J.G. Ballard - Shanghai Jim U B U W E B - BBC Video

via ubu.com

J.G. Ballard - Shanghai Jim

Following J.G. Ballard from Shepperton to Shanghai and back, looking at the scenes of his life which inspired his autobiographical novels. This is a BBC original production which aired in 1991, directed by James Runcie. It chronicles J.G. Ballard's first trip to Shanghai after he first left it in 1946. He discusses his ilfe and his work especially his two autobiographical novels, _Empire of the Sun_ and _The Kindness of Women_. There are also bits there about _Crash_ and _Vermilion Sands_. A must for any J.G. Ballard fan.

Quality is far from perfect as this is a VHS rip

RESOURCES:

J.G. Ballard in UbuWeb Historical

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Iggy Pop and Joseph Goebbels

http://www.alexwaterhousehayward.com

Iggy Pop and Joseph Goebbels

Wednesday, March 14, 2007


In 1989 I had the good fortune to photograph a drug free and sober Iggy Pop at the Fours Seasons Hotel. I decided to use a dramatice spotlight low on him for my picture and when I looked at him through my viewfinder I recalled a photograph taken by Alfred Eisenstaedt in 1939 in Geneva when he was covering the League of Nations Assembly. His subject was Joseph Goebbels, Hitler's propaganda minister. In retrospect that photograph of the man with an annoyed and malign expression proved all too prophetic of horrors to come.

I mentioned this to Iggy (it sounds odd to write Mr. Pop or even Pop) who immediately became very excited and told me he had been to the very house in Geneva.

He then posed for me and gave me the closest malign expression he could muster. For a gentleman like Iggy Pop this was hard to do but I appreciated his gesture.

Link to: Iggy Pop and Joseph Goebbels

Alex Waterhouse-Hayward
Photographer, Writer, Artist

Alex Waterhouse-Hayward is a Vancouver-based commercial and fine art photographer.

One of Canada's most experienced magazine and portrait photographers, Alex has photographed celebrities (Bob Hope, Candice Bergen, Dennis Hopper), politicians (Larry Campbell, Carole James, Jack Layton) actors (Molly Parker, Nicholas Campbell) writers (William Gibson, Nick Bantock, Douglas Coupland, Mario Vargas Llosa) and enough CEOs and business leaders to start his own capitalist army. His favourite photographic subjects are his granddaughter and the roses and hostas that populate his garden.

His pictures have appeared in publications ranging from the New York Times, Vanity Fair, and Stern to Readers' Digest, the Globe and Mail and the Georgia Straight. His commercial work has adorned everything from annual reports to postage stamps. Alex is also a teacher and a writer, and he would like to take your picture.

You can talk to Alex about all of this and more by calling him at 604-266-7200.

Cheri P - Ecdysiast Extraordinaire

Saturday, March 24, 2007

On Christmas Eve 1966 my Argentine Merchant Marine ship the Río Aguapey docked in New Orleans. I decided to visit the city on my own and immediately went to the then notorious Bourbon Street in the French Quarter. I had never ever had a bourbon or seen a burlesque act so I followed some sailors into a club. I asked for my bourbon (it was terribly strong) and sat up front (in later years in Vancouver this was called "gynecology row"). A perfectly bored woman appeared on stage and she proceded to plug in an electrical cord to the wall oulet. This, I immediately found out was her music player. She then danced around looking extremely bored and by the time most of her clothes were off I was out of the joint. I left with the impression that the woman was some sort of robot who plugged herself in and then danced.

It was around 1978 that I finally overcame my curiousity to enter the Drake Hotel Pub Lounge. I had been told that terrible things happened here and that no decent young man (by then I was 34) would ever be caught in there. I sat down and ordered my beer. I felt obliged to order beer even though I have never liked it. On stage I saw a very young (20, at the most) blonde girl with a bob haircut and legs that seemed to go on forever. She danced with skill, energy and with a beautiful smile on her face. I was so enamoured that I returned again and I soon was a Vancouver fan of the ecdysiast art. I became a fan of Cheri (that was her name) and of Tarren Rae (the only girl who could compete with Cheri in having long and shapely legs).

