THE MEAT MARKET: ‘UNCLE’ TERRY RICHARDSON by Navo

(Part 1)

“You will never find a more wretched hive of scum and villainy. We must be cautious.”
– Obi-Wan, Star Wars (1977)

All Images by Terry Richardson, excluding this ones.

Frivolous.

Vain.

Materialistic.

Shallow.

Excessive.

Catty.

Racist.

Sexist.

Agist.

Pretentious.

Superficial.

Playful.

Diva.

Pimp.

Wierd. 

Creepy.

Snub.

Junky.

Sleazy.

Exploitative.

Crazy.

Scandalous.

Dirty.

Stupid.

There are many adjectives we use to describe the fashion industry and those who make their living in it. Can you just imagine a child raised with this kind of adjectives? Wouldn’t he be as fucked-up as fashion photographer Bob Richardson‘s 45 yr old son? Have you seen Terry Richardson‘s Kibosh Book (now $195.75 @ amazon.com, 358 X-rated color images, published in 2005), dozens of shots showing Uncle Terry having a fun-day ejaculating over some top models faces (mouth, ears and eyes) while being photographed with a point and shoot camera? Not pornstars, but high-fashion agency models, the big question here is why those images don’t shock us anymore? Can fashion photographer Steven Klein, Mario Testino, Bruce Weber and other Vogue Magazine favorites like Terry get away shooting some fashion agency model with their very own sperm-facial, publishing it as a photo book and call it ‘HIGH FASHION ART’ for a couple of hundred dollars?

Money’s tight for everyone these days, and it doesn’t exclude the fashion élite, whether you’re wearing Chuck Taylors or Manolo Blahniks, everybody gets up in the morning and puts on some clothes, fashion is a vital part of who we are, whether we admit it or not. Fashion is a social and cultural expression or if we get carried away, could result to the maxed-out credit cards, and could also be a mindless distraction or escape from the ‘real problems’ of the world today.

Thinking about it, what made me fall in love with fashion photography for less than a decade now is actually the words — Teamwork, Creativity, Passion, and Genius, but these days are overshadowed by those aforementioned.

HIGH-FASHION SUICIDE

Do you believe that things happen for a reason?

- Is there a reason a legendary designer like Alexander Mcqueen hanged himself during recession? (hooray for metaphors)
- Is there a reason Anna Wintour (US Vogue editor) swallowed her pride and aggressively rubbing her wrinkled elbows with us commoners, becoming more and more media-friendly these days and sacrificing her image as an “Snub Ice-Queen”?
- Is there a reason the most iconic fashion giants and elites filed for bankruptcy this year like Christian Lacroix, Escada, Fred Leighton, Lambertson Truex, Charles Chang-Lima, Maria Pinto, Eric Gaskins, Yohji Yamamoto to name a few?
- Is there a reason the gods of fashion can’t afford Bryan Park for NY Fashion week anymore?

- Is there a reason 367 magazines closed in 2009, including significant numbers of fashion magazines and the ones that still exist are anorexic in pages and advertisements?

- Is there a reason thousands of fashion retail stores closed down in 2009 alone and more are predicted closing down their business in 2010?

Yes. The fashion world is now facing a reality check on things. The fashion gurus and magazine editors/writers might dismiss this as an economic phase and deny that they are not affected by the global shift of priorities, but the tell-tale signs listed above are evidences of a very dark-future for fashion – consumer’s priorities are becoming more and more realistic and it doesn’t include a $20,000 clutch bag and a $100,000 wedding dress. The fashion stratosphere cares more about diamond encrusted high heel shoes than the earthquake in Chile or Haiti, they care more about Project Runway than why the world’s no# 1 terrorist Osama Bin Laden is still at large and having an R&R in Pakistani cave somewhere, the fashion world is facing an earthquake and terror of its own – the fashion world’s inevitable demise.

