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This Film Is Helping Shatter Society's Rigid Beauty Standards

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The glitz and glamour of the fashion world is often what attracts people to careers in the industry, and it ultimately keeps them there once they get a foot in the door. 

 

That was almost the case for Rick Guidotti, who became one of the most sought-after fashion photographers in the '80s and '90s. He captured iconic images of supermodels like Cindy Crawford and worked for top publications such as Elle. And while that might seem like the dream gig, it wasn't so for Guidotti.

 

After becoming fatigued by society's rigid beauty standards -- and a job that perpetuated them -- the New York-based photographer decided to leave high-fashion shoots behind and aim his camera at people with various genetic differences who are not often seen as traditionally beautiful. 

 

Although Guidotti  has left the world of high fashion, he says that capturing gorgeous images is still the objective. "I am the same artist I always was. It has always been about beauty and it still is," he told The Huffington Post.




This professional pivot was sparked by an encounter with a young girl with albinism, the congenital disorder that affects melanin production, resulting in little-to-no pigmentation in the skin, eyes and hair. From there it snowballed into a full-fledged career and the launch of a not-for-profit organization called Positive Exposure




"This is a human movement, and together with the images, we are all advocating not to be seen as a disease or diagnosis but as human beings," Guidotti said. 

 

Guidotti's awe-inspiring portraits and moving mission caught the attention of Emmy-nominated filmmaker Joanna Rudnick, who has turned his story into the newly released documentary "On Beauty," currently in select theaters. 




The film follows Guidotti in his charge to redefine beauty, a cause he believes is slowly changing the fashion and beauty industry. 

 

"[It's] such a huge industry with so many followers," Guidotti said. "So much money and so much product to sell. Things won’t change easily, but it's changing nonetheless."




 

The doc also takes an intimate look at two of Guidotti's subjects: Sarah Kanney, who has Sturge-Weber syndrome, a congenital condition that resulted in a large birthmark on her face, and Jayne Waithera, a young woman with albinism who lives in Eastern Africa. 

 


Ultimately, Guidotti says he hopes the film will instill in viewers "the ability to see beauty in diversity, the freedom to see beauty in their own reflection."



 


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'Bachelor In Paradise' Season 2, Episode 1 & 2: Welcome To Hell -- And A Beach

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It's not "Almost Paradise" anymore -- "Bachelor in Paradise" has finally arrived, and in abundance. The first week's episodes, three hours in total, offered all the laughter, tears, making out and backstabbing we could possibly hope for.


In this week's "Here To Make Friends" podcast, hosts Claire Fallon, Culture Writer, and Emma Gray, Senior Women's Editor, recap episodes 1 and 2 of "Bachelor in Paradise" Season 2. We'll discuss paradise's apparent crab infestation, all the Ashley I. tears, the cult of Jared and the definition of "old lady." 




Plus, Maxwell Strachan, "Bachelor" fan and HuffPost Senior Entertainment and Sports Editor, joins to give us his "Bachelor in Paradise" premiere commentary:


Do people love "The Bachelor," "The Bachelorette" and "Bachelor in Paradise," or do they love to hate it? It's unclear. But here at "Here To Make Friends," we both love and love to hate them -- and we love to snarkily dissect each episode in vivid detail.




 


This week's best "Bachelor In Paradise" tweets...


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11 Powerful Feminist Messages, Written On The Bodies Fighting For Them

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A powerful project by photographer Liora K gorgeously captures the issues individual women care about most.


(Some images below may be considered NSFW.)


Liora began the project, titled "Feminism," in 2012, after she moved to a Republican state for the first time and heard more about proposed reproductive rights legislation that was detrimental to women.


 "I was signing petitions and sharing articles, but it wasn't really alleviating the anger I felt," she told The Huffington Post. 


Liora decided to use her skills as a photographer to spread the message that women won't stand for their rights being scaled back. To do this, she chose to speak to individual women about the topics that matter to them, and then photograph each woman with a message about feminism written on her body. 


"When I started witnessing all the attacks on birth control, abortion rights, equal pay, and retractions of protections for survivors of domestic violence, I wanted to see an artistic response," Liora wrote on her website. "I wanted to create a body of share-able and instantly understandable work that people could connect with and use to continue to spread the word: 'women’s rights are being sabotaged, but we are fighting back.'"



Liora works with volunteers, all of whom are fully involved in conceptualizing their photoshoots and editing the images afterwards. Each session begins with a conversation about the issues important to each volunteer, and the two collaborate to come up with a phrase or sentence that the subject would like written on their body. 


"When somebody volunteers their body, I would never want to remove their voice from the process," Liora told HuffPost. "It's very much about them."



The resulting images show women pushing back against sexism, racism, transphobia, anti-abortion rhetoric, slut-shaming, sexual assault, domestic violence, victim-blaming, and a host of social ills. 


Liora hopes that the images will inspire people already involved in the feminist movement to keep fighting against inequality.


"I hope that the people who choose to work with me feel empowered," she told HuffPost. "And that the people who see the photos feel empowered to continue the hard work of activism and fighting." 


 See more powerful images from this series below. 











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Photos Capturing String Instrument Movements Are So Stunning They Look Photoshopped

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This photographer shows us that music doesn't just sound beautiful -- it can look gorgeous as well. 


Stephen Orlando from Waterloo in Ontario, Canada captures violinists, violists, and cellists playing music as part of a photo series he has been working on. But, he explained to the Huffington Post in an email, the pictures capture much more than just the musician -- they also capture the bows' movements through captivating, colorful light trails. 



The Bach Cello Suite is shown with three different bowings.

 


The images are stunning, and we know what you're thinking. No, they're not photoshopped. 


Orlando told HuffPost that the striking images, each of which were taken with a long exposure, were achieved by attaching LED lights to the musicians' bows. He then manipulated the colors with a microcontroller, a small computer programmed to produce the desired color patterns. The photographer also got to moving. 


 



 


"A relative motion between the performer and camera must exist for the trails of light to traverse the frame," Orlando said, according to Colossal. "I found it easier to move the camera during the shot rather than the performer."


 




The project was inspired by Gjon Mili, a photographer who had captured violin bowing through light painting in 1952. Orlando wanted to try his technique -- this time with modern lights. 


 



 


This isn't Orlando's first time using light painting photography. In addition to the musicians, he's also captured kayaking, hockey playing, and several other activities in motion. 


 




 


The photos are brilliantly stunning, and they're definitely music to our ears, er, eyes. 


To see more of Stephen Orlando's work, visit his Instagram, Twitter, and Facebook pages. 


 


Also on HuffPost:  


 


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Movies These Days Have A Lot More CGI Than You Might Realize

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Think you can tell what’s real and what’s ‘shopped in big-budget movies? Think again, says RocketJump Film School’s Freddie Wong. 


In his defense of computer-generated imagery, or CGI, Wong tosses the common belief that such effects turn good movies bad out the window by presenting us with this awesome mashup of effects. Computer images, he explains, are often unfavorably contrasted with so-called "practical effects" -- like explosions or gunfire -- that happen in a real, controlled environment.


