Last year, for our inaugural Global Travel Photo Contest, we received so many great images from all around the U.S. and the world that really hit the mark of our contest theme: Many Worlds, One Planet. It was an incredibly tough challenge narrowing the images down to the top 10. There were literally dozens of images that we wanted to publish and show the world, as well as to honor the photographers who submitted them. So we put together a slideshow of about 100 of our favorites. To all our readers, enjoy these unique images. To all the photographers, thank you, and we’re looking forward to seeing more amazing work for 2009.
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Menswear from Izzy Lane's 2009 Ethical Fashion
Seven-plus days of champagne-soaked, Swarovski-studded Fashion Week opulence can leave your average “green” enthusiast feeling unconscionably wasteful. The daily arrival of extravagant fashion invitations printed on rubber or dusted in 14k gold can make the most cynical of eco-skeptics wonder: “what is the carbon footprint of chic?”
Happily, a heroic few among the fashionable set have made going green a style priority for Spring/Summer 2010. Located at Soho’s fittingly titled King of Green Street boutique, the GreenShows will host presentations by earth-friendly, fair-trade labels including Bodkin, Bahar Shahpar, Izzy Lane, Lara Miller, Mr. Larkin, and House of Organic over the course of two days. Of course, runway beauty will be suitably “eco”, with John Masters Organics providing all hair-styling services. In addition, a kickoff party on opening night will aim to raise awareness about the Rainforest Action Network (RAN)—an organization that attempts to educate fashion and luxury brands who use custom paper packaging about the dangerous environmental side effects that come from farming tree pulp in tropical rainforests.
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Photography by David Hobcote
Ah, Dubai. The crazy little emirate known for palm-tree-shaped islands and exploiting South Asian laborers now has another feather in its cap: the tallest building in the world. The Burj Dubai, which is rumored to open December 2, is already taller than Taiwan’s Taipei 101, now the second-tallest building in the world. Designed by Adrian Smith and the skyscraper-efficiency gurus at Skidmore, Owings and Merrill, the Burj Dubai could be as tall as 2,600 feet once finished. While its developer, Emaar Properties, won’t divulge the Burj’s official height or completion date, they have been generous with obnoxious promotional copy: “Burj Dubai will be known by many names. But only a privileged group of people will call it home.” Also on the project’s website is a bewildering image gallery with more borderline artistic photographs than pictures of the actual building.
I don’t mind the tackiness. I just want a new tallest building.
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Photography by Franco Musso
Nicolas Godin and Jean-Benoît Dunckel have been making music together since they were in grade school. They meet everyday to play, whether they have specific ideas in mind or not. Eventually, out of these daily improvisations, an album is born. Maintaining this sort of routine for over a decade takes an incredible amount of commitment. Asked if their relationship resembled a marriage, Godin responds, “For me, the idea of a marriage is someone who doesn’t piss you off. The world is cruel enough. When you come home, you need some support. Our producers tell us these stories about bands that hate each other and I say, ‘Why do you do this?’ You have to want to be together.”
So Godin and Dunckel’s marriage may solely be a musical one, but it’s an incredibly successful partnership. Love 2, the most recent fruit of their labor, sounds like a record from two musicians who have hit their stride — they know what works, and this go-round they’ve found inspiration in the sense of security that love and acceptance can provide. “Love shouldn’t be a problem,” Godin says. “Yes, but lack of love is always a problem,” Dunckel continues. “The songs on this record are about aching for love. We just want to say, ‘Love me.’” And that’s not an impossible request.
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Air – Do the Joy
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Paradise Regained, Zane Lewis. 2009.
Leave it to the Wall Street Journal to really put the heat on a guy. Zane Lewis, an emerging artist based out of Brooklyn and San Antonio, experienced it firsthand several years ago following the publication of a little article. Named one of ten “23-Year-Old-Masters” in the 2006 story, Lewis garnered some serious artistic accolades, and a hearty buzz of expectations.