UNCLE TERRY

You create a hyped up, overrated industry filled with morally challenged, below average IQ level over-achievers, sprinkle it with cattyness, bitchiness and diva-syndrome and viola, you’ll have a recipe for disaster that is waiting to happen, majority of fashion people are tailor fit for a BRAVO reality show, why? Because reality show stars have to be psychologically imbalanced to begin with and where can you find most people with a.d.d. and all this craziness? The FASHION INDUSTRY. Where they have theyre own government, they have their own queens, they have theyre own kings, and they have theyre own world with a set of rules or lack of rules they play within.

What’s polarizing the fashion blogosphere lately (and female blogosphere taken up arms against)? Two Words – Uncle Terry. One of fashion industry’s favorite son is under attack. Everyone’s seems to be cooperating on this wierd social experiment. But before we open our lips, let the man’s work speak for itself.

THE PERVERTED RINGLEADER

“I think for people in the fashion industry, the way Terry Richardson works has been an open secret for a long time, I think a lot of people tolerate it in public because of his extraordinary power within the industry. In private I think many are very disturbed by his history of behaviour with many of the models he works with.” -  Jenna Sauers, Jezebel fashion editor

“It’s likely that he approaches all girls the same way: gauge the situation, drop some names, take out your trouser monster, and see what you can get them to do.” – Jamie Peck, model who posed for Richardson at 19

So the photographer who has made a career out of seeming like a pervert is actually a pervert? What a shocker! All of us have no idea that Terry Richardson fucks models. Who in the right mind would ever want to fuck a beautiful fashion agency model anyways?  The fashion industry shows young girls with their tits and ass hanging out and now it’s a surprise that an actual photographer bangs them? It’s an industry filled with crazy people and big personalities. The boundaries are different than purely corporate enterprise. It’s not IBM, it’s a business with beautiful girls, sex, and malfeasance. To single out one person as some sort of ringleader is absurd. We traffic in human bodies. Human Meat.

UNCLE BRUCE WEBER

The world has become desensitized to Terry Richardson’s point of view, the Terryworld.  Only in an industry like this that a successful, powerful fashion photographer will always be above scrutiny, and those against him are jealous haters. Some say he’s a Jurgen Teller, Walter Pfieffer, Dov Charney hack.  Some say he’s an overpaid sex addict with a point and shoot while Uncle Terry is laughing all the way to the bank. The genius behind Terry Richardson: Normalizing sexual harassment in fashion and celebrity photography. Anna Wintour approved it, Carine Roitfeld approved it, Tom Ford approved it, Marc Jacobs approved it, countless fashion royalties approved it, even President Obama approved it with a handshake and a thumbs-up (Republican’s will feast on this), now how can it be wrong? It only make sense that the rest of us (the consumers) approve it. What about ‘Uncle’ Bruce Weber? Everybody in the industry knows about the big elephant in the room, it’s also an open-secret, all the sexual conquest of Bruce Weber (whose career spawned for 3 or 4 decades shooting hundreds of nekkid boys every year) are a favorite coffee break topic, why are you calling Uncle Terry the ring leader? This bring us to the true topic that this is not about Terry Richardson, or Uncle Terry, Rie Rasmussen, or Jamie Peck or Bruce Weber, it’s not about sex or sexual harrassment, it’s all about POWER, the person who can blacklist you from the Fashion Industry, the person with the most powerful connections, the person with their fingers hotwired in different buttons, the person who can afford a better lawyer will always triumph and dominate, exhibit A: The Vatican (http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/21/world/europe/21pope.html)

