+ all of the above

via A Photography Blog which also has an excellent interview with him.

Just finished watching Bomb It and I highly recommend it. This is an excerpt from the film with Kenor and Kode.

“There’s a tension that comes from not directing a person, that tension makes for good pictures.”

- Todd Hido (on portraiture)

Americansuburb X has an excellent interview with Todd Hido.

American Suburb X has a great interview with Lewis Baltz

Q. Nowadays most photographers seem to regard photography as the best way of recording a ‘real present’ – of course, this is part of the history of the photography. Do you think we need photographs to give us real information about our present today?

A. No, I don’t think we need that at all, any more; we already know, to the point of ennui, what the world looks like in photographs. Other than in very specialized circumstances, photography has been left behind as a descriptive medium. Of course this loss of utility renders it more available to an aesthetic reading. Since the beginning photography has insisted on its place among the fine arts, now it has arrived, though in ways and for reasons unsuspected by most of its partisans.

In becoming inutile – no longer content-driven – photography became self-reflexive, much as painting did from the time of Manet. Photographs no longer provoke a meditation upon external phenomena, but on the conditions of their own existence. Photography became Modernist at precisely the moment when Modernism faltered, and became commodified at the moment when the intellectual prestige of the commodity is at its lowest ebb. Poor photography. On the other hand, given the recent applications of technology photographs are now quite acceptable objects for the market.

Freshjive is taking their logo and name off all products, website, and promotional materials starting in 2010. This will certainly be interesting to see as one of my biggest problems with street brands is that while much of their clothing may be very good, there is inevitably some huge logo slapped all over it ruining the whole thing.

I don’t doubt that the move will be a successful one however I wonder if it represents the first in an industry wide sea change or will it be only successful for the early bird (a la Radiohead’s donation system of In Rainbows)

The company is still Freshjive. It’s just that none of our product will have any of our logos or even our name AT ALL. Not even in the labels. And after the turn of the year, no promotional material, nor our website will have any logos. It’s really invigorating to approach designing a line WITHOUT the constrictions of how the logo is gonna be placed or used on the garments.

via the Strange Attractor

via Every Day I’m Tumblin’

Tom Waits: The whole town is kind of like a folk song. It’s like public domain. You do have a hand in the building of it. It didn’t get built by one guy. This is what I envisioned, we all work together. Even in your house, the things you do to your house, well, someone will be living in it, and its what you did to it. And someone after them will be living in it. I get bothered by all the people you see every day that I’ll never see again. We’re surrounded by strangers. Millions and millions of people you see every day that are just like fish. They’re just extras in the movie starring you and you’re an extra in the movie starring them. It’s just peculiar. Then you’re really aware of it in a city ’cause there’s so many people and you’re just pushing through. You’re just like a sperm flipping your flagellum around, you know, trying to make your way through the city.

Beck: Who you know and whatever situations you find yourself in with whatever people—it’s all sort of arbitrary. There are an infinite amount of doors you could’ve opened.

Tom Waits: And walk right out and walk right into another door and start another life six blocks away.

via Fimoculous

A lot of the time I don’t like Mark Romanek or his work, other times I cannot stand him or it. Then there are still other times when I think he’s brilliant.

via Fresh Creation

I love seeing this guy’s work around the subway, and I love that all he works with is a blade. Check Poster Boy’s work out here, via The Wooster Collective

This makes me sick. Why not admit the gaffe, accept responsibility for the mistake and move on rather than inventing a new addition to the Newspeak dictionary? Gotcha Journalism? Please. I’m committing thoughtcrime on McCain and Palin right now.
via Steven Beelen

Discussing the Sothebys auction.
via Lost at E Minor

Photographer Jill Greenberg is a freelance photographer who was hired by The Atlantic to photograph Presidential hopeful John McCain. Greenberg has an iconic, Photoshopped style and creates vivid portraits of people and animals. It’s almost guaranteed you’ve seen her work in an advertisement somewhere, and if you ride the NYC Subway you are well acquainted with her Monkey Portraits. When photographing McCain however, Greenberg has created controversy by boasting about deliberately casting him in harsh light and also by denying him the photo-retouches which is the customary post-production for magazines.

“I left his eyes red and his skin looking bad … Some of my artwork has been pretty anti-Bush, so maybe it was somewhat irresponsible for [The Atlantic] to hire me.”

Apart from the Atlantic accepting and running with the Cover Shot (click to see), which I think is actually quite a good picture, Greenberg also took another few shots, the most notable of which involved a bloody shark’s jaws super-imposed on top, which is the picture you see below.

Without casting judgment on any of the parties involved, I think that this is only the beginning of a renewal of the debate of the role of Artists in politics. Remember the Dixie Chicks? And after seeing how the brawl over Bill Henson’s work was handled (Kevin Rudd thinks Henson’s work is revolting? So what?), I am a little fearful. However at the very least, and putting aside any moral incursions which may or may not have happened here, I’m glad there’s a debate going on. Especially since I happen to agree with Jill Greenberg’s opinion. This is game-changing, it’s guaranteed they’ll be talking about this for years. Jill Greenberg has cemented her position as political discontent and this picture will be referenced for many years to come. If it was hard taking photos of politicians before, it will be impossible now. We’ll be seeing it on Illegal Art soon enough, pending a court case of course.

Finally, watch the hysteria unfold at Fox as the Atlantic’s editor is put in the hot seat (no matter what your persuasion, alignment, leaning or inkling I think we can all agree that Fox gets it wrong, on purpose, every time). One interesting thing to come out of this interview however is that photo re-touching now appears to be an expected right. Much different from the Kate Winslet fiasco of yesteryear. Aaaah, simpler times.

Read more at Gawker and at Digital Journal (which also has a full gallery of all of the manipulated shots, including the one with the monkey and the you know what…)

Review
Interview Part 1
Interview Part 2
Interview Part 3

At the risk of firmly casting myself as a Aronofsky fanatic, here’s a short interview from the Venice Film Festival.
via /Film

warning, nsfw language.
via Juxtapoz

An interview with Emily Horn and Joey Comeau (of A Softer World fame) over at ComicMix