RARE PHOTOS OF MARILYN IN THE HAMPTONS

Marilyn Monroe came to New York in 1956 to study acting with Lee Strasberg, after a very short marriage to baseball legend, Joe DiMaggio ended in 1954. In the serious world of New York actors, Monroe fell into the orbit of playwright Arthur Miller, who she married on June 29, 1956. Living in city, the couple rented a simple farmhouse in Amagansett for the 1957-58 summer seasons. During that blissful newlywed time, she called herself MMM for Marilyn Monroe Miller. When she ordered cosmetics over the phone at she’d call herself “Mrs. Miller” and she was often seen driving around town in her black ’56 Thunderbird convertible with their Bassett Hound, Hugo. Marilyn is documented here in these rare photographs shot by Sam Shaw in the summer of ’57. Shaw took more than 900 photos of Marilyn that hot July, nearly 60 years ago.

(Photos, Sam Shaw; via Patch)

ARTIST KITTY BROPHY PLAYS THE BORED PALM SPRINGS HOUSEWIFE TO A TEE...

Kitty Brophy is an artist and former model (and a friend) who, as you can see can play the bored Palm Springs housewife to a tee. For this story in Territory, she makes getting older with style look pretty effortless and like a lot of fun. Kitty says, 

“I am emboldened every day by people, especially women, young and old who remind me that the power to change society’s norms and expectations are strengthened by joining ranks.“

Some people, regardless of age, just have that “period look” and this is Brophy’s, I’d say.

(Photos, Puspa Lohmeyer; via Territory)

#RIP: PHOTOGRAPHER & NEW YORK ICON, BILL CUNNINGHAM

Sad news to report. Bill Cunningham suffered a stroke a few days ago and we all wished him a speedy recovery. But it was not to be. He died today in his beloved Manhattan. He was 87.

Jason Bernstein wrote in the Times, where Cunningham worked for the last 4 decades,

“Cunningham was such a singular presence in the city that in 2009 he was designated a living landmark. And he was an easy one to spot, riding his bicycle through Midtown, where he did most of his field work, his bony-thin frame draped in his utilitarian blue French worker’s jacket, khaki pants and black sneakers (he himself was no one’s idea of a fashion plate), with his 35-millimeter camera slung around his neck, ever at the ready for the next fashion statement to come around the corner.

Nothing escaped his notice, not the fanny packs, not the Birkin bags, not the gingham shirts, not the fluorescent biker shorts.

In his nearly 40 years working for The Times, Mr. Cunningham snapped away at changing dress habits to chart the broader shift away from formality and toward something more diffuse and individualistic.

At the Pierre hotel on the East Side of Manhattan, he pointed his camera at tweed-wearing blue-blood New Yorkers with names like Rockefeller and Vanderbilt. Downtown, by the piers, he clicked away at crop-top wearing Voguers. Up in Harlem, he jumped off his bicycle — he rode more than 30 over the years, replacing one after another as they were wrecked or stolen — for B-boys in low-slung jeans.”

Arthur Ochs Sulzberger Jr., the Times’s publisher and chairman, 

“His company was sought after by the fashion world’s rich and powerful, yet he remained one of the kindest, most gentle and humble people I have ever met. We have lost a legend, and I am personally heartbroken to have lost a friend.”

I took this photo of Bill taking a photo of me at Robert Bryan’s apartment on New Year’s Day, 2014

In 2010, the documentary film, Bill Cunningham New York, premiered at the Museum of Modern Art to glowing reviews. It’s on Netflix. See it.

If you lived in New York City and were on the scene for any length of time, being photographed by Bill was a right of passage. He will not be soon forgotten.

The only good thing about this news is that he did what he loved, rode around NYC on his bike right until the end. No long illness, or not being able to get out and shoot the city. As far as I'm concerned, I'll just imagine him on his bike somewhere, using that incredible eye on another (very chic) plane.

