#awarded photographer Mexico

[sitting-on-me-bum]

Title

Cracked Eggs

Bisti Badlands is a remote area in New Mexico, filled with mysterious rock formations, hoodoos and weathered concretions known as the cracked eggs

Erika Valkovicova

Czech Republic

Neutral Density Photography Awards 2023

[kuramirocket]

Leica has named Mexican photographer Luvia Lazo as one of four recipients of its fifth annual Leica Women Foto Project Award, celebrating photographers whose work embodies reclamation, resilience, and rebirth.

They will all receive a Leica SL2-S camera, a Vario-Elmarit-SL 24-70mm f/2.8 ASPH lens, and a $10,000 cash prize.

The winners were selected by a panel of acclaimed photojournalists and members of the international photography community and photo editors from some of the most prominent publications like National Geographic, The Washington Post, CNN, New York Times, and many more.

Luvia Lazo

Luvia Lazo, a Zapotec indigenous photographer born in Oaxaca, Mexico, looks at the essence of indigenous identity, generational shift, grief, and the relationship between people and their space, especially when that space has cultural and spiritual significance.

Photographer Luvia Lazo

Noted for her talent from an early age, Lazo has previously received the Young Creators program by the National Fund for Culture and the Arts (FONCA) in Mexico and the prestigious 2021 Indigenous Photograph award. Her work has been showcased worldwide, including in Mexico City, New York City, and Barcelona.

‘Mom at the Market’

‘Mother and Sisters’

‘Jewelry from Agua Fria’

‘Flor, Ita Savi, From the Coast’

‘Gold Maker, Gold Weaver, Gold Woman’

Lazo’s winning project, Women from the Clouds, is a mosaic of stories of contemporary indigenous women across a wide age range. The photographer’s goal is to create a richer understanding of the diverse experiences of indigenous women.

In the coming weeks, PetaPixel will chat with this year’s winners and showcase more of their work and stories.

Source

[sheltiechicago]

The water feature El Paraguas at the Museo Nacional de Antropología, Mexico City.

Photographer: Richard Quirke

The National Geographic Traveller Photography Awards 2023

[thedisabilitybookarchive]

Disability in Non-Fiction #1: Plain Text Edition

A plain text version of this post. Here you will find detailed image descriptions and easier-to-read versions of each book summary. If you think that any image descriptions/summaries need to be updated, please let me know!

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‘How to Live Free in a Dangerous World’- Lawson, Shayla

[ID: A book cover. The background is a pale orange colour. In the centre, a large photograph of a person with brown skin standing in front a desert under a blue sky. They have short braided brown hair swept over their left eye, and have their arms crossed over their chest, with one hand resting on the side of their face. The title “How to Live Free in a Dangerous World” is around them in large orange writing that covers the length of the photo. The subtitle “A Decolonial Memoir” is to the right their head in very small white writing. The author’s name “Shayla Lawson” is below the title, at the bottom of the photograph, in smaller yellow writing. Black text at the bottom of the cover reads, under the author’s name, reads “author of ‘this is major’, a national book critics circle award finalist”. /end]

Summary:

Poet and journalist Shayla Lawson follows their National Book Critics Circle finalist This Is Major with these daring and exquisitely crafted essays, where Lawson journeys across the globe, finds beauty in tumultuous times, and powerfully disrupts the constraints of race, gender, and disability.

With their signature prose, at turns bold, muscular, and luminous, Shayla Lawson travels the world to explore deeper meanings held within love, time, and the self.

Through encounters with a gorgeous gondolier in Venice, an ex-husband in the Netherlands, and a lost love on New Year’s Eve in Mexico City, Lawson’s travels bring unexpected wisdom about life in and out of love. They learn the strength of friendships and the dangers of beauty during a narrow escape in Egypt. They examine Blackness in post-dictatorship Zimbabwe, then take us on a secretive tour of Black freedom movements in Portugal.

Through a deeply insightful journey, Lawson leads readers from a castle in France to a hula hoop competition in Jamaica to a traditional theater in Tokyo to a Prince concert in Minnesota and, finally, to finding liberation on a beach in Bermuda, exploring each location—and their deepest emotions—to the fullest. In the end, they discover how the trials of marriage, grief, and missed connections can lead to self-transformation and unimagined new freedoms.

‘Being Seen’- Sjunneson, Elsa

[ID: A book cover. It is a dark black with faint, grey, writing over it. The writing, from top to bottom, reads: “Elsa Sjunneson” “Being Seen” “One Deafblind Woman’s Fight to End Ableism” All in capitals. The “I” in “Being Seen” is designed to look like an opening of sorts, with a ray of light coming through. /end]

Summary:

A deafblind writer and professor explores how the misrepresentation of disability in books, movies, and TV harms both the disabled community and everyone else.

As a deafblind woman with partial vision in one eye and bilateral hearing aids, Elsa Sjunneson lives at the crossroads of blindness and sight, hearing and deafness—much to the confusion of the world around her. While she cannot see well enough to operate without a guide dog or cane, she can see enough to know when someone is reacting to the visible signs of her blindness and can hear when they’re whispering behind her back. And she certainly knows how wrong our one-size-fits-all definitions of disability can be.

As a media studies professor, she’s also seen the full range of blind and deaf portrayals on film, and here she deconstructs their impact, following common tropes through horror, romance, and everything in between. Part memoir, part cultural criticism, part history of the deafblind experience, Being Seen explores how our cultural concept of disability is more myth than fact, and the damage it does to us all.

‘Disability Pride’- Mattlin, Ben

[ID: A book cover. The background is made of simple, colourful red, cream, white, yellow and teal shapes. Large text reads, from top to bottom: “Disability Pride” in large, black capitals, “Dispatches from a Post-ADA World”in smaller, black capitals, “Ben Mattlin”, in slightly bigger red capitals. /end]

Summary:

An eye-opening portrait of the diverse disability community as it is today and how attitudes, activism, and representation have evolved since the passage of the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA).

In Disability Pride, disabled journalist Ben Mattlin weaves together interviews and reportage to introduce a cavalcade of individuals, ideas, and events in engaging, fast-paced prose. He traces the generation that came of age after the ADA reshaped America, and how it is influencing the future. He documents how autistic self-advocacy and the neurodiversity movement upended views of those whose brains work differently. He lifts the veil on a thriving disability culture—from social media to high fashion, Hollywood to Broadway—showing how the politics of beauty for those with marginalized body types and facial features is sparking widespread change.

He also explores the movement’s shortcomings, particularly the erasure of nonwhite and LGBTQIA+ people that helped give rise to Disability Justice. He delves into systemic ableism in health care, the right-to-die movement, institutionalization, and the scourge of subminimum-wage labor that some call legalized slavery. And he finds glimmers of hope in how disabled people never give up their fight for parity and fair play.

Beautifully written, without anger or pity, Disability Pride is a revealing account of an often misunderstood movement and identity, an inclusive reexamination of society’s treatment of those it deems different.

‘Crip Kinship’- Kafai, Shayda

[ID: A book cover. The background is light blue, with colourful pictures of butterflies, flowers and a house setting featured in the centre. Lower right centre of the image, a black figure in a long sleeved, billowing dress, holding a curved black walking stick in their right hand. Behind them, a drawing of a room with a table, chair, pink wall with a window, and a blank wall with an orange picture. Text on the book cover, from top to bottom, reads: The title “Crip Kinship” in large black font at the top of the image, The subtitle “The Disability Justice & Art Activism of Sins Invalid” in smaller black capitals, in the upper right corner of the image, The authors name “Shayda Kafai” in medium black capitals in the lower right of the image, partially overlapping the figure in the dress. /end]

Summary:

The remarkable story of Sins Invalid, a performance project that centres queer disability justice.

In recent years, disability activism has come into its own as a vital and necessary means to acknowledge the power and resilience of the disabled community, and to call out ableist culture wherever it appears.

Crip Kinship explores the art activism of Sins Invalid, a San Francisco Bay Area-based performance project, and its radical imaginings of what disabled, queer, trans, and gender-nonconforming bodyminds of colour can do: how they can rewrite oppression, and how they can gift us with transformational lessons for our collective survival.

Grounded in the disability justice framework, Crip Kinship investigates the revolutionary survival teachings that disabled, queer of colour community offers to all our bodyminds. From their focus on crip beauty and sexuality to manifesting digital kinship networks and crip-centric liberated zones, Sins Invalid empowers and moves us toward generating our collective liberation from our bodyminds outward.