GOVERNMENT APPROVED PERVERSION

Lets checkout Uncle Terry’s Client rosters: Gucci, Sisley, Miu Miu, Chloe, Tom Ford, French Vogue, British Vogue, i-D, GQ, Harper’s Bazaar, Purple, Daniel Day-Lewis, Leonardo DiCaprio, Vincent Gallo, Jay Z, Kanye West, Johnny Knoxville, Karl Lagerfeld, Pharell Williams, Lindsay Lohan, Kate Moss, and President Obama. Uncle Terry admitted in a latest interview, “At first, I’d just want to do a few nude shots, so I’d take off my clothes, too … I’d even give the camera to the model and get her to shoot me for a while. It’s about creating a vibe, getting people relaxed and excited. When that happens you can do anything. I don’t think I’m a sex addict, but I do have issues. Maybe it’s the psychological thing that I was a shy kid, and now I’m this powerful guy with his boner, dominating all these girls”. Terry Richardson is a product of our societies demand for perversed and sexual images, he is a product or a mutated hybrid of capitalism. He brings us to that Terryworld whenever we look and buy his images or the products that his images are selling, we don’t only condone his perverted way of looking at things but we celebrate it, and we are shocked to know that there is a perverted man behind those perverted images? What are you expecting? a Mother Theresa or a Bill Gates would be behind those images? Or a clean-cut catholic priest? Oh sorry, they’re more perverted than an Uncle Terry (they don’t even work in Fashion for God’s sake they only rape 6-year-old boys and girls).

THE MODEL BOOKERS

Who did Terry frantically called (and maybe yelled at) the next day to complain when Supermodel Rie Rasmussen gave a furious tongue-lashing at a Paris fashion event, shaming the powerful photographer? Rie’s Model Agency. One thing is sure, Rie Rasmussen is toast, french toast.

When bloggers tried to reach Terry’s side of the story through his agent, manager and assistant, they didn’t return calls or e-mails. A rep at his agency, Art Partner, told New York Post: “I don’t know anything about this. Terry is on a plane from Paris.” Who are the guardians and so-called protectors of the models? THE MODEL BOOKERS, who would stop sending models to a photographer who’s clients ranges from Gucci, Sisley, Miu Miu, Chloe, Tom Ford, French Vogue, British Vogue, i-D, GQ, Harper’s Bazaar? It’s all business at the end of the day and they use the models to “exchange goods”, like corrupt cops who steals crack from a drug dealer, most of the time the defenders are the oppressors, the Model Bookers sometimes cant help but taste the meat first… literally (but that will be discussed more on THE MEAT MARKET Part 2: THE LIVES OF GAY MALE BOOKERS). For the rest of the world this could be a shocker, but for people like Ana Wintour (the proclaimed god of American Fashion), and all the fashion hipsters, Uncle Terry doesn’t shock them anymore, checkout the Terry Richardson: Kibosh Book ($195.75) and Uncle Terry having a fun-day ejaculating over the top models faces, and these are the models that agreed to be published, I could just imagine the countless girls that didn’t, but actually been shot the same way.

JEALOUS HATERS

At the end of the day, all this talk will lead to Uncle Terry’s day-rate tripling or date-rape tripling? Who wouldn’t be jealous of a Terry Richardson?

All this publicity is only increasing his notoriety and his vision which is Scandal. Frivolous. Vain. Materialistic. Shallow. Excessive. Catty. Racist. Sexist. Agist. Pretentious. Superficial. Playful. Diva. Pimp. Wierd. Creepy. Snub. Junky. Sleazy. Exploitative. Crazy. Scandalous. Dirty. Stupid.

Welcome to the World of Fashion, Who’s your ‘Uncle’ now?

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Related Entry: http://naiveboy.com/2009/11/12/i-want-to-have-sex-with-mr-tom-ford-by-navo/

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info@navostudios.com

http://navostudios.com/

©2009 Dangerously Naive

©2009 Naiveboy.com

THE LAST MEN STANDING by Navo

“People like you and I, though mortal of course like everyone else, do not grow old no matter how long we live… [We] never cease to stand like curious children before the great mystery into which we were born.” - Albert Einstein’s letter to Otto Juliusburger

