Martine Franck (April 2, 1938 – August 16, 2012) - Photographer

FRANCE. Hauts de Seine. Meudon. 1991.


"A photograph isn't necessarily a lie, but nor is it the truth.
 It's more of a fleeting, subjective impression.

 What I most like about photography is the moment that you can't anticipate: you have to be constantly watching for it, ready to welcome the unexpected."



SWITZERLAND. Basel. Carnival. 1977.

FRANCE. Paris. Opéra Garnier. The "Petits Rats" of the Paris Opera in one of the dressing rooms. 1979.

USA. New York City. Veterans' parade, commemorating the armistice. November 11th, 1974. 


courtesy of Magnum Photos

BLUE BOOK ONE: DREAMHOUSE

"Dreamhouse consists of two high-quality photobooks and two tapes in a lovely wooden case. One book juxtaposes architectural details of men's bodies with architectural details of buildings and the other book juxtaposes architectural details of women's bodies with architectural details of buildings.
Porn, basically. For people who are sexually attracted to architecture.


Photographers featured in Dreamhouse are:
Adam Revington
Alejandra Vaculi
Alice LaComte
Andrew Schroer
Anton Novoselov
ar_graff
Artem Kolesnikov
Avard Woolaver
Barry Falk
black opal 2005
Blackstation
Catherine Mendez
Cedric Yon
Chris Friel
CM Goodenbury
David Olsson
Denis Cherim
Delay Tactics
Diane Powers
Dimas Veodovato
Douwe Dijkstra
Ece Bal
Eiko Weishaupt
Gabriel Green
Gary Poulton
Heitor Magno
Jacob Price
Jan Zimmerman
John Lamont
Jonathan Kos-Read
Juan D Quintero
Kaometet
Katie Bauer
Kenny Lok
Krystian Kujda
Larrend Lacuesta
Laurence Philomene Oliver
Louise Butterworth
Lena U
Luca Norbiato
Malte Wandel
Maria Luisa Corapi
Mariana Castro
Marquitos Sanabria
Maykel Lima
Melanie K
Michael Scholz
Minno Ramirez Terron
Miroslava Brooks
Natalie Kirk
orinoko42
Patrick Warner
Philippe Conquet
Rebecca Risjdijk
RS Nisio
Silvia Grav
Silvia Sani
Sumyko
Tim Schreier
tekktoo
Yves Castellano
The music contained on the tapes is a "soundtrack" of sorts. One tape is a mix of Blue Tapes artists Whitney George, Guzzlemug, Prayer and We are Bright & Broken. The other tape is a collage piece - called Sleeping in Houses - themed on architecture, memory and dreams, by Thank You, Merciless Onlookers."

(the individual books are also available to buy separately from Blurb)

Fuck Pretty



+++ FUCK PRETTY Opening Reception +++
Actress Angela Featherstoneʼs first curated show, Fuck Pretty, is a collection of photographs by world-renowned and unknown women artists, whose work moves and inspires her. There are images from contemporary photographers Catherine Opie, Susan Meiselas, Tierney Gearon and equally important to the curator, an array of emerging artists, some of whose work the curator is proud to be showing for the very first time. The exhibit is accompanied by a musical score created by film composer Claudia Sarne (Book of Eli). The opening reception will be sponsored by Solomon Tournour, Co- producers of Rene Hand Crafted Alambic Rum and Svedka Vodka.
Artists: Anonymous, Sarah Baley, Sally Davies, Tierney Gearon, Sandy Gray, Naomi HarrisHana, JakrlovaSharon, Johnson-TennantSiri KaurGillian, LaubKristina, LoggiaLauren, Marsolier, Mary McCartney, Susan Meiselas, Catherine Opie, Alison Van Pelt, Cydney Puro, Marjorie Salvaterra, Jessica Shokria, Deanna Templeton
Exhibition: July 21, 2011 – August 20, 2011 Gallery Hours: 11-6, Tuesday – Saturday   RSVP: 310-315-9506

every fruit has its secret



"There never was any standing aloft and unfolded on a bough
Like other flowers, in a revelation of petals ;
Silver-pink peach, venetian green glass of medlars and sorb-apples,
Shallow wine-cups on short, bulging stems
Openly pledging heaven :
Here’s to the thorn in flower ! Here is to Utterance !
The brave, adventurous rosaceæ."