‘Sounds Like Home’- Wright, Mary Herring

[ID: A book cover. The background is yellow. A black and white photograph in the centre shows two young black children and a dog in front of a car. The title “Sounds Like Home” is at the tope in large, curvy black writing. The subtitle “Growing Up Black and Deaf in the South” is written in small orange writing, on three black bars on the right side of the cover. The author’s name “Mary Herring Wright” is written in curvy black writing, slightly smaller than the title, at the bottom of the cover. /end]

Summary:

Mary Herring Wright’s memoir adds an important dimension to the current literature in that it is a story by and about an African American deaf child. The author recounts her experiences growing up as a deaf person in Iron Mine, North Carolina, from the 1920s through the 1940s. Her story is unique and historically significant because it provides valuable descriptive information about the faculty and staff of the North Carolina school for Black deaf and blind students from the perspective of a student as well as a student teacher. In addition, this engrossing narrative contains details about the curriculum, which included a week-long Black History celebration where students learned about important Blacks such as Madame Walker, Paul Laurence Dunbar, and George Washington Carver. It also describes the physical facilities as well as the changes in those facilities over the years. In addition, Sounds Like Home occurs over a period of time that covers two major events in American history, the Depression and World War II.

Wright’s account is one of enduring faith, perseverance, and optimism. Her keen observations will serve as a source of inspiration for others who are challenged in their own ways by life’s obstacles.

‘The Right to Maim’- Puar, Jasbir K.

[ID: A book cover. The background is white. A painting stretches from the bottom of the cover to bottom of top quarter. In the upper quarter of the cover, text reads: The author’s name “Jasbir K. Puar” is at the top in black writing. The title “The Right to Maim” is immediately below this in red caps. The subtitle “Debility, Capacity, Disability” is immediately below this in smaller, yellow caps. The painting is immediately below this. The background is a dark cream. It appears to show a humanoid figure climbing a mound. Two other figures appear to be falling off the mound. There are splashes of red paint around the mound and the figure on it. /end]

Summary:

In The Right to Maim Jasbir K. Puar brings her pathbreaking work on the liberal state, sexuality, and biopolitics to bear on our understanding of disability. Drawing on a stunning array of theoretical and methodological frameworks, Puar uses the concept of “debility”—bodily injury and social exclusion brought on by economic and political factors—to disrupt the category of disability. She shows how debility, disability, and capacity together constitute an assemblage that states use to control populations. Puar’s analysis culminates in an interrogation of Israel’s policies toward Palestine, in which she outlines how Israel brings Palestinians into biopolitical being by designating them available for injury. Supplementing its right to kill with what Puar calls the right to maim, the Israeli state relies on liberal frameworks of disability to obscure and enable the mass debilitation of Palestinian bodies. Tracing disability’s interaction with debility and capacity, Puar offers a brilliant rethinking of Foucauldian biopolitics while showing how disability functions at the intersection of imperialism and racialized capital.

‘Uncomfortable Labels’- Dale, Laura Kate

[ID: A book cover. The background is a close photograph of some kind of knitted garment, and its label. The garment is blue. The label is in the centre. Text on the label reads: The title “Uncomfortable Labels” in large black caps The subtitle “My Life as a Gay Autistic Trans Woman” in smaller black caps, lower left of this The author’s name “Laura Kate Dale” at the bottom of the label in black writing. A smaller label attached to the bottom has a single, black capitalised “M” written on it. /end]

Summary:

“So while the assumption when I was born was that I was or would grow up to be a neurotypical heterosexual boy, that whole idea didn’t really pan out long term.”

In this candid, first-of-its-kind memoir, Laura Kate Dale recounts what life is like growing up as a gay trans woman on the autism spectrum. From struggling with sensory processing, managing socially demanding situations and learning social cues and feminine presentation, through to coming out as trans during an autistic meltdown, Laura draws on her personal experiences from life prior to transition and diagnosis, and moving on to the years of self-discovery, to give a unique insight into the nuances of sexuality, gender and autism, and how they intersect.

Charting the ups and downs of being autistic and on the LGBT spectrum with searing honesty and humour, this is an empowering, life-affirming read for anyone who’s felt they don’t fit in.

'Brilliant Imperfections'- Clare, Eli

[ID: A book cover. A photograph of stones can be seen. Over it, a dark box stretching from left to right at the top of the image. Text in the box reads: “Brilliant Imperfection”, in large caps. “Brilliant” is in green, “Imperfection is in white. “Grappling With Cure”, in small, green caps. “Eli Clare”, in white caps. /end]

Summary:

In Brilliant Imperfection Eli Clare uses memoir, history, and critical analysis to explore cure—the deeply held belief that body-minds considered broken need to be fixed.

Cure serves many purposes. It saves lives, manipulates lives, and prioritizes some lives over others. It provides comfort, makes profits, justifies violence, and promises resolution to body-mind loss. Clare grapples with this knot of contradictions, maintaining that neither an anti-cure politics nor a pro-cure worldview can account for the messy, complex relationships we have with our body-minds.

The stories he tells range widely, stretching from disability stereotypes to weight loss surgery, gender transition to skin lightening creams. At each turn, Clare weaves race, disability, sexuality, class, and gender together, insisting on the nonnegotiable value of body-mind difference. Into this mix, he adds environmental politics, thinking about ecosystem loss and restoration as a way of delving more deeply into cure.

Ultimately Brilliant Imperfection reveals cure to be an ideology grounded in the twin notions of normal and natural, slippery and powerful, necessary and damaging all at the same time.

================================================

A short list of 8 non-fiction books featuring and/or discussing disability!

I don't highlight the non-fiction section of the archive enough, so I think this is a perfect opportunity.

A plain text version of this post exists here, featuring more detailed image descriptions of each book cover and easier-to-read versions of every summary.

Books on this list:

‘How to Live Free in a Dangerous World’- Lawson, Shayla

‘Being Seen’- Sjunneson, Elsa

‘Disability Pride’- Mattlin, Ben

‘Crip Kinship’- Kafai, Shayda

‘Sounds Like Home’- Wright, Mary Herring

‘The Right to Maim’- Puar, Jasbir K.

‘Uncomfortable Labels’- Dale, Laura Kate

'Brilliant Imperfections'- Clare, Eli

All of these books and more can be found on the Disability Book Archive.

Happy Disability Pride Month!

[louisupdates]

Louis Tomlinson has been nominated for several iHeart Awards. These are determined by online public votes. You can vote up to 100 times per day.

BEST FAN ARMY: Vote here

FAVORITE TOUR PHOTOGRAPHER: Vote here

FAVORITE ONSCREEN: Vote here

Voting ends 1 April 2024.

Canada, USA, Australia, New Zealand, and Mexico are eligible to vote.

[projectourworld]

Fred Hazelhoff award (Portfolio) category - Balam, the Endangered King of the Mayan Jungle, Fernando Constantino Martínez Belmar (Mexico)

Gaiotti says: ‘The image of the jaguar taken from above while the animal passes through the door of a building is visually very powerful and at the same time original in terms of point of view.’

Photograph: Fernando Constantino Martínez Belmar/2023 NPOTY Nature Photography of the Year 2023

[immemorymag]

My name is Diego Alonso Vignon, but my artistic name is Diego A. Vignon. I was born on the 1st of August 1993, in Mexico City. When I was barely one year old, my parents, my siblings, and I fled from the police, living in hiding in rural areas on the shores of Lake Chapala until I was thirteen years old, marking my life forever. At the age of sixteen I began to run away from home on several occasions avoiding school responsibilities and traveling through the extensive Mexican territory, forcing my family to put me in a mental institution for several months. The first camera with which I interact in my life I stole it (something I regret today), in a photographic store in San Francisco, California at the age of eighteen. When I turned 19 I was accepted at the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM) in Mexico City to study Philosophy and Literature. I have produced various visual series such as “Codeína, Fe y Genealogía” (Mexico, 2021), which was awarded the production prize at the XIX Photography Biennial and nominated for the Marco Pesaresi Award, as well as my unfinished and unpublished series titled “Twelve Visions of heaven Under the Same Solar Cycle” (Doce visiones del cielo bajo un mismo ciclo solar). I also exhibited my work in the Museum of Centro de la Imagen (Image center), Juan Soriano Gallery and very recently in Gallery Gänge and F-stop fest in Leipzig, Germany. In 2022 I was also invited to be part of the list PICS (Contemporary Image Platform). I currently live in between Mexico City, Berlin and Madrid.

[foxes-that-run]

2019 Haylor Timeline

Timeline Tag, Back to 2018

1 January - Taylors New Years Eve costume party she dresses as Ariel

3 January - MH asks to produce Harry's next album... via twitter.... and says Harry has blocked him.

6 January - Taylor in LA at Golden Globes afterparty

9 January - Harry still in Japan

Miss Americana filmed between Rep tour and Lover, released in 2020.

