ARTEROTICA vol. 04 featuring MODEL/ ARTIST/ FRIEND SIDNEY ETIENNE

I had two events to attend (almost at the same time) on October 15th. This was also the first day of cold weather in NYC topped with winds and rain. The first event I attended was the Arterotica vol. 04. The were featuring work from one of my friends, artist/ model Sidney Etienne.

It was located at this lilttle bar/ lounge in Soho called Madame X. I was got there early so i could really see the art before it venue got too crowded. It was the perfect location for an event like this. Ithe decor and atmospher was so sexy. I was waiting for scantily clad hoes to pop out ready to make the patrons "happy." lol. I made my way in through the place in search of my friend's work.
I was so impressed with his selection of images. I stared at his photographs of nude females on his roof top being sprayed with water. Some of the images looked like they were being pee'd on. LOL, Rkelly woulda especially enjoyed these particular photographs.

other artist featured included:

fashion photographer: Marc Baptiste

model:  Ibrahim Yaqut

painter: Jonathan Herbert

I stayed for about an hour before heading uptown to Harlem for the Harlem Fashion Row Event. I ended roaming the streets of harlem in the cold and rain for an hour lost before i found the venue. I arrived to a packed lobby full of angry black fashionistas because the event was over capacity and they weren't letting anyone in. /the event featured two designers i was really looking forward to seeing, my friend Epperson from Project Runway and the amazing visionary Jose Duran. I mingled a few models and friends and had dinner my friend/ model Rumando Kelley before heading home calling it a night. Arterotic was definitely the high point of my night and I was glad I attended.

THE RETURN OF THE REAL MAN featuring COURTNEY STEELE

I read this article in some magazine ( i can't remember at this moment where) they talked to American Vogue's Editor-in-Chief, Anna Wintour about the men's shows. Through the article, she brought to my attention that today's men's fashion alienates the grown man who can actually afford these high-end designer duds. Most grown men are not "European Cut." Many of them workout at gyms and have personal trainers so they can look like their ideal version of themselves.  I don't think men look at these young guys stomping down runways  in the latest designer duds feeling like those designers made those clothes with him in mind. I don't think grown men look at fashion advertising and see those young guys and relate to the products or find the fashion relevant to their lifestyle.

Women have always been attracted to older, stable men. 14 year old girls want to be with  slightly older guys because they have cars or access to one, and they can drive. Women in their 20's start looking for security and want to be with men who make them feel safe.... physically, mentally, and financially. The typical male model today looks like their brothers and his slacker friends who sit on the couch, eating snacks, playing video games, and smoking weed all day.

Young boys can't wait to "grow up" to be hairy with facial hair and have a masculine presence with big muscles. I remember drawing on a mustache and beard and putting on my grand-daddy's size 13 shoes and pretending i was a man.

I met actor/model Courtney Steele of 301 Model Mgmt in Miami  when he first arrived to NY this summer. He definitely isn't a 19 year old newbie on the scene. He is a man- educated, sexy, and strong. I have been inspired by the kind of man I grew up wanting to be. He is the embodiment of everything i wanted to look like when i was a little dude in Memphis.

I have also noticed guys with more masculine and mature looks like David Gandy are booking the major campaigns again. I had to venture out on my own to find this type of guy because  the agencies are continuously pushing the young boys in their late teens/ early 20's. Although he worked steadily in Miami, he found it damn near impossible to get agency representation here in New York mostly because he looks too mature.

Courtney Steele @ 301 Model Mgmt. - Miami / Base Model Mgmt. - Capetown

Courtney stopped by yesterday to say goodbye before heading to Capetown, South Africa. The above images are from a quick shoot we did while he was here.  It sucks that he has to go to South Africa because there is a greater demand for the "real man" type over there. Maybe one day the American fashion industry will return to catering to people's fantasies .... time will tell.

THIS IS WHY I LOVE FASHION.....

Just when I thought fashion was about to bore me to death, something amazing happens. Check out Alexander McQueen's 2010 Spring/ Summer collection. The fashion show was amazing. I wish American designers were allowed to create extravaganzas like this one.

CRASH!