Yet three years later, working under pressure and status, Lewis still appears keen to the challenge. A new solo exhibit, Watch Me Slowly Death, is scheduled to open this month at New York’s Mixed Greens Gallery, right in time to kick off the fall art season in Chelsea.
The exhibit will feature a series of mixed media paintings on Plexiglas, each piece a not-so playful juxtaposition aimed at the consumer excesses and youth-obsessed idolatry of our culture. Each untitled piece depicts luxe and glossy advertisements torn from the pages of a fashion magazine, overlain with neon, graffiti-like drippings of paint. The images are instantly recognizable (for who hasn’t seen those ads for Chanel No. 5?) yet slightly distorted, like contemporary idols warped by the sun. Religious iconography, mirrors, and collage are also used to further the themes of death, power, and decay. The show is a mature, subtle investigation of what it means to live and consume in the face of global economic crisis, inevitably raising many questions. Is it still possible to live humbly? Does recession ultimately lead to rebirth?
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Photography by Alex Marvar
Last Friday, we went to the sweltering, bricked confines of New York’s Mercury Lounge to check out the Antlers perform their recently released album Hospice. And while we cannot emphasize enough how magnetic and magnificent the trio’s headlining set sounded, we’ve already amply pronounced our affections here. On that account, we also wanted to pay our respects to the band playing right before the Antlers: Murder Mystery. The Brooklyn quartet infuses a bit of Americana into their catchy and carefree songs, which call to mind the old indie guard of Luna and Pavement. On tracks like “Lost” (streamed below), Jeremy Coleman’s baritone, the intricate interplay of keyboard and guitar, and the buoyant bass and drums rise and converge in a beguiling tension whose sunny disposition nevertheless serves the spirit of summer romance well in these waning days of the season.
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Murder Mystery – Lost
West Berlin was ripe with glam rock, urban blight, and Baader-Meinhof terrorists in the 1970s. A walled city cut off from the West, its inhabitants simmered in a pressure cooker of art, drugs, and leftist politics, so it’s no surprise the place captured Lou Reed’s imagination. Back then, he had never set foot in Berlin, but the city became his muse for a while; its dilapidated post-war rubble, drug-fueled dysfunction, and the massive concrete wall that ran through its heart inspired a story. Except for Reed, the story was about the walls that come between people or, more specifically, couples.
The Berlin in Reed’s mind took on operatic proportions, as did the album he named for the city, which chronicles the rise and fall of a love affair, and the requisite drugs, domestic abuse, sex, and suicide you can expect from the patron saint of the underground. Over the course of Berlin’s ten songs, things go from bad to worse for the narrator as his love, Caroline, does too many drugs, goes a little nuts, and tries to kill herself.
When Berlin was released in 1973, it achieved zero critical success, but thirty-three years later its moment arrived. Reed’s homage to dysfunctional love and self-destruction finally got its due in 2006 when he performed the album in its entirety with a thirty-five-piece ensemble at a warehouse in Brooklyn. Artist/filmmaker Julian Schnabel captured it all on film, and now Rizzoli has captured the film in a book.
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Image courtesy of Kevin Cyr
These days, it seems there’s a new eco-invention every week. Maybe you’ve already heard of the solar-powered eco-camper, the vegetable oil-fueled bio-Trekker , or even the Emergency Response Studio. If you have, then there’s no need telling you that the RV no longer has to be that gas guzzler antipode of sustainable travel that it used to. If not – well, now you know. And there’s even more….
Boston-based artist Kevin Cyr has created another type of green RV: the Camper Bike. Secured on a steady three-wheeler the camper is a human-driven sustainable RV that can be taken for a ride by a single pedaler. The inside is still under construction but once finished the Camper Bike will be equipped with the most necessary amenities for a few days on the road, making it a neat alternative holiday house — that is, if you don’t mind traveling solo. On his website Cyr describes the camper as a sculptural art piece, even if it is fully functioning. As such there might be little luck in wishing for one of your own anytime soon. But who knows, if Cyr gets a good response maybe he’ll put the camper into production.
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