Bassman, Frank, Demarchelier, Weber, & Leibovitz

THE OLDEST 28-YEAR-OLD IN THE WORLD

I still don’t have a Twitter. I joined Facebook earlier this year, after being constantly bombarded by the electronic Facebook invites of my college mates from art school, I finally gave in. Sometimes, updating status, replying to messages, wall tags and photo comments are something I do to keep me company while retouching some of the images I took in Photoshop, in between photo shoots, waiting for my flight, waiting for my luggage, waiting for a friend in a coffee shop, just finished reading a book or done my research for my novel, Facebook somehow sneaked in to my routines, should I be worried? For all my growing readers and followers out there, I appreciate your emails and support, I  attended a worldwide blogger’s 2-day conference over the weekend to upgrade myself and literally everyone (about 200 bloggers, web developers, writers, coders) has a Twitter, MySpace, Facebook, together with their website and other contact details in their business cards or their blogs, I feel prehistoric, the oldest 28-year-old in the world who don’t Twit and a Facebook amateur compared to my niece who have used Facebook and Twitter since birth, now I’m worried.

MR. IRVING PENN 92

My favorite feature in Facebook is the “top five” list of everything you can think of, top five movies, top five sandwiches, top five Britney song, top five Sarah Palin books (although she has only one, hopefully), of course I don’t want to be left out by the other cool kids, so I made a couple of list of my own, like the hit “Top 5 Famous Dead People I Would Like To Invite For Dinner”– James Dean, Charles Darwin, Jesus Christ, Adolf Hitler, and Albert Einstein (I’m definitely sure 3 of them are vegetarian and I definitely got a lot of fb comments for that), and after browsing The New York Magazine in LAX, Aug 16, ’09 interview of the famed photographer Annie Leibovitz (59 yrs. old), “Photography is not something you retire from, Photographers live to a very old age and work until the end.” (Lartigue lived to be 92, Steichen 93, and Cartier-Bresson 94.)  “Irving Penn is going to be 92 next month, and he’s still working.” Leibovitz said. I quickly made another “top 5″ last September 13 at 5:53 am (it’s still somewhere on my facebook wall), “The World’s Oldest Living Iconic Photographers” where Mr. Irving Penn topped the list at 92, shortly after a month (October 7),  Ms. Lillian Bassman (92) took Mr. Penn’s spot at the top 5.

FIVE LEGENDARY LIVING LENSMEN

It’s a youth-obsessed industry, a working fashion model’s age brackets from 14 to 21 and less than 1% of them work up to their 40′s (Claudia Schiffer 39, Christy Turlington 40, Naomi Campbell 39, and Kate Moss 35), but great photographers get to last twice or more than any great supermodel’s career in a lifetime which is fascinating and inspiring for a “late twenties” photographer like me, their career’s longevity and their resilience are something that a lot of “top” fashion photographers in their 30s or 40s at the moment can only dream of. It would be interesting to know if any of the five legendary living lensmen and women Twits or have Facebook “top fives” of their own. Two caucasian women, three caucasian men, two immigrants, three american-born, one photojournalist, one portrait photographer, two fashion/celebrity photographers, one fashion/art photographer, three have started with Harper’s Bazaar Magazine, and all based in the east coast, four in new york, one in miami, here are the updated list of “The World’s Oldest Living Iconic Photographers” still working today.

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Lillian Bassman (92)

A painter and an American fashion photographer, born in Brooklyn (1917) to a jewish immigrant parents from Russia (1905).

Bassman’s work as a fashion photographer started at Junior Bazaar (1940s) and Harper’s Bazaar (1950 -1965), by the 70s she abandoned fashion photography to work on her own photo projects, resulting to 40 years of life’s work (films and prints) thrashed, some salvaged hundred images re-appeared and her work was re-appreciated in the 90s. Her photography style is the high contrast, grainy finish, and geometric camera angles of her subjects.

In an industry ruled by “White Men (gay or straight)”**, Bassman is now one of the last two “great women” standing. And that is still an understatement for me.

**a future article you’ll find here in Dangerously Naive.

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Robert Frank (84)

An important American art/photojournalist, born in Zurich, Switzerland (1924) to a wealthy Jewish family.