One of my hard drives crashed last week and i lost most of the work i shot from january to now. I cannot afford the cost to retrieve  the information lost so I am forced to just start over. My creative mind is in full swing ....I'm ready to start fresh. This might be a good thing.....

R.I.P - IRVING PENN

Irving Penn was an amazing photographer whose legacy will live through his work.

photographer - Richard Avedon (r.i.p)

supermodel Gisele

Text Via NY Times:
Irving Penn, one of the 20th century’s most prolific and influential photographers of fashion and the famous, whose signature blend of classical elegance and cool minimalism was recognizable to magazine readers and museumgoers worldwide, died Wednesday morning at his home in Manhattan. He was 92.



His death was announced by Peter MacGill, his friend and representative.

Mr. Penn’s talent for picturing his subjects with compositional clarity and economy earned him the widespread admiration of readers of Vogue during his long association with the magazine, beginning in 1943. It also brought him recognition in the art world; his photographs have been exhibited in museums and galleries and are prized by collectors.

His long career at Vogue spanned a number of radical transformations in fashion and its depiction, but his style remained remarkably constant. Imbued with calm and decorum, his photographs often seemed intent on defying fashion. His models and portrait subjects were never seen leaping or running or turning themselves into blurs. Even the rough-and-ready members of the Hell’s Angels motorcycle gang, photographed in San Francisco in 1967, were transformed within the quieting frame of his studio camera into the graphic equivalent of a Greek frieze.

Instead of spontaneity, Mr. Penn provided the illusion of a seance, his gaze precisely describing the profile of a Balenciaga coat or of a Moroccan jalaba in a way that could almost mesmerize the viewer. Nothing escaped the edges of his photographs unless he commanded it. Except for a series of close-up portraits that cut his subjects’ heads off at the forehead, and another, stranger suite of overripe nudes, his subjects were usually shown whole, apparently enjoying a splendid isolation from the real world.

He was probably most famous for photographing Parisian fashion models and the world’s great cultural figures, but he seemed equally at home photographing Peruvian peasants or bunion pads. Merry Foresta, co-organizer of a 1990 retrospective of his work at the National Museum of American Art, wrote that his pictures exhibited “the control of an art director fused with the process of an artist.”

A courtly man whose gentle demeanor masked an intense perfectionism, Mr. Penn adopted the pose of a humble craftsman while helping to shape a field known for putting on airs. Although schooled in painting and design, he chose to define himself as a photographer, scraping his early canvases of paint so that they might serve a more useful life as backdrops to his pictures.

He was also a refined conversationalist and a devoted husband and friend. His marriage to Lisa Fonssagrives, a beautiful model, artist and his sometime collaborator, lasted 42 years, ending with her death at the age of 80 in 1992. Mr. Penn’s photographs of Ms. Fonssagrives not only captured a slim woman of lofty sophistication and radiant good health; they also set the esthetic standard for the elegant fashion photography of the 1940s and ’50s.

Ms. Fonssagrives became a sculptor after her modeling career ended. In 1994, Mr. Penn and their son, Tom, a metal designer, arranged the printing of a book that reproduced his wife’s sculpture, prints and drawings. In addition to his son, Mr. Penn is survived by his stepdaughter, Mia Fonssagrives Solow, a sculptor and jewelry designer; his younger brother, Arthur, the well-known director of such films as “Bonnie and Clyde,” and eight grandchildren.

Mr. Penn had the good fortune of working for and collaborating with two of the 20th century’s most inventive and influential magazine art directors, Alexey Brodovitch and Alexander Liberman. He studied with Mr. Brodovitch in Philadelphia as a young man and came to New York in 1937 as his unpaid design assistant at Harper’s Bazaar, the most provocative fashion magazine of the day. But it was under Mr. Liberman, at Vogue, that Mr. Penn forged his career as a photographer.

