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Luciano Ruiz: Instagram

Posted on May 19, 2012 by Luciano Ruiz

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……….New York City – 1965. 231 East 47th Street. Andrew Warhola, known as Andy Warhol, revolutionized the way in which people look at art. His emblematic technique has become an icon of modern art. As the 50th anniversary of his famous Factory studio approaches, it seems proper to explore the not so conventional aspects of his artistic career.

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Luciano Ruiz: Instagram

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Some of his earlier works show deliberate preparation through photographic images and sketches. Warhol’s “organized mess” took much more than simply selecting contrasting colors and backgrounds to create the perfect design. By taking photographs of the objects he was drawn to, Warhol anticipated the shapes and patterns he would later recreate.

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Luciano Ruiz: Instagram

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His final works do not resemble his initial sketches in any way. The use of color and contrast was purely Warhol’s own creation. Additionally, he developed his own movement by venturing into techniques never seen before. However, without his photographic eye for design, his creations would have never been the same.

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Luciano Ruiz: Instagram

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By examining several of Warhol’s filmstrips, it is evident that he was drawn to peculiar characters. His interest in high fashion provided him access to avant-garde ideas and techniques. Although not commonly exhibited or explored, these filmstrips provide an insight into one of Warhol’s main inspirations.

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Luciano Ruiz: Instagram

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As his interests expanded into other sectors of society, Warhol began using political and social agendas as inspirations for art. Controversial political events and social movements began to spark an interest in Warhol. Terrifying political figures soon took the form of colorful characters, revolutionizing the way in which people looked at them.

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Warhol Exhibition

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Throughout Andy Warhol’s career, he created numerous works of art that express diverse interests and subjects. Anything from fashion to current events caught the attention of this artistic idol. Through skillful preparation and innovation, nowadays his works are amongst the most renowned in the world. Five decades later and Warhol continues to surprise us all.

About The Author: Luciano Ruiz is a Candidate for Bachelor of Arts, University of Pennsylvania – Class of 2013

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Editor’s Note: To access additional articles by Luciano Ruiz, go to the search bar at the top of the page: enter name and click green icon.

Photo: Bob Shell

Posted on May 16, 2012 by Bob Shell

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……….Nothing new to report on my case. But I really don’t expect to get a ruling from the court until around the middle of the year. Courts move at their own speed, and the general rule seems to be the longer the better, because that means they are actually considering everything. My case generated a massive amount of paperwork, and the court must go through all of it to consider my claims.

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I got a letter the other day from one of the models who worked with me on the bondage book back in 2003-04. She said she got to wondering about what had happened to me and did a Google search and found out where I am. Like every model I ever worked with, she knows that I am not guilty. I told her about TWS and suggested that she post here about what it was like to work with me, so maybe she will.

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One lawyer I know made the point that the cops and prosecution had from June 2003 until my trial in August of 2007 to search for any model I worked with who would say anything negative about me. They couldn’t find anyone. If I really had been the serial molestor they portrayed me as being, they ought to have been able to find at least one of my earlier victims, but they found no one. That should have meant something to the jury. I don’t think they really thought things through and simply voted with a knee-jerk reaction.

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I also don’t think the jury understood how sentencing works. Not one of the sentences they gave me was very long, and I believe they assumed that all of them would run concurrently. Indeed, running sentences concurrently is the norm. But in Virginia the judge makes that decision, not the jury, and the jury can’t even be told that they have the option to recommend concurrent sentences. My judge ignored the VA sentencing guidelines and ran my sentences consecutively. The guidelines called for 1 1/2 to 3 years. But the Virginia guidelines are merely recommendations, they carry no force, and judges routinely ignore them. I don’t know why they even bother to have guidelines.

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If the jury in a state of Virginia case asks the judge if sentences will be run concurrently or consecutively, the judge will tell them that it is none of their concern! The jury is not allowed to know!! But the law requires that jurors be fully informed prior to their deliberations. None of this makes any sense, since a jury can intend a light sentence and a judge can arbitrarily convert it into a very long sentence. The more research I do on this, the less sense it makes.

About The Author: Bob Shell is a professional photographer, author and former editor in chief of Shutterbug Magazine. He is currently serving a 35 year sentence at Pocahontas State Correctional Center, Pocahontas, Virginia for involuntary manslaughter for the death of one of his models, Marion Franklin. He is currently working on his appeal.
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Editor’s Note: To read more letters from prison by Bob Shell, go to the search bar at the top of the page: enter name and click the green icon. To learn more about the case log on to www.BobShellTruth.com.