Mr. Frank emigrated to the United States in 1947 and like Ms. Bassman started as a fashion photographer for Harper’s Bazaar. He travelled to South America and Europe after the brief stint with the magazine, and like Ms. Bassman worked on his more personal works, and came back in the 1950′s to NYC for a group exhibition in MOMA and then moved to Paris. His frustrations with the control of the editors over his work colored his fashion magazine experience, nonetheless he moved back to New York, 3 years after the exhibition and worked as a freelance photojournalist and completely abandoning fashion photography altogether.

In 1958, “The Americans” was published, his widely celebrated photographic book cemented his position in the history of American photography.

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Patrick Demarchelier (65)

A French fashion photographer, born in 1943 to a modest family and started as a wedding photographer at the age of seventeen.

Like Mr. Frank, Mr. Demarchelier emigrated to New York (1975), Elle, Marie Claire and 20 Ans Magazine was the first stints he had as a fashion photographer after working as a freelance photographer/ assistants to such greats as Cartier-Bresson. He later worked for Harper’s Bazaar (like Mr. Frank and Ms. Bassman) and Vogue (1992-present). Demarchelier also is behind several blue chip campaigns including Dior, Louis Vuitton, Celine, TAG Heuer, Chanel, Yves Saint Laurent, Lacoste, Calvin Klein and Ralph Lauren, and became a household name after the 2006′s Meryl Streep film The Devil Wears Prada with the lines- “Did Demarchelier confirm?”, and “I have Patrick!”.

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Bruce Weber (63)

An American fashion/celebrity photographer, born in Greensburg, Pennsylvania (1946).

Mr. Weber’s first fashion photography work appeared in GQ magazine in the late 1970′s, shot Bloomingdales catalogs in 1978, Calvin Klein Campaigns in the late 1980s to early 1990s, introducing him to the American households. His photograph of supermalemodel Marcus Schenkenberg nude in the shower, catapulted him to celebrity status. Then later working with fellow celebrities like him, Andy Warhol’s Interview magazine, Chet Baker, Chris Isaak, Harry Connick Jr., Jackson Browne and virtually all the stars in the hollywood’s walk of fame, the dead and the living. Today, he is behind the countless ad campaigns such as Calvin Klein, Pirelli, Revlon, Gianni Versace, Ralph Lauren and Abercrombie & Fitch and unlike Mr. Robert Frank, Mr. Weber embraced the fashion industry and worked with virtually all the top fashion and celebrity magazines existing in the world today.

Mr. Weber’s work are mostly in black and white and homoerotic. (A House is Not a Home and Bear Pond to name a few of his numerous homoerotic nude photobooks).

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Annie Leibovitz (59)

An American portrait photographer, born in Waterbury, Connecticut (1949) to a modern dance instructor mother, and a lieutenant colonel father (US Air Force).

She took her first pictures in the Philippines while studying college, and to be with her family, after her father was stationed there during the Vietnam war. Ms. Leibovitz returned to the US in 1970 and started a career as a staff photogrpaher for Rolling Stone magazine, then in 1973 became its chief photographer (for 10 years) and helped defined the look of the magazine with her celebrity portraits of Mick Jagger, John Lennon, and like Mr. Weber the rest of the names in Hollywood’s walk of fame and virtually every celebrity that are in the headlines today, from President Obama to Miley Cyrus (for Vanity Fair Magazine).

Ms. Leibovitz’s signature style is the close collaboration to her subjects and on her earlier works are the more orange/yellow hue tint to the present work’s blue-ish purple hue. – Navo

Related Entry: http://naiveboy.com/2009/10/08/thank-you-mr-penn/

FILIPINO NEWSMAKERS IN WORLD FASHION HISTORY by Navo

16th century King Philip II of Spain is a significant historical figure for me, although I enjoyed more of Cate Blanchett’s 1998 “Elizabeth” than the 2007 sequel “Elizabeth: The Golden Age”, I’m  amused to watch one of my favorite actor Jordi Mollà on the latter playing the part of the king where my country of birth was named in his honour.