I SHOT TAIMAK FOR TVONE'S LIFE AFTER

Taimak was only 19 years old when he appeared in the cult movie Barry Gordy's The Last Dragon. Soon after he was spening time with celebrities like Janet Jackson and destined for stardom. What happened to this young phenom? See how he dealt with the pressures of overnight stardom. I shot the image they used for the promo poster for the show.
Check out air times - www.tvoneonline.com

My New York Fashion Week Spring/Summer 2010

This year for New York fashion week I had planned on using my vacation time to go home. Finances kept me here in Nyc. :(. Since I moved to New York in the fall of '06, the fashion scene hasn't really excited me. Long gone are the days of anticipating the shows of exciting designers like Todd Oldham, Byron Lars, and Isaac Mizrahi who's star-studded presentations were as inspiring and the clothes. Now the presentation are bland, the clothes are forgettable, and the models are nothing more than skinny clotheshangers. It seems like fashion shows have become nothing more than a backdrop location for paparazzi to snap shots of celebrities looking fabulous.

I kicked off fashion week by running into legendary photographer Patrick Demarchier on 6th and 48th street. I almost died... I was speechless. Me and my friend Jason Danza went to Times Square go see the film The September Issue. It's a documentary about the behind the scenes of the Septenber 2007 issue of Vogue magazine. It was actually pretty good.


me and Jason Danza in Times Square
I cheered from the sidelines as my friend Brandon Parker @ Ford, stomped it out at the Elie Tahari spring 2010 fashion show. This was extra special because everyone was saying that Brandon was too big for runway and he'd never get the chance to do shows at NY fashion week. I'm so proud for him. Yeah he shut them haters up, hahahaha:)


Brandon Parker and Pierre Woods @ the Elie Tahari Spring 2010 show

Another friend and model Pierre Woods @ NY Models also walked for Elie Tahari, invited me to watch him walk in the Loris Diron spring 2010 show. It was in some building on 18th street. Early that morning I tore one of my contact lenses and accidently dropped the other one down the drain. I had to wear my old "Malcolm X" glasses from college. I had fun mainly because I was with a friend.




Pierre Woods @ the Loris Diron Spring 2010 show




Pierre with actor/ rapper Ice - T. Me and Pierre catching the train back to his place
The highlight was seeing porn star Ron Geremy and Rapper Ice-T, lol. After the show, we had lunch and went back to his condo in New Jersey and chilled with his fiancee , Becky - who is cool as hell in a Gweneth Paltrow - kinda way. They gave me Moet champagne and after 2 glasses I passed-out. lol.


We chillin drinking champagne .... and me passed out. I don't handle alcohol well thats why I usually don't drink

Overall this has been the most eventful NY Fashion Week i have ever had. Maybe in the future when i am more established as a photographer I will be more in the trenches of the NY fashion scene.

CHANGE.....

Its real easy to get images that the industry will accept when the model is already validated by the industry with representation, tearsheets, editorials and major campaigns. Clothes with designer labels attached to them also help make images get the thumbs up in the business. It is more of a challenge to work with new talent who hasn't received the seal of approval from the fashion powers that be. I do that with the models I have selected for my work. I have worked with unsigned (at the time) models like Brian Peters, Andre Douglas, Brandon Parker, Joseph/ Laurence McCrea, Gene Grady, Geremy Alexander, Christian Dubosse and so many other because I truly believe in their potential to be forerunners helping me redefining black man's image in this industry to be more than a one dimensional hip hop caricature.
I dressed them ( and undressed them) and put them in the same circumstances their leading white counter parts so that the fashion industry can see black men are strong enough and capable of representing a relevant fashion vision.


Given the opportunity to choose from models from an agency board, I chose guys like Pierre Woods, Darrell Walden Jr., Wendell Lissimore, Art Stroman, Marcus LLoyd, Lamar James, Lawrence Annunziata, and so many men of color because no one else was choosing them. Their images weren't as strong as the white boys and were dated. They were going to castings with the same pictures they had from when they first signed with their agencies. Some even found it difficult to get a photo test because most photographers felt they had enough black guys in their portfolio. i wanted my collaboration with the black guys to show they could do more than just commercial and urban shit. I wanted to show that they could do the same type of work that set these white guys up for prestigious and lasting careers.



AS a black fashion photographer, I don't think people realize how much pressure we are under to NOT work with black models. The industry is constantly telling us that black models are NOT fashion and that they are commercial and to focus on working with the mostly white ones if we want credibility and prestige. I have constantly been pressured to conform to this idea. If I had listened, there would be no Brian Peters, Andre Douglas, Christian ect because I would have never worked with them. I never believed in the idea that same = change. If you want to see opportunities swing in your favor you haveta take some responsibility and make steps toward making that happening.