(via The New York Times)

"SCARLETT MUSE" EXPOSES & EXPLORES THE WORLD'S OLDEST PROFESSION

NSFW: The upcoming exhibit, Scarlett Muse, at Daniel Cooney Fine Art further exposes hustlers, hookers, prostitutes, gigolos, ladies of the evening and assorted sex workers. Since the dawn of photography over 150 years ago the purveyors of prostitution have inspired compelling imagery... 

The idea of this exhibition at first, might seem a bit illicit and seedy, but it is really quite the opposite upon examination. From an early stereo daguerreotype (c.1850’s) to E.J. Bellocq’s portraits of prostitutes in the brothels of New Orleans to Atget and Brassai photographing ladies of the evening in Paris, the show runs the gamut of up-close intimacy.

The more current work of Benjamin Fredrickson in a dual role as artist/hustler with his provocative Polaroid self-portraits made while servicing clients rivet while Anthony Friedkin’s look at gay life in gritty San Francisco are a window into the dawn of gay liberation. Punk rock legend Danny Fields‘ shares living room snapshots circa mid 70’s and artist’s George Awde, P.L. diCorcia and Malerie Marder bring us into the 21st century.

The exhibit opens Thursday, June 9 at Daniel Cooney Fine Art.

Bruno – August Braquehais

Brassai

Eugene Atget

E.J. Bellocq

Christer Stromholm

Christer Stromholm

Anthony Friedkin

Anthony Friedkin

Larry Clark

George Awde

Danny Fields

Danny Fields

Chris Arnade

Chris Arnade

Bob Mizer

Bob Mizer

Jane Hilton

Pedro Slim

50 YEAR-OLD LARRY FINK PHOTOS OF ANDY & EDIE DISCOVERED!

In the spring of 1966, photographer Larry Fink was assigned a shoot for a literary magazine called East Side Review. It was edited by a man named Shepard Sherbell.

“The story was about Andy. In 1966, everything was about Andy.”

According to New York magazine;

Over the course of several days, Fink shot the group — Warhol and Ingrid Superstar, Lou Reed and John Cale, Edie Sedgwick and Gerard Malanga(Warhol’s collaborator and right-hand man) — mostly on the Lower East Side. They were styled (Sedgwick in a lace scarf and polka-dot dress, Ingrid Superstar in heavy earrings and a gauzy white head scarf) by a woman named Khadejha McCall, a friend of Fink’s who sold African fabric on St. Marks Place. Soon after, the East Side Review shuttered when Sherbell ran out of money, before the shoot was ever published.

“It was a larky shoot,” says Fink of the photos. “Spontaneous.” 

One image depicts Warhol, Malanga, and Ingrid Superstar posing solemnly alongside a butcher soaked in blood, with Malanga’s hand resting on a heap of disassembled cattle. 

“We bumped into the meat guy and asked if we could shoot — he said, ‘Shit, yeah, bring them in. Fuck it — let’s eat some steak.’”

Another shot — in which Malanga and Warhol stand coolly behind a group of tussling schoolyard children — was more conceptual. 

“In a way,” says Fink, “these guys represented for me not avant-garde but really arrière-garde. They were far behind the black revolution. So in the schoolyard, I thought I’d have the kids overthrow them. I told Andy and Gerard to walk around in fashion-y poses, and I yelled for the children to attack them. If there had been 150,000 kids, it would have been sort of like Battleship Potemkin, but there wasn’t — there were only 15. So my grand scheme of revolution was miniaturized. But still: I was pulling a fast one on them, in a way. And Andy never forgot me after that.”

In the 50 intervening years, Fink never realized that the photos hadn’t been released. 

“I was high all the time back then. And I wasn’t a careerist. So I didn’t think I needed to get them published. Then this year they turn up. And everybody goes: ‘Well, look at this shit.’ ”

The series will be published by Damiani in the winter of 2017.

(Photos, Larry Fink; via New York Magazine)

WORLD'S LARGEST PHOTO CREATED WITH THE WORLD'S LARGEST "CAMERA"

It is a fitting name for the world’s largest print photograph; The Great Picture. It’s a black and white panoramic print of Marine Corps Air Station El Toro, which is a decommissioned military outpost. It measures 111 feet wide by 32 feet high on seamless white muslin.