Cheri (on the Drake stage, right) had been known to kick so high that she once managed to break her nose with one of her legs.

It didn't take me long to insinuate myself into the presence of these dance queens so that I could try out my new flash equipment and learn to make beautiful women more beautiful and prove Mac Parry, the editor of Vancouver Magazine, wrong as he had asserted that I made beautiful women ugly and ugly women uglier.

Link to: Cheri P - Ecdysiast Extraordinaire

Karen Campbell At Last

Friday, March 23, 2007

While working at Tilden Rent-A-Car some 30 years ago I decided to learn to swim with style so I took a stroke improvement class at the YMCA. A French-Canadian fellow swimmer found out I was a photographer and she asked me to take her portrait. I did not know that she worked at the gift department of Holt Renfrew nor did I know that she slipped my colour 8x10 prints into many of the frames of her deparment. Then one day Marlene Cohen (of Army & Navy fame) entered the gift department and I ended up taking portraits of the whole Vancouver Cohen family. It was Mrs Joe Cohen who told me to look up Gabriel Levy who was the fashion writer for Vancouver Magazine. Levy looked at my portraits and said (to my chagrin), "You are a good portrait photographer but you will never shoot fashion." He then gave me his card to take to Rick Staehling who was the art director at Vancouver Magazine. Shortly after I quit my job at Tilden and became a freelancer.

Except for once (a spread in Vancouver Magazine) I never shot fashion and I was jealous of all those photographers like Howard Fry who photographed beautiful women and were paid to do it. For some years in the late 80s to early 90s I shared a huge studio in Yaletown with Denis Montalbetti who did a lot of fashion. In particular I was jealous of his shooting the Vancouver super model Karen Campbell. One night in particular Karen Campbell was posing for him while in a corner I was taking portraits of Gavin Walker with his sax and Kool cigarettes. As much as I like and liked Gavin Walker I felt shortchanged.

In May 1989 John Lekich and I decided to correct the situation by offering the Georgia Straight an article on a beautiful blonde ( who happened to be Karen Campbell). The Intro article saw the light of day. In those days it was enough to be beautiful and blonde. Or at least it was enough for editor Charles Campbell (no relation!).

Shortly before Levy died of AIDS in the early 90s he summoned me for a favour. He wanted me to shoot a couple of nude men for a calendar contest for a gay club called Neighbour's. The winner of the contest (one of the nude men)was going to have an expenses paid trip to Hawaii. During the shoot Levy confessed to me, "I was wrong about you. You are an excellent fashion photographer." Without him knowing his correction came too late to ruin my photographic career. In Vancouver, with the loss of Woodward's, Eaton's and Bay catalogues, had I been a fashion photographer I would not be in business now.

Link to: Karen Campbell At Last

The only record of Davis's trip to Vancouver was my little picture (the b+w one) in the Straight and the Vancouver Sun made no mention of the man.

Davis had been very cooperative in posing for me and even went as far of going for my idea for the Greek hero look with ivy around his head. As a Canadian he did suggest to me that nobody was a prophet in his own country. I keep seeing his picture in the National Geographic and as he rockets into further fame I can at least enjoy here the cover that never was. Davis and I had a lot of fun doing the table top of his things on my living room floor. His luggage had been lost so all he could bring was his razor, passport, business card, Swiss Army watch and I used my Nikon F-2 which was exactly like his. I remember that the folks at the Straight had wanted me to photograph Davis as he cleared customs to show the world traveler in action. Even in 2001 it would have taken me weeks to get the necessary permission.

