July 2018 - Tony Ward Studio

A.H. Scott: By George, He’s Got it!

Tony_Ward_Studio_Trump_ThePetulantPuppetTS_1984 — The Petulant Puppet by Thomcat23

For me, this quote below was truly the kicker that set my head spinning! You can’t make this craziness from his lips up. Unbelievable!

Standing in front of the VFW Convention last Tuesday, he actually said this:

“Just remember, what you are seeing and what you are reading is not what’s happening,” – Donald J. Trump, President of The United States, Veterans of Foreign Wars Convention in Kansas City, Missouri, July 24^th, 2018

70 years ago a work of fiction was written, but reality is always stranger than anything one can come up with in their imagination:

“The Party told you to reject the evidence of your eyes and ears. It was their final, most essential command.” – George Orwell, “1984”, published 1949

By George, He’s Got It!

Happening now, is not what you see

Happening now, is not what you hear

Pay attention only to the billboard on the wall with the one of tiny hands and mind that is so small

Pied piper he may never be

But, leader is the only one he is as you can see

Free press is the enemy

Stenographers are the friend of He

We must praise the leader, for He is law

Truth and justice cannot be something we saw

By George, he’s got it!

He is ever so wise

Controlling the masses with his lies

Look at the shiny orb he holds in his hands

It glistens with xenophobia and shimmers with manufactured rage

All he does hypnotizes the senses

The takeover of the muddled mind is going as planned

This is his moment

He is the CHOSEN man

Pay attention to the wall of division

Your neighbor is not your equal

Report them in accordance to the leader

Speak only of the agenda repeated like parrots

Never step out of line or think for yourself

Isn’t it better to let the leader of the state take care of those little agitations, formerly known as rights and freedoms?

Just listen to the mantra for solace and control

By George, he’s got it!

Let the cloud of conformity mollify your soul

Obey the voice of the state and you can never go wrong

Pen scratched against history has cast a shadow ever so long

Seventy-years on, the bell tolls strong

By George, he’s got it!

Now, we are through the looking glass

About The Author: A.H. Scott is a poet based in New York City and frequent contributor to Tony Ward Studio. To read additional articles by A. H. Scott, go here: https://tonywardstudio.com/blog/a-h-scott-the-torch/

About The Illustrator: Thomcat23 is a new contributing artist at Tony Ward Studio. The owner of a hyperactive imagination, Thomcat23 creates images based on a wide variety of categories. Everything from cartoons to politics are mangled, jumbled, smashed, merged and synthesized to create colorful and interesting works of art. The pop surrealist approach Thomcat23, stems from his formal training as a graphic designer and his love of comic book-style pen and ink illustration he’s sharpened over the years. He has a wide variety of influence, which include Jack Kirby and Renee Magritte. To access more of Thomcat 23’s work, follow him on Instagram @Thomcat23. Or Facebook: The Art of Thomcat23.

Bob Shell: Dead Cats in the Studio – Yikes!

Bob Shell: Letters From Prison # 17

DEAD CATS IN THE STUDIO – YIKES!

Some years ago my friend Steve Sint and I were eating in a Japanese restaurant in Manhattan, when the subject of discussion turned to what our personal limits were, what we would and would not photograph. Basically Steve argued for photographing anything at all, so long as the pay was good and it wouldn’t get you arrested, while I thought a photographer should have some narrower limits. Looking back on that now, I realize that my limits are pretty bizarre by many people’s standards.

Case in point: Those dead cats.

At some time in the mid-80s, Ruth Steinberger, an illustrator friend who primarily illustrates textbooks, came to me with a project. It was to illustrate an anatomy and physiology lab manual. The plan was for Ruth and the author to bring the dead cats to my studio and dissect them in stages. I was to take photos and Ruth would do line drawings to make the details easier to locate, photo on left page, drawing on right page. This project took something like two weeks with the smelly cats in my studio. I don’t know what they use as a preservative now that formaldehyde has been banned, but it sure stinks! Took weeks for that smell to leave my studio completely. Limits: they also wanted some pictures of cadavers, but I said no, no dead people in my studio!

Was I wrong? Steve would have thought so, and said go for it. But I just couldn’t wrap my mind around working with dead bodies. The cats were enough for me.