16 January - Kiko Mizuhara says she has never met Harry, then

2 February - Kiko at Harry's birthday party they may or may not have dated.

18 January - Taylor seen at recording studio in NYC (suggested Me!, but I think that's too late, it was released as a single in April)

26 January - Harry still in Japan

1 February - Harry's 25th Birthday “I had a very Murakami birthday because I ended up staying in Tokyo on my own. I had grilled fish and miso soup for breakfast, then I went to this cafe. I sat and drank tea and read for five hours.” (Harry Styles on his 25th birthday, Rolling Stone 2019)

10 February - Joe and Taylor go to Harry's local, the Spaniards Inn Hampstead Heath ...... Harry was in LA on the 12th. Seen walking in Paris in March and not again for 7 months.

12 February - Joe and Taylor attend the BAFTAS Taylor is photographed having dinner with Liam Payne

5 March - Taylor things before 30 article, includes that Andrea is again in treatment

14 March - Harry arriving at gym in London

28 March - Harry JFK airport, then hotel in NY

29 March - Harry and Xander dinner Ny

5 April - Harry in LOndon

23 April - Taylor plays Time 100 show setlist is Style, Delicate, Love Story, NYD and Shake it off

26 April Me! Video released, just before April 29 anniversary... Joe not seen with Taylor till October.

2 May - Taylor Zane Lowe Me! Interview

3 May - Harry in LA

5 May - Harry Anna Wintour's apartment, pre-met Gala dinner

7 May - Harry hosts his only met gala attendance, Taylor’s doesn’t go anymore. Adore you and Lights up written in May. Harry and Kendall have after party and both leave at 6am and both stayed at the Bowery hotel. Jeff and Xander also there.

May - 6 July Joe filming A Christmas Carol in Hampstead Heath and stays in London after. Taylor in US, billboard awards, Lover media

15 May Harry was in the studio, Harry writes Adore You, Lights up, Treat People with Kindness, starts Boyfriends.

18 May - Harry driving a bright yellow vintage ferrari in Malibu, you can practically hear golden in that photo.

20 May (Haylor anniversary #1), still in studio, Harry wears a white horses shirt and fearless gold shorts on the beach in Malibu. While Horse is a Fearless song he also references in the Daylight video. Fine Line then complete

21 May - Gucci Swan Campaign released

24 May - Taylor in Paris with Joe, she recreates scenes from Begin Again which are later in the TV version of Taylor Swift Live in the City of Lover, except the concert was filmed months later when Joe was not there.

3, 6 June - Harry in London,

9 June - Blind that Taylor & Joe double date was PR setup

30 June Big Machine Records sold with Taylor’s masters.

2-6 July - Taylor in Virgin Isles with her mum, Ashley and the Haim sisters, Joe still filming UK.

10 July Taylor Performs at Amazon Prime event in NYC, points at a figure in Delicate thought to be Joe.

15-17 June - Harry visits Xander in Philly, airport photos

18 July - Harry sells LA house at a loss after 2 years on market

20 July - Taylor in NYC

29 July - Harry in NYC for Rolling Stone shoot in Hawaiian shirt (the eternal sunshine of Harry styles story with Rob Sheffield)

1 August - Gucci fragrance campaign where Harry plays with a ring and leans his head on a blonde lady with a cat masks shoulder. This mask is vintage, there is a Tiktok of the guy who owns it. Taylor wore a similar mask in the LAWYMMD video and was filming cats. We don't know who's in the mask, Harris Reed is on the set and I wonder if it is her.

4 August - Harry shot Lights Up music video in Mexico

6 August - Harry in philli

19 August - stories that KK falling out was she threw a party in Taylor’s NY house

23 August - Lover released. Lover Video released with quite clear Haylor references. Taylor says relationship not up for discussion. in NYC Taylor poses next to a photo of One Direction backstage at a signing in Brooklyn New York.

29 August - Taylor films BBC Live Lounge in NY with emotional performance of London Boy, Lover, The Archer, I can’t stop loving you (Phil Collin’s), Holy Ground and YNTCD. Holy Ground and ICSlY are particularly emotional and Taylor talks about loving someone even if they don’t love you back and that she chose Holy Ground because it refers to NY.

2 September - Harry in London, then disappears for 10 days. Gucci Fragrance Campaign where Harry wore the Haylor Ring.

7 September - both at Ed Sheeran's wedding in a big top. Joe maybe there - Niall followed Joe 8 Sept; Joe back 21 Sept

9 September - Taylor records City of Lover in Paris. Live setlist #7 was DBAC and #13 was Style, also played Love Story, Delicate, ATW, Red, Style and Shake it Off. Joe in Toronto.

11 September - Blind that Joe wasn't able to talk about Taylor, about stilted showing at Favorite premiere

12 September - Harry seen in London and MIA till LAX on 17th

14 September - Joe and Taylor Rhode Island and fly to London

17 September - Harry private club Hollywood

24 September - Harry seen with Xander in LA

26 September - Harry Miami with Xander

28 September - Harry leaves Miami with Gucci Mickey Mouse suitcase.

29 September - Harry in London gallery with Georgia Ritz and her BF (Xander’s sister)

4 October - Harry seen with fans in London. Matty Healy says he wants to produce Taylors record (said about Harry earlier the year) and went on to say 'that taylor swift song about supporting gay people, when it came out we already knew that."

5 October Joe hold hands at Taylors SNL appearance, Elle comments 'their version of PDA at least' which is holding hands. Do you know who you are starts. Taylor performs Lover at SNL, the arrangement is acoustic and slow, she's wearing green, with a green piano and green floor, walls and nails! The music sheets look like paper planes. False God also.

11 October - lights up released

14 October - Harry at John Mayer concert at O2 London, John posts backstage photo.

21 October - A Fashion designer said they met Harry at the Bowery Hotel

27 October - Harry goes on stage at Kasey Musgraves last concert, wearing an all black version of the Fine Line Outfit.

28 October - Taylor's tiny desk concert, her CD is still in the background for Harry's in March.

5 November - Harry announced Fine Line

12, 17 November - Harry in New York

13 November - Joe and Taylor Thai restaurant Hampstead

16 November - Watermelon Sugar released as promotional single. Harry with Xander NY

20 November - Harry filmed the cross walk concert

22 November - sponsored tweets for Eroda Tourism started ❤️ Scooter wrote open letter to Taylor wanting a resolution saying his family was being threatened

23 November Harry's Zane Lowe interview (SNL 16 Nov)

1 December - Taylor on cover of British Vogue

3 December - Harry announced Adore you confirming Eroda is related.

7 December - Harry performs at Capitals Jingle Bell Ball, London

8 December - Taylor performs at Capitals Jingle Bell Ball, London

11 December - Kendall and Harry on Spill your guts

13 December - Fine Line released, Taylor’s birthday, Harry performed it in LA that night Harry Styles ‘Fine Line’ Concert at Forum in L.A. – Rolling Stone. Photos of Harry in Japan released. Taylor also performed that night but at MSG NY, making of photos. Rumour Xander there. Taylor performs in NY for Jingle Bell Ball and tells Fletcher "She had mentioned to me how much she loved the lyrics [to Undrunk]. I nearly fainted and passed away at that moment." Undrunk is about wanting to be over an ex.

15 December - Taylor’s 30th birthday party in NY with all the famous people, tiny pupils and a cat face cake. Media says Joe there, but:

16 December - Joe is in London, not at Taylor's birthday

18 December - Cats premiere, Taylor has a swollen lip. Joe attends holds hands as they leave. Flakes answering about holiday plans. Joe does Christmas Carol interview where he says he jumps in Hampstead Heath Pond every year. What convenient cross marketing, the film is shot in Hampstead, Paper Rings refers to icy outdoor pools. I wonder if he ran into Harry there. Harry at BBC Live Lounge recorded Juice cover

31 December - Joe, Taylor and friends at Maldives for New Years, Harry first wore the But Daddy I love him shirt on New Years Eve video of him dancing with no shoes and tipped a bartender $2020 in Anguilla in the Caribbean

Continue in 2020

[abirdie]

Gael García Bernal photographed by Craig McDean for AnOther Man in 2006.

Accompanying interview text (it's a really good interview) after the jump.

Interview by Dave Calhoun

(source but I can never get AnOther Man articles to display properly)

He played Che Guevara in The Motorcycle Diaries. He made a stunning drag queen in Bad Education. Now he’s a confused young Parisian who can’t distinguish between dreams and waking-life in The Science of Sleep, Michel Gondry’s latest mind-warp of a movie. He’s worked for some of the world’s top directors, from Pedro Almodóvar to Walter Salles. He’s fiercely political, a true film lover, and an actor who genuinely puts his art before his bank balance. He’s also a powerful force behind the new wave of filmmaking in Latin America. And Gael Garcia Bernal is still only 27.