Barlow Holley

Posted on May 12, 2012 by Barlow Holley

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……….I despise imposing my own subjective idea of this photographic message upon you the viewer and wish to leave its meaning as open-ended as possible. That being said, one could reasonably say that this image is of a more humorous rather than serious nature in comparison to some of the other exhibits in The Philo Project series. To me, this picture hints at a variety of themes: a parody of the concept of “erotic art” through the absurd juxtaposition of a formal space and stodgy musical instrument with near complete nudity, a glimpse of the sitter with see-through vision, or merely the whimsical appreciation of the human form in the position of musical performance. Is erotic art a nominal practice more than other genres of art, does erotic art require reference to physical acts or parts to be erotic, what is erotic art’s place in the hierarchy of artistic content, assuming that such an ordering exists? These are just a handful of my personal musings.

To Be Continued……….

William Burroughs

Posted on May 11, 2012

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In 1972, Rolling Stone magazine sent me and writer Robert Palmer to London to do a feature article on William S. Burroughs. William greeted us cordially; despite his outlaw reputation, he was a complete gentleman. We stayed a week, and had a terrific time. We also met Brion Gysin (William’s closest friend), who showed us his “Dream Machine,” a revolving flicker device that caused visual fireworks in the viewer’s brain. Bob and I also enjoyed Burroughs’ awesome intelligence and his controversial ideas about addiction, conditioning, and control.

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Photo: Charles Gatewood

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Rolling Stone loved our article, and made me their New York photographer (they were based in San Francisco) later that year.
In 1975, Crawdaddy magazine asked me to photograph Burroughs and Jimmy Page as they interviewed each other. Burroughs was back in America now, and we met in his downtown Manhattan loft. Burroughs disliked being photographed, but he remembered me and was warm and friendly, even giving my camera a rare grin.

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Photo: Charles Gatewood

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In 1975, William Burroughs wrote the text for my first book, Sidetripping. I was so thrilled. Shortly thereafter, Burroughs moved to Lawrence, Kansas. I never saw him again. He died in 1997 at the age of 83. By introducing my photography to the world, William Burroughs changed my life, big time. Thank you so much, William!

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Photo: Charles Gatewood

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Photo: Charles Gatewood

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Last year I published Burroughs 23, a handmade artist’s book with DanaDanaDana, a noted San Francisco art book publisher. Burroughs 23 contains all the best photos from both my NYC and London shoots. To view the book (and the boxed set of my Burroughs prints), go to www.Burroughs23.com.

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Photo: Charles Gatewood

Editor’s Note: To learn more about Charles Gatewood’s work log on, www.CharlesGatewood.com

Photo: Ryan Feit

Posted on May 9, 2012 by Ryan Feit

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……….Entrepreneurship used to be setting up a large factory. It used to be knocking on doors for months to convince a bank or wealthy investors to provide you millions of dollars before you could operate. But everything we know about entrepreneurship is changing. This is what Entrepreneurship looks like today.

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Photo: Ryan Feit

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Today, all you need to build is a laptop. The computer has replaced the hammer and the Internet has replaced the assembly line. The cost to create has declined exponentially.

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Photo: Ryan Feit

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Only one thing remains constant. It’s all about the team. The right team can operate like a heat-seeking missile, varying its path in a rapidly changing landscape in order to succeed. Nowadays teams are more agile and can work together from across the globe.

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Photo: Ryan Feit

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SeedInvest will change the game. For the first time in history, entrepreneurs don’t need to knock on doors to find and convince the 1% to invest in them. They will be able to pitch millions at once and raise small amounts from lots of people.

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SeedInvest empowers entrepreneurs to raise capital in a way that has never been done before. Convince “The Crowd” and fund your business. Fail and you’ll know your idea wasn’t worthy.

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Photo: Ryan Feit

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For the first time in 80 years, anyone will be able to invest in the new restaurant down the street or the next hot startup. SeedInvest is about the 99%. You don’t need to be rich, you just need a computer. Join us at seedinvest.com.

About The Author: Ryan Feit is enrolled in the MBA program: Wharton School of Business, University of Pennsylvania.

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Editor’s Note: To read more articles by Ryan Feit, go to the search bar at the top of the page: enter name and click green icon.

Christopher

Posted on April 6, 2012 by Madeleine Shiff

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For this series of portraits, I was influenced both by Diane Arbus’s photographs of so-called “deviant or marginal” individuals, as well as Nan Goldin’s candid style of photography. I admire both of their photographic styles for their abilities to create photographs that are blunt and honest. They also both raise questions about a photograph’s ability to reveal hidden truths.

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Christoper

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My series depicts a man getting ready for a night out, and in the process of transforming himself into a woman. Each photograph is a different step in the process and conveys him methodically putting on makeup and changing his clothes until the transition is complete.

