the miasma of chaos and casualty, Nash is constantly asking himself questions, what with the common denominator reliant on self portraiture, his photographs seem more of a personal odyssey; a forty days and forty nights trek through the barren desert of queries about our own mortality.  Through the love and terror of a universe that does not answer back, there is a sense of acquiescence and peace in the not knowing, that gives Nash's images a tremendous aura of existential tranquility.  Last night, Graham Nash's song 'Simple Man,' from his first solo album Songs for Beginners (1971), came on the shuffle at around midnight, at random, from my vast library of music. Its a sad tale of love, woe, and heartbreak, written by someone way more than just a simple man - Sir Graham Nash - who turns 69 today. Text by Oliver Maxwell Kupper / Images by Graham Nash

Our Future is in the Air

Adolph de Meyer 'Dance Study' 1912 - Alfred Steiglitz Collection

Adolph de Meyer - who would become Vogue magazine's first official fashion photographer, 1913 - photographed the dancer Ninjinsky and other members of Sergei Diaghilev's troupe when l'Apres Midi d'Un Faune was presented in Paris in 1912. It has been suggested that the above photograph, the only nude by de Meyer, has some connection to the Russian ballet, but if so, remains mysterious.

It has been commonly remarked that the 20th century didn't really begin until 1910. The above photograph and a selection of other  incredible photographs from the 1910s are on display at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York for the exhibit "Our Future Is In The Air": Photographs from the 1910s. On view till April 10, 2011.

Steven Klein: Your Hallucination Is Now Complete

Video still, Courtesy © Steven Klein Studio 2010/ Hyères Festival

Foam presents Your Hallucination Is Now Complete by fashion photographer Steven Klein as part of Amsterdam International Fashion Week. Your Hallucination Is Now Complete is a new video work by Steven Klein specially compiled for Hyères annual fashion and photography festival in 2010. This multimedia presentation is presented in the Westergoud building at Westergasterrein, near the catwalk shows. On view until January 30, 2011. www.foam.nl

Lure of Images: John Strezaker

Mask

John Strezaker 'Mask XXXV' 2007

British artist John Stezaker is fascinated by the lure of images. Taking classic movie stills, vintage postcards and book illustrations, Stezaker makes collages to give old images a new meaning. By adjusting, inverting and slicing separate pictures together to create unique new works of art, Stezaker explores the subversive force of found images. Stezaker’s famous Mask series fuses the profiles of glamorous sitters with caves, hamlets, or waterfalls, making for images of eerie beauty. This first major exhibition of John Stezaker offers a chance to see work by an artist whose subject is the power in the act of looking itself. With over 90 works from the 1970s to today, the artist reveals the subversive force of images, reflecting on how visual language can create new meaning. John Stezaker is organized by the Whitechapel Gallery, London, and Mudam, Luxembourg - on view till March 18, 2011.

Cinema: Santa Sangre

Alejandro Jodorowsky's surreal masterpiece is on DVD for the very first time. A young man is confined in a mental hospital. Through a flashback we see that he was traumatized as a child, when he and his family were circus performers: he saw his father cut off the arms of his mother, a religious fanatic and leader of the heretical church of Santa Sangre ("Holy Blood"), and then commit suicide. Back in the present, he escapes and rejoins his surviving and armless mother. Against his will, he "becomes her arms" and the two undertake a grisly campaign of murder and revenge.

Vivian Maier: Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star...

#60 Undated, New York

Between January 27 and April 28, 2011, Hilaneh von Kories Gallery in Hamburg is going to show “Twinkle, twinkle, little star”, an exhibit of more than eighty images by Vivian Maier from the 50’s and 60’s. Maier, who in her life time did not publish any of her pictures, has been recently discovered as an enormously talented “street photography” artist who saw the world through the lenses of a Rolleiflex camera and captured hundreds of thousands of telling moments in the gritty streets and shops of Chicago and New York. The show is only the third of her work worldwide and the first in Germany. www.hilanehvonkoriesgallery.com

Objet d'Art: Cupid's Lie

DAMIEN HIRST, Cupid's Lie, Gold

To inaugurate the Hong Kong exhibition space, Gagosian Gallery is pleased to present “Forgotten Promises,” an exhibition of new paintings and sculptures by Damien Hirst. Forgotten Promises - Jan 18 - Mar. 19, 2011 at the Gasgosian Gallery, Hong Kong.

Exotic Regrets by Aoi Kotsuhiroi

I received an image over the weekend of the fascinating first chapter of sartorial sculptor, poet, and conjurer Aoi Kotsuhiroi's new collection entitled Exotic Regrets. As in past collections, Kotsuhiroi, based in the South of France, releases imagery of her new collections in chapter's to express gravity and anticipation. www.aoikotsuhiroi.com

Naked Study #55

Étude de nu n°577 Print on salted paper from a collodion glass negative Bibliothèque nationale de France, 1855

Very little is known about mid-19th century photographer Louis-Camille d'Olivier.  After the the 1860s the history of this prolific photographer of early erotica simply vanished. We do know he was a progenitor of a nascent art form considered mechanical and superficial. Today, d'Olivier's multiple images of the female form are widely sought after by collectors.

R.I.P. Renfield

Renfield was a good dog who led a good dog life. With the air permeated by sweet saltwater and the sound of crashing waves, Renfield's fourteen years on planet Earth were idyllic and serene.  With the body of a sturdy Shepard and a thousand year old soul, he loved unconditionally, like a good dog should.  Renfield, you will be missed.

Tattoo by Doug at Everlasting Tattoo Photo by Lily Harris Text by Oliver Maxwell Kupper

Naked Eye: The Voice & Life of Ney Matogrosso

Ney_Matogrosso_film_70_anos

Ney Matogrosso was a leather artisan with a rare voice at the right place at the right time.  Brazil, 1966, a polychromatic cultural revolution was taking place called tropicália.  Even more psychedelic and revolutionary than the sexual revolution commencing in the thick white fog of San Francisco, tropicalia pervaded every corner of  Brazilian culture: theater, poetry, dance, and especially music.  You could call tropicália music an evolutionary divergence of psychedelia that amalgamated  traditional America rock n' roll, Afro-Cuban rhythms, and funk.  When the band Secos e Molhados wanted a male leader singer with a high pitched voice they got even more than they asked for.  Enter Ney Matogrosso, and his sopranino voice with tonal ranges beyond a soprano, who helped Secos e Molhados reach explosive success.  When the band dissolved Matogrosso went on with a solo career that has lasted through the present. According to Art Brazil, a documentary on Matogrosso's 40 year carreer is currently in post production.  The documentary, entitled Naked Eye, will be  premiered in August - most likely in Brazil - on Ney Matogrosso's 70th birthday.     Text by Oliver Maxwell Kupper

mp3:::ney matogrosso - Pedra de Rio

[audio:http://www.pasunautre.com/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2011/01/04-Pedra-de-Rio.mp3|titles=04 Pedra de Rio]

mp3:::ney matogrosso - Barco Negro

[audio:http://www.pasunautre.com/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2011/01/07-Barco-Negro.mp3|titles=07 Barco Negro]