Last night, Bernal was knocking back drinks and dancing late into the night at a house party in Greenwich Village. The morning after, he’s sitting in a small diner in downtown Manhattan, talking spiritedly about the disastrous effects that globalisation is having on rural farmers in his home country of Mexico.

“It’s getting to the point where it’s going to implode,” Bernal warns, knocking back a coffee. “The people who will be affected will be the poor. The countries who are going to get fucked up are the poor ones. It’s going to lead to civil wars.”

The more you speak to Bernal, the more time you spend in his company, and the more of his friends and collaborators that you speak to, the more you begin to understand that there’s something unusual about this young actor. There’s a refreshing, even old-fashioned, seriousness to the way he approaches his life and work. He’s unusually engaged – politically, culturally and socially – in a way that isn’t awkward or mannered. He’s hungry to learn, to work with the right people, to do the right thing, to make a difference. There’s a natural, confident ease in his commitment to cinema, politics and the world around him. If all this makes him sound too earnest, it shouldn’t; he’s as comfortable sniggering about beach parties in Brazil as he is dissecting politics. It’s all one life to him.

Bernal first grabbed the attention of the art-house crowd in 2000 in Alejandro González Iñárritu’s Amores Perros, an extreme story of three lives that collide in one car crash amid the chaos of Mexico City. He was 21. In the following year, he filmed the sexually charged road movie Y tu mamá también, which made him, alongside good friend and co-star Diego Luna, Mexico’s most in-demand young actor.

“We had finally discovered a new face,” remembers Carlos Cuarón, writer of Y tu mamá también and brother of the film’s director, Alfonso Cuarón.

“Here was a new young actor who could sustain emotion in a very different way. After seeing Gael in a short film a year or two before Amores Perros came out, I remember calling my brother and saying to him, ‘Man, you have to see this guy.’ He was like, ‘Yeah, thanks, I’m busy right now.’”

A year or two passed before Alfonso saw Gael in action. “Alejandro González Iñárritu is a friend of ours and he showed Alfonso an early cut of Amores Perros,” continues Carlos. “That was the moment when Alfonso said, ‘I want that guy!’ I was on the telephone saying, ‘I told you so!’”

Since then, Bernal has played a youthful Che Guevara in an award-winning performance for Brazilian filmmaker Walter Salles in The Motorcycle Diaries, a fox of a transvestite (and according to one critic a “dead ringer for Julia Roberts”) for the Spanish auteur Pedro Almodóvar in Bad Education, and opposite Charlotte Gainsbourg in French director Michel Gondry’s latest movie, The Science of Sleep. It’s an impressive roll-call of collaborators. And still not one Hollywood movie in sight.

“I think Tijuana is the closest I’ve ever got to Hollywood,” Bernal jokes as we talk about the three months he recently spent on location in the notorious Mexican border town for Alejandro González Iñárritu’s latest film, Babel. “It sounds like a really bad tragedy, doesn’t it? The Closest I Ever Got to Hollywood Was Tijuana!”

Carlos Cuarón agrees that Bernal’s acting path has been remarkable. “The really crazy thing about Gael is that he’s probably the most famous Mexican actor nowadays, but he still hasn’t done a Hollywood movie. He chooses his projects very intelligently. He picks them because he likes the director or because he thinks the script is amazing or because there are other interesting actors in the film. Usually, people become famous across the world because of Hollywood movies, he hasn’t had to go that route.”

Bernal’s commitment is thrown into sharp relief when he talks about his move to London to go to drama school at the age of 17 a decade ago. He was shocked by the country’s apathy to politics and culture. He expected the Rolling Stones, the Marquee Club and arthouse cinema. Instead what he found were the Spice Girls, Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels, and students who would rather sit drinking in pubs or subject themselves to pharmaceutical testing than attend a political rally.

“I found it difficult coming from Mexico,” Bernal explains. “In Mexico, there’s this feeling that everything you do has a political complexity. Which it does. Whatever you do, whoever you say hello to, whichever part of the neighbourhood you go to... Everything has this huge political complexity, as well as social, emotional and sexual.

“I think my attitude also has something to do with my family. They work in the theatre, underground theatre, so maybe I was pretentious, or snobbish perhaps.”

Bernal’s teenage years coincided with a tumultuous time in Mexico. The country was emerging from what he labels “an old tyrant democracy”, and the Zapatista movement in Mexico’s southern state of Chiapas was rising up against the government. Street demonstrations were part of everyday life. Bernal and his family lived comfortably in Mexico City – his mother is an actor, his father an actor and director – but like many kids of his age he was swept up by the energy and sheer excitement of the capital’s mass support for the Zapatistas.

“That movement polarised the country, but it also united a lot of people,” Bernals recalls. “We helped to stop the war. Because of that, it felt like what we did counted. Something like a million and a half people demonstrated every day when the war between the government and the guerrillas started. I was very involved. I was writing and reading about the situation, helping to send food, and demonstrating on the marches. It was great. I was young, and it was fun. And, I’ve got to say, I met my first girlfriend – my first real girlfriend – there as well. It was a great place to meet girls!”

Sex and politics. There’s nothing po-faced about Bernal’s political engagement. It’s wrapped up in movies, fun, friendships, music, travel, theatre and family. There’s something pleasing and traditionally bohemian about all this. There is often a sense in Europe and North America, that we are too comfortable, cynical even, and few people believe that protest – let alone art – can make a difference. Bernal would get along just fine in Paris circa 1968.

All of which helps to explain why he spent the past ten days at the World Trade Organisation summit in Hong Kong. His world doesn’t end with himself and his films. In Hollywood, political engagement, more often than not, means rash gestures and red faces all round. Bernal’s engagement is more steady, more regular, more constant. He quietly attended the protests at the G8 summit in Edinburgh last year on the same weekend that Madonna, Elton et al performed at the Live 8 concert in Hyde Park. In Hong Kong, he sat in meeting after meeting, discussing ideas, presenting case studies and assisting delegates such as Mary Robinson, the former Irish president (“La Presidenta!” as Bernal calls her, laughing). Before travelling to Hong Kong, he spent some time in Chiapas, discovering for himself the effect that free trade is having on local maize and coffee producers.

He’s fully aware that his profile as an actor is a selling point for organisations such as Oxfam, but still he makes sure – indeed demands – that he’s fully informed. He’s not interested in being an intelligent pretty face. He wants to get stuck in. He arrived at the Hong Kong summit with an undefined role, but was soon speaking out at meetings.

“Little by little, I started to get into it and became really interested in everything,” he explains. “Oxfam asked me if I wanted to be in the talks and negotiations.”

He jokes about something else that he picked up at the summit, after some Germans he met fell about laughing when they heard his name. “Gael” it turns out, means “horny” in German. You can already see the pin-up poster tag-line in the German equivalent of Teen Vogue: “Ich bin Gael”, it would read, pasted across a brooding portrait of the actor. It wouldn’t be anything new. “Mexican heart-throb”, “Sex Mex”, “The sexiest thing to come out of Latin America since Ricky Martin” are just some of the tacky headlines – often in upmarket publications – that have been written recently about Bernal.

The conversation turns to Live 8. Bernal admits that he feels a strong sense of unease towards events like these.

“I was a bit critical of Live 8. The people that organised it act as if they are there to safeguard our souls, and present it as a civil action, as if it’s our civil duty to go to a concert. Many of the people who took part made no more effort to do this concert than they would to make a Pepsi commercial. Some of these artists are the same people who advertise Coca Cola. People in Mexico don’t have clean water, yet they’ve drunk Coca Cola all their lives. It’s cheaper to get a Coke than to get clean drinking water. That in itself is a strong image of how much power such companies wield across the world.”

Such independent thinking is present too in Bernal’s attitude to films and filmmaking. He’s happier on the margins, where the ideas and imagination lie. It’s interesting to contrast his career with the young American actors of a similar stature – those who, one minute are hailed as the new saviours of independent cinema, and the next, are dressing up as Spiderman or nestling happily in King Kong’s computer-generated fur. It’s easier to say yes than it is to say no, as Bernal has consistently replied to all approaches from Hollywood.

The screenwriter Milo Addica (Monster’s Ball and Birth) tells a good story about how Bernal accepted the lead role in The King, which he wrote and produced. It’s an independent American movie that British director James Marsh shot in late 2004. When the film was still in the casting stage, many young American actors read the script and liked it, but, as Addica recalls, backed off for what he calls “moral reasons”. They didn’t like the film’s violence or the ambiguity of a lead character who starts out as a hero, but commits an horrific act in the film’s closing moments. Bernal, on the other hand, leapt at the chance. He plays Elvis Valderez, a young American with a Mexican mother, who leaves the navy and goes in search of his father (William Hurt), a popular Baptist preacher who never knew his illegitimate son. It’s a search that ultimately has terrible consequences. Bernal does a good job in his first American film.

