In Voluptas Mors

I’m a big fan of the movie “The Silence of the Lambs”, directed by Jonathan Demme in 1991. Other day I was browsing on Google about subliminal messages in movie posters and I found among some of them, “The Silence of the Lambs” poster. I have the DVD of the movie and I’m tired to see the cover and I never realized what was hidden behind that skull painted on the back of the moth.

See “The Silence of the Lambs” poster (right click on the image to enlarge in another window):

“The Silence of the Lambs” high-res poster – 1600×2377.

Now, see closer and closer, and what you see is not a skull on the backside of the moth covering Jodie Foster‘s mouth but is actually a photo of seven naked women where the position of their bodies looks as a skull.

That was a tribute to “In Voluptas Mors”, the famous photo conceived of by Salvador Dalí and shot by Philippe Halsman in 1951.

I also knew the picture but I had never associated one thing to another. I decided to do some research about the photo. The draft of this post was saved for months, and finally I could finish it.

Halsman, Dalí and In Voluptas Mors

Philippe Halsman was bon on 2 May 1906, in Riga, Latvia, and was a Latvian-born American famous portrait photographer who was born to a Jewish family of Morduch (Max) Halsman, a dentist, and Ita Grintuch, a grammar school principal, in Riga, Halsman studied electrical engineering in Dresden. In September 1928, Halsman went on a hiking tour in the Austrian Alps with his father, Morduch. During this tour, Morduch died from severe head injuries. The circumstances were never completely clarified and Halsman was sentenced to 4 years imprisonment for patricide. The case provoked anti-Jewish propaganda and thus gained international publicity, and Albert Einstein and Thomas Mann wrote in support of Halsman. Finally by 1931 Halsman was released under the conditions that he leave Austria for good, never to return.

Philippe Halsman and Salvador Dalí lived and worked in Paris in the 1930s when surrealism flourished but they first met in New York in 1941, when both were new émigrés. They had arrived within months of each other – Dali in August 1940, and Halsman three months later. During the previous ten years, their paths must have criss-crossed frequently in the narrow streets of Montparnasse, where Halsman had a studio at 22 Rue Delambre, and Dali was part of the surrealist enclave at 54 Rue du Chateau. In 1936, Halsman exhibited photographs at the Galerie de la Pleiade, where surrealist photographer Man Ray also showed his work. But until 1941, Halsman and Dalí had never met.

Within a year of his arrival in New York, Halsman had re-established himself. His iconic portrait of model Constance Ford silhouetted against an American flag had been featured in a major Elizabeth Arden advertising campaign. And in October, Halsman was sent by the Black Star Agency to photograph the outsize costumes created for the Ballets Russes production of “Labyrinth” at the Metropolitan Opera House — with music by Franz Schubert, choreography by Leonid Massine, and scenery and costumes by Salvador Dalí.

Lacking a large studio, Halsman took the company’s prima ballerina, Tamara Toumanova, and another dancer dressed as a giant white rooster, to a nearby rooftop. When Halsman photographed bird and ballerina against the soaring towers of Rockefeller Center, he produced a photograph that evoked one of Dali’s own sharply-focused, surreal works of art. The photo became LIFE’s “Picture of the Week,” the artists became inspired friends, and their creative rapport would last for the next 37 years.

Several weeks later they collaborated again; this time they produced a collaged photograph of Dalí lying naked in the embryo pose within an enlarged photo of an egg. The image, entitled “Pre-Natal Memory,” was published the following year in Dalí’s autobiography, “The Secret Life of Salvador Dalí.”

The 1948 work “Dalí Atomicus” explores the idea of suspension, depicting three cats flying, a bucket of thrown water, and Dalí in mid air. The title of the photograph is a reference to Dalí’s work “Leda Atomica” which can be seen in the right of the photograph behind the two cats. Halsman reported that it took 28 attempts before a satisfactory result was achieved. Halsman and Dalí eventually released a compendium of their collaborations in the 1954 book “Dalí’s Mustache”, which features 36 different views of the artist’s distinctive mustache.

To make “In Voluptas Mors”, Halsman took three hours to arrange the seven models according to a sketch by Dalí. Hours of direction, contortion and prodding seems to have eliminated any eroticism. In the behind-the-scene photos below, the models look exhausted and bored. The title, “In Voluptas Mors”, roughly translates to “the voluptuous death”. In Roman mythology, Voluptas was the goddess of pleasure.

