Monday, April 26, 2010

What I'm Reading: Fuentes on Seberg

I just finished reading Diana, The Goddess Who Hunts Alone by Carlos Fuentes. 
Early in the novel, it becomes apparent that it's a roman a clef about Fuentes' brief affair with Jean Seberg.

 It's an uncompromising book, brutal at times. It's disturbing, and also invasive - although doubtless the author would point out that it's a work of fiction; also that the real-life person on which it is based is long dead and can no longer be hurt. The former claim doesn't fully hold up - when every other factual detail is unchanged except for names, then why should we doubt the details of 'Diana's' fruit-perfumed sex organs,  her sexual proclivities?
Yet Fuentes earns the right to his material after all. He earns it through the suffering it caused him in the first place. He earns it because it affected him so deeply that he had to purge it many years later, perhaps attempt to understand it through his art. It's a romantic view of creativity, but I doubt he had a choice.

It's an artful book as well, one that offers a brilliantly drawn, subtle portrait of its protagonist. Fuentes' account is generous in its portrayal of Seberg's intelligence, and manages to capture something of the elusive nature of her personal magnetism, beyond mere physicality - the type of woman 'you can't help, change or leave.'

Also, as a side-note, a woman who wore one of the two great, iconic haircuts in all of cinema - Louise Brooks having worn the other.

Sky Blue Sky Part 2

Heading into Death Valley

Sunday, April 25, 2010

The Return of the Space Cowboy.

Jamiroquai, with his drummer (name unknown).


An alternate version of yesterday's shot. It doesn't work because of where J's drummer is standing, immediately behind him. But I'm always amused by this one, by the expression on J's face, the ease with which he's vaulting around the lamppost...


Friday, April 23, 2010

The Cat In The Hat.

Jamiroquai, NYC 1995.

I just converted a bunch of slides, 15-20 years old,  to digital files. This is one of a series I shot after interviewing Jay Kay, aka Jamiroquai. More to follow...

Thursday, April 22, 2010

Too Fast to Live, Too Young To Die



Photo: Chris Jackson/Getty Images

The funeral of Malcom McLaren, impresario, whose accomplishments were much more than administrating the birth of punk, managing The Sex Pistols. "Too Fast To Live, Too Young To Die' was the name of the fashion shop he started with Vivienne Westwood. Later, with the emergence of punk, the shop was simply renamed - 'Sex.'

Anarchy in a UK hearst.                            Photo: Getty Images


Thursday, April 15, 2010

Broken Bells

From the SXSW essay that ran in Dossier Journal. Find it here:

http://dossierjournal.com/etcetera/architecture-and-morality-a-sxsw-photo-essay-by-john-d/

Friday, April 2, 2010

Lindbergh.


One of my very favorite fashion shots ever: Mathilde, by Peter Lindbergh.
(Note: the reproduction quality here doesn't do it full justice)

Lindbergh may be my favorite fashion photographer, most notably his work from the early '90s for Liz Tilberis at Harper's Bazaar.