But sometimes, it's hard to tell which is which.





“Amazing, wonderfully-executed CG is everywhere -- you just don’t know it,” he says in the above video. Bad visuals, he adds, are the fault of either a shoestring budget, time constraints, or both. 





“Visual effects have, since the beginning of cinema, always been a part of this art form," Wong explains.


"And CG, just like every innovation in cinema, is simply a tool on the filmmakers’ tool belt to tell a story. But when the end result is bad, maybe it’s really not the tool’s fault.”


 


Also on HuffPost:



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This Guy And His Frat Bros Pulled Off A Masterful Musical Proposal

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May 16, 2015 was a big day for college sweethearts Alexa Agourides and Jonathon Feinstein. Not only did the pair graduate from Westminster Choir College in Princeton, New Jersey on that day, but they also got engaged



After the commencement ceremony, Jonathon and his brothers from the Phi Mu Alpha music fraternity gathered around Alexa and serenaded her with a romantic song aptly titled "A Serenade to a Girl." The lyrics of the song are about Phi Mu Alpha's "sweetheart" and are sung to honor a special woman -- in this case, Alexa. 


"I knew I wanted to propose somewhere meaningful for the both of us," Jonathon told The Huffington Post. "With such a small school community, we were lucky to be close with almost everyone that we attended school with. Proposing after our graduation seemed like the perfect idea." 



After the serenade, Jonathon got down on one knee to pop the question. And although you can't really hear it in the video, we can confirm that she did, indeed, say "Yes!" 


"It was honestly kind of a blur," he told HuffPost. "I prepared something to say but ended up speaking off the cuff. I remember saying that Alexa was the woman I had been waiting for my whole life, and that she encourages me to be the best version of myself. Then, I asked her to marry me."



"I thought she would be crying, but she didn't stop smiling the whole time!" Jonathon said. "I think she was overjoyed at seeing the faces of myself and so many friends singing to her."





The couple, who are both pursuing careers as opera singers, first met during freshman orientation. 

 

"We were inseparable from day one, and stayed best friends until we started dating," he said. "I like to forget the fact that Alexa rejected my initial interest in her during the first weeks of freshman year!"

 

Oh, how far they've come! 







Watch the Phi Mu Alpha brothers sing their hearts out in the video above. 

 

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Striking Photos Juxtapose Detroit's Vibrant Past With A Dilapidated Present

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"Start at the turn of the last century, in 1901, with the celebration of Detroit’s bicentennial," author Jerry Herron writes in his book AfterCulture. "That was the Detroit that came before -- before all the racket that attended the making of the modern world, which happened here first and faster than anywhere else on this planet."


Fast forward more than 200 years, and Detroit's once thriving automobile industry has been hit hard by global competition. A city that once served as a vision of the future potential of the industrial empire is now characterized by vacancy, bankruptcy, stagnation and decay. 


Hungarian artist Flora Borsi was struck by the visual impact of Detroit's many neglected spaces. "I have been to Detroit two times and I visited abandoned places that were really touching me," she explained to The Huffington Post. "They're amazing because of how time and nature changed them, and made me wonder how they looked when people were living, working there. I wanted to bring life back from the past decades."



Borsi searched for photographs of Detroit residents from centuries past, juxtaposing the lively citizens with the contemporary scenes of disuse and deterioration. By colorizing the black-and-white, retro photos and retouching both the past and present images, Flora creates single, seamless images that coherently stitch together then and now. 


"I hope that people will see how vibrant the city of Detroit was, and still can be," Borsi continued. "People there need to work, and these factories aren't lost even if they look abandoned on the surface. The history of these companies are in people's hearts and they want it back. I wanted to support them with this series."


Bori's photos capture a fabled Detroit, at once alive and forgotten, pulsing with history, memories, dreams and hard work. The mashups conjure now dormant associations of Detroit with progress and promise, as experienced by Diego Rivera back in the city's heyday.


In the words of the muralist painter from his autobiography, My Art, My Life: "As I rode back to Detroit, a vision of Henry Ford's industrial empire kept passing before my eyes. In my ears, I heard the wonderful symphony which came from his factories where metals were shaped into tools for men's service. It was a new music, waiting for the composer with genius enough to give it communicable form."


See the mythical mashups of Detroit's past and present below. 



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Street Sweeper Saves Girl's Chalk Art (And Our Souls) With Kind Act

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A kind street sweeper allowed a little girl's summer fun to last a little bit longer -- and reminded us truly good people still exist out there.


Wendel Lamb, a street cleaner in Courtenay, British Columbia, was on the job last week when he came upon some colorful chalk drawings in the road. As he approached the illustrations in his truck, he lifted the brush, preserving the artwork of 7-year-old Brielle Pronick, before continuing on his way, CNEK News reported.


According to the news outlet, Lamb has worked for the city for 16 years and didn’t know his act of kindness was caught on camera by Brielle’s father, Mikhail.


“I saw her out on the road when I was coming up and she pulled the chalk back and then ran over towards [her dad]  and I could see this worried look,” Lamb told CHEK. “She was looking at me then looking out at the road and looking at me again.”


So as Lamb drove down the street, he made a point to keep the colorful mural intact.


Brielle’s parents then shared the video of Lamb with the city of Courtenay, who posted it to their Facebook page last month. As of Tuesday, it has racked up nearly 40,000 views


"It was just a sweet simple gesture that made a little girl's day," Brielle's mom, Kristen Pronick, told HuffPost B.C.


Also on HuffPost:



 





 

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Tremendously Twee Short Film Pays Homage To Imaginary Friends

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You’re home alone on a lazy summer afternoon and wish you had someone to enjoy bumming around with. We young adults would resort to texting our BFFs, checking out who’s on Tinder, or, perhaps as a last result, daydreaming about the ideal partner or #squad member to hang out with.


But kids (read: younger, more creative adults) have long retreated into the corners of their imaginations to devise some quick company.


Fictitious friends are a staple of childhood; some kids play with dolls and other toys, imbuing them with real-life characteristics and forming real-life attachments. And, according to Psychology Today, by age 7, 37 percent of kids take this imaginary kinship a step further by creating an invisible pal. Whether human, humanoid, or an entirely made-up species (technicolor lions? Why not! Polka-dotted, winged creatures? Sure!), kids care about their imaginary friends as though they were real, going so far as to construct fact conflicts that the pair must resolve.


One such conflict has become a trope in how we discuss imaginary friends in pop culture: what happens to the made-up playmate when a kid outgrows the need for his or her kinship? This summer’s new Pixar flick “Inside Out” addressed the problem when protagonist Riley’s former fictitious friend struggled against becoming obsolete, (spoiler) ultimately sacrificing himself for her happiness, marking the production company’s token tear-jerking scene.


A recently released short film, directed by student filmmaker Kate Tsang, confronts the same quirky, heart-wrenching conflict.