In the decades ahead, Halsman and Dalí would “play” together at least once a year — “an elating game”, Halsman wrote in 1972, “creating images that did not exist, except in our imaginations. Whenever I needed a striking protagonist for one of my wild ideas, Dalí would graciously oblige. Whenever Dali thought of a photograph so strange that it seemed impossible to produce, I tried to find a solution.”

Usually they conspired in Halsman’s large, strobe-equipped studio at 33 West 67th Street, around the corner from St. Nicholas Arena in Manhattan. Other “sittings” took place at Dalí’s home in Cadaques, Los Angeles, and at the St. Regis Hotel, where Dali invariably stayed when he was in New York. The death of Philippe Halsman on June 25, 1979, in New York, put and end to this intense, prolific, 37-year collaboration unique in the history of 20th Century art. Dalí died on January 23, 1989, at 84, in Catalonia, Spain.

And to finish, an additional information: the moth depicted in “The Silence of the Lambs” is real. The death’s-head hawkmoth is a real moth found primarily in Europe, and it appears to have a human skull on its back.

Nuts: The Final Issue (+18)

The end of an English institution

Nuts closure largely due to ‘tsunami of internet porn’

Nuts, the weekly that along with arch-rival Zoo shook up the men’s magazine market a decade ago but attracted criticism for their sexist portrayal of women, is now closed. It’s hard to believe, but if you need to see with your own eyes go to the site www.nuts.co.uk and you’ll see this:

Nuts launched in January 2004, just ahead of Bauer Media’s Zoo, and at the height of its popularity had an average weekly circulation of more than 300,000. However, both magazines have suffered years of sales decline, along with most other paid-for titles in the men’s sector. Nuts had a circulation of just over 53,000 in print in the second half of 2013, according to the latest official ABC sales figures, plus nearly 9,000 digital editions. Zoo, which has always lagged behind Nuts in sales terms, had a circulation of less than 30,000 in the same period.

Nuts and Zoo’s circulations dropped by one third year on year in the second half of 2013, after both titles’ publishers pulled them from Co-op stores. This came after they refused the supermarket chain’s demand that both magazines be distributed with modesty bags to shield pictures of naked women from shoppers. The retailer said it was acting on the concerns of its customers when it ordered Nuts, Zoo, Front and Loaded to hide their lurid front covers or be taken off its shelves.

Nuts and Zoo were defined from the outset by publishing more overtly sexual content than more expensive monthly rivals such as Loaded and FHM, which were forced go more downmarket in response. However, after 2007 sales of both weeklies went into longterm decline, not least because readers who wanted to look at scantily clad, topless or naked women could find far more risqué material online for free.

Nuts (2004 – 2014)

The closure of lads’ magazine Nuts is largely down to a “tsunami of internet porn”, which is in itself a reason for “slight despair”, according to one of the UK’s most senior female journalists. Eleanor Mills, editorial director at the Sunday Times, said the demise of Nuts was “a sign of progress” in terms of representation of women in the media, “but the reason it’s closing fills me with slight despair”.

“Unfortunately the reason why Nuts and those lad mags are not doing well is because of the absolute onslaught, tsunami of internet porn out there,” Mills said during a Women in News session at the Advertising Week Europe conference in London on Tuesday. “Why do you need to buy Nuts magazine when with two clicks you can see a million images of tits much more graphic than you can see in Nuts?”

The end of the printed edition of Nuts Magazine as well the website nuts.co.uk also means no more posts like these on All That I Love: Nuts 100 Sexiest Babes 2012 and Nuts 100 Sexiest Babes 2013. The two posts together have over 2,500 hits on this blog only in one week (at right).

Source: www.theguardian.com.

The Final Issue

Warning: curves ahead (+18 or NSFW)

As sales are dropping, it’s getting more difficult for printed magazines to survive. This month the curtain for the famous British Nuts Magazine also falls. Say goodbye with this final photoseries… Click to enlarge the images.

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A photographic protest by Alex Moscow (+18)

O fotógrafo brasileiro Alex Moscow resolveu usar o seu talento e a sua atividade para expressar, de forma contundente e única, o que acha da recente onda de manifestações Brasil afora. Usando uma modelo nua em pelo como “tela” ele deixa claro que ninguém o representa. // The Brazilian photographer Alex Moscow decided to use his talent and his activity to express in a forceful way and unique, what he thinks of the recent wave of demonstrations throughout Brazil. Using a model in the nude as his “screen”, Moscow makes clear that no one is representing him.

