12 de junio de 2011

Linda McCartney LIFE IN PHOTOGRAPHS


PHILLIPS de PURY & COMPANY ANNOUNCES LIFE IN PHOTOGRAPHS
AN EXHIBITION OF PHOTOGRAPHS BY LINDA McCARTNEY

FEATURING SELECT HIGHLIGHTS FROM THE LINDA McCARTNEY ARCHIVE
VIEWING: JUNE 7 - 16, 2011
LOCATION: Phillips
de Pury & Company, Howick Place, London, SW1P 1BB

you can browse CATALOGUE HERE

Linda McCartney BIO

Linda Louise McCartney (née Eastman) was born in Scarsdale, New York, on September 24th, 1941. She graduated from Scarsdale High School, Westchester County, New York in 1960, and went on to study at the University of Arizona, where she majored in art history.

Linda got her first big break as a photographer while working as receptionist at Town and Country Magazine. She used an unwanted invitation to a Rolling Stones promotional party on the SS Sea Panther on the Hudson River in New York to document the event and photograph the band.

Linda became a professional photographer in the mid-sixties. Her pictures during this period chronicled the musical revolution of the decade. Whilst working as the house photographer at the Fillmore East in New York City she photographed many iconic musicians including; The Rolling Stones, Otis Redding, B.B. King, The Doors, The Grateful Dead, Frank Zappa, The Beach Boys, The Who, Cream, The Kinks, Traffic, The Byrds, Jimi Hendrix and, ultimately, The Beatles.

Linda's photograph of Eric Clapton for Rolling Stone magazine's May 11th, 1968 issue made her the first female photographer to have work featured on the cover of the magazine.

In 1968, Linda was in London to shoot an assignment on the ‘Swinging Sixties’. Linda met Paul McCartney at the Bag O’Nails Club and then again four days later at the launch of Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band at Brian Epstein's house in Belgravia. A year later they married at Marylebone Registry Office, London, March 12th, 1969.

After receiving credits on Paul’s solo album Ram, Linda joined Paul on stage, as keyboard player and vocalist, in Wings. She went on to write and record several songs of her own, including ‘Seaside Woman’, released in 1977 through Epic Records in the US, under the band name Suzy and The Red Stripes. Linda’s album Wide Prairie was released posthumously in 1998.

In 1989, Linda began to pioneer another passion, to save the lives of animals through promoting the vegetarian lifestyle that she and Paul long embraced. Her first two vegetarian cookbooks, Linda McCartney’s Home Cooking and Linda’s Kitchen became international best sellers. Linda’s cookbook, Linda McCartney On Tour, was published by Little, Brown & Co in 1998.

Following the huge success of her first cookbook, Linda broke new ground in 1991 by launching her own range of readymade meat free meals, which have become the most popular vegetarian foods in Britain. From an initial choice of just six meals, the range has expanded to more than 40 products.

Linda’s photography has done much to help promote the aims of many varied causes including the anti-fur lobby Lynx, Greenpeace, The Council For The Protection Of Rural England, Friends Of The Earth, The Great Ormond Street Hospital, People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, The Hammersmith Hospital, The British Dyslexia Association, The Rye Memorial Hospital and War Child.

In 1998, Linda came to the aid of two other causes, the cancer charity Bacup and The Starlight Foundation – each of whom received profits associated with her sponsorship of the world’s first all-vegetarian professional cycling team.

Linda’s work has also reached the cinema screen. Her photographs of The Grateful Dead became the inspiration and focus of Grateful Dead: A Photofilm, produced from a process of making stills photography move and morph that was invented by Paul McCartney. The photofilm was honoured by entry into both the London and New York Film Festivals.

Following her previous work with short animated films – Seaside Woman andOriental Nightfish – Linda also completed work on another animated short,Wide Prairie, which was shown in 1998.

Linda continued to work prolifically as a photographer throughout her life, documenting, amongst other things, family life, landscapes and the natural world, interiors, and portraits of artists.

Despite her work as a photographer, animal life campaigner, cookbook author, musician and vegetarian pioneer, Linda said her greatest achievement was her and Paul’s four children; Heather, Mary, Stella and James.

10 de junio de 2011

RIBA Awards 2011


The RIBA Awards have been running continuously since 1966 and are judged and presented locally.

No matter the shape, size, budget or location, RIBA Award winning schemes set the standard for great architecture all across the country.

RIBA Awards are for buildings in the UK by RIBA Chartered Architects and RIBA International Fellows.