Which brings me to another weird project, dead aliens. You may remember the furor raised by the FOX TV program Alien Autopsy: Fact or Fiction broadcast, I think, in 1995.. As it turned out the owner of the film wanted my help in authenticating that the 16mm film actually dated from 1947. I knew that Kodak used edge marks exposed onto the film during manufacture to make dating of film footage possible. I was sent some pieces of the actual film to analyze, and the edge markings were correct for 1927, 1947, or 1967 (Kodak reuses the code every 20 years), but there was a hitch – the film was a copy, not camera original footage. This was explained because the camera original would have been a negative and copied onto another film for projection. The film was supposedly shot by an Army photographer after the crash near Roswell, New Mexico, of an unknown aircraft The film couldn’t have been shot in 1927 or 1967 because the film type (Kodak Super XX) wasn’t made in those years. So was it really filmed in 1947? I couldn’t say 100% yes or no, but my gut feeling is that it was.

While working on this project I was contacted by a producer from TF1, one of the French TV networks. Would I come to Paris to give my opinion on a live, two hour program they were doing on the film? Oui! So off to Paris I flew to appear on Jacques Pradel Presents. Pradel was sort of like the French Dan Rather, with an enormous following. They’d built a giant eye on the set with a working iris, and it opened and I walked out of it and down stairs to dramatic music to meet Pradel. We carried on a conversation that was somewhat stilted because I don’t speak French. So as he was speaking a babelfish in my ear was piping in a “simultaneous” translation. The same for him since he doesn’t speak English. Anyway, it was a blast, particularly the after party! Anyone interested in learning more about this episode of my photographic career can read the book that Mike Hesemann, Philip Mantle, and I wrote titled Beyond Roswell. My name isn’t on the book cover due to contractual problems, but I’m in there as co-author. And, no, I don’t get any royalties, that’s long since ended, so I don’t profit if you buy the book. Actually I’m still mad at the publisher. They sent me galley proofs so I could make corrections, I spent hours going over them and sent in a long list of corrections. Then the book came out without a single correction being made! These things happen and the authors get the blame. When my first book (Pro Guide: The Canon EOS System) came out, two of my photographs were printed upside-down! Of course those readers who noticed blamed me.

Is that really a dead Roswell alien being sliced and diced in that strange film? The jury is still out on that. Anyone interested can find tons of pro and con on the Internet, including an audio file of my interview with Art Bell on his old Coast to Coast FM radio program. I’ve just learned that Art died, a real loss to his many listeners over the years.

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 for involuntary manslaughter for the death of Marion Franklin, one of his former models. Shell was recently moved from Pocahontas State Correctional Center, Pocahontas, Virginia to River North Correctional Center 329 Dellbrook Lane Independence, VA 24348. Mr. Shell continues to claim his innocence. He is serving the 11th year of his sentence. To read more letters from prison by Bob Shell, click here: http://tonywarderotica.com/bob-shell-art-of-rope/

Bob Shell: Art of Rope

Tony_Ward_Studio_Bondage_Art_of_Rope_Bob_Shell_Howard_Lee — Bob Shell: Art of Rope

Bob Shell: Letters From Prison #16

Just how did the book Erotic Bondage: Art of Rope come about? Basically, it was Marion’s idea. She’d been looking at my collection of books, including Tony’s Obsession, Petter Hegre’s My Wife, Ralph Gibson’s Deus Ex Machina, Lee Higgs’s Generation Fetish, and others (all confiscated by the cops, none returned, most of them signed copies given to me by the photographers) and decided she wanted The Marion Book. She was heavily into sexual bondage, said she had the most intense orgasms when restrained. She’d shown me a bunch of Polaroid snaps of her bound taken by an old boyfriend. The photography and rigging were amateurish, but she still shined. She also described the bondage sessions she’d done with a recent boyfriend, and complained that he tied the ropes too tight. So I began shooting some bondage sessions with her, something new to me. Oh, I’d played around with handcuffs and such with a few models, but nothing hardcore. I then built a suspension frame, incorporating suggestions from her dad, and built a couple of sets. It was then that I discovered rainbowrope.com, where I found nice soft 1/4 inch Nylon rope in all sorts of colors. I bought a bunch of rope from them as well as some props like an old style dental clamp that Marion fell in love with. We commenced shooting for the book each week after my other obligations were out of the way. After we had some pictures we really liked. I went looking for a publisher. I didn’t think an American publisher would be interested. so I went looking in Germany, where several of my books had been published. My main German publisher was a wing of the Vatican, so I didn’t take this project to them! After several dead ends, I found a publisher, and we began to rough the book out – and then that publisher went bust. I was discouraged, but this had happened before, and so I started over. If I had all the money publishers have gone broke owing me, I might have been as wealthy as the prosecutor thought!