Com a palavra, o autor Alex Moscow:

“A modelo das fotos foi sensacional, topou, não criou qualquer objeção e se entregou ao personagem, plenamente. A escolha da mulher para simbolizar a Mãe, a Natureza, pra onde o ser humano precisa, urgente, voltar a fazer parte dela. As sociedades, baseadas em consumo de toda espécie, inclusive de indivíduos, está falida, não tem mais caminho a seguir. Acredito que só o reencontro com a Mãe natureza vai nos dar novos e prósperos caminhos. A mulher nua apresenta os seios de onde vem nosso principal e primeiro alimento; e a vagina, por onde somos geridos e expulsos para enfrentar a vida pós parto. A nudez tem ainda outro valor no ensaio, que é o quase óbvio, se desnudar de preconceitos, de dogmas, de doutrinas, de crenças, de tudo que nos prende a vícios de convivências desastrosas. É a proposta de nos expor, de nos ceder, nos entregar por completo as novas expectativas.
As coberturas no rosto são um outro protesto, contra a decisão dos nossos desprezíveis políticos, governantes, administradores públicos em proibir a livre expressão com o uso de máscaras durante as manifestações. Ninguém me representa.
Cabe exclusivamente a mim apresentar propostas realmente melhores para a nossa existência e de toda a natureza.
Não é o outro, sou eu.
As responsabilidades são minhas. Não cabe mais aquele velho papo de condenar ou responsabilizar o vizinho pelo cheiro do lixo. Cabe somente a mim, saber reciclar os pensamentos, transforma-los em ações dignas, que contemplem antes de tudo aos que nos cercam. Fazendo assim a gente, necessariamente, progride (ou sofre) as consequências dos nosso atos. Não existe via de mão única.
A revolução vem de dentro.
Revolucionar não é jogar bomba no manifestante, tão pouco jogar pedra na instituição criada, pelo Estado, pra reprimir. Isso já era. A gente está, equivocadamente, agindo como já foi feito, fracassadamente, em centenas de infinitas, milhares de vezes na história da existência do bicho Homem na Terra. É repensar novas fórmulas, novos meios de debate, discussão e luta. Ser cruel pra enfraquecer e apagar inimigos, (já que parece ser parte da nossa essência) de outras maneiras. Boto fé em algumas ações, como a dos Anonymous, por conta disso. Atacam de outra forma. Exercem a violência sem escorrer sangue pra fora. Causam hemorragias internas em instituições que até então se consideravam intranspassáveis (sic), inatingíveis. Derruba, por algumas horas, o sistema de um órgão como um DATAPREV da vida pra ver a merda que causa na vida de todo mundo…
A revolução, tanto para o bem, como pro outro lado, vem de dentro da gente, com o fim dessa mania frouxa e covarde de acreditar que é o moleque ali da esquina que vai te convocar pras ruas. Não, não dá mais pra ser ou pensar assim. Sou eu que decido ocupar todo e qualquer local destinado ao público pra gritar por dignidade, honestidade, tranquilidade na rotina de vida.
A reforma é humana
Vai as ruas gritar por dias melhores, mas volta pra casa avançando sinal de trânsito. Não dá seta porque não precisa dar satisfação da vida a ninguém.
Vai pras ruas chamar PM de cuzão, mas dá propina na Blitz quando anda com documentação toda errada, dirigindo bêbado.
Vai pras ruas exigir direitos, mas crê que o rock n roll que escuta no apartamento é bacana mas o funk do favelado é uma aberração.
Vai pras ruas e reclama de tiros de borracha, cheiro de gás e cinzeiradas, mas ignora (propositadamente) as centenas de pessoas que são assassinadas nas infinitas áreas de exclusão da cidade.
É tomando banho, trancado no banheiro, que a gente se entrega.
O ensaio propõe que só depende de mim para as coisas ficarem ainda pior ou transformar completamente a ordem das coisas, para melhor.
A Fotografia está, nos dias atuais, aliada (ainda bem) às recentes tecnologias de difusão de informação. Creio até que se essas manifestações fossem em algum tempo passado, onde a gente não tinha acesso às redes sociais, por exemplo, não teriam qualquer repercussão ou expressividade, diante da mesquinha forma com que os grandes meios de comunicação se posicionam diante dos fatos. A fotografia documental, ensaística, independente tem o papel fundamental na sustentação dos ideais que vem das ruas.”