A young girl laughs on her family’s front lawn, rolling around with a faceless, pocket-square wearing man who has seemingly magical powers, turning mundane activities like lunchtime into thrilling adventures. Named Ex, the heroine’s imaginary friend is entering his ninth year in existence -- much longer than most mythical creatures are allowed to stick around. He visits a bureau designed for imaginary friends and learns that he’s eligible for retirement, but declines the offer sternly, hoping to continue working as a trusty sidekick for as long as possible.


To address Ex’s stubbornness, a bureau worker shows him a film called “So You’ve Grown Attached” -- also the name of Tsang’s film -- an instructional video meant to help imaginary friends adjust to life post-friendship. As Ex tries balance remaining relevant while still providing support, he takes up an interest in beauty magazines and makeup in an attempt to help his human counterpart make other human friends. It’s a tender take on growing up and learning to step outside of your own imagination.


Watch “So You’ve Grown Attached” above, and check out other student films at Film School Shorts.


Also on HuffPost:


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Nicki Minaj's 'Anaconda'-Inspired Wax Figure Heats Up Madame Tussauds

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Nicki Minaj's "Anaconda"-inspired wax figure is hot enough to melt all of Madame Tussauds. 


Tussauds unveiled the world's first wax version of the gorgeous rapper in Las Vegas Tuesday. The statue mimics a scene from Minaj's "Anaconda" music video, showing her dressed in a gold chain top and black briefs while posed atop a table. 




Minaj posted photos on her Instagram of the lifelike figure, calling it "iconic" and saying how much she loves the final product. 


"YOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO WTF?!?!?!?!??!?? Had no idea they were really doing this. I would've went to Vegas for this. #HappyBirthdayAnaconda Madam Tussauds Wax Figure- whoever did this ❤️ ❤️❤️ ," she wrote


She also shared a snapshot of herself just to show how on-point it is. 



A photo posted by Nicki Minaj (@nickiminaj) on




A photo posted by Nicki Minaj (@nickiminaj) on



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17 Disruptors Who Have Completely Changed The Art World

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Read the original article here.



Who has created the art world as we know it in recent years? And who may be doing so now?


The concept of “disruption" got its start in Clayton Christensen's 2011 book The Innovator's Dilemma: The Revolutionary Book that will Change the Way You Do Business.


It's also been reduced to a buzzword. In the past few years, it seems like every startup hopes to disrupt something or other. The word has even been used to promote a good old-fashioned wooden cuckoo clock, said aNew York magazine writer in a desperate appeal to stop using the word altogether.


Still, we think it's a useful concept for thinking through who has helped to create the art world we live in today. We at artnet News put our heads together, polled some art-world veterans for suggestions, and assembled this admittedly subjective, non-comprehensive list of colleagues who have changed the shape of the American art world.



1. Anne Pasternak, Promoting Public Art


Over two decades as director at Creative Time -- half the lifespan of the New York public art organization -- Anne Pasternak oversaw dramatic projects like Kara Walker's blockbuster A Subtletyat the Domino Sugar Factory while expanding the organization's budget and staff by orders of magnitude, helping to bring public art to greater visibility (along with colleagues like Nicholas Baume, of Public Art Fund). Creative Time evensnagged a spot on the artist list for Okwui Enwezor's Venice Biennale.


With chief curator Nato Thompson, she's highlighted socially engaged projects, often given a platform at the annual Creative Time Summit, and she's set editor Marisa Mazria Katz loose with Creative Time Reports, a web publication in which artists comment on the issues of the day.


She's now headed to the helm of the second-largest museum in New York, the Brooklyn Museum. She takes over September 1, and the art world is eager to see how she'll shake things up.



2. and 3. The Performers: RoseLee Goldberg and Jay Sanders
Two curators have raised the profile of performance immeasurably in the last several years: RoseLee Goldberg, art historian and founder of thePerforma biennial, and Jay Sanders, curator of performance at New York'sWhitney Museum of American Art. In an era when the market tends to dominate the conversation, many have welcomed a focus on less-commodifiable works of art.


Since the first Performa, in 2005, the New York biennial devoted to performance has seen acclaimed works by artists like Joan Jonas, Ragnar Kjartansson, Liz Magic Laser, Adam Pendleton, and Alexandre Singh, and choreographers Jérôme Bel and Yvonne Rainer; the biennial has also directed renewed attention to historical practitioners like choreographer Martha Graham and artist Allan Kaprow.



With Elisabeth Sussman, Sanders co-curated the 2012 Whitney Biennial, during which, for the first time, the entire fourth floor of the museum's Upper East Side building was devoted to performance, music, theater, and other events. For her challenging performance, British choreographer Sarah Michelson took home the $100,000 Bucksbaum Award, presented to one artist in each Biennial -- the first time that the winner fell outside of the traditional confines of visual art.


And for better or worse, Joe Scanlan's 2014 biennial performance centered on a fictitious black artist, Donelle Woolford (included at the invitation of Michelle Grabner), gave rise to some of the liveliest debates about race and gender in the art world in years, placing performance art at the center of the conversation.



4. Cady Noland: Artist, Dropout, Denier


In an art market that sees artists' careers harmed when their prices get out of control when rapidly sold and resold at auction, Cady Noland's tight grip on her existing works can be seen as a serious act of defiance. She would rather you not see her work at all than that you should see it in the wrong context or if it's not up to her standards.


She disowned the work Cowboys Milking in 2011 on the eve of its auction at Sotheby's New York, tagged with an estimate of up to $350,000. Invoking the Visual Artists Rights Act of 1990, she declared that minor damage completely invalidated the work, and that her reputation would be harmed by its sale. She also disrupted another sale recently, when she realized the work had been restored.


Upending what you might think of as the authority of art patrons over their artists, she has forced even the most powerful collectors, such as Peter Brant, to post disclaimers when showing or selling her work, like this gem shown by dealer Christopher D'Amelio at Art Basel in 2012: "Ms. Noland does not consider Christopher D'Amelio to be an expert or authority on her artwork."



5. Jerrold Nadler, Lobbying for Artists


New York Democratic representative Jerrold Nadler aims to change the way auction houses operate, to make their jaw-dropping sales benefit not only sellers and houses, by also artists. The congressman has been working for years to get artists a cut of the consignor's profit. And he pulls no punches when it comes to Christie's and Sotheby's, claiming that the auction houses negotiated with him in poor faith, getting concessions from him and then opposing the bill anyway.


Nadler has reintroduced the legislation, which he says is well positioned to pass this time around.



6. ArtList, Talking Trash to Power
But you know who really hates auction houses? It's the online art resellerArtlist, who launched earlier this year and printed a T shirt reading “Fuck Christie's and Sotheby's." The online seller promises to funnel half the commission from each sale to the artist whose work goes on the auction block, like Nader wants the bigger houses to do. And it's not just low-priced art on offer.