With the holy water, I got baptized into Christianity, my spanish name Navo, my mother Elvira and my father Cesar, both names of spanish origins, unlike me, the Philippines has more name changing than a witness on a protection program, the ancient Greeks called the archipelago of 7,107 islands “Maniolas”, Chinese traders named it “Ma-yi”, which means “Land of Gold”, the Portuguese born-Spanish explorer Ferdinand Magellan baptized it “Archipelago of St. Lazarus”,  few years after and another explorer of mother Spain Ruy López de Villalobos renamed the colony “Felipinas” in honor of Prince Felipe (later crowned as King Philip II), later evolved to “Filipinas”, the Americans called it “The Philippine Islands” and at present time “Republic of the Philippines”.

Most people familiar with my work are surprise I’m not a “60 yr old overweight blond caucasian dude” the first time they meet me, another creative or a model, or someone I bump into a line for my venti iced caramel macchiato in starbucks, the top inquiry is, “where is that accent from?” Il’d reply-“Philippines”, they’ll say- “Oh, Manny Pacquiao“, suddenly it hit me, the modern world has renamed the island of my ancestors “Republic of PACMAN”. The ancient Greeks will see the “Maniolas” renamed after the gladiator PACMAN, as America “the United States of Britney Spears” to the middle east, as far as I remember when I was living there. But this is not about Filipino gladiators in the world history of Sports, but the Filipinos who made a name and headlines in the world of Fashion.

It’s fascinating and sometimes appalling to read or watch the news to know that a visionary magazine editor, a notable fashion designer, an iconic first lady, a groundbreaking model, and a controversial Versace murderer has altered and continue changing the course of the world’s fashion history as we speak. Quoting the author Hodding Carter “There are two lasting bequests we can give our children: One is roots, the other is wings.”

Stephen Gan

Creative director at Harper’s Bazaar, co-founder of Visionaire, editor-in-chief of V Magazine and Vman magazine.

Born (1966) and raised in the Philippines, arrived in New York City when he was 18, immediately becoming a prominent NYC club kid Gan studied at Parsons School of Design and began his career as a photographer. In 1986—while he was still a student—legendary Times lensman Bill Cunningham shot a photo of Gan on the street in SoHo, took him for coffee and a cookie, and gave him a quarter to call Annie Flanders, the soon-to-be editor of Details. Gan’s meeting with Cunningham proved fortuitous: Flanders later offered him the position of fashion editor at Details. After the magazine was sold to Condé Nast and Gan was kicked to the curb, he used $7,000 of his severance pay to print 1,000 copies of Visionaire with co-founders James Kaliardos and Cecilia Dean.

In 1999, he launched V Magazine, an offshoot of Visionaire focusing on young art, fashion, and culture. His day job, though, is at Harper’s Bazaar, where he was named creative director in 2001, one of Glenda Bailey’s first hires as editor-in-chief. Gan is also director of Dream Project, a creative powerhouse, with advertising clients such as Calvin Klein, Dior, Fendi, Shiseido, Olay Colour Europe, Tommy Hilfiger, D&G and Missoni.

Monique Lhuillier

Born (1971) and raised in Cebu, Philippines, fashion designer based in the United States. She’s the daughter of Michel Lhuiller, a successful businessman of mixed French Filipino descent, and Amparito Llamas, a society figure & former model of Spanish-Cebuano Filipino descent. Lhuillier’s family is prominent in Philippine society. Lhuillier demonstrated good taste and great imagination at an early age. At 15, she was an outstanding student in Lausanne, Switzerland and hoped to become successful in the fashion industry. Her parents sent her to the Fashion Institute of Design and Merchandising (FIDM), where she met the man she married, Tom Bugbee. Lhuillier and Bugbee, a young, dynamic husband and wife team, founded their company in 1996 and launched their first bridal collection. The line was extremely well-received by fashion-savvy brides, editors, and celebrities.