This year’s award-winning buildings range geographically from a winery in Spain to a community hall on the Scottish Hebridean island of Raasay, and in style from the Royal Shakespeare Theatre in Stratford to ‘Love Shack’ - a self-build hideaway in the Lake District National Park. The recently completed Velodrome is the first ever 2012 Olympics event building to win an architecture prize and is one of five RIBA Awards for Hopkins Architects, a practice previously shortlisted three times for the RIBA Stirling Prize.

Balancing Barn. Mole Architects with MVRDV

2011 has been an exceptional year for private houses which constitute 17 out of 89 UK winners. Schools and universities have also flourished with 14 schools (including three BSF projects and two Academies) and 9 university buildings winning awards. Last year’s RIBA Stirling Prize winner, Zaha Hadid, is an award winner this year with the Evelyn Grace Academy in South London.

Three very different health buildings – the NHS Teenage Cancer Trust in Birmingham, Foster + Partner’s private Circle Hospital in Bath and a new Maggie’s Cancer Care centre in Cheltenham – showcase carefully designed, comfortable spaces to aid patient wellbeing.


You can see the winning buildings by region HERE.

3 de mayo de 2011

Lartigue: a floating world

PHOTOGRAPHY TO ME IS CATCHING A MOMENT WHICH IS PASSING,
AND WHICH IS TRUE.



Jacques Lartigue was born in Courbevoie on June 13, 1894. He took his first photographs at the age of six, using his father’s camera, and started keeping what would become a lifelong diary. In 1904 he began making photographs and drawings of family games and childhood experiences, also capturing the beginnings of aviation and cars and the smart women of the Bois de Boulogne as well as society and sporting events. An unfailingly curious amateur, he tried out all the available techniques, tirelessly recording the fleeting moments and meticulously arranging his several thousand images in large albums.


However, it would seem that photography was not his true vocation. In 1915 he attended the Académie Jullian: painting was to remain his professional activity and from 1922 onwards he exhibited in the salons of Paris and southern France. His acquaintances in the world of the arts included Sacha Guitry and Yvonne Printemps, Kees van Dongen, Pablo Picasso and Jean Cocteau, while his passion for movies saw him work as still photographer with Jacques Feyder, Abel Gance, Robert Bresson, François Truffaut and Federico Fellini.


Although Lartigue occasionally sold his pictures to the press and exhibited at the Galerie d’Orsay alongside Brassaï, Man Ray and Doisneau, his reputation as a photographer was not truly established until he was 69, with a retrospective at the Museum of Modern Art in New York and the publication of a portfolio in Life. He now added his father’s first name to his own surname, becoming Jacques Henri Lartigue. Worldwide fame came three years later with his first book, The Family Album, followed in 1970, by Diary of a Century, conceived by Richard Avedon. In 1975 he had his first French retrospective at the Musée des Arts Décoratifs in Paris. For the rest of his life, Lartigue was busy answering commissions from fashion and decoration magazines.

He also produced the official photograph of the new French president, Valéry Giscard d’Estaing. In 1979, the photographer Jacques Henri Lartigue donated his entire photographic œuvre to the French State, mandating the Association des Amis de Jacques Henri Lartigue, known as the Donation Jacques Henri Lartigue, to conserve and manage this collection, under the supervision of the French Ministry of Culture.

Although little seen in that format, many of his earliest and most famous photographs were originally taken in stereo, but he also produced vast numbers of images in all formats and media including glass plates in various sizes, some of the earliest autochromes, and of course film in 2 1/4” square and 35mm. His greatest achievement was his set of around 120 huge photograph albums, which compose the finest visual autobiography ever produced.

He died in Nice on September 12, 1986.


Untill 19th June in the
CaixaForumMadrid

Exhibition Book
Un mundo flotante, fotografias de Jacques Henri Lartigue
Textes de Florian Rodari, Martine d’Astier, Andres Hispano Editions La Caixa, 297 x 240 mm – 255 pages

Some interesting links:

2 de mayo de 2011

Caro Diario




Yesterday, my love has brought me from Sicilia a lovely surprise: a film-book of Caro Diario. It´s one of my favorites films. Nanni Moretti has teached me a lot of things about Italy, italians and its landscapes. Enjoy it!

"Si, la cosa che mi piace di più é vedere le case..."



"Io credo nelle persone, però non credo nella maggioranza delle persone. Mi sa che mi troverò sempre a mio agio e d´accordo con una minoranza"

"Si, me lo avevano detto tutti, appena arrivati a Stromboli si sente subito la presenza minacciosa del vulcano"