"Folded upon itself, and secret unutterable,
And milky-sapped, sap that curdles milk and makes ricotta,
Sap that smells strange on your fingers, that even goats won’t taste it;
Folded upon itself, enclosed like any Mohammedan woman,
Its nakedness all within-walls, its flowering forever unseen,
One small way of access only, and this close-curtained from the light;
Fig, fruit of the female mystery, covert and inward,
Mediterranean fruit, with your covert nakedness,
Where everything happens invisible, flowering and fertilization, and fruiting
In the inwardness of your you, that eye will never see
Till it’s finished, and you’re over-ripe, and you burst to give up your ghost."


Text by, D.H. Lawrence - Figs and photography by, Diane Powers.

"the beauty of all this uncertainty"


"It might take us a lifetime to find out what it is we need to say. Most of us fall into where our feelings are headed while we're quite young. But the beauty of all this uncertainty would be that in the process of exhausting all the possibilities, we might actually stumble unconsciously into the recognition of something that's useful to us, that speaks to a deep need within ourselves. At the same time, I like to think that in order for any of us to really do anything new, we can't know exactly what it is we are doing."- Emmet Gowin

deviantART journal entry: Fri. Dec. 26, 2008.
Photography by, Emmet Gowin.


Resurrection of Venus - Wingate Paine



I was born in Los Angeles during 1966. It was this time photographer Wingate Paine published his boudoir book of muses 'Mirror of Venus.' It's been noted that Paine burned and destroyed all the negatives after the publication. It has also been said that the models were all friends and lovers.

I held little charm with my biological parents at this time, two mythological persons I call the Bios. You see, after three months with me they left me with the nuns where I was quickly claimed by a lovely Dutch couple who showed me the world so that the Bios could go on with their life. All that's known of them barely fill page in a profile of feedings and sleep habits. It's been written that he was a poet and she a clerk. He was dark and small in stature. She was tall with long red hair and big blue eyes. So why do I think of the Bios at a time like this? I'll get to that.

Almost forty three years later Wingate Paine's images of muses were celebrated once again in a lovely little vintage clothing store called Resurrection on Melrose Avenue in West Hollywood last month. Designs by Katy Rodriguez, walls adorn by the women of Wingate Paine. The images captured theses beauties in intimate moments that give you that feeling of a time filled with morning luminosity after the surrender when the mood is light and warm. A time between the purity of the 1950's and the sexual revolution of the 1960's. Rodriguez designed a collection inspired by this celebration of female openness and femininity and is quoted in saying, " The book is “fashion without clothes,” whose designs have a lot of Paine’s girlishness to them." The collection was donated from private collectors. The exhibit ran from May 21 to June 15 this year under the title "Venus Revisited."






Viewing and admiring the frivolity of these moments of women playfully running nude on the beach, laughing in the bath and posing within clean white sheets I began to speculate the relationship of the Bios. Was she the muse of his creativity? Did he destroy the remnants of words as he blatantly threw me away? Did she in fact survive the artist muse relationship? My entire existence in fact based on question and query, never to be answered. However, not worth tormenting oneself. I now posses a sense of romanticism when it comes to the Bios. Maybe he wrote of a smile and pleasant afternoon that seized him with a passion to burn all that was lost.