“We went to a number of young actors, all of who you know but I won’t name names,” Addica explains. “They all liked the script but were concerned with the audience’s perception. They wanted changes made to accommodate that. Of course, when you pay an actor $20 million he will do an Irish jig on the table for you. He doesn’t give a flying fuck.” Needless to say, $20 million was not on offer for The King.

Bernal is not easily tempted by a pay cheque. “A film with no point of view is such a waste of money,” he considers. “So much money is spent on films. Oh man, spend that money somewhere else!”

Bernal’s attitude to cinema is rooted in Mexico – rooted in the struggle to get films made – personal stories, real storytelling, strong ideas. He says that making The Motorcycle Diaries, for which he travelled through Argentina, Peru and Mexico, reaffirmed his commitment to Latin America and Latin American cinema. Last month, his production company in Mexico City opened for business in partnership with Diego Luna. They’ve already launched a travelling documentary festival that began in Mexico City and is due to visit 16 towns across the country.

As an actor, Bernal is drawn to the filmmakers he has worked with. He wants to learn more, and says unashamedly that he usually wants to be friends with his directors.

“That was the best thing about all these films, on a very personal level, getting to know these people,” he says. “To be their friends, actually. That’s the best thing, and I really get emotional about that. Many people have explained what cinema is, but so far, to me, the best appreciation is that cinema is further proof, further affirmation that fiction can move people more than reality, more than the facts. Also that in the process of making films you get to travel and make friends.”

This isn’t just talk. Michel Gondry, who last year directed Bernal in his latest film, is effusive about the actor who he now counts as a good friend. In The Science of Sleep, Bernal plays Stephane, a half-Mexican, half-French young man whose colourful dreams have a bizarre effect on his waking-life. On the phone from New York, Gondry mentions that he has borrowed Bernal’s old apartment in the city while he works on the post-production of his film in time for Sundance. The two became close both before and during the shoot. When they first met, Gondry hadn’t quite completed his script, so he and Bernal discussed ideas together. Gondry is happy to credit Bernal with offering crucial input to the finished screenplay.

“He’s a great person on top of being a great actor,” Gondry says warmly. “He’s very caring and we’ve become very, very close. He’s very committed. The character he was playing in my film is close to me, so we had to find out what we both had in common. That takes time, and he was really pleased to spend time getting to know me. He’s also just a machine of happiness. During the shoot, he would always make everybody happy and entertain them.”

We walk around the corner and head back to the hotel, still talking about films, Mexico, London and New York, before saying goodbye in the lift. Bernal still has places to go today. The first is the local cinema, where he plans to catch the Tommy Lee Jones-directed Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada, a superb film written by his fellow countryman Guillermo Arriaga, the writer of Amores Perros and 21 Grams. The second is with a TV set in a bar somewhere. His local football team in Mexico are playing in a cup final tonight. He wouldn’t miss it for the world. The revolution rolls on.

[saintmeghanmarkle]

⚠️ [RECAP] Meghan at Uvalde, Texas on 26th May 2022 after the Robb Elementary school mass shooting. A Master Post including Thomas Markle's stroke

A Sinner asked for some references for why Meghan's pap walk in the immediate aftermath of the Uvalde school shooting and why it is still considered unforgivable by so many Sinners.

I went to look for a source post but its is scattered all over this sub, twitter (X) and the internet. So I thought I would create a master post for future reference. Please note that I wasn't on the ground that day and don't know have first hand knowledge. We had two Sinners (Feisty_Nurse and BubbleGum_Yum_Yum) who were on the ground and I have included their relevant comments. Both Sinners are considered to be credible to me. I will share their comments of their experience here.

There are follow on posts from Sinners which I will share. You will need to read them for full context.

... means that a portion of text is used and click on the link for full context

Those who can and want to support the Children in Texas, this is org is recommended by BGYY Texans Care for Children website link.

______________________________________________________________

The Uvalde school shooting occurred on the 24th of May 2022 at an elementary school. The gunman, Salvador Ramos, killed 19 children, 2 teachers and injured 18 others. Robb Elementary School would have had children who are primarily from the ages of 4 to 10 years of age. [Wikipedia source for school shooting].

Photo 1: Regular people paying their respects at the school

On the same day (24th May), it was reported that Thomas Markle Sr suffered a major stroke days before he was about to fly to London for the Queen's Jubilee. [Dailymail archive link]. The trip to London was meant to be a big deal. He was going to be on GBNews and hang out with Lady C.

Photo 2: Thomas Markle Sr rushed in hospital after stroke. Photo taken by Backgrid

Meghan flew to Uvalde on a private jet, Texas 2 days after the shooting on the 26th of May. Here are the highlights of the photographs released and an attempt to hitch her PR to a national tragedy.

The photos below went viral globally in the immediate aftermath of the Uvalde shooting.

Photo 3: Taken by Chandan Khanna (AFP)

This photo of the visit to the community centre was provided directly to Buzzfeed by Meghan [Buzzfeed article] | [Archive link]

Photo 4: Meghan attends a community centre with vending machine sandwiches and Dorito chips / crisps

The Sussex Squad promoted World Central Kitchen (WCK) and they were the top donor to WCK to celebrate Archie and Lili's birthday. https://donate.wck.org/team/425216. credit: Aware-Impression8527. There were tweets about $100k raised to celebrate Lili's birthday. There was a mixup that Meghan also funded WCK at Uvalde from the Sussex Squad. This is because the Squad's $100k Lili donation was confused with the Uvalde attendance of Meghan. eg. this Scobie tweet on the 6th of June 2022.

I remember the squad saying that THIS stall was set up by Meghan to provide food to Uvalde. But in reality it was pre-made sandwiches and Doritos.

Photo 5: WCK kitchen in Uvalde not funded by Archewell

Archewell Partners was released and confirmed that WCK was a partner and that that money was donated to WCK for meals in Haiti. credit BuildTheHerd [Source Post]

Photo 6: From BuildTheHerd post

CONTEXT MATTERS

What many people didn't realise is that Meghan was living her Pretty Woman fantasy during the Santa Barbara Polo match just a few days before this crass PR tactic. Remember that young polo player refusing to share his award with her? It was just us Sinners and the sugars who were watching these events unfold more closely. What's worse is that she went back to grifting at the Polo club immediately after the Uvalde stunt and didn't rush to Mexico to see her father. Here's the colour swatches of Meghan before and after Uvalde. It shows that she body glazed specifically for Uvalde like it was a red carpet event. [Source Post]

Photo 7: Her shade of bronzer is particularly striking as her skin is darker in the sun than in the shade.

Thomas Markle Sr, aged 77, suffered a stroke and was a mere 54 miles from Uvalde and a 4 hour drive from Montecito. She was happy to fly on a private jet to publicly show sympathy for dead kids but didn't show the same level of concern towards her dying father. [Full context, this Leilani of Barbados opinion post.]

______________________________________________________________

Soon after social media was divided about the incident and a lot of the focus was diverted to Meghan's stunt instead of the victims. Many pointed to the similarities between this incident and Catherine paying tribute to Sarah Everard. I dont think these incidents are the same thing as Kate was not captured by the media and was only recognised by those who saw her up close in the crowd [source post video] credit RoohsMama

Photo 8: Meghan turning around to watch the photographing capturing her flowers on the cross

When you search for "Meghan Markle at Uvalde". You are most likely to see this video. Post source video by -ellen-degenerate-. In this version, the posing for photographers and the her photographers following after she leaves is not visible. There were photographers in the area, but Meghan brought her own photography team. This was confirmed after the pic from the community centre was exclusive to Buzzfeed and Sinners on the ground.

This VIDEO shows raw footage of 3 photographers capturing Meghan at the scene (source: NBC News: Meghan Markle Pays Respects At Scene Of Texas School Shooting YouTube).

Pay close attention to this NBC video as you can see the photographers snapping pics of her and how she poses. The photographs from these 3 photographers is what ends up getting circulated amongst the press. Note that this was 2 days after the tragedy. Bigger celebs like Matthew McConaughey turned up much later and the visit was not publicised.

Video 1 - NBC video, photographers following her

Here you can see the female photographer with the mask goes into the photograph the Meghan's flowers and Meghan cannot resist turning back to watch her taking the photo. You can also see Chandan Khanna capturing her laying the flowers at the beginning of the clip.

Video 2: close up of photographers capturing her

Carolyn Durand, Finding Freedom co-author tweets about Meghan's visit to Uvalde with the high res pics from the photographers

Photo 9: Look at the names of the photographers credited in the tweet

Shutterstock also tweets about Meghan's visit a few hours later and tags Kensington Royal

Photo 10: Shutterstock photo

These are the photographs from the 3 photographers from different agencies: Jae C Hong / Yasin Ozturk / Chandan Khanna. Credit Yahoo News | archive Even this article is disgusting because it talks about the couples impending travel to celebrate the Queen's Jubilee rather than discussions around the tragedy.