I talked to Lee Higgs and he put me in touch with his publisher in Germany, Goliath. They loved the project and over the course of a year or so we put the book together. In fact they liked it so much that they decided to make it the first of a series under a new imprint, MixOfPix. In the middle of this process Marion died. I was very conflicted about going on with the project, but Marion’s best friend Samantha had seen the photos (and was in some) and said Marion would have wanted me to finish the project, and her other friends I talked to felt the same, I felt they were right, so I hired other models to do the shoots we’d planned and sketched, and finished the book. That I published under my Edward Lee pseudonym had nothing to do with Marion’s death, but had been the plan from the beginning. I had some very straight-laced clients at the time and wanted to keep things separate.

The prosecutor implied that I’d made a lot of money from the book. As photographers who have done picture books will tell you, you do not get rich from this type of book. I did not do a detailed accounting, but by the time I figured in model’s fees, cost of set building, and all the other expenses of doing the shoots for the book, I might just have broken even. I did have some quiet support from photo industry companies, and a cheering section from my dear old friend Monte Zucker, who gleefully showed me the gay bondage he was shooting and critiqued the images for me. But, no matter what the prosecutor implied, I was not rolling in money from this project. The book is out of print now, and my royalties ended long ago, but I’m told it is available from Amazon.

Marion also wanted a website along with the book. She’d been inspired by boundndetermined.com, the website owned by my friend Maria Shadoes, and wanted to call hers bound2bwild.com. I’d registered the name and Maria and I were working on the design. Maria made a good living from the websites she owned and webmastered and was to be our webmaster. All those plans came to naught, though. Marion’s website never went live. So many plans and dreams died with her.

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 Marion Franklin, one of his former models. Mr. Shell is serving the 11th year of his sentence. To read more letters from prison by Bob Shell, click here: https://tonywardstudio.com/blog/bob-shell-letters-from-prison-15/

A.H. Scott: The Torch

Tony_Ward_Studio_protest_philadelphia_anti_Trump-Torch — The Torch

“A fool who dances with fascism balances on a tightrope of fallacy. Melody of the cheering masses are the intoxicant that allows the fool to believe all which he thinks and does is a symphony of approval; when in fact, many in that crowd are just amused by circus act that arrived before their eyes. History is a flame which never is truly doused, as it can burn that tightrope the fool balances precariously upon. Empires fall as do fools” – A.H. Scott

