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In one of the more imaginative collaborations we’ve seen of late,
Christian Louboutin and David Lynch have locked heads and created a
show, Fetish, which opens today in Paris in Pierre Passebon’s Galerie du Passage. The exhibition shows five limited edition pairs of shoes by Louboutin
alongside five signed photographs of the shoes by Lynch. As if
Louboutin’s day-to-day footwear weren’t fetishistic enough, the pair
together has taken the theme to an entirely new level.
As with so many collaborations, things moved very quickly. The process
began when Lynch commissioned Louboutin to make shoes for an exhibition
he was hosting at the Cartier Foundation back in March this year. The
pair quickly became friends and when Louboutin wanted to push the
notion of extreme fetish in his work, by creating shoes and then
playing with their creative representation in two-dimensional images,
it was clear Lynch would be the man to translate his vision.
As with so many collaborations, things moved very quickly. The process
began when Lynch commissioned Louboutin to make shoes for an exhibition
he was hosting at the Cartier Foundation back in March this year. The
pair quickly became friends and when Louboutin wanted to push the
notion of extreme fetish in his work, by creating shoes and then
playing with their creative representation in two-dimensional images,
it was clear Lynch would be the man to translate his vision.
''I tried to keep an element of my drawings, to be faithful to the drawings, with no practicality, just pleasure, thinking of extreme fetish shoes. Usually when you go to the third dimension you lose something,’ explains Louboutin of his initial concept, ‘then I wanted to photograph them - I find there’s more emotion with cinematic images. I wanted Lynch’s style and since we’d recently become friends it was natural for me to ask him.''
The designer has an atelier where the one-of-a-kind shoes are created. With practicality and comfort out the window, Louboutin has pushed the designs to their limits: think 26cms heels, spikes on the inside and sole of the shoe, and Siamese heels (two shoes fused at the heel).
The idea is that the shoe becomes a cult object, transcending the most
beautiful part of the shoe and/or foot. Louboutin pinpoints ''The
Siamese shoe'' as his favourite, ''For me the shoe and the picture
together become very close to Twin Peaks.''
The portrait by Steve McCurry turned out to be one of those images that
sears the heart, and in June 1985 it ran on the cover of this magazine.
Her eyes are sea green. They are haunted and haunting, and in them you
can read the tragedy of a land drained by war. She became known around
National Geographic as the "Afghan girl," and for 17 years no one knew
her name.
She remembers the moment. The photographer took her picture. She remembers her anger. The man was a stranger. She had never been photographed before. Until they met again 17 years later, she had not been photographed since.
She is 28, perhaps 29, or even 30. No one, not even she, knows for sure. Stories shift like sand in a place where no records exist...continue reading
...sight&sound, multimedia content about this story.
She remembers the moment. The photographer took her picture. She remembers her anger. The man was a stranger. She had never been photographed before. Until they met again 17 years later, she had not been photographed since.
She is 28, perhaps 29, or even 30. No one, not even she, knows for sure. Stories shift like sand in a place where no records exist...continue reading
...sight&sound, multimedia content about this story.
Kevin Carter (September 13, 1960 – July 27, 1994) was an award-winning South African photojournalist and member of the Bang-Bang Club.
Carter has started to work as weekend sports photographer in 1983. In 1984 he moved on to work for the Johannesburg Star bent on exposing the brutality of apartheid.
In March 1993 Carter made a trip to southern Sudan. The sound of soft, high-pitched whimpering near the village of Ayod attracted Carter to a young emaciated Sudanese toddler. The girl had stopped to rest while struggling to a feeding center, wherein a vulture had landed nearby. He said that he waited about 20 minutes, hoping that the vulture would spread its wings. It didn't. Carter snapped the haunting photograph and chased the vulture away. However, he also came under heavy criticism for just photographing — and not helping — the little girl:
"The man adjusting his lens to take just the right frame of her suffering might just as well be a predator, another vulture on the scene."
The photograph was sold to The New York Times where it appeared for the first time on March 26, 1993. Practically overnight hundreds of people contacted the newspaper to ask whether the child had survived, leading the newspaper to run a special editor's note saying the girl had enough strength to walk away from the vulture, but that her ultimate fate was unknown.
On April 2, 1994 Nancy Buirski, a foreign New York Times picture editor, phoned Carter to inform him he had won the most coveted prize for photography. Carter was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Feature Photography on May 23, 1994 at Columbia University's Low Memorial Library.
On 27 July 1994 Carter drove to the Braamfonteinspruit river, near the Field and Study Centre, an area he used to play at as a child, and took his own life by taping one end of a hose to his pickup truck’s exhaust pipe and running the other end to the passenger-side window. He died of carbon monoxide poisoning at the age of 33. Portions of Carter's suicide note read:
"I am depressed ... without phone ... money for rent ... money for child support ... money for debts ... money!!! ... I am haunted by the vivid memories of killings & corpses & anger & pain ... of starving or wounded children, of trigger-happy madmen, often police, of killer executioners...I have gone to join Ken if I am that lucky."
Carter has started to work as weekend sports photographer in 1983. In 1984 he moved on to work for the Johannesburg Star bent on exposing the brutality of apartheid.
In March 1993 Carter made a trip to southern Sudan. The sound of soft, high-pitched whimpering near the village of Ayod attracted Carter to a young emaciated Sudanese toddler. The girl had stopped to rest while struggling to a feeding center, wherein a vulture had landed nearby. He said that he waited about 20 minutes, hoping that the vulture would spread its wings. It didn't. Carter snapped the haunting photograph and chased the vulture away. However, he also came under heavy criticism for just photographing — and not helping — the little girl:
"The man adjusting his lens to take just the right frame of her suffering might just as well be a predator, another vulture on the scene."
The photograph was sold to The New York Times where it appeared for the first time on March 26, 1993. Practically overnight hundreds of people contacted the newspaper to ask whether the child had survived, leading the newspaper to run a special editor's note saying the girl had enough strength to walk away from the vulture, but that her ultimate fate was unknown.
On April 2, 1994 Nancy Buirski, a foreign New York Times picture editor, phoned Carter to inform him he had won the most coveted prize for photography. Carter was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Feature Photography on May 23, 1994 at Columbia University's Low Memorial Library.
On 27 July 1994 Carter drove to the Braamfonteinspruit river, near the Field and Study Centre, an area he used to play at as a child, and took his own life by taping one end of a hose to his pickup truck’s exhaust pipe and running the other end to the passenger-side window. He died of carbon monoxide poisoning at the age of 33. Portions of Carter's suicide note read:
"I am depressed ... without phone ... money for rent ... money for child support ... money for debts ... money!!! ... I am haunted by the vivid memories of killings & corpses & anger & pain ... of starving or wounded children, of trigger-happy madmen, often police, of killer executioners...I have gone to join Ken if I am that lucky."
The memorable images from any given year provide a glimpse into the
world's most compelling stories, and the selection for 2007 shows a
striking mix of the fresh and the familiar.Looking back at this past year in pictures, we might wonder about next year: What new faces, places and things will we see? Which images will be all too recognizable?
Also see the Reuters selection...