Made a decade ago in 2006 by six artists in an abandoned F-18 hangar in Irvine, California, not only did they create the world’s largest photo print, they created the world’s largest pinhole camera to produce it. By light-sealing the hangar, and using the light sensitive cloth, the building acted as the “camera” to take a panoramic shot of the base.

It originally produced as part of the Legacy Project, a photographic and historical record of the base before it was transformed into what is now the Orange County Great Park.

After producing the negative, 80 volunteers helped with the development of the print in custom trays the size of an Olympic-sized swimming pool. The Great Picture has been displayed in various across the country since 2007. Wonder where it will live?

(via ABC News)

THESE LOST PICS OF A YOUNG AUDREY HEPBURN SHOW SHE HAD "IT" EARLY ON

Audrey Hepburn was a 24-year-old waif (born this day, May 4, in 1929) who made a good impression in Hollywood and on the stage but had yet to solidify her fame. She had only had one major film role—in 1953’s Roman Holiday—when photographer Mark Shaw spent a day with her. Director Billy Wilder, and others worried that she was neither a sex goddess or the girl next door.

Shaw produced this spread for Life magazine (the People of its day) including these lost outtakes seen here. In it you can see she was focused on her workaday life. She got up early for work, went to the studio, got ready to film Sabrina, practiced ballet and got ready for another day of work. The day was a good subject for a photo essay, Life noted, 

“not because there is anything so remarkable about it but because whatever Audrey does, she looks pretty remarkable doing it.”

In the decades that followed the release of Sabrina, Hepburn has become one of the 20th century’s most iconic stars, just as Shaw predicted. At the beginning of the issue, he commented that she was a “monster” when it came to productivity and that the studio technicians who worked with her said that she would have a long and illustrious career. They told Shaw,

“We can tell when someone has got it.”

She had “it” for sure.

(T/Y Tad; Photos, Mark Shaw; via Time)

PHOTOGRAPHER PAYS HOMAGE TO RENAISSANCE PAINTERS USING AUTO MECHANIC MODELS

Photographer Freddy Fabris created these updated versions of famous Renaissance paintings after the idea came to him during a visit to a garage. He perfectly represents the distinctive style of great Renaissance master painters like Rembrandt & Leonardo daVinci in these reverent recreations. Talk about Renaissance men...

(Photos, Freddy Fabris; via Brightside)

DUO'S "COMPLIMENTS" SERIES MAKES FUN OF COUPLES PORTRAITS

Brooklyn designers Leta Sobierajski and Wade Jeffree, who also happen to be a couple wanted to explore their relationship in pictures, but with an odd twist, to say the least. They reinterpreted what they call “hilariously cringeworthy” couples portraits with a quirky touch, using their own pop aesthetic to create the ongoing Compliments series. Their website explains,

“Complements explores Leta and Wade’s relationship, as well as the universal strangeness of love, highlighting their individual talents that complement (and compliment!) each other.”

Some of the portraits seem to be inspired by famous portraits like, René Magritte‘s, The Lovers, above. You can follow them on Sobierajski and Jeffree’s Tumblr.

PHYLLIS GALEMBO'S FABULOUS "MASKE" IS BACK IN PRINT

My old pal, photographer Phyllis Galembohas traveled widely throughout Africa and Haiti. Her preferred subjects over the last few decades have been many participants in masquerades. In traditional African ceremonies, contemporary costume parties and carnivals those who use costume, body paint, and masks to create mythic characters have sat for her. They are colorful, intriguing and sometimes dark and forboding in nature, but these portraits of hers document the transformative powers and mystery of the mask.

Her Aperture book Maske is in back print and Galembo will speak about her work at a book signing this week in New York. Wednesday, March 16 at 6:30PM at the Aperture Gallery and Bookstore, 547 West 27th Street. See you there. I’l be the one in a mask in the back. If you’re not in NYC, you can get her book here.