One of their first big sales, listed at $400,000, was for a Danh Vo work; a set of Andy Warhol Mao screen prints now on offer is tagged at nearly $1.4 million. Plenty of artworks at the major houses go for less than that.



7. and 8. Joseph Grima and Sarah Herda, Founders, Chicago Architecture Biennial
How is it exactly that there has been no major recurring architecture exhibition except the Venice Architecture Biennale, even in the U.S.? Let that sink in for a moment.


Enter Joseph Grima and Sarah Herda, the founders of the Chicago Architecture Biennial and the organizers of “The State of the Art of Architecture," its inaugural 2015 outing (October 3, 2015-January 3, 2016). The Windy City has been a hotbed for architectural practice, with giants like Louis Sullivan, Frank Lloyd Wright, and Mies van der Rohe having major projects there.


At a recent press presentation, a slide show presenting the participants made it clear that the roster is diverse. Activist leanings are visible in names like André Jaque's Office for Political Innovation; and it's not just about creating buildings, as shown with the inclusion of the Heritage Foundation Pakistan (founded by architect Yasmeen Lari, who claims to be her country's first female architect), which documents and conserves that country's historic built environment.


Participants come from cities as far-flung as Ho Chi Minh City, Rio de Janeiro, and Lagos.



9. and 10. Ambre Kelly and Andrew Gori, Spring Breakers


You've heard every critique of fairs, but Spring Break Art Show breaks the mold; the fair “succeeds in setting itself apart," even for the tough critics at Art F City. The invited participants are typically curators, not dealers, and they select artworks based on a theme, like transaction (2015) or the public versus the private (2014).


What's more, the booths cost the exhibitors nothing up front; the organizers take a percentage of exhibitors' sales, so the presentations can afford to be more experimental and less of a commercial slam dunk. (Big fairs like Armory, to which Spring Break is timed, charge up to $70,000 for a booth.) To make it all possible, Kelly and Gori seek out spaces they can use for nothing, like the run-down Daniel Moynihan Station, which provided an ironically decrepit backdrop for the 2015 edition.



11. and 12. Andrew Edlin and Valérie Rousseau, Outsider Art Power Couple


Philadelphia Outsider Art dealer John Ollmann recalls that “Back in 1970, when we first started showing this material seriously, we couldn't buy attention, good or bad. It was simply ignored. Now ‘suddenly' people are discovering Bill Traylor, James Castle William Edmondson, Henry Darger, and Martin Ramirez."


New York dealer Andrew Edlin didn't create the wave of interest in Outsider Art, which has even seen many untrained practitioners showcased in “The Encyclopedic Palace," the main exhibition at the 2013 Venice Biennale, but he's proven adept at riding it. It started with a family connection: Edlin's uncle Paul was an untrained artist, and he was his nephew's first client.


Now Edlin runs a storefront gallery in Chelsea (soon moving to the Lower East Side) and owns the Outsider Art Fair, which he bought in 2012 and then expanded to Paris in 2013. Dealers credit him with markedly professionalizing the fair.


His wife, meanwhile, is Valérie Rousseau, who is organizing attention-getting shows like a Bill Traylor exhibition at the American Folk Art Museum (AFAM), where she was hired as curator of 20th-century and contemporary art in 2013. If ever a museum needed new life, it's the AFAM, which lost its Tod Williams and Billie Tsien–designed home on West 53rd Street in 2011 and then saw it razed by the Museum of Modern Art, which bought it. It is evident that there is new energy at the museum, where the board has rallied.



13. and 14. Theaster Gates and Rick Lowe, Social Sculptors


Ever since Joseph Beuys coined the term “social sculpture," artists have been thinking through the German artist's concept. Two practitioners who have made moving use of this mode of art-making are Chicago's Theaster Gates and Houston's Rick Lowe. They've both worked to use culture to redevelop neighborhoods plentiful with abandoned buildings -- and make sure there's a payoff for the people who have lived there, and not just gentrifiers.


“Very significant people in the city and beyond would find themselves in the middle of the hood" when they visit his Dorchester Projects, named for the street where the project started, says Gates in a TED Talk that has garnered nearly three-quarters of a million views. He has bought up nearly 70 abandoned properties, including a crack house he transformed into Black Cinema House, a movie theater that took off so well that it had to move to a larger facility. He's now at work rehabbing a massive neoclassical bank building near Hyde Park.


And when he won the Artes Mundi award in January 2015, he disrupted that too: he split the £40,000 cash prize, the largest for the arts in the UK, with his fellow nominees.



Gates was just 20 and over a decade away from his breakout Chicago performance when artist Rick Lowe launched Project Row Houses in 1993, buying up nearly two dozen 1930s-era shotgun houses that were headed for demolition. They have played host to programs like transitional housing for single mothers and various education initiatives, and the pioneering venture, foundational to the “social practice" genre, won him the $625,000 MacArthur Foundation “genius" grant. Lowe says that he aims to empower people to “exercise their power as creative practitioners," in keeping with Beuys' proposition that “every human being is an artist."


15. and 16. The USC7 and Cooper Union Students and Graduates
Art education in the U.S. is in danger from the galloping commercialization that threatens the entire cultural field, and two groups of art students and graduates, on both coasts, have stood up to school administrations.


The USC7, as they have come to be known, were once the class of 2016 at the renowned Roski School of Art at the University of Southern California. That was before it became the more commercially oriented Roski School of Art and Design, and before the school reneged on financial promises, gutted parts of the program, and offloaded valued faculty members. So the students dropped out en masse, seriously impacting the school's recruitment efforts -- an indication that the balance of power between school administration and students is not as one-sided as you might think.


And on the East Coast, students and alumni of the financially beleaguered college The Cooper Union (with schools of art, architecture, and engineering) have challenged a fundamental policy change. Formerly tuition-free for all, the school began to charge students after revealing that the beloved institution's books were consistently in the red over decades -- despite its own sunny declarations to the press just a few years ago.


Students and graduates cried foul, occupying the president's office, declaring that founder Peter Cooper's mission of maintaining a school “as free as air and water" must remain paramount, and filing a lawsuit alleging mismanagement. Soon enough, the Attorney General had begun an investigation, resulting in the abrupt departure of five trustees who were in favor of tuition. So, again, who says that a bunch of paint-stained 20-year-olds can't turn the tables on the suits?



17. Stefan Simchowitz


You didn't think you were going to get through a list of disruptors without reading about Stefan Simchowitz, the self-declared disruptor extraordinaire, did you? Talking to the New York Observer about the $200-million sale to Getty Images of his business, MediaVast, the Los Angeles-based collector/dealer said, “The disruption becomes the new establishment, and the establishment is once again attacked, then is hopefully attacked again to become the new establishment." So is he a disruptor or, now that he's selling art online, part of the establishment?


He's plowed the money from the sale of his company into collecting artists who have gone on to become hot -- Joe Bradley, Ryan McGinley,Oscar Murillo, Sterling Ruby -- sometimes supporting the artists financially in return for all the work they produce. He harnesses his avid social media following to create what he terms “virality" around the artists he likes, and argues that art flipping is good because it generates headlines that gin up more interest in art.


