It’s OK to be gross – that’s the message that photographer Rebecca Storm wanted to tell us last month with her ASMR-inspired series. Minced meat on vaginas, rotten vegetables, earrings pierced through armpit hair. She told us: “I like working with visceral, garish colours and textures because they simultaneously repulse and intrigue, a phenomenon that operates in the same way as synaesthesia – a confusion of the senses. Some of the most disgusting textures and substances can actually be quite decadent and beautiful."
The first in this two-part #FollowFriday celebrating the dynamism of this year’s Dazed 100, in particular, the photographers shaping the way we will see 2016. Part two was detailed here.
Turning her lens on Russia, Yulia Spiridonova’s images explore an ever-growing conservatism when it comes to sex and the body. “My friends used to joke that in these photos even the most beautiful girls are portrayed in a way that it’s impossible to feel aroused. In photography I’ve always been drawn to the coldness of the perfect sculptural form which contradicts the natural feeling of pleasure and desire,” she told us about the images which capture varying levels of intimacy in today’s generation.
Fried eggs on nipples, kittens on vaginas and aubergines on cocks – it’s all getting a bit ridiculous on Instagram isn’t it? The beauty of the body is being censored by our emoji. While it feels like we’re not really moving forward with any real change in the debate over censorship and social media, London-based photographer Steph Wilson gave the topic a fresh take with this tongue-in-cheek photo shoot, commissioned by Dazed.
Photography Stephanie Wilson, styling Tara Greville, art Laura Little, makeup Holly Sillius, hair Yusuke Morioka
The awkwardness of being a teen girl is something most of us went through individually, but as 20-somethings are able to look back universally. Realising it wasn’t all that bad that you didn’t look like an IRL Sofia Coppola character, photographer Constance McDonald shot her friends in her hometown of New Zealand. “My particular interest lies in an examination of the intricacies of the longing adolescent girl: sexual longing, longing for the future and nostalgic longing. The single female figure is often photographed within enclosed domestic spaces, such as her bedroom; the room and house as womb, protective yet suffocating”, she explained.
“Stories are always getting lost and the kind of work I do is seen by an infinitesimally small audience in the large scale of things. The number of people that read literary novels is always going to be tiny compared to people that read tabloid newspapers, but that doesn’t mean it doesn’t have value.” That was just one key piece of advice Alec Soth gave us when we hit him up for tips on how to tell stories through photography.
Alexander McQueen, Kate Moss, Leigh Bowery, Courtney Love, Bobby Gillespie, Björk, Pulp, Steven Meisel, all in the same club. Where were you? Perhaps not there, but this new book focusing on London alternative space Sign of the Times, published by Steve Terry’s Wildlife Press will help you relive the heady days and nights that you missed out on.
Fiona Cartledge's Sign of the TimesCourtesy of Steve Terry and Wildlife Press
There’s something amazing about incredible images of a corner of a subculture that spend three decades largely unseen by anyone. Something even more amazing about them landing in our inbox. Book dealer Arthur Fournier launched a publication at LA’s Art Book Fair last month with an homage to the city’s hardcore scene – and allowed us to unearth some of the gems on Dazed.
Curator and Girls Only NYC founder Antonia Marsh collected a series of photographs that celebrate the beauty of being in-between the sheets for her last show Pillow Talk. Featuring work from Ada Hamza, Rebekah Campbell, Scarlett Carlos Clarke and Sandy Kim, to name a few, she told us (from her own bed): "They are such personal, individualised spaces and yet they mean pretty similar things to each of us. I was talking to one of the photographers in the show, Marcel Castenmiller, about this exact subject, and he used the metaphor of the bed being like an island, a safe space. We are totally stripped down and ourselves, and when you invite another person to share this space with you it becomes even more intensely intimate."
Photographer Yulia Zinshtein teamed up with fellow creatives, and good friends, Maya Fuhr, Valerie Kamen and Rachel Zaretsky for a girly road trip that resulted in a dreamy series that channeled the complexities of cultural identity, and finding a home away from home.