19th August: World Photography Day

WORLD PHOTOGRAPHY DAY

World Photography Day originates from the invention of the daguerreotype, a photographic processes developed by Louis Daguerre. On January 9, 1839 The French Academy of Sciences announced the daguerreotype process and a few months later, on August 19, 1839, the French government announced the invention as a gift free to the world. Read more here.

Photography

Photography (derived from the Greek photos- for “light” and -graphos for “drawing”) is the art, science, and practice of creating durable images by recording light or other electromagnetic radiation, either chemically by means of a light-sensitive material such as photographic film, or electronically by means of an image sensor. Typically, a lens is used to focus the light reflected or emitted from objects into a real image on the light-sensitive surface inside a camera during a timed exposure. The result in an electronic image sensor is an electrical charge at each pixel, which is electronically processed and stored in a digital image file for subsequent display or processing.

The result in a photographic emulsion is an invisible latent image, which is later chemically developed into a visible image, either negative or positive depending on the purpose of the photographic material and the method of processing. A negative image on film is traditionally used to photographically create a positive image on a paper base, known as a print, either by using an enlarger or by contact printing.

The Inventor

Louis Jacques-Mandé Daguerre, had formed a business partnership with Nicéphore Niépce who died of a stroke (apoplexy of the brain), after which his son took his father’s place in the partnership. Niépce had started out experimenting with light sensitive materials and had made a contact print from a drawing, and then went on to successfully make the first record of an image in the camera obscura using materials that were light sensitive – the world’s first photograph. Niépce’s aim originally had been to find a method to reproduce prints and drawings for lithography.

Daguerre knew it would be difficult to collect patent royalties from the invention, and there had been an unsuccessful attempt by Niépce and Daguerre to issue stock so as to profit from the invention of the daguerreotype. The president of the French Academy of Science, the astronomer François Arago who sat as a Deputy in the French House of Deputies became enthusiastic about the invention and a committee was formed whereby Arago would present a bill in the House of Deputies and Gay-Lussac a similar bill in the Upper house of the French Parliament. Daguerre and Niépce’s son would each receive a life annuity, and the invention would be donated by the French government to the world.

The Daguerreotype process (also called Daguerreotypy) was the first practicable photographic process. Using the camera obscura (a drawing aid for artists that after the birth of photography became known as the photographic camera) a light tight plate holder was designed to hold a copper plate faced with a thin layer of silver. Prior to exposing the plate in the camera, the plate was made light sensitive by fumes from iodine crystals in a wooden box. After the exposure, mercury fumes would develop the image which was then fixed in a solution of common salt (sodium chloride) or of sodium thiosulphate. The plate could be toned in gold chloride.

1840–1841 Camerae obscurae and plates for Daguerreotype called “Grand Photographe” produced by Charles Chevalier (Musée des Arts et Métiers)

The camera obscura is a naturally occurring phenomenon. When a hole in the wall of a dark room faces onto a brightly lit scene – as, for example a dark cave on the edge of a sunlit valley, a picture of the scene outside can be projected upside down onto a sheet of paper or parchment held at a suitable distance from the hole inside the dark room. Early camerae obscurae were large dark rooms of this type (camera obscura is Latin for dark chamber). The system gives a brighter picture when the hole is replaced by a lens, and portable camerae obscurae were built with an internal mirror at 45 degrees to make the image upright. They are fitted with a ground glass viewing screen, and are used as a drawing aid by artists. Daguerre would have been familiar wth the camera obscura as a tool in his work as a theatrical scene painter, and had developed a visual public entertainment called the Diorama. By painting on both sides of a piece of white cloth, and illuminating the painting first from the front, and then from the back, an illusion of movement could be obtained to depict a train crash, or the erupting of a volcano. Dioramas were opened in towns in several countries. Photos and text: Wikipedia.

Whether you see yourself as an Amateur, Hobbyist or Professional, August 19th is a day to embrace your love of photography. Enjoy the gallery.

International Worker’s Day (+18)

International Workers’ Day (also known as May Day) is a celebration of the international labour movement. May 1 is a national holiday in more than 80 countries and celebrated unofficially in many other countries.

Enjoy these beautiful workers and have a nice International Worker’s Day!