Patrons have supported artists in return for their production before, to be fair, and Instagramming doesn't necessarily equate to “breaking shit," the buzzy phrase that's trying to dethrone “disrupt." So is he or isn't he a disruptor? What do you think?


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Painfully Close Photos Of Human Faces Look Strangely Inhuman

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Glance at a crowd of people from a great enough distance and they'll cease to even look human, their particular parts fading out of focus until the pack resembles a uniform army of flesh-colored toy soldiers. 


Zoom in and you'll see their hands and hair and the choice of shoes. Keep going and you'll make out the shapes of their noses, the textures of their faces, the color of their eyes. Keep zooming and the temporary relief of human familiarity is ripped off like a scab, as every tooth, every ear, every pimple, every scar, becomes a singular visual event. 


Brooklyn-based photographer Bruce Gilden gets close. So close, in fact, that by gazing upon one of his color portraits you can almost feel hot breath emanating from them, smelling just a bit sour. "You know, I’m photographing people that are not only left behind in most cases, but they’re actually invisible because people don’t want to see them," Gilden explained in an interview with GUP Magazine. 


"I get close because I try to get close to the soul of the people in my pictures," he added. On the way to the soul, Gilden surely gets a good glimpse of the face, every blemish, wrinkle and pore, turning one of photography's most tried and true tropes -- portraiture -- into something unsettling, a little gut-wrenching.



Gilden, who is now 68 years old, has been taking photographs since 1968, when he was a student in college. He's known for his impulsive style, catching intriguing pedestrians off guard, leaping before them with his camera in one hand and his flash in the other. "Some are taken unawares, some are surprised," he told PBS. "Some didn't know what hit them. And I think most people like to be photographed. But since I work in a spontaneous way, I have to be a little bit sneaky because I don't want them to know that I'm going to take a picture of them."


Gilden's series, "Face," captures the full frontal expressions of people he describes as "underdogs," those outside the zones of gentrification, not privileged enough to possess the plasticky exterior of the masses. Finding subjects in places from Las Vegas to Des Moines to Milwaukee to West Bromwich, England, Gilden snaps their every quirk and blemish with the authority of a mugshot and the precision of a medical image. Whiteheads bulge with the promise of puss, foundation cakes up like dust gathering on a corpse. What Lucian Freud did to the body Gilden does to the head.


Gilden is not, however, spotlighting his subjects as particularly grotesque aberrations of the human being. He himself identifies with the outsider status of his subjects, and he respects them for it. "I identify with these people in my pictures, because I’m actually photographing myself. The people in my pictures interest me. I like them, and they motivate me."


Gilden's portraits may be unforgiving, brutal, ugly, even grotesque. Yet this visceral ugliness isn't the signal of a monster, but of a human being. One not sanitized and scrubbed clean, buttoned up and plugged in. For Gilden, the ugly is the good stuff, and maybe even lets the soul peer out.  


Bruce Gilden's Face is available courtesy Dewi Lewis Publishing



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MAD's Hillary 'Mad Max' Cover Is Something To Behold

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MAD Magazine releases their next issue Aug. 12, focusing primarily on the 2016 presidential candidates. ("2016" being not the year, but in fact the number of presidential candidates.)


Huffington Post obtained an exclusive look at the issue's cover, which sets its satirical sights on Hillary Clinton and her "Furious Road to the White House."


Let's not be glib about this cover -- it's f**king epic.



 


But they didn't stop with Hillary and Bill. More than a few of the candidates got the movie-poster treatment, and all of them are spot on.






 


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11 Times Jon Stewart Threw Down For Feminism

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After 16 years behind "The Daily Show" desk, tonight is Jon Stewart's last as the host of the beloved political satire. 


Since 1999, audiences have relied on Stewart to skewer and sober through times of sadness and absurdity. And when it came to feminism and women's rights, there were plenty of opportunities to do so. 


With a well-calibrated mansplain detector, Jon Stewart's "Daily Show" regularly pointed out how absurd it is that a male-dominated political landscape makes decisions about reproductive rights. For a show tasked with parodying the news, real-life instances of sexism and declarations made about women were often farcical enough on their own.


With consistently perfect delivery, Stewart mocked and ridiculed sexism while acknowledging its dangerous impact on the way women live. 


Throughout the Stewart Administration, female correspondents including Samantha Bee and Jessica Williams covered gender politics in some of the most standout "Daily Show" segments. Samantha Bee left earlier this year to start her own show, but 26-year-old Jessica Williams will stay on board as comedian Trevor Noah takes over the desk in September


Stewart's unique brand of male-on-male misandry will be hard to match. Here are 11 of Jon Stewart's most memorable feminist mic drops. 


1. When Fox News guests and contributors griped that use of the phrase "war on women" was an overreaction to massive cuts in reproductive health access, proposals to criminalize abortion, and opposition to the Violence Against Women Act, Stewart pointed out their full embrace of a "war" on Christmas. 



2. When a Fox News commentator insisted men are the real victims of a "feminized atmosphere," Stewart enlisted correspondent Jessica Williams to vet the claim that sexism no longer exists. In the sketch, William's invited us into "Jessica's Feminized Atmosphere," jam-packed with street harassment, reminders to smile, and safety threats any man would envy. 



3. Last year, men's rights groups were up in arms over New York City's thinly veiled indictment of manspreading on the subway. Stewart shut down those who claimed manspreading was a biological imperative to accommodate the male anatomy. "You may not be aware of this, but one regular subway seat does grant you a good amount of ball space," he said.



4. "Clearly, universities are not making their campuses safe for women," Stewart said last summer, referring to the inadequate punishment for those found guilty of sexual assault. In the clip, Stewart asked Daily Show correspondents to go over "college do's and don'ts" that highlight the double standards women face when it comes to sexual assault. As the male correspondent listed a few "party commandments," Jessica Williams rattled off the exceedingly detailed safety measures women are expected to take. 



5. In a segment titled "The Punanny State," Stewart lampooned the "sauasagefest" of Catholic religious leaders who don't think insurance should cover the cost of contraception. "On the other side are women, who for some reason would like their preventative health care costs covered by their healthcare providers," he said, noting that erectile dysfunction drugs are covered without objection.



6. When Chelsea Clinton announced her pregnancy, talking heads asked how it could impact her mother's candidacy for president. "Is that sexist?" Stewart wondered. "No, no, no silly Billy! Of course it's not sexist! Even though it's question that has never, ever been posed to a male candidate ever."



7. Stewart frequently called out the hypocrisy of  "small government" and "hands off" conservatives who eagerly proposed legislation to control women's bodies. In another installment of "The Punanny State," the host ridiculed politicians in support of a Virginia bill that would require women to have an invasive transvaginal ultrasound in order to access their legal right to abortion.