"Wingate Paine, 1915 – 1987, was a member of a Mayflower New England family with ties to law, banking and the ministry. He broke from those traditions and became a Marine captain, connoisseur of French wine, devotee of Hatha-Yoga and finally a gifted photographer and filmmaker. Described as his “visual valentine to feminine beauty,” Paine’s series of female nudes were published in his 1967 book Mirror of Venus. This 1960s classic was printed in ten editions and features text written by Federico Fellini and Françoise Sagan. Paine later abandoned photography for sculpture. Mirror of Venus represents the culmination of his photographic career."



Written for Imeem August 23, 2009.
Photography by Wingate Paine.

Cinderella




"You always read about it:
the plumber with the twelve children
who wins the Irish Sweepstakes.
From toilets to riches.
That story.

Or the nursemaid,
some luscious sweet from Denmark
who captures the oldest son's heart.
from diapers to Dior.
That story.

Or a milkman who serves the wealthy,
eggs, cream, butter, yogurt, milk,
the white truck like an ambulance
who goes into real estate
and makes a pile.
From homogenized to martinis at lunch.

Or the charwoman
who is on the bus when it cracks up
and collects enough from the insurance.
From mops to Bonwit Teller.
That story.






Once
the wife of a rich man was on her deathbed
and she said to her daughter Cinderella:
Be devout. Be good. Then I will smile
down from heaven in the seam of a cloud.
The man took another wife who had
two daughters, pretty enough
but with hearts like blackjacks.
Cinderella was their maid.
She slept on the sooty hearth each night
and walked around looking like Al Jolson.
Her father brought presents home from town,
jewels and gowns for the other women
but the twig of a tree for Cinderella.
She planted that twig on her mother's grave
and it grew to a tree where a white dove sat.
Whenever she wished for anything the dove
would drop it like an egg upon the ground.
The bird is important, my dears, so heed him.

Next came the ball, as you all know.
It was a marriage market.
The prince was looking for a wife.
All but Cinderella were preparing
and gussying up for the event.
Cinderella begged to go too.
Her stepmother threw a dish of lentils
into the cinders and said: Pick them
up in an hour and you shall go.
The white dove brought all his friends;
all the warm wings of the fatherland came,
and picked up the lentils in a jiffy.
No, Cinderella, said the stepmother,
you have no clothes and cannot dance.
That's the way with stepmothers.

Cinderella went to the tree at the grave
and cried forth like a gospel singer:
Mama! Mama! My turtledove,
send me to the prince's ball!
The bird dropped down a golden dress
and delicate little slippers.
Rather a large package for a simple bird.
So she went. Which is no surprise.
Her stepmother and sisters didn't
recognize her without her cinder face
and the prince took her hand on the spot
and danced with no other the whole day.

As nightfall came she thought she'd better
get home. The prince walked her home
and she disappeared into the pigeon house
and although the prince took an axe and broke
it open she was gone. Back to her cinders.
These events repeated themselves for three days.
However on the third day the prince
covered the palace steps with cobbler's wax
and Cinderella's gold shoe stuck upon it.
Now he would find whom the shoe fit
and find his strange dancing girl for keeps.
He went to their house and the two sisters
were delighted because they had lovely feet.
The eldest went into a room to try the slipper on
but her big toe got in the way so she simply
sliced it off and put on the slipper.
The prince rode away with her until the white dove
told him to look at the blood pouring forth.
That is the way with amputations.
They just don't heal up like a wish.
The other sister cut off her heel
but the blood told as blood will.
The prince was getting tired.
He began to feel like a shoe salesman.
But he gave it one last try.
This time Cinderella fit into the shoe
like a love letter into its envelope.

At the wedding ceremony
the two sisters came to curry favor
and the white dove pecked their eyes out.
Two hollow spots were left
like soup spoons.

Cinderella and the prince
lived, they say, happily ever after,
like two dolls in a museum case
never bothered by diapers or dust,
never arguing over the timing of an egg,
never telling the same story twice,
never getting a middle-aged spread,
their darling smiles pasted on for eternity.
Regular Bobbsey Twins.
That story."

Anne Sexton





Photography by, Tim Walker.
Originally posted for Imeem.