FLO FOX

I became acquainted with the work of photographer Flo Fox after watching 'Joan Rivers: A Piece of Work'. Joan meets her while delivering a Thanksgiving meal as part of her volunteer work for God's Love, We Deliver. Flo is legally blind and wheelchair bound from symptoms of MS, and started taking photos with an auto-focus camera in the late 70s after failing eyesight made it impossible to continue working as a costume designer.  She has taken, by her estimation, over 100,000 photographs of life in New York since the late 70's. She shows Joan a series of photos she took of the same drugstore for 25 years, documenting the rise in the price of cigarettes. "Check me out," she says, before saying, very slowly and deliberately, "Flo-Fox-Dot-Com."

Her photos are moody, subtle, and always somehow shot through with a pang of raw humor (police blockades creating an accidental Star of David, man in assless leather chaps eating alone at a diner). Also, lots of dick pics, which she's been compiling for her yet-to-be-published tome, 'Dicthology'. She claims every man who has entered her apartment since the mid-70's has posed for the book. 'Atta girl.

In spite of some obsessive internet detective work, I wasn't able to find very many of her photographs online. Her website features a few, but sadly looks like it hasn't been updated since 1999, and hardly does them justice. She has created only one self-published book of her work, 'Asphalt Gardens: 69 Photographs by Flo Fox,' but it is long out-of-print (ps if you can find me one, I'll send you a puppy).

My favorite series is one she self-photographed for Playboy magazine. She was already nearly legally blind when these photos were taken. There's some nudity so I've hidden them after the jump.

partners in surrealism

Spent my Saturday at the Legion of Honor taking in the surreal photography of Man Ray and his muse/artistic partner Lee Miller.  Miller, a former model, met Ray in Paris in the late 1920's, and she became a frequent subject of his photographs and eventually his lover. She had a background in photography as well, and together they explored the abstract and surrealist movement through then-radical photographic techniques like rayographs and solarization.

Lee followed the traditional paradigm of artist's muse with her striking beauty, but she was also a true artist in her own right. She spent years working as a fashion photographer and exposing the surreal in everyday life through her personal photography. When WWII broke out, she became the first female photojournalist to travel to the front lines and photograph the war for Vogue. The photos she took of the blitzkrieg and the liberation of the Dachau concentration camp have become some of the most iconic WWII images in history.

If you're in or around SF, I highly recommend seeing this exhibit. Now I just have to go see Gaultier at the De Young. And since this wouldn't be a proper post without a poorly executed photo collage, here ya go--a bunch of rad surrealist-approved apparel I found on the interwebs, some of which is potentially quite wearable. Yes, I'm talking about the black gloved bra as a top.

L to R: Jean-Charles de Castelbajac F/W 2011, Moschino Cheap & Chic lip print tunic dress (avail, here), Elsa Schiaparelli gloves, Nicholas Kirkwood flats, Salvador Dali ruby lips brooch, Elsa Schiaparelli shoe hat, Nicholas Kirkwood "pony" heel, Viktor & Rolf look from Spring 2010

born to be wild

Brooklyn Teen Gang, The Jokers, 1959 via Retronaut

Hope you all have a badass 3-day weekend!

i'll have another

It's definitely a dream of mine to attend the Kentucky Derby. As you can see I already have my outfit picked out.

fashion macabre

Given my fascination with crime scene investigations and the eerie, disembodied women's shoes in Guy Bourdin's photography it's no wonder I'm in love with these photos by Nicola Kuperus. Somehow she manages to convey images that are both extremely macabre (the sight of feet reminds me of an accidental death) and quite elegant at the same time.

V-day

all images via my Pinterest

Happy Valentines Day to you and your'n. I'll spend the holiday making pork chops and chocolate truffles. And no, that's not a double entendre. You sickos.

d'oh!

top to bottom: BellJar SF lookbook via Refinery29, amazing letterman sweater on Ms. Vintage Virgin, drawer pulls via Kelly Wearstler's blog, "Smoking" dress via Street FSN, weird lipstick via Circa Now, Margaux Hemingway via Google, Friend of Mine Spring 2012 dress via Studded Hearts--oh, and you can find it all on Pinterest.

I'm pissed off y'all. I had Wardell take excellent outfit shots for me this weekend (wearing new leather leggings!!!!!!!!), and accidentally deleted them from my SD card before I uploaded them to my computer. I Googled what to do and am relatively convinced that so-called programs used to retrieve deleted files are all just viruses and bullshit. Has this ever happened to anyone? Were you able to retrieve your photos? If so, how?

Twenty bucks says I get a spammer commenting on this post.