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.

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Holy Bible

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“…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.

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Mario Sorrenti: Draw Blood For Proof

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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.

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Outtakes: The Zone, StyleZeitgeist Volume 4

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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.

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A Few Words With: Gerhard Steidl

Culture, Features/Op-EdLeave a comment

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.

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Abasi Rosborough

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One afternoon a few months ago I visited my good friend Costas at his fabric and garment dyeing studio in Manhattan. There I met two young gentlemen who were browsing a copy of StyleZeitgeist magazine.

They introduced themselves as Abdul Abasi and Greg Rosborough. They were in the process of developing their second collection under the name Abasi Rosborough, and Colibri was dyeing some Irish linen for them. Abdul and Greg had one blazer with them from their first, Fall/Winter 2013, collection with them (the collection was exclusively picked up by Isetan in Tokyo).

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Boris Bidjan Saberi Book – II

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When Saberi approached me to write an essay for his monograph last year, I felt not only honored but also enthusiastic.

There is nothing like writing that gives me an opportunity to systematize and define what I think about someone’s work. This is no mean task since often what we like about creative work is ineffable.

The book is now out on the roster of the Italian publisher Atlante and is edited by Fabriano Fabbri, professor of art history at University of Bologna who has lately been delving into fashion design.

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Boris Bidjan Saberi x Munoz Vrandecic

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When Boris Bidjan Saberi was starting out as a designer, having settled in Barcelona, he came across the work of the Chilean artisan Miguel Munoz Wilson, the designer behind the Barcelona-based label Munoz Vrandecic. Saberi was smitten. He approached MV about collaborating, but it did not work out.

Ever persevering, Saberi came back years later with another offer that Vrandecic could not resist – just one pair of boots, no more, no less, designed and made together. I asked Saberi and Munoz about how this collaboration came about.