Scott Recommends: A Period of Juvenile Prosperity by Mike Brodie

Mike Brodie spent five years riding freight trains across America, during which time he found a discarded Polaroid camera and started capturing images of teenage “freighthoppers” who were traveling with him, criss-crossing American illegally by jumping onto trains.

Brodie had no formal training in photography and he no longer takes photographs, but his work has been compiled in a new book called A Period of Juvenile Prosperity.

My fascination with both microcosms and the youth of America leads me to love this.

As published in an interview by The Guardian, many of the teenagers Brodie met have since gone back home:

It was something they did for whatever reason before they settled down. Some were running away, some were out for adventure. It’s like being homeless by choice, I guess, but, living like that you learn a lot of American values like self-reliance, independence.

Content found via DPreview. All photos in this post by Mike Brodie.

Other Photographers: Adam Kennedy’s New Worlds

San Francisco’s Adam Kennedy combines two of my favorite things, photography and astronomy. He walks around the city looking for old fire hydrants and when he finds one, he photographs the knob on the top of it.

Then, Adam Photoshops the knob into a planet, with beautiful and interesting results. [Click to enlarge.]

Found via Tree Hugger (who I’ll forgive this time for not knowing how to spell knob). All photos in this post by Adam Kennedy.

Imagine a World without Hate

If you need a good 90-second cry this afternoon, watch this ad about hate crimes and bigotry.

Scott Recommends: Django Django

This is one of my favorite new bands of the minute. And this is, by far, my favorite song they’ve done.

Scott Recommends: Le Beau Male

I’ve always loved Jean Paul Gaultier cologne. And now, I love this ad campaign for Le Beau Male, featuring model Kaylan Morgan.

”The new fragrance Le Beau Male is created to accentuate erotic potential of each man and to stimulate all sense. This is the scent of freshness which makes men hot.” – said Jean Paul Gaultier.

Scott Recommends: Marina Abramović: The Artist Is Present

I watched a fantastic documentary this weekend called Marina Abramović: The Artist Is Present. The first part of the documentary is a brief history Marina Abramović’s contemporary performance art, but the film focuses primarily on her best-known exhibit, “The Artist Is Present,” which took place at the New York Museum of Modern Art in 2010.

Marina Abramović has spent over 40 years using her own body as an artistic vehicle, pushing herself to the edge of her physical and mental abilities and sometimes risking her own life in the process. In one show Marina called Rhythm 0, she placed 72 objects on a table that her audience could use on her any way they saw fit. These objects included a rose, a feather, honey, a whip, scissors, a scalpel, a gun and a bullet. The performance piece lasted for six hours, and while the audience remained civil at first, as the hours passed they cut up her clothes, stuck rose thorns into her stomach, and one audience member pointed the loaded gun at her head (only to have another audience member pull it away). Still, all the while, Marina remained impassive.

In another show, Marina stabbed herself multiple times and recorded her reactions, and in another show she propelled herself into the center of a large star that was lit on fire (and she nearly asphyxiated).

But from March 1 until May 31, 2010, Marina performed “The Artist Is Present,” and she sat in a chair in the atrium of MOMA — all day, every day. Members of the audience were invited one at a time to sit in a chair opposite her, but there was to be no talking, no touching, no overt communication of any kind, just eye contact for a suggested length of 15 minutes. To get into the room to see Marina, a patron had to squeeze between a live nude couple and then walk through an exhibit of videos showing Marina’s previous work.

At one point in the documentary, Fox News (which always seems to miss the point, no matter what they’re talking about, right?) deemed Marina a pornographic, “Yugoslavian-born provocateur.” First, there’s Marina’s sheer willpower. The fact that she sat in the museum from opening to close, every day, for three solid months — silent, connecting on a mental and physical level to stranger after stranger and absorbing all of the emotions that they brought into the exhibit — must have been exhausting and must have taken more fortitude than anything I’m likely to try in my lifetime.

But most importantly, while I’ll be the first person to admit that I don’t always understand performance art, I was intrigued while watching this documentary at how many of the people who sat with Marina were moved to tears. Yes, Marina’s face is fantastic — it’s simultaneously filled with pain and love and beauty and mystery — but these people obviously connected with her on a much more personal level.

Some people are sure to ask, but how is this art? I’d have to ask, how is it NOT art? Two strangers sharing a few minutes together who develop a connection that causes them both to have new perspective . . . What is art if it’s not transformative?

The patrons of MOMA clearly fell in love with Marina: One docent commented that while most museum goers spend about 30 seconds looking at the most famous art pieces in the world, crowds were coming to MOMA and literally spending all day watching Marina. She was a celebrity by the end of the exhibit. The film follows this trajectory, too. For the first 30 minutes I dismissed it, even thinking to myself “Why am I watching this? I don’t like performance art all that much?” But by the end of the movie, I loved Marina, too. I think I’ll be purchasing this movie.

Here is the official film trailer:

Beauty

I want to go into this house, which was designed by 314 Architecture Studio and sits in Athens, Greece.

A few words by the architects:

The house was designed in order to give the sense of sailing, speed and hovering over the water, according to the owner’s love for yachts. The bioclimatic design of residence, the cooling through the contact with water and eco-design of air-conditioning by using geothermal energy are consistent in constructing a highly dynamic and modern aesthetics but also friendly to the environment.

Scott Recommends: A Love Story, by Marlene Marino

Here’s a short art film for Dazed Digital, by Marlene Marino and featuring Ava Smith and Colin Roddick as the sea monster.

Drag Queens Playing Softball

Scott Recommends: Dark Shadows

The first time I saw a movie still from “Dark Shadows,” I immediately wanted to see this movie. I say this, despite the fact that I haven’t seen a Burton/Depp/Bonham-Carter movie since “Sweeney Todd” (I tend to fall into the camp that thinks they’re doing too much of the same thing). But then I saw the trailers for “Dark Shadows” and I decided there was no way in hell I was going to see this movie. Boy did the trailers make it look stupid.

And then, I changed my mind again; friends talked me into it by telling me that the tone was reminiscent of “Death Becomes Her,” which is one of my all time favorite movies. And so we went to the movie this weekend, and I loved it. The trailers definitely don’t match the movie. “Dark Shadows” was not stupid, it’s clever, funny, and gorgeous.

For one thing, it was nice to see Michelle Pfeiffer leading again, and her role was fantastic. It’s been a while since she impressed me. For another thing, this was my favorite Helena Bonham-Carter role since “Fight Club,” and I was glad to see that while Tim Burton might put his wife in every movie he makes, he’s not afraid to put her in a relatively small part sometimes. And for a third thing, as you can see from the following stills from the movie, it’s beautiful, and I liked it for that. These shots make me wish I had been a stylist for the movies.

All photos by this post copyright, Warner Bros.