I recall shooting Seandon Robertson @ Boss models whose portfolio contained mostly pictures of him wearing baggy jeans, hair braided to the back, and mean mugging the camera. I wanted to show a totally different side of him and focused on giving him images that showed him with a more fashiony edge. The agents weren't very happy with the images I shot of him because felt they could do nothing with them since they were only interested in marketing him as an urban model. According to them they felt that my work was too stylized and made Seandon look "soft" and "gay." I wanted to show that Seandon could do more than be a "nigga with braids." I know that my images changed Seandon's view of himself and the way clients saw him.



When Uptown Magazine was doing a feature on Pierre Woods and was looking for a photographer to shoot it. They were considering using a prominent white photographer that Pierre had worked with in the past. The pictures with this photographer were some of the worst work Pierre had done. Pierre saw this as an opportunity to suggest me since the work I had done with him portrayed him in the best light. Pierre then round up Polo stylist Kelli Browning and Randal Jacobs and makeup artist Crystal Clark to create some hot editorial images for this feature. I remember Kelli commented that this was her first time working with this many black people on a project. I totally applaud the effort Pierre made to pull up other talented black people who really could use the opportunity to show what they could do. I wish more black models would use their opportunities to help bring other deserving talents (black and white) through the door.

Although I have conscientiously made definite efforts toward change with some positive results, mine are baby steps. Its gonna take the models reaching out and helping each other instead of fighting each other for that "token" spot. The photographers, fashion stylist, muas, and hair dressers are gonna haveta start opening the door wider so more black talents can take advantage of opportunities. Its definitely gonna take modeling agents and bookers to broaden their view of their black models to extend beyond the commercial market for them to be considered for the editorial and high-end prestigious jobs. I must applaud agencies like Red models and Major Model mgmt. who, thru their presentation, present their ethnic models in the same light as the white ones. Most agencies only see their black models doing catalog and commercial work and never put their muscle behind them for editorial/ high fashion opportunities.

I'm not saying we should become anti-white or anything like that. I most certainly enjoy working with all types of people. I just want to see myself reflected and represented in this industry and have the opportunity to become the next Bruce Weber, Steven Miesel, Patrick Demarchelier, or Steven Klien. I don't see that happening if we continue to feed the machine the same ol things.

facebook is a great place..... introducing Marina Korotun

i found Marina on the social network website Facebook. I thought she was very pretty and I was inspired to shoot her. She is not a model but her leggy six-foot tall frame complimented her girl next door beauty. She reminded me of how supermodel Claudia Shiffer was when she first started. She was very nervous and a little awkward (like Claudia use to be) but I liked her and I thought the images we got from this quick shoot were nice and worth sharing with you guys....:)

introducing Azmarie @ Identities Models Inc.

photographed by Tarrice Love

featuring Azmarie @ Identities Models Inc

styled by me - Tarrice Love

makeup by  Crystal Clark

I first saw Azmarie in photos that photographer Shameer Khan shot and I thought she was amazingly beautiful and I immediately wanted to work with her. I called Tim at Identities and set it up. I noticed that most of the photographers who have shot her kinda focused on the obvious toughness of her beauty. I wanted to do images that focused on her girlieness and make people appreciate her feminine power. I wanted to do 2 fashion looks and a beauty shot. I was inspired by the power women of the 80's and wanted the looks to be strong. I asked Crystal Clark to stop thru and do the makeup for me. We have a great chemistry and Crystal understands my aesthetic. I styled and designed her looks and the accessories myself.

Check out the results of our collaboration....

Christian Dubosse @ Basic Model mgmt.

Christian was a college student studying accounting when I first met him. I immediately started developing him. I shot him almost every Saturday morning for about 5 months before he began searching for representation. He was quickly picked up by Basic Model mgmt. He's done a few shows during the last few fashion weeks and a few magazine editorials. I anticipate a big demand for his look this upcoming fashion week. I am very excited to see what Christian does this time around and I wish him much success.