Photo 11: Jae C Hong photo (AP)

Photo 12: Yasin Ozturk photo (Anadolu Agency)

Photo 13: Chandan Khanna photo (AFP)

So by this point even casual on lookers were disgusted by her behaviour, especially in the context that her father was in hospital after a stroke.

Then came the leaks from the Sinners who were Boots on the Ground...

Brief highlights from from Feisty_Nurse post [Read About that Uvalde visit... Full post here]. Posted on 28th September, 2 days after Meghan's visit. So the crisps / chips weren't even from her.

I was visiting recently with one of the other nurses who also went to Uvalde, Texas following the school shootings. ..... I was busy staffing a shift at Uvalde Memorial Hospital on May 27th when I heard the narcissist of Montecito👸came in with her bodyguard, photographer, and the Netflix crew. ..... The Texas Highway Patrol providing security at the hospital escorted Meangan and her troupe out, with the suggestion that if she wanted to help? Go donate blood with directions to the senior center. Onward, the circus went to Robb Elementary so photos could be taken of Meangan in mourning.😢 Uvalde is a small community with a strong sense of family. So here she was, in the midst of the most horrific thing that could ever happen. An ego profiteer.😁 .... When in reality? There were no trays of sandwiches from H-E-B (grocery store). Just three small vending machine sandwiches that were tossed out. The drinks and chips were all courtesy of South Texas Blood❣️ for their donors. I know, I get the Doritos nacho cheese.

Highlighted comments from Bubblegum_yum_yum can be found in "The backlash is growing, so the BuzzFeed article about Meghan’s visit to Uvalde was edited" [RoohsMama post]

As a member of the media, I must say: SHE DID NOT AVOID THE MEDIA. THE MEDIA AVOIDED HER BECAUSE WE ARE NOT HERE TO TAKE PHOTOGRAPHS OF HER AND WRITE ARTICLES ABOUT HOW SHE BROUGHT CHIPS TO A COMMUNITY CENTER AND FLOWERS TO ONLY ONE OF THE CROSSES. She laid flowers at the “youngest victim” for clout She could have - and should have - laid flowers at every single cross. She can afford it. The role of the media is not to document unaffiliated people flying in for photo ops. Our role here is to tell the stories of the children whose stories will never be complete because they were tragically and disgustingly killed at 8, 9, 10 years old. ....

more comments from BGYY "She just kind of walked in with her crew ...." [HillyBeans post]

Yes. She did. I’m here as part of a press team and this entitled brat shows up with a team of several people and is trying to make it a godd*** spectacle! A Texas Ranger told her team to fuck off because it’s the site of a literal massacre, not a celebrity photo op I’m going to be very frank because this situation is extremely real and raw and beyond what words can describe: It’s time for HER to ask EVERYONE HERE if they’re okay! Don’t bring them chips and shitty sandwiches and show up with an entire media crew here for YOU and not for actual media coverage of what is happening! She’s also fucking it up for us actual reporters on the scene. There are such strict protocols and the relationship between the media and officials is predicated on such a fine line that having a fucking unauthorized media crew show up sets every other journalist back! ....

After the pap walk it was revealed that Meghan wrote a letter to Moms Demand Action and it was shared on social media by Shannon Watts

Photo 14: Meghan's letter to Moms Demand Action

The Archewell Foundation also funded a new KABOOM! playground in Uvalde in October 2022.

“It has been an honor to support the children and families in Uvalde design and build this amazing space where the community can come together,” said James Holt, Executive Director of Archewell Foundation, in a statement. “Our hope is that this special project can help the community heal, and be home to imagination, games and play for many years to come.”

Kaboom still organises fundraisers giving shoutouts to the Sussex Squad like on 4th May 2023 https://x.com/kaboom/status/1654206812587974656

Photo 15: Archewell funded Kaboom playground see their logo

Master Post link

author: Negative_Difference4

submitted: September 10, 2024 at 07:34AM via SaintMeghanMarkle on Reddit

[sitting-on-me-bum]

Humedal Amarillo

Coastal lagoons, islands, and extensive mangrove swamps are found in the Chetumal Bay, Quintana Roo, Mexico.

by Humberto Bahena Basave, Mexico

Mangrove Photography Awards

[derwahnsinn]

31 Days Idol Challenge - Oliver Riedel

Day 29: At Award Ceremony

One thing I really like about photos of Rammstein from award ceremonies, is how they dress. I love how they just seem to all put on whatever they feel like, so that the more or less always have at least one 'odd man out'.

My photo of choice is this group shot from 1998 Echo Awards, because I really like how Oliver went with a choker. Photo by Axel Kirschof.

I feel like it's appropriate to add a passage from Flake's book Heute hat die Welt Geburtstag (It's the World's Birthday Today), where he wrote about when the band got nominated for their first Echo Award. It is such a good example of "six inexperienced East Germans entering the celebrity circus":

Beforehand we had long conversations about what we should wear. We definitely wanted to all wear the same thing so that people would see we were a single entity. Since this was the first time we'd been invited, we got there on time. On time meant two hours too early. When we walked down the red carpet, there was of course not the slightest reaction from the audience, which wasn't bad, however. The only person who recognized us was the security guard for Die Toten Hosen, who were also nominated and of course actually received an award. We attached ourselves to Nena's manager, whom we knew from the industry tour. We stood around in the lobby with him for hours and were horribly thirsty. Then the ceremony finally started and we thought it was all very exciting. Otto Waalkes was sitting in front of us. I stared at the back of his head the whole time. I thought back to how, when I was a kid, I would go over to our neighbor's place just to watch the Otto Show. Every single gag got rehashed all over school the next day, and I didn't want to be left out. And now I could practically touch him. I was so excited my palms were sweating. All the nominees were introduced with a short film. When they finally showed our film, there was absolutely no applause since of course no one knew who we were. There was only bored silence. I think Aerosmith got the prize. We realized that we'd gotten all dressed up for nothing and felt appropriately foolish. Thankfully though, there was a giant afterparty. We hadn't known about that either. There we could eat and drink as much as we wanted and didn't have to pay. We weren't the only ones who got exorbitantly drunk; those who were still there at four stayed till six. Moses Pelham broke Stefan Raab's nose. The next day, a bunch of zombies stood freezing on the train platform, waiting for the train with their Echos in their hands. Or not, in our case. Then two years later, we got the award. We stood there on stage like six bumps on a log and didn't know what to say. Under no circumstances did we want to toss out an embarrassing litany of thank yous. When it was my turn at the mic, I just talked about my vacation in Sri Lanka - I'd just gotten back two days earlier and was still overflowing with impressions. Plus, while the boring ceremony was going on, Ben Becker had been teaching us that drinking vodka mixed with tonic water was very refreshing. The trophy they handed us was I guess supposed to represent a sound wave - I mean, I don't know what an echo looks like, technically speaking - and it was pretty heavy. It was an unwieldy thing to have to hold onto at the party afterward, so I just left it sitting around somewhere.

Bonus material: 1) 1997, Rammstein getting gold for Herzeleid and Engel. Unknown photographer. Some of the band members, including Oliver, had interesting choices of shoes. 2) 1998 MTV Europe Music Awards. Another interesting choice of clothing for Oliver. 3) 2001 MTV Europe Music Awards. Can't go wrong when you're all wearing stage costumes! Photo by Anthony Harvey. 4) 2001 Mexico City. Very questionable positioning of Paul in this photo by Guillermo Ogam. 5) 2005 Echo Awards. I really love how they showed up and performed in fat suits. Photo by Sean Gallup. 6) 2005 Rammstein Music Awards, I love Oliver's outfit here, too. Unknown photographer. 7) 2009 Echo Awards. Oliver went fully casual, and Schneider showed his total lack of taste in shoes. Unknown photographer.

--

Others doing this challenge:

Till: @endlich-allein Flake: @anwiel13 Paul: @instillennachten

[religion-is-a-mental-illness]

[ A team of amateur astronomers led by Marcel Drechsler, Xavier Strottner and Yann Sainty made a surprising discovery to win the overall prize in the 2023 Astronomy Photographer of the Year competition. "Andromeda, Unexpected" shows a huge plasma arc next to the Andromeda Galaxy, the closest large spiral galaxy to our Milky Way. ]

By: Jess Thomson

Published: Sep 15, 2023

The universe is filled to the brim with weird and wonderful sights, which we are often lucky enough to see thanks to the skills of astrophotographers.

