TONYWARDSTUDIO.COM

Picture Party King

……Ted Adams has a wonderful knack for converting his living room space in to the hottest party in town, “picture” party that is. That’s right, Ted’s home located in the heart of South Philadelphia doubles as Southwark Gallery, an exhibition space that several times a year pays homage to the photographic image. The next event is on October 31, 2009. He and former Philadelphia Inquirer photographer/curator Eric Mencher teamed up several years ago to put on a very unique one-night photography group exhibition/reception in the confines of Ted’s home environment. Past participants have included such distinguished artists as Harvey Finkle, Jenny Lynn, Lawrence Salzman, Zoey Strauss, Daniela Sessa, Kass Mencher, Ron Tarver, Robert Asman and others. If you ever get a chance to meet Ted, ask him to invite you to his next party. You don’t want to miss it! To learn more about Southwark Gallery, log on to www.philadelphiaphoto.net/southwark ……….

Hotel Village

….If you happen to be traveling to Hamburg, Germany for business or pleasure anytime soon, the studio recommends that you stay at Hotel Village, a moderately priced hotel in the heart of this rich european city. Hamburg is the home of Jil Sander, Wofgang Joop and other distinguished Germans and It’s just a block away from the Hauptbanhof or train station as it’s known in English. The hotel was formerly the location of one of Germany’s most famous Bordello’s and the decor reflects the activities that took place there during it’s infamous past.

A Great Place For Lovers

As soon as you walk in to the place, it’s as if you’ve taken a step back in time. The original “ceiling mirrors” over the beds are still in place for today’s hotel guests to enjoy. It has also been the location for many of this studios most erotic shoots.

www.Hotel-Village.de

Hotel Village is close to the thriving city’s night life where prostitution remains legal……

Hamburg Is Hot

Studio Muse Simone

Charlene Lanza

…..No stranger to the studio, pin-up artist Charlene Lanza and TW met through a mutual friend, fellow painter and guest blogger Mikel Elam back in the nineties while they we’re hanging out regularly in Soho. Recently, the artist and the photographer met again for a portrait sitting and to introduce her latest works to our growing audience. Ms. Lanzel is an American artist, originally from LaCrosse, Wisconsin. Born in 1967, she started to paint with passion at the age of five. Self taught and determined to exhibit her works beyond the confines of a small town, she moved to New York City at the age of 20 and has been enjoying the creative process in the Big Apple ever since.

We are delighted to introduce a sampling of her work to you. To learn more about Charlene’s painting’s, log on to www.charlenelanzel.com…….

Chckita

Erotica

Dirty Martini

Kiss Me You Fool

www.CharleneLanzel.com

Jersey Girl

…..Here at the studio, we’re quite certain that when Bruce Springsteen wrote his famous song, “Jersey Girl”, he was surely referring to girls like Alison Dunlap, a native of the Garden State. In his song Springsteen wrote; “Nothing matters in this whole wide world…When you’re in love with a Jersey Girl.”

Alison At Home In New Jersey

Talent, a natural beauty, great wit and a distinctive charm are some of the qualities that got our attention here at the studio. An accomplished commercail photographer who works comfortably on location and in the studio, Alison loves to make pictures and model as well. She credits David LaChapelle, Helmut Newton and Joel-Peter Witkin as a few artist’s that have inspired her. Her commercial work has a clean and crisp edge to it while she describes her personal work as more, “playful yet a provacative mixture of sensuality and sarcasm.”

Alison Lounging

TW arrived at her home on a perfectly sunny day, a short distance from the studio just over the Delaware River on the way to the shore. The daughter of a contractor father, Alison is very handy around the house. She basically can fix anything, a testament to her independence and ability to construct complex sets for a single photograph.

Handy Around The House

Her bedroom is aglow in a cozy, sensuous blood red…….

Alison In Her Bedroom

There will be more sittings with Alison………..

Leg Show

www.alisondunlap-photo.com

To be continued……..

Miami Real Estate

…..As soon as we arrived at the security gate we knew we were safe. The studio was assigned to photograph Thomas Kramer, the self proclaimed visionary entrepreneur of Miami Beach at his mansion on Star Island. This small little island, attracted a few well known neighbors that include: Gloria Estefan, P. Diddy and Shaquille O’Neil. There were rumblings going on in Mr. Kramer’s native Germany, that the real estate mogul was embroiled in a multi- million dollar legal battle with members of his former wife’s family. Well known magazine picture editor Anka Degenhard, under contract for Hamburg based Park Avenue magazine at the time, contacted the studio from her office in Hamburg, to ask TW to fly down to South Beach to meet and photograph the real estate investor.

TK CROSS

Mr. Kramer was a polite host as we toured the enormous property looking for various places to shoot. The search for a great location on this day was not going to be a problem. We were on a tight schedule as he informed us of a cocktail party he was invited to attend at Shaq’s house, just a few basketball courts away. Rather than walk, TK decided to take the Harley……….

