Raymond Pettibon
The work of Raymond Pettibon, the Los Angeles artist most famous for creating the logo of the punk band Black Flag, is now being celebrated with a new monograph ($150, Rizzoli).
Eugene Rabkin is the founder of stylezeitgeist.com. He has contributed articles on fashion and culture to The Business of Fashion, Vogue Russia, Buro247, the Haaretz Daily Newspaper, and other publications. He has taught critical writing and fashion writing courses at Parsons the New School for Design.
Deborah Turbeville, In Memoriam
Dear readers,
We have never shared an article that appeared in our print edition, but today is a specially dark day. The photographer Deborah Turbeville has passed away after succumbing to lung cancer. I initially approached Turbeville for a profile for our second volume two years ago. After, she became a dear friend. It is sad to see anyone go before their time, but especially her. Rest in peace, Deborah, wherever you may be.
The New Antwerp Shopping Guide
Last month I had the pleasure of visiting Antwerp, one of my favorite cities in Europe, for the N-th time. What keeps pulling me back, besides professional obligations, to this city that in Europe has an unjust reputation of a place that’s not worth visiting? Fashion, obviously, as well as a mix of medieval and…
Massive Attack V Adam Curtis
I’m at that age where concerts don’t impress me much, having seen everyone I have wanted to see a few times over. But when by chance I saw a Facebook post about Massive Attack, whom I have never seen play, I bought a ticket right away. I did not realize that it’s not a straightforward concert. What I witnessed was something infinitely better. Massive Attack has teamed up with the documentary filmmaker Adam Curtis to create a performance that will undoubtedly be etched in the minds of those who witnessed it for years to come. It was a combination of film and music, not exactly a documentary and not exactly a concert, but flawlessly executed fusion of image and sound.
Holy Bible
“…and every living substance that I have made will I destroy from off the face of the earth.” Genesis {7:4}
History of human conflict is a history of religious conflict. Pick up any history textbook and you will be benumbed by death and atrocities that humans have inflicted (and continue to inflict) on each other in the name of religion.
Holy Bible, by Adam Broomberg and Oliver Chanarin (MACK, $80) literally fuses the histories of violence and religion together. The tome itself is a direct copy of the King James bible. Its text, however, is carefully overlayed with images from The Archive of Modern Conflict, an entity that collects photos whose subject is self-explanatory and that purposefully shrouds itself in mystery.
A Few Words With: Kaat Debo, Director of MoMu
During my visit to Antwerp I got to sit down with Kaat Debo, the director of Antwerp’s fashion museum, MoMu, to talk about her work. Below is an excerpt from our conversation.
Mario Sorrenti: Draw Blood For Proof
The minutia of life can be a waste of time or the most fascinating thing about it. The writer Saul Bellow once said that he finds a good footnote more interesting than the text itself. And if you know whom to follow on Instagram you can spare yourself from selfies and food pictures and behold some captivating ephemera instead. One cannot always be grandiose – it’s tiring.
The new Steidldangin book on the photographer Mario Sorrenti is just the kind of thing if you are in the minutia camp. He’s done enough grandiosity – Calvin Klein campaigns, photos in every imaginable fashion magazine, and so on. But this volume is dedicated to something entirely different – a series of scraps of Sorrenti’s life rendered in visual form.
Outtakes: The Zone, StyleZeitgeist Volume 4
I wanted to share some photos from the editorial titled the Zone that we shot for Volume 4 of the print magazine, out now. I had the idea of doing something on Tarkovsky’s iconic 1979 film Stalker for quite a while. The problem was finding a location that would even remotely resemble anything like the phantasmagoria of the abandoned hydro power plant that Tarkovsky used for the film’s setting. Ironically, it took a natural disaster that has shaken up New York to provide one. A few days after Hurricane Sandy we were at Breezy Point, the Queens neighborhood that was destroyed by fire.
A Few Words With: Gerhard Steidl
One quiet morning in New York I met with the legendary German publisher Gerhard Steidl in the lobby of the Mercer Hotel in SoHo. Steidl is the last of the Mohicans in the world of print – a fiercely independent publisher who has maintained complete control and ownership of his house for over forty years. His art and photo books with the likes of Robert Frank and Bruce Davidson are revered as the best in the business. He also publishes literature in German, including books by the Nobel prize winners Günter Grass and Halldór Laxness.
Volume 4 Launch at Gallery Aesthete
I would like to share with you some photos from the last week’s launch part at Gallery Aesthete in Chicago.
The space was gorgeous, the people friendly, and the music good. I loved the city and hope to be back soon.