Wade Davis

Wade Davis - Explorer-in-Residence

Link to: Wade Davis - Hero Of The Planet (But Not In Vancouver)

The Egyptian Restaurant

Friday, March 09, 2007

Around 1955 my grandmother worked in the Filipino Embassy in Mexico City. When the new consul, Johnny Hormillosa arrived my grandmother took him out to see the sites of the city. In one of the restaurants they visited, she had been most embarrased when in his Filipino Spanish, Hormillosa had asked for a clean glass with water. A few weeks later Jhonny (he insisted in spelling his name that way, but then his son was called Robin after Nigaraguan poet Rubén Darío) asked my grandmother to take him to that wonderful "Egyptian restaurant" (he pronounced that Egyptzian restaowrunt). My grandmother was all confused until Jhonny described the Egyptian costumes of the waitresses. It was only then that my grandmother realized that the waitresses of the ubiquitous Sanborns restaurant/drugstores wear a uniform based on those of the Tehuanas, the Mexican Indian women of the Tehuantepec Istmus. They could be seen as Egyptian if the viewer were the Filipino consul.

Last year when I photographed Pam in Nora's living room I asked Nora to decorate it Egyptian style and to make up Pam as an Egyptian/Coptic Madonna. I couldn't explain to either Pam or Nora that Jhonny would have approved.

Sanborns Morelia
Sanborns Cancun

Link to: The Egyptian Restaurant

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Cheri P - Ecdysiast Extraordinaire Alex Waterhouse-Hayward

via alexwaterhousehayward.com

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Ultimate Punk (Best Selection of Punk Rock Pics and Covers Still!) Culled from 'Punk' Magazine and 'New York Rocker' for all my P-Facebook Punk Pfriends!