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I chose to explore the boundaries of gender and sexuality through my series. In the process, however, I also learned about the boundaries of photography. Diane Arbus’s work is controversial both for the starkness with which she depicts individuals’ defects, and for the questions it raises about a photographer’s potential exploitation of his or her subjects. My friend Christopher, the subject of this series, has never before dressed in drag. This raises questions about the authenticity of the photographs. Is it enough that Christopher was eager to explore a side of himself that he had always been curious about, or must a photograph always depict reality for it to be credible? Does Christopher’s background really matter? Christopher explained to me that as a gay man he is far more open to exploring his sexuality and femininity than a heterosexual man. His point lends itself to questions about the very nature of the society in which we live. If individuals are born with a range of sexual orientations than why does society impose restrictions in which one must adhere to one of two categories completely. Contemporary debates in American society regarding gay rights, address the core of these questions of societal restrictions on gender identities. I became interested in these issues when I moved to America two years ago. I am Canadian and unlike the United States, gay marriage has been legal in Canada since 2005. Although Canada is by no means perfect, it has provided equal rights for those considered by other countries to be “marginal or deviant.” Nevertheless, it is likely that sexual orientation and gender roles will continue to be explored and debated in both Canada and the United States for the foreseeable future.

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Christopher

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With regards to the question of the authenticity of these images, one might argue that my photographs are inauthentic because Christopher is not a “real” drag queen. However, I do not believe that any photograph can truly be “authentic.” Every photograph demonstrates either the subject or the photographer wishing to portray himself or herself in a certain way. The power of photography to distort reality yet also reveal hidden truths about its subjects is a concept that I find particularly interesting and have explored throughout all of my photography assignments this semester. As Diane Arbus once said, “A photograph is a secret about a secret. The more it tells you the less you know.”

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Christopher

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Christoper

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Madeleine Shiff: Self-Portrait 2012

About The Author: Madeleine Shiff is enrolled in the College of the University of Pennsylvania, Class of 2013.

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Editor’s Note: To access additional articles by Madeleine Shiff, go to the search bar at the top of the page: enter name and click green icon.

30th Street Station

Posted on May 3, 2012 by Florentin Juillet

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……….This series was inspired by a feeling of nostalgia. One photo sowed the seeds of my approach: a photograph of the French Alps, taken from a summit by the German photographer Michael Schnabel, in the middle of the night. To create a landscape with an extreme absence of light, he exposed the film for a prolonged exposure time for about an hour. The result was a dark, extremely cold photo displaying all of the range of grays that could possibly come to mind. The stillness of the mountains made the photos really sharp, except for the clouds that left lighter marks in the sky. At first, I could not say exactly what moved me most about the photo. Was it the cold aesthetics? The method used to take the shot?

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Apartment Tower

I soon found out what feeling it was: nostalgia. These photographs reminded me of the cold air of the Alps, the silence of the upper slopes when I used to go skiing with my family, reminded me of how it felt to be back home in France. This feeling was reinforced by the aesthetics of the picture – it reminded me of a dream, something surrealistic.

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Reflections

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These images were created during a special period for me; as I am about to leave the place where I have been living for a year, a feeling of nostalgia slowly emerges. Influenced by this feeling created by the night shot of the Alps, I tried to capture views of Philadelphia in the same way: night photos with really long exposure times of places I know by heart, with the goal to see them differently, and anticipate the way I might dream about those places in the years to come.

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Street Lights

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One of the main purposes of photography is to create memory, to find again an exact view we had back in time. By creating these kinds of pictures, slightly different from what my eyes are used to seeing, compelled me to create a variation of what I would have normally remembered. Is that cheating, lying? No: memory is exactly the truth anyway, it is always distorted by subjectivity and the mindset we had at the time, for the place remembered. I just wanted to shape my memories as I would like to remember them.

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Self-Portrait 2012

About The Author: Florentin Juillet is a junior enrolled in the College at the University of Pennsylvania as a foreign exchange student.

Andrew

Posted on April 26, 2012 by Andrew Jakubowski

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………The image that I envision is a mishmash of roughly applied body paint and color-driven sensations; it also includes a body position that excites but does not reveal. This image is based on a personal belief that the erotic is a state of mind resulting from the desire but inability to know reality. For me, the act of body painting is an extension of juvenile tendencies, a return to the very stage of life during which human curiosity (and ignorance) is at its peak. It denotes playfulness, innocence, and imagination – all of which contribute to my erotic, sensual, and sexual feelings.

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Andrew

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Within the context of Philo, this image is a seemingly striking juxtaposition against the wealth of knowledge present in the halls and possessed by the members. However, I contest that such knowledge is the result of innate inquisitiveness:  intellect itself is a product of refined interests. Therefore, the image gets at the root of what Philo is as an organization. It is a reminder that we are all motivated by childish curiosities and aroused by the unknown. Both the book and the body serve as means for satisfying our personal desires.

