My pal Andrea is a very talented photographer. She took a photo of me holding The Moon and wearing a Tunnock’s Teacake wrapper…
…And then she made me King Of The Universe!…
You can see and even hear more of what Andrea gets up to on her website HERE.
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I discovered Erik Johansson’s fantastically imaginative photography completely by chance a few days ago which is probably the best way you can discover anything. Erik’s from Sweden and here is what he does with his time…
About Erik Johansson:
“My name is Erik Johansson, I’m a full time photographer and retoucher from Sweden based in Berlin, Germany. I work on both personal- and commissioned projects and sometimes I create street illusions. I don’t capture moments, I capture ideas. To me photography is just a way to collect material to realize the ideas in my mind. I get inspired by things around me in my daily life and all kinds of things I see. Although one photo can consist hundreds of layers I always want it to look like it could have been captured. Every new project is a new challenge and my goal is to realize it as realistic as possible.”
View more of Erik’s amazing work on his website which is HERE.
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My friend Bob works as a bouncer on the doors of The Tempest, a great little dive bar on New York’s 8th Avenue. A few days ago, Bob had this utterly jaw dropping story to tell…
A true 8th Avenue tale. Apologies in advance for the use of profanity and one particularly offensive term, but the story wouldn’t be nearly as interesting if it wasn’t quoted verbatim and uncensored:
It was a typical Friday night at Tempest and the evening had thus far been uneventful. We were expecting a decent crowd to file out of the Knicks game and into the pub, but until the final buzzer sounded in the Garden we would have to settle for the slow but reliable business from the handful of regulars and the odd passerby that stopped into the pub. Hoping to kill some time, I stepped out front for a smoke. Within moments of me lighting the cigarette, an unusual-looking fellow approached me. His clothes were far too big for his body (although his build was anything but frail) and he had a manic look in his eyes that was unmistakably the gaze of someone who wasn’t, as they say, “all together”. Far younger and more spry than the usual derelicts who mill about on 8th Avenue, I kept at an arm’s length as he made eye contact with me.
Reaching into his pocket, he produced a Discman that had to have dated to the mid-1990s.
“But my motherfucking batteries is dead, man! I need to listen to my jams!”
“I’m very sorry, buddy,” I reiterated, “but I don’t have anything for you”.
At this point his glare went from crazed to menacing. His eyes assumed a steely clarity that was unsettling, to say the least.
“Is that how we going to play it, motherfucker?” he snapped, the inflection of his voice rising and becoming noticeably louder. “I just got out of motherfucking Rikers, asshole,” he continued. “Do you know what that means? Do you know what that makes me, motherfucker?!”
I took a step back and squared my shoulders, keeping my arms to my sides but otherwise assuming a fighter’s stance. I fully expected him to attack me at that point. Although his dress made him appear comical at first glance, he was nonetheless powerfully built. Just when I thought he was about to swing, however, he began gesticulating wildly to himself.
“It makes me a faggot!”
I looked at him with an expression of utter bewilderment.
“I got fucked in the ass every day there, and now I’m a faggot! Yeah! I’m a faggot! I’m a faggot! Whoooooo!”
He repeated the phrase over and over again, each repetition louder and more enthusiastic than the one that preceded it. As quickly as he had approached, he turned around and began walking away from me into 8th Avenue’s perpetual tangle of traffic. He raised his arms triumphantly above his head and continued to repeat his new mantra:
“I’m a faggot! I’m a faggot! I’m a faggot! Yeah!”
Halfway across the street, he approached an off-duty yellow cab that was sitting in traffic. With one abrupt motion, he grabbed the handle to the driver’s door and swung it open violently. The terrified driver cowered in fear as our hero leaned in and screamed into his ear:
“I’M A FAGGOT!”
Without another word, he calmly walked away from the cab with his arms still raised skyward, sauntering down 30th Street like the heavyweight champion of the world.
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Meet “Green Boots”.
“Green Boots” is just one of the 200 or so dead bodies on Mount Everest’s ‘Death Zone’ and because the recovery of corpses like Green Boots is pretty much impossible, each one like him is named and used as a landmark on the Death Zone.
Climbers attempting to reach Everest’s summit will typically spend substantial time within the ‘Death Zone’ (altitudes higher than 8,000 metres (26,000 ft)), and face significant challenges to survival.
Temperatures can dip so low in the Death Zone that any part of the human body exposed to the air can result in instant frostbite. Another major threat to climbers is the atmospheric pressure which at the top of Mount Everest, is about a third of sea level pressure or 0.333 standard atmospheres, resulting in the availability of only about a third as much oxygen as normal to breathe. A lot of the people lying in the Death Zone simply went to sleep and never woke up.
Although, who’d want to?
The extreme weather conditions on Everest mean that a lot of the bodies are discovered showing little signs of decay…
This is George Mallory:
George Herbert Leigh Mallory was an English mountaineer who took part in the first three British expeditions to Mount Everest in the early 1920s.
During the 1924 British Mount Everest Expedition, Mallory and his climbing partner Andrew “Sandy” Irvine both disappeared somewhere high on the North-East ridge during their attempt to make the first ascent of the world’s highest mountain. The pair’s last known sighting was only a few hundred metres from the summit.
Mallory’s ultimate fate was unknown for 75 years, until his body was discovered in 1999 by an expedition that had set out to search for the climbers’ remains. Whether or not Mallory and Irvine reached the summit before they died remains a subject of speculation and continuing research.
This is how George Mallory looks these days:
Climbers on Everest often stumble upon injured men and woman along the way but have no way of helping them because of the location and the dangerous conditions and so, there is no choice but to leave them to die. Two climbers once stumbled upon one such unfortunate woman who yelled at them “Please don’t leave me!” The climbers promised the woman that they would return whilst knowing that there was no way they possibly could.
Consumed with guilt and after spending many years saving money, the climbers returned to the woman and gave her a proper burial.
This is not her:
It can cost anything between $25k and $6ok to make a trip to the summit of Mount Everest and many Everest climbers have said that the hardest part is passing all of the graves and human remains.
And who can blame them?
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By Danish designer Michael Hansen, this is one of the greatest ideas for vinyl record design I’ve ever seen!
“An album cover for the modern classical composer Allan Gravgaard Madsen. My idea was to translate Allan’s sensorial music into a visual experience with elements of sensuality. The two pieces of music is separated on the records two sides. There is not an A- or B-side. Each piece has its own front page; Waves is a visualisation of the music performed by nine trompets. I made it as simple as possible with nine circles on a line. Crystal Tapestry is a pattern of crystals that has no front or back end, it refers to a crystal that merge into it self. Inside I made a visualisation that combines the two sides, a crystalized wave. On the record i created patterns that gives the design a visual sensuality. I made an analog animation with a 50 Hz strobe lamp and made it interact with the music.”
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* Album Cover Artwork: “Love Lust Tales”
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The Unravelling Of Al Cook... 