8. In this 2012 clip, Stewart described an all-male Fox News panel on birth control as the "Vagina Idealogues." "A concerned Sean Hannity convened a diverse panel of experts on the subject of contraception. Catholic men, Jewish men, Baptist men, black men, white men -- absolutely everyone who might have something relevant to say on women's reproductive health."



9. In a June 24 segment, Stewart invited Jessica Williams to discuss the Treasury's announcement about the new $10 bill that will feature a woman. Stewart cited praiseworthy platitudes for the "giant leap for womankind," tossing to Williams who delivered a perfect takedown of the move's inflated significance. 



10. Highlighting some of the more animated responses to Caitlyn Jenner's "Vanity Fair" cover, Stewart pointed out how quickly the media was willing to treat her as a woman -- sexism and all. "Caitlyn, when you were a man we could talk about your athleticism, your business acumen. But now you're a woman. Your looks are pretty much the only thing we really care about."



 11. During the 2008 campaign, devoted Hillary Clinton opponents used the candidate's "emotional outbursts" and "anger" -- stand-ins for womanhood -- against her. In a segment called "Broads Must Be Crazy," Stewart and a mashup of ill-tempered male legislators put an absurd double standard on full display.



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What This 'Black Boyfriend' Wants White Fathers To Know

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"I always see it. That surprised face. That face that says, 'Oh shit! My daughter did not bring home a black guy." 


This is one of the first lines his Harris's poem 'Black Boyfriend,' performed at the 2015 Rustbelt Regional Poetry Slam in June. The line describes the moment of meeting the fathers of past white girlfriends  -- and the visible surprise and disappointment.  


Harris, a Yale University student, goes on to break down the prejudices he faces when dating interracially in the performance, posted by  Button Poetry on Aug. 2. 


"To the fathers of too many of the women that I've dated," Harris begins, "The day I meet you, I always straighten my tie. I use the biggest words I know. I break out the good shoes. So you can see them before you see past them."  


For Harris, no matter how respectable he tries to be, he's still viewed as a bad influence of "just a phase." The poem rejects this notion, arguing that outdated ideas about interracial dating must end if America can ever truly live up to the idea of being a "melting pot" of racial equality. 


In the last line of the poem Harris tells disapproving fathers to "Wake up," powerfully adding: 


"If I am your worst nightmare, you need to figure out what the f**k is wrong with your dreams." 


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You Can Say Something Racist Without Being 'A Racist'

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Note:If you're a self-identified racist, this post is not for you. Also, please immediately catapult yourself into space.


Hi, everyone else! We need to talk about something that is happening with frightening frequency among well-meaning white people, this rapidly proliferating idea that you need to be A Racist to do or say something racist.


This week's example comes to us from Kelly Osbourne. As a guest host on "The View" Tuesday morning, she attempted to call out anthropomorphic hairpiece Donald Trump by asking, "If you kick every Latino out of this country, then who is going to be cleaning your toilet?"



"Latinos are not the only people to do that," Rosie Perez said.


"Come on, you know I would never mean it like that," Osbourne replied.


She has since apologized through her rep, saying, "I will take responsibility for my poor choice of words but I will not apologize for being a racist as I am NOT."


It's a line we've heard many times before. Back in 2006, Michael Richards apologized for his notorious slur festival of a standup show saying, "I'm not a racist, that's what's so insane about this." More recently, Amy Schumer responded to criticism of her more tone-deaf routines saying, "Trust me. I am not racist. I am a devout feminist and lover of all people.”


"How can I say something racist if I'm not racist?!" they seem to ask, not really apologizing so much as expressing confusion over how a racist thing could have happened to them, a non-racist. This kind of magical thinking is not relegated to celebrities making public statements. It's emblematic of the way white liberals consider themselves to be inoculated against offensive ideology. 


The bit of progress we've made towards being less terrible means that Being Racist is treated as an awful, disgusting thing, the equivalent of a pedophile murderer with no eyebrows (or just Donald Trump). Still, you can say or do a racist thing without being a card-carrying racist. Osbourne's comments are a peak example of the kind of microaggression that is derogatory and disrespectful, regardless of intentions. She should have admitted that without conflating her words with a perceived history of liberal righteousness.


Unfortunately, being the kind of person that would probably let Rosa Parks sit in the front of the bus or Ruby Bridges be in your algebra class does not make you a hero incapable of wrongdoing. Not being a hateful bigot does not create a forcefield preventing you from even the possibility of offensive behavior.


Silence is complicit in encouraging bigotry. To ignore that is to treat everyday instances of stereotyping and discrimination as innocuous trivialities, when in fact they are extensions of the racism that infects everyday life. The reality is that racism, by its very nature, is pervasive. It is embedded in the bedrock of society. It is not some mustachioed villain tying only minorities to the train tracks. It is systemic, institutionalized marginalization. It is everywhere, and it is dangerous to pretend otherwise.


You, white progressive, may have tried to get vaccinated, but you are not immune.


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Say ¡Hola! To These Awesome 'Mexican Emojis'

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What’s better than a taco emoji? A full collection of emoji concepts that accurately represent Mexican culture. 


Eduardo Salles, a Mexico City-based designer who runs the site CinismoIlustrado, has released a set of 60 emojis inspired by Mexican history, arts and cuisine. The artist digs deep into the Mexican tradition, covering everything from calaveras and tequila shots to Frida Kahlo and Emiliano Zapata.


And yes, in case you were wondering, there's also a taco emoji.


The emoji set, unfortunately, is just a concept design, which means they won't be available on your phone anytime soon. (The Unicode Consortium is responsible for writing and releasing the code for all your favorite emojis.)


Salles shared the collection July 30 on his Facebook page, "El Espíritu de los Cínicos." Check it out:



 Not sure what some of these emojis represent? This guide, published by Remezcla, a digital publication dedicated to Latino Millennials, will answer all your questions.

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Photographer Uses 17th-Century Art To Talk About Racial Politics Today

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Artist Maxine Helfman has always loved Flemish portraits. Made distinct by the comically large collars and hats adorning the artworks' subjects, the 15th- to 17th-century paintings typically feature a lone, expressionless man or woman staring just beyond the viewer's sightline. Centuries removed from today's styles of portraiture, they seem like windows into the lives of ghosts we never knew.


There's a slight problem though. The portraits of Belgian-Dutch past are pretty monotonous, filled with eerily similar white European faces that hardly represent the population of people living in the region today. Sure, in Jan van Eyck's time, his patrons were frequently white and of noble descent. But it's still worth questioning all the faces van Eyck and his ilk left out of their work; the many faces a painter never bothered to stare at for hours on end. 


This kind of speculation is what helped inspire Helfman's series, "Historical Correction." In it, the American photographer recreates the poses of Flemish portraiture, replacing the faces of 17th-century elites with the faces of modern men and women of color. Her posed photos keep the collars and hats, expressions and stares, but instead of a white-washed roster of subjects, her portraits place a spotlight on the black models she collaborates with.