The Torch

Callous to the core
When the world wants less of his mess, he presses forth with more, more, more
As everything he ever touches turns to ash
Hopes of Dreamers are dashed
Core of who he is churns on the spit of hate, proving this spoiled, rich man’s son is beneath and below a penniless reprobate
Dollars he may have
But, sense is vacant in his sphere
Accept what the leader says is how a megalomaniac gets his kicks
And, for this year’s pick it isn’t Chairman Kim
But, this propaganda is not about DRPK’s nuclear ambition
This is about an orange hedonist’s vicious disposition
Commandant of Cruelty doesn’t ride solo
Prince of piety is Mike Pence
His swooning gaze at his orange-tinged King can make the world blush a rainbow
Yet, loving your fellow man can never be in the land of He and his preachy beliefs
On a Trump leash Mike always heels, especially if in a stadium where an ungrateful bunch of sons of bitches kneels
So pure Pence is, of mind and soul
Yet, he works under a man whose own words have told to grab a lady’s angel part and not bat a delicate eyelash of backlash
Frauds come and frauds go, but this crapshow of an administration is a swamp that truly overflows
Babies in cages and parents taken away
Standing up and wishing for the day when ICE will melt away
Humans aren’t stained with a stamp of being illegal
But, now they have been judged by a singular man in a house of white as being not worth anything
They are invisible to his eyes
Even when his beloved daughter and wifey pouted to him about hearing the audio of their cries
He still don’t give two shakes of care, but realized the impact of those bad optics were ever so bruising to his brand
MAGA! MAGA! MAGA!
Sounds like a chant of an arm held at a specified angle upward
Making this country great again, isn’t coming on the watch of this regime
Hearing them thar’ words are just a bumper sticker scheme
Trump and his crew of division and despair have been kicking liberty in the rear for more than a year
From that moment he rolled down the escalator in that tarnished tower that bears his name, the push beyond the limits has been clear
Beyond dignity
Beyond respect
Beyond humanity
Beyond shame
Beyond anything considered normal has been eviscerated
Did it happen overnight?
Of course not
We are the frog in the fractured melting pot
Slow boil
Bit by bit, sliding towards something so dire
It can’t happen here
This is America
Red, White and Blue
It can’t happen here
What is the glue to patch the melting pot?
Resistance!
Voices rise!
Democracy!
This is OUR country, not HIS alone!
We are the BEACON in the darkness!
America is MY home and FREEDOM is my song!

About The Author: A.H. Scott is a poet based in New York City and frequent contributor to Tony Ward Studio. To read additional articles by A. H. Scott, go here: https://tonywardstudio.com/blog/a-h-scott-tws/

Mikala Mikrut: Self Love

Self Love

Her nails, blades that once cut along the dotted line around her neck.

Her skin, galaxies for you to explore but never conquer.

Her laugh, flames of fire to keep you warm under that starry sky.

Her eyes, roses at first glance and brambles at second.

She has more to learn before she finds you.

She was so used to inhaling smoke that wasn’t hers, now there will only be fresh air.

Mikal_Mikrut_writer_Tony_Ward_Studio_self_love_bikini_poolside_mixer — Mikala Sunbathing

We live in a world drowning in negativity.

It is so easy to fall into the mindset of most, that life is excruciating with all of its trials and unexpected turns for the worst. I am no stranger to self deprecating thoughts. However, I have always known the power of loving oneself and haven’t toyed with that positive power until recently. As people once close to me cut me out of their lives for their own (I hope) justifiable reasons, I am choosing to accept who I am and to move forward by trying to better myself.

I believe in me. I believe in the good in people and that every action has an equal and opposite reaction, because life is not made out of expected moments but it does balance the choices we make. Sometimes we make wrong decisions, and that’s okay in the long run. We are only human, an imperfect species by design. It’s what we do to follow up our actions that speaks volumes; making a promise then breaking it speaks volumes as much as saying something you didn’t mean and then making amends.

I acknowledge my own self worth; my confidence is soaring. On this journey of self love, through the testimonies of friends armed with countless examples of the good I have done, I have found that I really am worth attention and love. I even read somewhere that “fake it ’til you make it” really works, so now I even made it a point to walk anywhere with my head high. I’m proud to report that not only do I feel better, but there have been actual instances where strangers walk up to me and express their admiration.

I am not my mistakes. There have been nights where I hardly sleep because I berate myself over and over on what I “should” have done. What I have realized, though, is that it doesn’t matter. If my wrongdoing was to someone that really knows me, then they will accept my apology and forgive me for acting out of my norm. We cannot be expected to be happy and kind every second of every day, and it is of the upmost importance that we learn to forgive ourselves.

The poem I wrote was inspired by a drawing I came across that really resonated with me. I know I’m not perfect, if there even is such a thing, but I am so grateful for that because it gives me a direction to go. I know so many people who wake up, go to work, then go to bed unfulfilled and do it all again the next day. That will not be me, I refuse. I will be a strong, happy woman that accepts her trials rather than expecting life to be perfect and cursing the universe when it isn’t.

About The Author: Mikala Mikrut is a sophomore enrolled at Southern Utah University and summer intern at Catherine Trifliletti Design, Las Vegas. To access additional articles by Mikala Mikrut, click here: http://tonyward.com/2018/05/mikala-mikrut-why-be-a-spectator-when-you-can-play-the-game/