Super Rock - v1 #2 Aug. 1977

CA$HING IN ON PUNK      Late in 1975 a small handbill was pasted all over the Lower East Side and Greenwich Village announcing - “Watch Out! Punk is Coming.” Punk, the magazine, launched their first issue from the Bowery in NYC in January 1976, and it was the first, and best, and therefore seminal magazine, or more appropriately zine, for what could loosely be called a “movement."   The New York Rocker premiered two weeks later and was a local N.Y. rock tabloid which was the brianchild of Alan Betrock; it was one of the earliest publications to exclusively chronicle the punk scene on the Lower East Side of NYC. Betrock had produced an early demo for Blondie before the band signed with a major label, and he also published The Rock Marketplace a tabloid for collectors of rock memorabilia. As Shake Books in Brooklyn, Betrock wrote and published zines and books on cult magazines, sleazy tabloids and pop culture of the 1950s and ‘60s, all of which were inspirations for Bad Mags.   Also a part of the times were the punk rock "specials" published by Myron Fass and edited by Jeff Goodman, mags such as Super Rock and Punk Rock. Many of the staff that helped to put these satiric pulp versions of Punk magazine together for Goodman became well known in their own right later on, such as writer Michael Musto and photographer Ebet Roberts. Goodman himself went on to edit and write for many adult girlie mags such as Velvet, High Society, Screw, Sluts & Slobs, Oui, and Penthouse.   Punk magazine was published sporadically until 1979 when it went belly up with issue #17. John Holmstrom, Punk’s editor, went on to become editor/publisher of High Times after the suicide death of Tom Forcade, High Times founder and a supporter of Punk magazine. Holmstrom also published a great, but short lived, rock-gossip mag in the early ‘90s called Nerve, that had Legs McNeil on board again, as editor-in-chief, which had the same sort of irreverent punk feel to it. Punk has been well covered elsewhere, and is undoubtedly familiar to most reading this, and it didn’t even cash in on itself. In recent years it has had a compilation volume of material published in book form, and in 2001 issued a 25th anniversary issue – Punk v2 #0.   The punk attitude could be likened to the anarchic antics of Bugs Bunny, Woody Woodpecker or Heckel & Jeckel, married to garage band musical tastes and talent. It was something that had really started a few years earlier with the release of Patti Smith’s “Piss Factory” (June 1974) and Television’s “Little Johnny Jewel” on independent 45rpm singles. The Dictators Go Girl Crazy was to my knowledge the first punk album released in 1975, that was followed later that same year with Patti Smith’s debut album Horses that exposed "punk" to the public at large.   1976 saw both the release of the Ramones first lp on an apathetic rock world and the publication of Punk magazine, both of which helped give "punk" a name and followers on both sides of the pond.   Basically you either hated it or loved it. The mainstream musical media picked up on it by 1977 because of the outrageousness associated with the Sex Pistols and the English punk scene. A year later it became almost fashionable, the nemesis of established rock and the disco fad. Or, to quote from the fairly perceptive article in the below mentioned Punk Sex - “Within a few years, punk had been legitimized by feature pieces in Time and Newsweek. It was chic, it was ‘in,’ it was a salable, profitable commodity. And don’t think nobody noticed! No, siree. Ask anyone who shops at Bloomingdale’s or Macy’s. Punk started out in the streets, but it ended up mutilated between the glossy pages of slick fashion magazines.” Which is interesting as some of the mags mentioned below have their own “punk fashion” pages.   Rock ‘n roll, fashion, and porn seem to have gone hand in hand in the past few decades, so punk also showed up as a theme in porn mags, just as disco was to be found in the titles and themes of hardcore porn mags back then. Punks in porn is sort of ironic because a lot of punks, for the most part, claimed boredom with sex or asexuality, in spite of their usage of bondage gear, which was introduced through the English punk scene thanks to Malcolm McLaren's shop, “Sex”.   The above-mentioned article in Punk Sex also attributed the NY punk scene, specifically Blondie and Annie Golden of The Shirts, with being more sexual than the English punks. In any case, it put dollar signs in the eyes of certain publishers always on the lookout for something to grab hold of to churn out another magazine. In the late ‘70s certain publishers, mainly Myron Fass, had a field day with punk, the Son of Sam, the Jonestown massacre, Star Wars, Jaws, and disco, to pull a few things from the late ‘70s time capsule.   I was concerned with the spin offs and ripoffs of Punk magazine, or the “punksploitation” mags published by those generally outside of the scene to make a profit, using the word and what they perceived to be the look of punk. They knew that the actual punks on the scene weren’t the main audience they were selling to anyway. This is not to say that these magazines didn’t hire some people part of the punk milieu to write for them, as some of the below mentioned mags did, hiring college kids into the music scene, because they would work cheap and get a chance to see their names in print. In a few cases it helped some of the contributors go on to successful careers in their own right.   These mags were published into the ‘80s along with features in the girlie mags concerning nude punks etc., but by then punk had been digested by the mainstream and shit out as a parody of itself and a stereotype. "Cherry Bomb & The Dead Boys" feature from the February 1978 issue of Cheri.

High Society - v6 #6 Nov. 1981 Punk Pussy - v1 #1 1987 Punk Dominatrix - v1 #1 1981 Punk Rock Special - Johnny Rotten and the Sex Pistols - v1 #1 Spring 1978 High Times - #26 Oct. 1977 Punk Sex - v10 #1 Summer 1978 Punk Rock - v2 #2 April 1978 Punk - #7 Feb. 1977 Punk Rock - v2 #1 Feb. 1978 Rock Scene - v2 #1 March 1974 Punk - #3 April 1976 Punk Rock Stars Collector's Issue - #8 July 1978 Rock Scene - v4 #5 Sept. 1976 Rock Scene - v5 #5 July 1977 Punk Rock - v1 #1 Dec. 1977 Punk - #8 March 1977 Punk - #12 Jan. 1978 Punk - #16 Mar/Apr. 1979 Cheri - v2 #6 Jan. 1978 Cheri - v2 #7 Feb. 1978 Flick - v2 #9 Dec. 1977 New York Rocker - v1 #2 March 1976 National Screw - v1 #1 Nov. 1976 Thanks to John Holmstrom for helping with the chronology of Punk magazine.

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