The breakthrough came after Monique designed the gowns for her wedding entourage. These captured the fancy of couture circles. Having had a difficult time finding her own gown, Lhuillier, a 23-year-old newlywed at the time, decided to begin sketching her own line of dresses. She made the news with two high-profile celebrity weddings in a row. She designed Christine Baumgartner‘s wedding dress for her Fall, 2004 wedding to Kevin Costner shortly after designing both of Britney Spears‘s dresses for her wedding to Kevin Federline. She’s also designed the wedding gown of US former Vice President and former Second Lady Al and Tipper Gore’s youngest daughter, Sarah G. Lee, for her marriage to Bill Lee, and also Heidi Montag‘s wedding dress to Spencer Pratt. Also, one of her gowns is used by Hilary Duff when she plays Sam in A Cinderella Story. Subsequently Lhuillier added evening wear to her line, and several of her efforts showed up on red carpets before awards shows. For the Fall, 2007 season she branched off into more typical runway collections. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monique_Lhuillier

Anna Bayle

Born (1959) and raised in the Philippines, a Filipina model who achieved success in the late 1970s and 1980s. She became one of the highest paid models of her time.

Bayle worked for numerous New York designers and became a design consultant to some established fashion houses. She did national and international campaigns for fashion houses and major department stores, as well as calendars for Elite Modeling Agency and Shiseido Cosmetics. She was featured in numerous fashion books, such as Mugler, Chanel, Scaasi, Valentino, Versace, YSL, Dior, Fashion Illustrations by Antonio, etc. Bayle was photographed by fashion photographers including Helmut Newton, Norman Parkinson, Sante D’ Orazio, Peter Beard, David Seidner, Olivero Toscani, Arthur Elgort, Patrick Demarchelier, Peter Lindbergh, Skrebneski, Alex Chatelain and Paolo Roversi. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anna_Bayle

Andrew Cunanan (1969 – 1997)

An American spree killer who murdered at least five people, including fashion designer Gianni Versace, during a three-month period in 1997, ending with Cunanan’s suicide, at age 27. On June 12, 1997, Cunanan became the 449th fugitive to be listed by the FBI on the FBI Ten Most Wanted Fugitives list.

Cunanan was born in National City, California, the youngest of four children to Modesto Cunanan and Mary Anne Shilacci.

In 1981, his father enrolled him in The Bishop’s School in the La Jolla neighborhood of San Diego, California. At school, Cunanan was remembered as being bright and very talkative, testing with an I.Q. of 147, but he was often bullied. As a teenager, he developed a reputation as a prolific liar, given to telling fantastic tales about his family and personal life; he was also adept at changing his appearance according to what he felt was most attractive at a given moment. After graduating from high school in 1987, he became a student at University of California, San Diego, where he majored in American history.
 After graduating from UCSD, he settled in the Castro District of San Francisco. There, he frequented high-class gay bars and prostituted himself to wealthy, older men. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andrew_Cunanan

“Still, there was a lot of surface masquerade going on. There was a lot of Andrew Cunanan that Andrew Cunanan did not like. He began to, using author Clarkson’s word, “reinvent” himself almost as a cause celebre. Glamour became the keyword; he wanted to be glamorous. Firstly, he did not like being Filipino, so he suddenly became Latino and acted out the part with the verve of an Antonio Banderas. At the bars he was known as either Andrew DaSilva or David Morales. A chameleon, he changed faces and figures with a pair of stylish glasses or a trim of his sideburns, or through the transformation from a suited Clark Kent to a T-shirt wearing Superman. Even though he was Personality A on Friday night, he could be Personality B at the same spot on Saturday and get away with it. Those who spent hours with him at the bar one night would not recognize him the next.” http://www.trutv.com/library/crime/notorious_murders/mass/cunanan/index_1.html

Imelda Marcos

The widow of former President Ferdinand Marcos, and is herself an influential political figure in the Philippines. Imelda was born on July 2, 1929 in Manila. Her own branch of the family was not political. Her father was a scholarly man more interested in music and culture than in public life. Her mother, Remedios Trinidad, a dressmaker who grew up in an orphanage in Manila, said to have been an illegitimate offspring of a friar.

