(no pussyfooting)

"Dancehall - The Rise of Jamaican Dancehall Culture"

'Tenkamaru; In a Tunnel' Tochigi 2005, from Decotora by Masaru Tatsuki

Araki, Sawa Suzuki

Michael Itkoff

Philip-Lorca diCorcia, W, September 1997 # 3

Insouciance+restriction

Hana Kinbaku 2008 © Nobuyoshi Araki

Yuko Torihara, LA

Hana Kinbaku 2008 © Nobuyoshi Araki

...At heart she was indifferent to it,
little flashes of sun
on the surface of a cold, dark sea.

cold hands

"I don't see anything any more: I can search the past in vain, I can only find these scraps of images and I am not sure what they represent, whether they are memories or just fiction."

Nausea, Jean-Paul Sartre

Circuits, by Kevin Greenberg, from Lost in the lights

Gabriele Basilico, Le Touquet , 1984, from DATAR

Mark Kimber, Moonrise over airport from Edgeland 2008

Untitled #3, Murmansk, Northern Russia, 2005, by Simon Roberts

Carsten Peter

almost there

Li Wei

Doug Aitken, Migration

He's back: Kim Jong Il watching football

Sarah Small

Leroy Watching Sandy

The Lawyer and the Gynecologist

Lonely Lakers Man

Water Jesus

She has been taking a Polaroid of herself everyday for 11 years. website

Anastasia Cazabon

windows

Pieter Hugo, In Tyrone Brand's bedroom, 2006

JENNY BRILLHART, Royal Carribean Parking Lot, 2008, oil on panel

INGMAR ALGE, Höchst Nr.1c, 2003, oil on canvas

Jay Mark Johnson -- Swept Away

"...this can be read, in view of the inclusion of the element of time in Johnson's images, as a compelling visual reflection on the nature of time itself as a destructive maelstrom that washes away all that is but transient.

Asako Narahashi

"The road of excess leads to the palace of wisdom" W. Blake
I look back over my life
I try to find analogies
there are none.

Give me a world
you have taken the world I was

Erwin Olaf

Erwin Olaf, from RECENT WORKS, Hope, Portrait 5, 2005

Julia Niemczynowska

I met her in Montreal last weekend. See her website here.

Masao Yamamoto

Untitled #1527 (from Kawa = Flow), 2008, 6 x 9 inch Gelatin Silver Print

Todd Hido

Together with William Basinski for a cocktail of sapping nostalgia.

Toyodome-san goes fishing

Touch

Great look at Touch by Fact Magazine.

Song of the day: "Weak 4 Me" by Nite Jewel

Provincial Japan by Guido Castagnoli

I immediately fell for this series of large format shots of a small Japanese town in Shizuoka prefecture. Nostalgia drips from these shots because they could have easily been taken in the small Japanese town I lived in for a year in Kyushu. I hope to do a similar project like this someday, not merely to document provincial Japanese life, but to show a side of a Japan most of the world doesn't know exists.

Ghada Amer

And the Beast, 2004

I saw some work of Ghada Amer in the Brooklyn museum back in the summer. I love how she subtly masks the erotica behind a pastiche of colors and lines.

Masao Yamamoto, KAWA=flow

from Kawa series

"I'm an animal, trapped in your hot car,
I'm all the days you choose to ignore"

She's gone, I'm trying to let it flow...

SANNE SANNES (1937-1967)

Dutch Sannes explores aspects of sexual passion. He made explorations of people, of their outsides and their insides, and sent back picture postcards of their psyches.

ARAKI--Bokuju Kitan / Marvellous Tales of Black Ink

Kinbaku, meaning bondage, is the signature motif of this specific body of work, Bokuju Kitan / Marvellous Tales of Black Ink. Traditionally used in pornographic works, bondage is rarely associated with artistic motivation. However, since 1979, Araki has depicted the theme through a creative lens. The paradox is that by restricting the female body Araki is liberating an expression. Or in his words, “I free their souls by tying up their bodies.”

girls can see better than boys

Proof that girl photographers see things I could never see. I'm so jealous of their eyes.

Haile Marie

kyrgyzstan

from my friend nic.

Hiraki Sawa

The video's grainy black-and-white footage and the monotonous roar of jet engines underscore the tense restlessness of living in exile and the melancholy of being out of place in one's own home.

Ambiguous Desires

Evgeny Mokhorev . Untitled (038), 2007, part of Ambiguous Desires

"Ambiguous Desires" considers an age of discovering one's sensuality, a mysterious metamorphosis from childhood into adolescence. Known for its social crises and emotional tempests, it is also a period when the tacit becomes explicit, when what is recognized becomes understood. Mokhorev possesses a special portal allowing him to enter the complex universe of pubescent youth, and to capture the wonder of innocence and unfamiliar longings expressed by his models. The growth of human understanding and sexual awareness in a teenager is one of the most intricate, amazing, and beautiful phenomena in nature.

Provoking Change in Japanese Postwar Photography

This is the best news I've received so far this month! At Carolyn Anitsch Gallery in Chelsea, an exhibition of post-war Japanese photography books. Eikoh Hosoe, Daido, Araki, et al--these guys are my favor photographers, ever.

Takuma Nakahira For a Language to Come, 1970

Nobuyoshi Araki Sentimental Journey, 1971

Shomei Tomatsu's Oo! Shinjuku, 1969