The characters depicted in Helfman's series never existed, but they subtly contradict the idea that race and class can be neither neatly boxed in, nor captured in gilded frames. The project is a "revision of history," she explained in an email interview. "My intention is to produce bodies of work that look at history and issues of inequality."


To create the images, Helfman, a 61-year-old white woman, says that the she explains the concept of the shoot with everyone involved, taking inspiration from artists like Kehinde Wiley, Titus Kaphar and Carrie Mae Weems. "Being white, I can only can create respectiful works of art that add to [their] dialogue," she added. "My projects are always shot from a point of respect for my subjects." Most of the subjects in "Historical Correction," she noted, have since appeared in other projects she has done.


"I never want to create something that's tongue-in-cheek because that defeats the purpose," Helfman recounted in an interview with CNN. "It's disrespectful to the [statement] I'm trying to make."


That statement may have as much to do with history's reliance on white European narratives as it does with the protests and news coverage of racially charged events today. "I began in 2012, before the recent events," Helfman explained, when asked how she relates her artwork to the state of racial politics in America. "My point at the time was that through all of the 'progress' that has been made, inequality is still a huge problem."


Helfman, who started her career in commercial photography shortly before "Historical Correction," has only begun exploring how the art form can be used to explore nuanced issues like race and gender. In other projects since, she's worked with black women posing as geishas and boys wearing dresses, constructing and questioning the ways we envision identity. "Art has a way of looking at issues from another perspective," Helfman concluded, "to generate a new kind of dialogue."



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'True Detective' Drinking Games That Could Kill You

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Because I don’t want you to die, I want to warn you away from the “True Detective” drinking games that the kids have been going wild for lately.


Here's how to avoid said drinking games, unless you have a death wish:



  • Don't drink every time an actor struggles with an overwritten line of dialogue. (“It’s like blue balls in your heart.”)

  • Don't drink every time you watch Taylor Kitsch or Vince Vaughn battle mightily to master roles that, for the most part, do not play to their strengths in a consistent way. Definitely don’t imbibe every time you think Vince Vaughn sounds like he’s appearing in a dinner-theater production of “Guys and Dolls.”

  • Don't drink every time you think the character development is lacking, sloppy or incomplete. Why was coming out, even a little, so difficult for Paul Woodrugh (Kitsch)? Why was embracing that side of himself so challenging for this particular man? No idea. And if the answer is because he’s got a shrewish, emasculating mother, then creator Nic Pizzolatto has got to stop getting his story ideas from psychology textbooks published decades ago.

  • Don't drink when you can’t fully enjoy a set piece, like that massive gun battle, because it fundamentally made no sense. Yes, now we know why it made no sense (sort of?), but it would have been nice at the time not to wonder why a bunch of random gang members suddenly decided to act very stupidly.

  • Don't drink when you wonder whether the entire resolution of the season will amount, more or less, to “a wizard did it,” with James Frain’s barely-seen Burris as the convenient wizard. How did Burris know where Woodrugh would emerge from the tunnels? Because he’s a wizard! Has he been pulling all the strings the whole time? Yes, because ... wizard stuff! Who was the African-American man Woodrugh met in the tunnels? Another wizard! All right, IMDb.com tells me it was Holloway, the police chief, but I highly doubt that was the first guess of anyone in North America. Forget Holloway and Burris -- raise your hand if you’ve spent exposition-dump scenes wondering who the hell Geldof and Tasha and Lutz are. But for your own mental and physical health, don’t drink when character names ring zero bells -- just move on.

  • Don't drink when you start thinking about how the repetitive overhead shots of Los Angeles’ highways are a metaphor for the convoluted bowl of spaghetti that is the plot. But wait, bowls of spaghetti and highways are not the same thing, maybe “True Detective” is a lasagna of obfuscation and imitation? But wait, maybe a better metaphor is a stew of undercooked MacGuffins swimming in a broth of “gritty”clichés? You will really, really want to drink when all these metaphors start colliding in your head (and you might get hungry), but don’t start pouring shots, because you need your head clear to figure out what that singer is wailing about (not even this hilarious "True D" plot explainer has any idea what the singer's deal is). 

  • Don't drink when an individual episode feels as though it lasts for several days (I don’t know about you, but Episode 5 alone aged me by three years). Definitely don't go near alcohol when you wonder why no well-compensated HBO executive effectively reigned in Pizzolatto’s tendency to write clunky dialogue, march his poor actors through unforgiving exposition deluges and festoon what could have been a decent six- or eight-episode season with way too many barnacles, curlicues and extraneous doodads. But maybe I’m an outlier on this: I’ve been at the Television Critics Association press tour for a week, and my desire to drink has increased every time I’ve heard an executive at HBO, Amazon, Netflix or some other deep-pocketed content factory proudly declare that they don’t tell their amazingly talented creators what to do, ever, because creators are creative and anyone who is creative must always be right! Uhh, what? I’m all for creative people being allowed to shape their stories and employ their craft in intelligent and evocative ways, but what is the point of executives at places like that if they don’t make the storytelling better, or at least stop it from turning into an expensive, reeking mess?

  • Ah, the hell with it, pour me a drink.


No, wait, I promised myself I would not drink when watching, thinking or writing about “True Detective”; that way lies madness and possible death. And yet I must confess that I am nevertheless addicted: I can’t stop watching it, because, as train wrecks go, much of Season 2 was a gift that did not stop giving.


 As the sophomore season got off to a hilariously awkward start, Pizzolatto attempted to give us five or six different shows ineptly smushed in one, and most of the grafts were either rejected or took a long time to take. It was fitting that Season 2 began with the rotting, propped-up body of a dead man, because the central plot was a Frankenstein’s monster, a stitched-together creation that smelled more ripe as time went on. 


As others have noted, for all its vaulting aesthetics and thematic ambition, Season 1’s saving grace was that it concentrated on only a few elements. There were linked murder investigations in the past and present, and the narrative through line -- which remained strong even when everything else wobbled -- was the complicated friendship of the two cops involved in those cases. Keeping the whole thing coherent were the masterful performances of Woody Harrelson and Matthew McConaughey and the sure, supple direction of Cary Joji Fukunaga, who infused long stretches of Season 1 with an air of wounded, graceful lyricism.


In retrospect, it’s more obvious how crucial the performance of McConaughey was; he had a sparkle in his eye that said, “Hey, maybe Rust Cohle is full of it, but at least he's an entertaining bullsh*t artist, am I right?” Both Harrelson and McConaughey had sly sides to their performances, and their ability to be both serious and to use subtle comic shadings to subvert Pizzolatto’s tendency toward preposterous faux-erudition ended up improving and elevating Season 1, which wasn’t too overwhelmed by inelegant detours and misguided deviations until it hit the home stretch.


This time around, it appears that Pizzolatto’s goal was to triple down on every mistake he made in Season 1, which may account for my weird fixation with this year's model: Soaring, unchecked arrogance can be a spectacle in its own right. Part of me knew what I'd be getting: Pizzolatto has never been known for subtlety, after all. Vinci is the most corrupt town! Ray Velcoro is the most tortured detective! This sex party has the most random boobs! These people employ even more sex workers than “Game of Thrones”! Take that, Westeros! 