Marcos’s extravagant lifestyle reportedly included five-million-dollar shopping tours in New York, Rome and Copenhagen in 1983, and sending a plane to pick up Australian white sand for a new beach resort. She purchased a number of properties in Manhattan in the 1980s, including the $51-million Crown Building and the $60-million Herald Centre; she declined to purchase the Empire State Building for $750m as she considered it “too ostentatious.” Her New York real estate was later seized and sold, along with much of her jewels and most of her 175 piece art collection, which included works by Michelangelo, Botticelli, and Canaletto.

After the Marcos family fled Malacañang Palace, Marcos was found to have left behind 15 mink coats, 508 gowns, 1000 handbags and 3000 pairs of shoes. In February 2006, Marcos insisted that her husband acquired his wealth legitimately as a gold trader. By the late 1950s, she claimed, he had amassed a personal fortune of 7,500 tons of gold, and after gold prices climbed in the 1970s, the Marcos family was worth about $35 billion. However, the Bureau of Internal Revenue has no record of the Marcos family declaring or paying taxes on these assets, and the source of their wealth remains open to investigation. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Imelda_Marcos

THANK YOU MR. IRVING PENN by Navo

In the beginning of the BUSH era I was in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. I still can’t believe I was there on September 11.

But this is not about 9/11. I remember an old friend and co-worker — as we were trying to make sense of the tragedy of that day — talk to me about the world’s future and my place in it as a graphic designer and photographer in Riyadh. He told me that his father asked him every single day “Son, is that job that making you happy? Is it contributing to the society and the world? Does your life have meaning or purpose?”

The only thing I remember answering back, while we were watching people jumping off the World Trade Center Tower that day was…

– “I want to write about this”

Nine years later my screenplay is still in the shelf — unfinished. But that day made me realize that my life could so easily become superficial. And I wanted to find my life’s purpose in a language I could understand.

I am a fashion photographer now. I’ve always admired those who live their life changing the world in ways that work for them. They make me feel shallow and insignificant — so I am taking writing classes, despite the fact that English is not my first language. I’m taking steps to organize my thoughts and write about things that I care and am passionate about. Taking portraits of a person or a model is somehow telling a story too but I want to write as much as I want to read good books and watch good films. In the capitalist world where I make a living, writing keeps me grounded.

One of the most grounded icons in the “fashion house” died at the aged of 92 yesterday in his Manhattan home. These words were written in his obituary:  “Irving Penn, A courtly man whose gentle demeanor masked an intense perfectionism, Mr. Penn adopted the pose of a humble craftsman while helping to shape a field known for putting on airs. Although schooled …in painting and design, he chose to define himself as a photographer, scraping his early canvases of paint so that they might serve a more useful life as backdrops to his pictures.”

He is a true photography icon minus the diva tendencies and superficialness that plague fashion today. It always amazes me to meet or read about “real” people in the industry. I meet and read about today’s top photographers and I feel like they are either junkies or Britney Spears wannabes. And every time you mention this to them, you are met with defensiveness and are discredited as bitter. These days, you can count with one hand the genuinely intelligent and grounded creatives.

(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Irving_Penn)

Irving Penn studied under Alexey Brodovitch at the Philadelphia Museum School from which he graduated 1938. Penn’s drawings were published by Harper’s Bazaar and he also painted. As his career in photography blossomed, he became known for post World War II feminine chic and glamour photography. Clarity, composition, careful arrangement of objects or people, form, and the use of light characterize Penn’s work. Penn also photographs still life objects and found objects in unusual arrangements with great detail and clarity.

His still life compositions are skillfully arranged assemblages of food or objects; at once spare and highly organized, the objects are raised to a graphic perfection, articulating the abstract interplay of line and volume.

Looking at Penn’s life and work, I could see he contributed wholeheartedly his visions of beauty and history to the the world — inspiring thousands of younger generations of photographers like me to be a storyteller like him.

Thank you Mr. Penn

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