Thomas Kramer

Nirvana By Mikel Elam

…..Guest Blogger, Patrick Breslin a professor of Speech Communication at Santa Fe College in Gainesville, Florida; writes a commentary about Mikel Elam’s state of “Nirvana”, the studio’s Painting of the Day…….

Mikel Elam’s painting titled “Nirvana” depicts a male figure seated in meditation. The painting is a partial patchwork: the figure’s head encased in an orange square, the torso in a dark gray one. The background contains light colored disks, gold leaf squares, and dark purple 5-spoked behandled circles reminiscent of Buddhist icons, all ensconced in rectangular shapes. The dominant shade at the bottom of the painting is also purple, suggesting a base or ground, and philosophically linked to the icons; the top is adorned with swaths of blue, suggesting sky.

The meditator in the painting is a multiracial collage. The head appears African; the torso a shade of bronze; the lower abdomen and legs partake of a dark Caucasian complexion; the arms lighter—the left hinting at orange, the right bordering on pink—, and both terminating in an empty space of unpainted hands.

The title of the piece suggests several interpretations. Nirvana by definition refers to the ultimate peaceful state, and the multiracial makeup of the subject of the painting seems to propose that the blending of races, or at least their acceptance of one another, might lead to a peaceful existence. In the context of meditation as understood in popular culture, the lower abdomen whimsically lacks a navel, the historically clichéd object of meditation, causing the viewer to wonder whether the meditator in the painting is a holy incarnation not born of a woman. The viewer observes that the head of the subject does not fully connect to the body; the two are separated by a strip of the orange color from the box that surrounds the head. One could read into this that the nirvanic state of the meditator is all within the mind, disembodied, the concept of which does align with classic Buddhist perspectives.

The goal of meditation is enlightenment, whose common metaphor is light. Meditation is practiced in the mind—in the head—, yet the color scheme of the meditator’s body in the painting casts the darkest shades on the head and the lightest ones on the nonexistent hands, reversing the typical expectation and intimating that perhaps through the hands one expresses one’s degree of spiritual development, as Elam may be attempting to do in this work.

Pat Breslin Vulcan Days

Selfy's

……When the email arrived with an attached photo of an attractive woman holding a book entitled Orgasm, it certainly got a lot of attention at the studio. An assistant commented “she must be a fan”. The planning, the execution of the picture was clever, striking and the model was exotic looking. The book that she was holding was published in the year 2000 by yours truly. It was quite a compliment.

We learned that the picture was a self-portrait or “self’y” as Alejandra Guerrero affectionately describes her passion for often making herself a subject. It has been exciting to watch the talented Columbian born, 30 year old, rise to the rank of international photographer.

Alejandra calls Chicago her home and is currently where she resides. However, she also shoots in LA and is currently abroad working on various projects in Scotland and England at the present time. It is our pleasure to offer you a sampling of the ambitious work of this talented young photogrpaher. To learn more about Alejandra’s work, log on to www.alt-er-ego.com. …………

Kissing A Fool

www.alt-er-ego.com

www.alt-er-ego.com

www.alt-er-ego.com

www.alt-er-ego.com

Gays In The Military

…..Guest blogger Yoko Grosshans brings us up to date on the continuing political hot potato involving “Don’t Ask Don’t Tell”……..

“Gay men have had a very difficult time finding acceptance alongside their comrades in the military. It begs the question; if a man proclaims to be gay, why is he deemed incapable of defending our country? Is it the “effeminate” nature of some gay men that has been exhibited or forced to be proclaimed? If that is the case, why are women allowed to serve in the military?
This brings the “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell Act” into continual play. A law passed by Congress in 1993 and signed by President Bill Clinton. It is exactly what it states; don’t ask about one’s sexual orientation and don’t divulge information about one’s sexual orientation.
James Pietrangelo II knows all too well about this act and its effects. The former Army infantryman and lawyer was booted from the military after fighting in Iraq in 1991. He returned as a JAG officer in the second war in Iraq and was preparing to return for his third combat tour in 2004, when he openly declared that he was gay. After many appeals the Supreme court is declining to review his case.
President Barack Obama has stated numerous times that he would overturn the act, but thus far no changes have been made. In fact, the Obama administration in its brief last month supported a lower court ruling, stating they acted accordingly in upholding the gay ban! What’s even more suprising and somewhat baffling is that a recent Gallup poll found that most conservatives and churchgoers now support gay men and women to serve openly in uniform, yet still no action has been taken to change the law to date.
It doesn’t seem to make sense that because of a person’s sexual orientation, they should be denied their rights to defend our country. Just when one thinks we have made such great progress in this land of hope, a non-sensical issue such as this arises and makes one question how much progress we have actually made.”