A tendency toward maximalism isn’t necessarily a bad thing. Film director George Miller has a similar urge toward energetic saturation, but the difference is, his characters are clearly delineated and his world-building ferociously complete and joyfully imaginative. But this season of the HBO show has hardly been “True Detective: Fury Road,” and more’s the pity. It’s been, for the most part, a series of grim, humorless attempts to crib from various kinds of noir, to shove 15 pounds of plot into a shoddily made 10-pound bag and to come up with something that could eventually incubate its own organic narrative drive. 


And that didn’t happen consistently until Episode 7.


Finally, the “Serpico” homage that Colin Farrell had been starring in steered decisively away from his painfully uninteresting family drama and gave the actor a chance to simply brood and throw off waves of charisma, which he did effortlessly. The reasonably straightforward cop procedural that Rachel McAdams has been appearing in also came into focus, and kudos to McAdams being light on her feet and exceedingly savvy as she skillfully navigated Season 2’s iffy construction. Like Harrelson and McConaughey, both of these actors are magnetic and able to underplay and elevate the sometimes overwrought material they’re given, and when Velcoro and Bezzerides interacted in Episode 7, they and director Dan Attias managed to recreate some of the old magic. (By the way, it’s gross and immature that Pizzolatto went out of his way to mock Fukunaga this season, given that it’s even more obvious now how much the show has suffered in his absence.)


Not having one director for the season was a mistake, but Season 2 labored under the cloud of a much bigger one. The lead weight pulling the whole thing under has been Frank Semyon (Vaughn); the storylines set at his home and workplace were often among the most painfully inept minutes of television HBO has aired in recent memory. Vaughn was miscast and Kelly Reilly has been criminally underused as his wife, and very few things this season were more poorly handled than their sodden, circular conversations about having a child. Sidebar: I could write a whole "True Detective" piece about its nagging wives, cartoonish mothers and women largely defined by the assaults they've endured. In Season 2, there are exponentially more of them than there were in Season 1. (Take that, critics!) But … ehnnnn. Not rising to the bait today. 


The season hasn’t been a complete train wreck, and that’s half the reason I couldn’t look away. It was hard not to love the DGAF characters played by W. Earl Brown and Richie Coster, who gleefully stole scenes from under their more famous co-stars just by having fun with this mishmash of “Chinatown” and every pulp detective novel ever set west of the Rockies. The scene of Velcoro getting shot by the masked man and the visits to the office of Rick Springfield, Creepy Plastic Surgeon, were suitably freaky and purplishly entertaining, and I’m OK with any scene that involves Rachel McAdams getting very stabby. 


But for long stretches, the show itself reminded me of Ani Bezzerides’ e-cigarette; a little douchey, full of artificial ingredients, not good for you and faintly ridiculous. And then, finally, the second half of the seventh episode made everything that came before it almost worth the pain. 


The scene of Velcoro and Bezzerides staring at each other with wounded, vulnerable eyes was hypnotic, and, in Vinci, Vaughn finally, finally locked into a new gear. He was masterful at playing a suddenly conciliatory Frank, who hid an ocean of rage underneath a bland, dead-eyed smile. The plot finally lurched forward, and most of the shaggiest and extraneous elements of Season 2 were burned down like Frank’s club and casino, to be missed by no one.


For long stretches, the seventh episode of “True Detective” was almost dialogue-free, proving again that when it's working, the show is a canny combination of minimalist dialogue and saturated atmosphere. What worked in that episode -- and elsewhere in the season -- derived from unpredictable alchemy created by actors and evocative moments handled gracefully by directors. In last Sunday's episode, what I loved about “True Detective’s” first season -- the quiet atmosphere of sad rage and frustration and the air of vulnerable, doomed romance -- at long last crept back to center stage.


So what will “True Detective” sift from the ashes when it finally wraps up Season 2? Who knows, but I have a feeling that Season 3, which is probably inevitable, will serve as another object lesson in the dangers of unchecked hubris, because Pizzolatto doesn't strike me as the kind of guy who is likely to get out of his own way. “We get the world we deserve,” eh? Critics have been pretty hard on Season 2. What kind of harsh lesson will we deserve in Season 3?


If Stan knows, he’s not telling.


Ryan McGee and I discussed "True Detective" and "UnREAL" in the the latest Talking TV podcast, which is here, on iTunes and below. 


 


 


 




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Empowering Photos Highlight The 'Super Powers' Of Kids With Disabilities

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Every superhero has a power. Rachel Callander’s daughter, Evie, had many.


Evie, who was born with a rare chromosomal condition that caused developmental delays and left her unable to walk or talk, died when she was 2-and-a-half years old. Callander and her husband, Sam, called their daughter's unique response to particular environments a super power. It was as if her daughter experienced things differently, Callander explained.



"She would cry when she went through electric sliding doors or when we drove on roads where there were large electrical pylons," she wrote in an email to The Huffington Post. "It was as if she had an electromagnetic sensitivity that was unique to her."


From her incredible strength to the way she "expressed happiness with her whole body," the list of Evie’s powers goes on. Her special abilities motivated Callander, a photographer in New Zealand, to share the powers of other kids who have disabilities with the rest of the world. And so "Super Power Baby Project" was born. 



"Super Power Baby Project" is a book featuring photos of kids with various chromosomal and genetic conditions. Each child has his or her own special ability. 


"The kids in the book have super powers such as possessing emotional intelligence, being able to read people, incredible empathy, unconditional love, perseverance, kindness, joy, magnetism, being ambassadors of peace and having a ripple of influence that change people for the better," Callander said.



The book serves as a tribute to Evie. Callander traveled across New Zealand meeting the families and taking photos of the children featured in the book. She captured their distinct personalities by building trust with them and letting them truly be themselves. 


"Their joy and happiness at being in the world shines through the images," she said. "I loved focusing on their faces, to capture their personalities as they did the things they love."



The photographer especially enjoyed sharing the idea of super powers with the parents. In a world where disabilities are frequently associated with negative terms, parents had a new way to discuss their kids' conditions in a positive light, all thanks to Evie.


"The parents' response was overwhelmingly positive and we loved hearing how they described their children's super powers, which were as we suspected, totally awesome," she said. "It was an amazing feeling to share what we had learned from Evie with other families and create a new language to describe disability."



The book of photos, which can be ordered on the "Super Power Baby Project" site, is just the beginning for Callander. She has been asked to discuss her photos and the message behind them with medical professionals and people who care for children with disabilities internationally. She also hopes to make another book so she can continue the celebration of these unique super powers.


"Our dreams for the project was that it would give hope to families and would encourage people to see beauty in others and celebrate diversity. We can see this is happening and it is incredible to witness."


See more of the stunning photos below.







H/T Today Parents


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