This year's Astronomy Photographer of the Year competition, run by the Royal Observatory Greenwich in the U.K., showcases some of these unique spectacles, ranging from the roaring surface of our sun to our galactic neighbor Andromeda.

Giant Plasma Arc

The overall winning entry of the Astronomy Photographer of the Year 2023, taken by Marcel Drechsler, Xavier Strottner and Yann Sainty, shows the Andromeda galaxy next to an unexpected hazy blue cloud.

This cloud, never before seen, is thought to be an enormous arc of plasma stretching across the space between the Milky Way and our neighboring galaxy, situated 2.5 million light years away.

"What you see is [a] gigantic blue arc of ionised oxygen gas that has never been seen before," amateur astronomer and astrophotographer Drechsler explained in a statement.

This picture reveals how new findings are always being uncovered just under our noses, as we have been observing Andromeda for over 100 years. The reason that the arc—christened the Strottner-Drechsler-Sainty Object 1 (SDSO-1)—had not been spotted before is that it only emitted light in the Oxygen 3 (OIII) wavelength, and was very faint. OIII is a wavelength of light emitted by clouds of oxygen, which only comprise around 1 percent of gas in the universe: hydrogen, by contrast, makes up over 75 percent.

"It was an absolute accident," Drechsler said. "No one expected to see it and that's why it's called Andromeda, Unexpected, because we wanted to take a beautiful image of the Andromeda Galaxy. And we looked at the first data and we spotted this hazy smudge on the edge of the image."

[ Angel An won in the Skyscapes category for snapping the extremely rare phenomenon of Sprites—or red lightning—in which atmospheric luminescence appears like fireworks. "It creates an unsettling, alien image that can't help but draw your eye," said judge Ed Bloomer. ]

Red Sprite Lightning

The winner of the competition's "Skyscapes" category is a spectacular red sprite lightning display, photographed by Angel An.

"Sprites are large-scale, lightning-like discharges that happen above thunderstorms," Caitano L. da Silva, a physics professor at New Mexico Tech, previously told Newsweek.

"They happen in response to powerful cloud-to-ground (CG) flashes in the underlying thunderstorms. These CG flashes radiate a strong electric field that creates sprites at the edge of the lower ionosphere, aka the edge of space," da Silva said. "Sprites are brief, but are huge, 50 km [30 miles] tall by 50 km [30 miles] across, about the size of a small town."

This image was taken at Lake Puma Yumco, in Tibet, China.

"I was standing on the highest ridge of the Himalaya mountains, enjoying the dancing lightning sprites like gorgeous fireworks in the night sky," Angel said. They acted as fairy-like creatures, giving a transient firework show for the audience on Earth. Seeing this extremely rare phenomenon of atmospheric luminescence with such high intensity was something that I have never witnessed before."

[ Eduardo Schaberger Poupeau's photograph of the sun with a huge solar filament in the shape of a question mark won in the Our Sun category. "If you zoom into the surface of the Sun, the image has a paint-like quality—I feel like I can see the brush strokes," said judge Sheila Kanani. ]

Solar Tendrils

The winner of the "Our Sun" category is a close-up of the sun's surface taken by Eduardo Schaberger Poupeau, showing a long tendril of solar plasma.

"This is such a clever image as while we have seen the granulation and surface of the Sun before, I've never seen a filament shaped like a question mark before," Sheila Kanani, competition judge, said in a statement. "If you zoom into the surface of the Sun, the image has a paint-like quality—I feel like I can see the brush strokes. There's a sense of movement and you can almost see the question mark filament moving if you stare long enough."

[ Ethan Chappel won in the Our Moon category for capturing in detail the moon passing in front of Mars on December 8, 2022. Judge Steve Marsh described the occultation as "one of the last and greatest celestial events of 2022." ]

Mars and the Moon

The "Our Moon" category was won by an image of the occultation of Mars by the moon, which is when Mars passes behind the moon in our skies. This image shows Mars as it peeked out from behind our satellite on December 8, 2022, as taken by Ethan Chappel from Texas.

"To capture the level of detail on Mars that you see here takes a huge amount of skill and practice," Steve Marsh, a competition judge, said in the statement. "Combined with a crisp, clear, perfectly processed lunar limb, the result is like taking a gigantic telephoto lens into lunar orbit itself! This image is a technical marvel and a real treat to look at. Two factors which make it a worthy winner in this category."

[ Monika Deviat's image of an abstract aurora in the shape of a brushstroke topped the Aurorae category. "We are accustomed to seeing aurora from an earthly perspective with mountains, trees and humanmade structures framing the dancing lights. This photograph offers something different, showcasing the beauty of the aurora in isolation," said judge Katherine Gazzard. ]

Northern Lights

The winner of the "Aurorae" category was of a long flame-like wisp of aurora, taken by Monika Deviat in Finland. Auroras are caused by solar wind slamming into the Earth's atmosphere and magnetic field, causing gases to emit light in the form of the northern and southern lights.

"This photograph is an aurora abstract. I focused on this structure as it looked like a painter's brushstroke across a canvas. It's not the usual corona or big nightscape scene, but I thought it was a unique and beautiful shape with the feathered ends. I pointed the camera almost straight up to capture this formation," Deviat said in a statement.

[ A team of amateur astronomers led by Marcel Drechsler, Xavier Strottner and Yann Sainty made a surprising discovery to win the overall prize in the 2023 Astronomy Photographer of the Year competition. "Andromeda, Unexpected" shows a huge plasma arc next to the Andromeda Galaxy, the closest large spiral galaxy to our Milky Way. ]

New Nebula

The winner of the "Stars and Nebulae" category was an image of a galactic nebula around the YY Hya star, taken by Marcel Drechsler from Germany and Xavier Strottner from France over 360 hours of exposure across 100 nights.

This nebula was previously unknown to science.

"In its centre, a pair of stars surrounded by a common envelope was found. For the first time, amateurs and scientists have succeeded in providing evidence for a fully developed shell of a so-called 'common envelope system'," the photographers explain in a statement.

Several other images won their categories, while tens of others filled the longlist and shortlists, all revealing the beauty and mystery of the universe.

"Once again, entrants to the Astronomy Photographer of the Year competition have conspired to make things difficult for the judges, with a flood of high-quality images covering an amazing range of targets. The highlight of this year is perhaps a number of genuine discoveries being imaged, but we've had wonderful efforts in every category," Ed Bloomer, an astronomer at Royal Observatory Greenwich, said in a statement.

[ The Young Astronomy Photographer of the Year was awarded to two 14-year-old boys from China—Runwei Xu and Binyu Wang—who captured the vibrant colors of the Running Chicken Nebula. The giant cloud of dust and gas is nicknamed that because it looks like a giant chicken running across the sky, according to NASA. ]

[ Tom Williams topped the Planets, Comets & Asteroids category for photographing a unique view of Venus using infrared or ultraviolet false color. "Capturing these atmospheric details from the sunlit side of the planet when it is so far from Earth is a remarkable achievement," said judge László Francsics. ]

[ The Sh2-132 complex lies near the border of the Cepheus and Lacerta constellations and contains multiple deep sky structures. Aaron Wilhelm's winning photograph in the Best Newcomer category includes 70 hours of data and shows the rich interplay of all the gases. ]

[ John White claimed the Innovation prize for capturing the sound of a black hole at the center of the Perseus Galaxy using audio source material from NASA's Chandra Sonification Project and playing it through speakers with a petri dish attached to them. "Here, we are shown an interesting and playful visualisation of astronomical data that we could not 'see' by ourselves nor 'hear'. This is an image of a sound generated by a source that is invisible. Stark, beautiful, rather weird, and certainly innovative!" said judge Ed Bloomer. ]

[ Vikas Chander's photograph of star trails poking through the gray sky above a ship stranded in the treacherous, most northern part of Namibia's Atlantic-facing coast on August 25, 2008, prevailed in the People & Space category. ]

[mosertone]

Typical Sunday Night ~

Thx Isabel Sig (again!)

Danny Lyon

"One of the most original and influential documentary photographers of the post-war generation, Danny Lyon forged a new style of documentary photography, described in literary circles as "New Journalism," an unconventional, personal form of documentary in which the photographer immersed himself in his subject’s world.

A graduate of the University of Chicago, Lyon began his career in 1962 as the staff photographer for the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), covering and participating in Civil Rights marches. His first important project was published as The Bikeriders (1967), and was based on four years spent on the road as a member of a motorcycle club known as the Chicago Outlaws, from 1963-1967. Lyon described the series as "an attempt to record and glorify the life of the American bikerider," whose golden years were receding as the sixties drew to a close. In 1971, Lyon published his best known work, Conversations with the Dead, which features photographs of six Texas prisons made over a period of fourteen-months, from 1967 to 1968. To make “a picture of imprisonment as distressing as I knew it to be in reality," Lyon juxtaposed his images with texts taken from prison records, interviews, inmates’ writings, (particularly the letters of Billy McCune, a convicted rapist), and even fiction..