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Andrew

To Be Continued………

Summer Palace Reflection

Posted on April 21, 2012 by Karl Gerchow

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……….My trip recently to China provided an opportunity to explore two cities – Shanghai and Beijing – largely through the lens of my camera. I specifically wanted to observe and capture images and scenes that normally escape my notice on trips such as this. I’m am avid traveler – and was one even before business school – however taking a camera with me everywhere on a trip, crouching down, leaning, or contorting my body to get the right shot was a new way to experience a city for me.

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Wuzhen

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I soon settled on a concept where a reflection, projection, or echo was an integral part of the image, if not the image in its entirety. Throughout the trip, I was left in awe of the speed of China’s progress and economic activity that we have all heard so much about. However, through this trip it became clear to me that this development has come at significant cost: traditional buildings are being torn down without an appreciation for historic value, pollution is rampant, and the country-side is little more than patches of green paddies between sprawling mega-cities.

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My first image, “Gardens of Nurtured Harmony” is an inverted reflection through a pond of the Emperor’s Summer Palace (the title of this photo being its literal name in Mandarin) in the outskirts of Beijing. It reflects the China of old, rich in culture and historical significance. Much like the Forbidden City, this palace was off-limits to all but the Emperor and his immediate family, leaving outsiders like the shadow in the bottom right of this picture left to wonder what lay beyond.

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My second image, taken in Wuzhen – a small water town in the outskirts of Shanghai – again captures the China of old, but this time a manufactured one. In an effort to show foreigners what these water towns looked like prior to being displaced by sprawling apartment complexes, the Chinese government restored a village to what it would have looked liked several hundred years ago. I have done my part, editing for age.

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French Quarter Lamp

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The third image is the shadow of a European-styled lamp taken in the French Concession in Shanghai on the tail end of a sunny day. Shanghai was one of the few places in China (Hong Kong aside of course), that saw colonial powers bring trade and cultural influence to its doorstep. The street names in the concession, once in French, have all been reverted to Mandarin, but shadows of the neighborhood’s past remain.

Development Blur

“Development Blur” was taken on a high-speed rail while traveling at 190 mph through the Chinese “country-side”. The train stands as an example of China’s achievements, but also provides insight into the level of over-development China has seen in the last decade. Sadly, in a 5 hour train ride from Beijing to Shanghai, this industrial landscape was 80% of the view.

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Lost of Translation

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My fifth image, titled Lost of Translation, was taken through a revolving door leading out of a bank in Shanghai. English or any other language other than Mandarin for that matter, is rarely spoken in China, and so communicating with others can be particularly difficult or frustrating. This warning sign shows how difficult it can be to understand even images across cultures. I had no idea what was being conveyed here. More importantly, in this shot I show what Shanghai is to China – the future, modern and new, but relegated to look like every other modern first-world city I’ve been to. This could very well have been taken in Paris, Cape Town, Tokyo, New York, or Buenos Aires.

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They say everything comes at a price, and in the case of China’s rapid rise to industrialization, that price has been paid dearly by the environment. Perhaps it is because I am from Costa Rica, a country that inches along the development scale but which defends its environment vehemently, that I found the ecological impact of this rapid development so troublesome.

About The Author: Karl Gerchow is enrolled in the MBA program: Wharton School of Business, University of Pennsylvania.

Photo: Errol Christian

Posted on April 14, 2012 by Errol Christian

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Many times, the most popular photos in sports are the photos taken directly after winning “the big game.” For example, one of the most popular photos in basketball is the shot of Michael Jordan laying on the floor and hugging his newly won championship trophy, while crying as he mourns the recent death of his father. In the Olympics, U.S. citizens will never forget the photo of Michael Phelps sporting around his neck the eight gold medals he won in the 2008 Beijing Olympics.

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Photo: Errol Christian

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These photos of achievement are what capture the eyes of the masses. However, what often gets overlooked is the hard work and dedication these glorified athletes endured in order to get to the ultimate stage. In his book Outliers, Malcolm Gladwell states that true success requires at least 10,000 hours of practice. How many shots do you think Michael Jordan had put up in an empty gym before he became the greatest player of all-time? How many laps do you think Michael Phelps has swum by himself before he became one of the greatest Olympians in history?

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Photo: Errol Christian

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Susan Sontag states “The history of photography could be recapitulated as the struggle between two different imperatives: beautification, which comes from the fine arts, and truth-telling…” Through photography, audiences are able to appreciate the beauty of Michael Jordan’s celebration and Michael Phelp’s eight gold medals. However, also through photography, it was my aim to capture the truth. The truth through repetitious practice in isolation – with no cheering fans, with no cameras, with no glory.

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Errol Christian: Self-Portrait 2012

About The Author: Errol Christian is enrolled in the MBA program: Wharton School of Business, University of Pennsylvania.