Documentary-Collection

The apparent simplicity of his technique and vision is an inspiration to a keen amateur photographer like me. Who needs a bag full of zoom lenses/filters/gadgets etc?

I'm desperately hoping for a reprint so I can buy my own copy of this book - at a reasonable price.

You take the Angel Tube to get to the current site of Torture Garden's monthly parties. You really do. These partygoers don't engage in much actual BDSM play, although there is some walkabout bondage. It's mainly a Stand and Model venue, a nightclub/dance scene. There's no room to swing a cane anyway. There's a floor show by some of the top out-there acts in the world. There are performance photos here of (among others) Miranda Sex Garden, the Genitorturers, Ron Athey, Medieval Magick, and Angel Grinders & Chainsaws, who use industrial equipment to send fountains of sparks gushing from the groins of troupe members.

The production package of Torture Garden, the book, is superb. Chaplin's candids capture the feverish ecstasy of a world where nothing is true and everything is permitted. They are brilliantly grouped and sequenced. Sivroni's mostly larger format portraits bring you face to face with folk in costumes far beyond fabulous, exuding the potency of their homemade personas. The Videodrome quote above is one of many at the bottom of every page. These provide a quick, painless introduction to the TG philosophy. A few favorites:

"...sadomasochism enjoys all the forms of religious piety - kneeling, praying, worshipping, sacrificing, invoking and punishing." -- Terence Sellers, The Correct Sadist

"The first duty of man is to become artificial." -- Oscar Wilde

"The body is both a pleasure palace and a torture chamber." -- Charles Levin, Body Invaders

"It's your body, play with it." -- Fakir Musafar, Modern Primitives

"Your body is a battleground." -- Barbara Kruger

At Torture Garden, the concept of costume is raised to extremes of creative imagination, transcendent otherness and disgusting repulsion. By the time you get through this volume, your own definitions of these categories will have been severely mangled. On one night a performer named Franko paraded through the crowd on crutches, accompanied by a nurse. He was nude except for syringes, catheters, rubber tubes and various medical receptacles containing various bodily fluids. On the same night, completely independently, a female partygoer appeared wearing a brassiere consisting of two plasma bags filling with her own blood.

One man's features are covered by a remarkably lifelike effect of the flesh of his face pulled back and nailed to his skull. Hellraiser-style pinheads abound. Crazed male ballerinas, harem girls, rubber boys, sirens, harpies, transvestites, androgynes, hermaphrodites, naughty nurses, naughty nuns, naughty Nazis, welder's goggles, gas masks, catcher's masks, nine-inch nails, helmets, horns, spikes, wounds, rings through everything and to top it off, a spitting-image Laurel and Hardy. Happy Halloween in Hell!

Street photography is a subject that mainly is portrayed in black and white. Pesaresi's depiction of the world of the underground transportation done in color photography is really something quite special. The usage of colors don't simply become a decoration to the photographs. Instead, they strengthen the athmosphere being captured in the photographs themselves.

Before going further, let me note that this volume contains many nude images of men and women that would be past the "R" rating if this book were a motion picture.

The book has a few brief comments by Helmut Newton to set the stage. "The book shows the work of two photographers . . . [who] have lived together for fifty years." " . . . [B]ut neither is usually present at the other's photographic sittings." " . . . [N]either one has in any way influenced the other's way of approaching their subjects." "I can see the truth and simplicity in the portraits of Alice Springs." "[She has] been an actress and a painter before she has taken up the camera seriously if somewhat sporadically." "As for myself, I recognize the manipulation and editorialising in my photographs."

Alice Springs looks for the core of the person, and captures the realities of daily life and aging very well. She shows you the joking and self-absorbed sides of Helmut Newton that help explain the stylized and challenging images that he is famous for producing. Helmut Newton obviously adds a gloss and a pose to everything, that gets his editorial position out. But it's fun in this context, much more so than in his other work. I found myself reevaluating his work after seeing these images by Alice Springs.

Here are my favorite images in the book by Alice Springs:

Of Helmut Newton -- Spain 1956; Rue Aubriot, Paris 1971; Ritz, London 1976; With Sylvia, Ramatuelle 1981; Monte-Carlo, 1987; Hollywood 1988, 1991

Of Alice Springs -- Ramatuelle, France 1975; Vail, Colorado 1996

Princess Caroline and son, Monte-Carlo 1985; Karl Lagerfeld, Monte-Carlo 1983; Rudi Gernreich, Los Angeles 1985; Tina Chow, Beverly Hills 1986; Angelica Houston, Hollywood 1983; Antonio Lopez, Paris 1977

Here are my favorite images in the book by Helmut Newton:

Of Alice Springs -- June as Hedda Gabler, Melbourne 1960; In our kitchen, Rue Aubriot, Paris 1972; Hotel Volney, New York 1982; Rue Aubriot, Paris 1974; Ramatuelle 1976

Of Helmut Newton -- Photomation, Paris 1970s; With wife and model, 1981; Clinique St. Jean, Cagnes-sur-Mer, 1997

Birgit Nielsen, Monte-Carlo 1987; Gianni Versace, Lake Como, Italy 1994; Donatella Versace, Off coast of Antibes, 1990; David Hockney, Los Angeles 1988; Peter Beard, Paris 1996

After you see this remarkable book, I suggest that you have some fun with your family. Take a day, bring a camera for each person, and make photographs of each other and the same subjects. Do this once a year to develop a better sense of your perspectives and relationships. Then comment on each other's work, and create a scrapbook or album out of this sharing. You'll have a lot of fun looking back on these images in future years.

Take a good look . . . and see more!