Having established new models for both documentary photography and the photography book, Danny Lyon went on to become an influential documentary filmmaker, winning numerous honors and awards in both fields, including Guggenheim Fellowships in both film and photography, and the 2015 Lucie Award for Achievement in Documentary Photography.

Danny Lyon’s work is in the permanent collections of The Museum of Modern Art, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Whitney Museum of American Art, the Art Institute of Chicago, American Museum of Art, Smithsonian Institute, the J. Paul Getty Museum and many other public institutions. Lyon lives and works in New Mexico."

[louisupdates]

FITFWT24: MASTERPOST

FASHION [x]

LITHOGRAPHS [x]

SELFIES & PORTRAITS [x]

OUTRO SONGS [x]

TWITTER SPREE 23.1.2024

John Delf/ Sennheiser interview: FITFWT Sound Engineering

FESTIVALS

FITFWT23

LOUIS TOMLINSON LIVE - 24.4.2024: Fan videos vs Spotify canvas

ASIA

24 Jan - Bengkel Space SCBD, JAKARTA: video 1, video 2, video 3

AUSTRALIA

28 Jan - Sidney Myer Music Bowl, MELBOURNE (fitfwt24: melbourne)

30 Jan - Riverstage, BRISBANE (#fitfwt24: brisbane)

2 Feb - Qudos Bank Arena, SYDNEY (#fitfwt24: sydney)

TEKATE PAL NORTE FESTIVAL

30 Mar - MONTERREY, MEXICO (cap. 80k) (#fitfwt24: tecate) (PRESS CONFERENCE) MTY 360, Tiempo, El Ambiente, Reforma

IHEART RADIO AWARDS - 1 APR 2023: Joshua Halling wins Best Tour Photographer

PRE-TOUR PRESS RUN, LATAM

2 Apr - SÃO PAULO, Brazil: Radio Mix FM, Foquinha, MTV Brazil, CNN Brazil, Capricho, POPLine Brazil, g1, Nickelodeon, Billboard Br

4 Apr - SANTIAGO, Chile: Los 40 Chile, CNN Chile, Canal 13, Bio Bio Chile, La Cuarta, Radio Disney Chile, Radio Planeta

6 Apr - BUENOS AIRES, Argentina: Los 40 Argentina, TN La Viola, HeinowPY, MTV Sur, Clarín, Sergio Aguero, TELESHOW, #velez sarafield stadium, Esto es Datta, Tu Musica Hoy, Telenoche, Canal 13, Billboard Argentina, Algos De Musica, Radio Disney LA

NORTHERN MUSIC AWARDS - 23 APR 2023: raffle (#northern music awards)

LOUIS IGTV - 27.4.2024

LATAM - IGTV with transcription 27.6.2024

2 May - Centro de Convenciones Amador, PANAMA CITY (#fitfwt24: panama)

5 May - Coliseo de Puerto Rico, SAN JUAN (#fitfwt24: san juan)

8 May - Jeunesse Arena, RIO DE JANEIRO (#fitfwt24: rio de janeiro)

11 May - Allianz Parque, SÃO PAULO (#fitfwt24: são paulo)

12 May - Ligga Arena Cap, CURITIBA (#fitfwt24: curitiba)

15 May - Antel Arena, MONTEVIDEO: (#fitfwt24: montevideo)

18 May - Velez Sarsfield, BUENOS AIRES: (#fitfwt24: buenos aires)

21 May - Jockey Club del Paraguay, ASUNCIÓN: (#fitfwt24: asuncion)

24 May - Bicentenario Stadium, SANTIAGO (#fitfwt24: santiago)

26 May - Arena 1, LIMA: (#fitfwt24: lima)

28 May - Coliseo Medplus, BOGOTÁ: (#fitfwt24: bogota)

30 May - Parque Viva, SAN JOSE: (#fitfwt24: san jose)

1 Jun - Autodrómo Hermanos Rodriguez - Curva 4, MEXICO CITY: (#fitfwt24: mexico city)

4 Jun - Auditorio Josefa Ortiz de Domínguez, QUERETARO: (#fitfwt24: queretaro)

6 Jun - Arena VFG, GUADALAJARA: (#fitfwt24: guadalajara)

AWAY FROM HOME FESTIVAL

8 JUN - MERIDA, Mexico (cap. 10k+): (#afhf 2024)

EUROS 2024 (#louiseuros24)

PINKPOP FESTIVAL

22 Jun - LANDGRAAF, Netherlands (cap. 70k): 17:55 to 18:55 (#louispinkpop24)

GLASTONBURY 2024 (#louisglasto24)

MAIN SQUARE FEST

4 Jul - ARRAS, France (cap. 40k): 18:15 to 19:15 (#louismainsq24)

RUISROCK FESTIVAL

7 Jul - Ruissalo Island, TURKU, Finland (cap. 35k): 19:15 (#louisruisrock24)

MEO MARES VIVAS FESTIVAL

21 Jul - VILA NOVA DE GAIA, Portugal (cap. 30k): 21:45 (#louismaresvivas24)

MORRIÑA FESTIVAL

26 Jul- PORTO DE A CORUÑA, Spain (cap. 20k): 23:50 (#louismorrina24)

ARENAL SOUND FESTIVAL

2 Aug - BURRIANA, CASTELLO, Spain (cap. 50k): 23:20 - 00:40 (#louisarenalsound24)

SANTANDER FESTIVAL

3 Aug - SANTANDER, Spain (cap. 15k): 1:30 - 2:30 AM (#louissantander24)

UNTOLD FESTIVAL

8 Aug - CLUJ-NAPOCA, Romania (main stage cap. 30k, 2023 attendance 400k): 21:45 - 23:00 (#louisuntold24)

SZIGET FESTIVAL

10 Aug - BUDAPEST, Hungary (cap. 92k): 19:15 to 20:30 (#louissziget24)

FREQUENCY FESTIVAL

16 Aug - ST. PÖLTEN, Austria (cap. 140k) (#louisfrequency24)

CABARET VERT FESTIVAL

18 AUG - CHARLEVILLE-MÉZIÈRES, France (cap. 90k): 19:10 - 20:10 (#louiscabaretvert24)

VICTORIOUS FESTIVAL

23 Aug - PORTSMOUTH, UK (cap. 65k): 16:45 - 17:30 (#louisvictorious24)

ZURICH OPENAIR FESTIVAL

24 AUG - ZURICH, Switzerland (cap. 80k): 19:40 - 20:40 (#louiszurichopenair24)

FESTNINGEN FESTIVAL

30 Aug - TRONDHEIM, Norway: 17:30 - 18:30 (#louisfestningen24)

ITALIAN GRAND PRIX

31 Aug - 1 Sep - MONZA, Italy (#louismonza24)

LIVE FROM FEST ISTANBUL

6 Sep - Festival Park Yenikapı, ISTANBUL, Turkey (cap. 10k): 21:30 - (#louisfestistanbul24)

LOLLAPALOOZA BERLIN

7 Sep - Olympiastadion & Olympiapark, BERLIN, Germany (cap. 100k): 18:15 - 19:10 (#louislolla24)

SUPERBLOOM FESTIVAL

8 Sep - Olympiapark and Olympiastadion, MUNICH, Germany (cap. 50k): 17:35 - 18:35 (#louissuperbloom24)

Louis’ FAREWELL REEL

UNDER THE TONGUE: THE UNTOLD STORY OF FOOTBALL’S MOST ICONIC BOOT

11 Dec - YouTube (#louisunderthetongue) (transcript)

[mybeingthere]

LUIS XERTU, Mexico City, 1985, Lives and works in Rotterdam, NL​

Luis Xertu moved from Mexico to the Netherlands in 2004 and graduated from the Rietveld Academy in 2009. He further developed his visual language working within the performing arts, where he set pieces that experimented with the mediums of theater and dance. These scenic artworks have been shown at the Dutch pavilion in Venice for the Carnevale dei Ragazzi and Museum Boijmans van Beuningen.

Xertu’s art combines the analogue and the digital, photographing and painting models, using Photoshop to decide on compositions, and meticulously collaging plants directly onto the canvas to create large-scale paintings with stark compositions. Drawing from mythological and historical references, he explores themes of time and ageing, incorporating the decay of real plants as elements of transformation, which can take several years to happen.

Xertu was nominated for the Dutch Royal Award for Modern Painting 2019 and was awarded the Audience Award. ‘In nature nobody would care for you either’ is his second exhibition at TORCH Gallery, Amsterdam.

https://www.luisxertu.com/