Friday, September 28, 2012

MID CENTURY COOL

The Flower
photographed in Charles James's design studio by Louis Faurer
Flair 1950

Flair staff photographer Louis Faurer photographs 'a striking range of mood from the "Cool" disciples of Birdland' and Sonny Stitt with sax below, 'to romantic rose fashions' as above.

COOLNESS

... the word has moved into the special language of the jazz world - a language quicker to obsolesce than any other form of slang. Its use demands complete authority; one dated syllable or inflection unmasks the outsider.

In the circles of last year's hipsters and beeboppers. coolness is all. It is spreading through Harlem, it has hit Broadway - in a vast cavern called Birdland.

The uniform of coolness is no exhibitionist style of dress: it is an expression. Patient, remote, the young practitioners at bandside look like first cousins of the "non-engage" students in Paris existentialist cellars.

Louis Faurer is represented in the photography collection of the Museum of Modern Art.

Cool at devodotcom

Coolness

Flair 1959

Photography: Louis Faurer

HAVE A NICE WEEKEND!

Vogue Paris October 1979
Photography: Steve Hiett

Thursday, September 27, 2012

MID-CENTURY HOLLYWOOD

Elizabeth Taylor

Ava Gardner

Gloria Swanson

Gerald Heard

Dory Schary

FLAIR
March 1950
The New Hollywood by Cecelia Ager
Photography:
Louis Faurer
Hoyningen-Heune

Hollywood Royalty at devodotcom

FLAIR

FLAIR
March 1950
Photography: Maria Martel

Thursday, September 20, 2012

SALVADOR DALI 1963

DALI
Gentlemen's Quarterly October 1963
Photography: Chadwick Hall
Illustration: Lou LoMonaco

Louis LoMonaco is an American painter and commercial artist. He is a graduate of Yale University Art School and Cooper Union, New York City. His illustrated works appear in many gentlemen's Quarterly magazines from the sixties.

LoMonaco's collage is featured on the official program for the civil rights "March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom," of August 1963.

He was married to soprano Shirley Verrett, now deceased.

Daliesque at devodotcom

Tuesday, September 18, 2012

The Soft Stroke Of Black
Photography: Gleb Derujinsky
Harper's Bazaar April 1956

Monday, September 17, 2012

AUDREY HEPBURN 1956

Friday, September 14, 2012

HAVE A NICE WEEKEND!

Harper's Bazaar April 1957
Photography:
Richard Avedon
Lillian Bassman

... mid-century sensibilities

devodotcom

Wednesday, September 12, 2012

BIZARRE PRINTS 1962

China Machado

Maurice Retner

Sarmi

China Machado

Monte-Sano and Pruzan

China Machado

Sarmi

Bizarre Prints

Harper's Bazaar March 1962

Photography: Melvin Sokolsky

China Doll
at devodotcom

WALKER EVANS - THE UNPOSED PORTRAIT

The crashing non-euphoria of New York subway life may someday be recorded by a Dickens or Daumier. The setting is a sociological gold mine awaiting a major artist. Meanwhile, it can be a dream 'location' for any portrait photographer weary of the studio and of the horrors of vanity.

Down in the swaying sweatbox he finds a parade of unself-concious captive sitters, the selection of which is automatically destined by raw chance.

The portraits on these pages were caught by a hidden camera, in the hands of a penitent spy and an apologetic voyeur.

But the rude and impudent invasion involved has been carefully softened and partially mitigated by a planned passage of time.

These pages were made twenty years ago, and deliberately preserved from publication.

This sensitivity towards exposing the commuter's privacy by holding the images for two decades speaks to the short life-expectancy of that era (64-67) when compared to today's life expectancy. At the time of publication, life expectancy was 66-73 years, in 2010 - 80 years.

admin

As it happens,you don;t see among them the face of a judge or a senator or a bank president. What you do see is at once sobering, startling and obvious: these are the ladies and gentlemen of the jury.
Walker Evans

"The New York subway pictures are a fling in native American contemporary anthropology. With something of the anthropologist's approach, I tried to survey and record the New York subway inhabitants as though I were examining another period and another civilization."