Entries Tagged 'Photography' ↓

Michaele Salahi, right, checks for Vice-President Joe Biden’s pulse

Hundreds of comments were posted on Michaele Salahi’s Facebook page, after the socialite and her husband, Tareq, not only crashed the Obama administration’s first White House state dinner last Tuesday night, but cravenly posted photos documenting their breach.

Of all those FB responses to this outrage, here’s my absolute favorite:

OBAMA: Good evening! Hey: How d’ya like my rundown, ghetto security? Man, I’ve been to rap concerts that were harder to get into….
SALAHI: We like it more than you presently imagine, Mr. President.…

Not bad for not having been invited: In the above photo, released yesterday by the White House, Michaele Salahi, center, and her husband, Tareq, right, are seen meet-n-greeting the leader of the free world, having done nothing but show up.

Oh, bonus: Look who’s next to the president, as is appropriate, given protocol: The guest of honor, Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh!

Wow. So, you mean if I, say, support Pakistan’s goal of redrawn borders in Kashmir, all I need do to get close enough to kill my opposition—the leader of the similarly nuclear-armed nation it borders—is put on a tux, go to the White House, and, like Jay-Z suggested, bring a blonde?

Well, this might offend my political connects, but somebody call Islamabad after I stick a fork in him: He’s done!

Amazing. I don’t know if we should throw these two losers in jail for red-teaming the U.S. government, or give them Nobel Peace Prizes for helping avoid World War III.

As opposed to being called a “cougar”—actor Demi Moore, 47, is famously married to 16-years-younger actor Ashton Kutcher, 31—W magazine’s December cover subject, above, says, in the mag’s profile, that “I’d prefer to be called a puma.”

Well, whatever the large cat, it looks like one of ’em just took a bite out of her hip.

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Hey: Did you ever lie awake at night and wonder, “What would it feel like to be Ice-T’s wife, Nicole ‘Coco‘ Austin: Lying on the beach, getting a tan, and looking at the world from between my ginormous, saltwater-filled ta-tas?”

I know I sure have. That’s why I was so startled when the cello-esque Coco, right—nude model, actor, and dancer—posted this disconcerting POV shot, above, on Twitter:

This is my view when I tan. Honestly, my boobs don’t look this big, it has to do w/the cameras perception

Well, Coco, they do say the camera adds ten pounds.

(Also, I just noticed another odd optical illusion: Coco says that her jugs are fake while her butt is real. But if you take the above right photo, then scroll down and cut it off just above the small of her back, it looks like the neck and cleavage of a woman with implants. Weird.)

In the spirit of full disclosure, I’ve known Ice-T, right, casually, for years, have met his lovely wife, and she’s quite sweet. In fact, in the YouTube, below, Ice talks about the moment he first saw the woman he’d eventually marry.

What’s most striking about his description of the events, though, is the utterly un-baller way their chance meeting proceeds. I mean, telling her how beautiful she is? Magic tricks? Playa….

But, then, on the other hand, it worked, right? Who’s to argue with breas…er, I mean success?

Robert Bechtle’s 1974, 48 in. by 69 in. oil, Alameda Gran Torino, is a masterpiece of the photorealistic style he mastered in the 1960s and ’70s.

In his 2005 review of the artist’s work, The New Yorker‘s Peter Schjeldahl called Bechtle’s images visions “from a prior life,” and Alameda Gran Torino, paradoxically, “a nova of banality.”

The station wagon can’t help but be only and exactly what Detroit fashioned. Hot sunlight can’t help but glint from a bumper and produce a faint reflection of the windshield on a garage door. A closeness between the green of the car and that of a background shadow is unusual, but so perfectly meaningless that your mind may panic at the waste of its energy in beholding the fact. Then something peculiar can happen: your reflexive sense of the picture as a photograph breaks down, and the object’s identity as a painting, done entirely on purpose, gains ground. Look closely. A congeries of tiny freehand strokes delivers an inconspicuous patch of foliage. The whole work is a feat of resourceful painterly artifice. At last, it’s as if the original photograph were a ghost that died and came back as a body.

And what a body it is.

Familiar landmarks within New York City’s largest borough dominate this image, above. The spectacularly detailed view was shot by NASA’s EO-1 (Earth Observatory) satellite, as it hovered over 438 miles above the nation’s most populated city, on September 12, 2001.

Vincent Bousserez’s Plastic Life series of photos puts tiny figurines against normal-sized human implements—ashtrays, door pulls, etc.—and, as above, body parts. As the micros apparently contemplate their environments, and the impossibilities of the obstacles they face, they render wry, albeit silent, commentaries on the futility of the human condition. I dunno, but there’s something about the sight of three men, determinedly working to reach the pinnacle of a female breast, that seems sum up everything.

[via ffffound.com]

It’s said that you should never surprise or startle a wild grizzly bear when it’s sunning itself.

So, what did this animal, above—equipped by nature with razor-sharp teeth—do when it caught sight of a nearby human being, armed only with a camera?

Let’s just say the action involved its massive claws. It’s the next image in this two-picture series, below, after the jump.

In a moment, you’ll know why MEDIA ASSASSIN had to hide this photo from plain sight.

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He wasn’t yet forty when he completed this residence in Harbor Springs, MI. Yet, architect Richard Meier’s 1973 Douglas House remains one of his landmark structures, and the building that, with what would become his trademark white exterior palette, declared him a force to be reckoned with.

This somber black & white image may be the best ever made of the site. Framing the home against the deep foliage that surrounds it, the near-charcoals of the natural environment form a womb-like cove for Meier’s gleaming angles. Even with a dark sky threatening, the futuristic house radiates a serenity for the ages.

For his book Flight Attendants, documentary photographer Brian Finke spent two years flying the friendly skies, with airline carriers from all over the world, in order to record the work, leisure time, and home lives of his volume’s titular employees. For example, this woman, Roshayati, above, was giving a safety demo before her Air Asia flight’s departure.

Rachel Papo‘s Serial No. 3817131 goes inside the days and nights of young women in Israel’s Defense Forces, for whom service is mandatory, as it is for all young people in the that country. (The book’s title was Papo’s own i.d. number during her military stint in the late ’80s.) As the body language and expression on the face of the soldier, above, makes clear, not only is war long stretches of boredom spiked my moments of sheer terror, preparing for it, apparently, is also.

What’s truly interesting, though, is that while these women’s occupations seem to be as different as they get, they share more than might immediately be apparent. Safety, training, freedom, even boredom all weigh heavily as issues in their respective fields. That became clear to me, at least, when I had the chance to talk to Papo and Finke about their own work.

Both artists are guests today on my WBAI-NY / 99.5 FM radio show, NONFICTION, this afternoon, Friday, June 5, at 2 pm ET.

You can hear their ideas by tuning in at 2 pm. If you’re outside of the New York tri-state, check out our stream on the web. If you miss the live show, dig into our archives for up to 90 days after broadcast.