Hasta La Ideas

I could really use some advice…the BKids Banner Design contest has brought me so many beautiful entries that I have a very hard time deciding… in the picture are just 3 of the 27 banners to choose from … please let me know which number you like best! Winner will be announced tomorrow on B:Kids.

Sure, freelancers are in trouble, but is it curtains for the entire field of photography? In a world of Photoshop, cell phone cameras, and Polaroid-branded iPod docking stations, what is at stake today in seeing something as a photograph? What is the value of continuing to speak of photography as a specific practice or discipline? These are the provocative questions posed by the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. As part of its 75th anniversary festivities, the museum has invited thinkers and practitioners including Vince Aletti, Philip-Lorca diCorcia, Peter Galassi, and Jennifer Blessing to consider the current state of photography before convening for a two-day summit on the state of the medium: “Is Photography Over?” The 13 invited participants have posted their initial responses to this question here, and those ideas will jumpstart the opening panel discussion on the evening of Thursday, April 22. Can’t be there in person? Keep an eye on SFMOMA’s blog, where a “lively public discussion” will develop.

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

Mauritania’s Nouadhibou Bay, the largest ship graveyard in the world, is where fishermen and captains go to abandon their dying vessels. Photographer Jan Smith spent considerable time and effort attempting to gain access, although the Mauritanian Army barred his way before he was able to convince them of his purely artistic pursuits.

The resulting sad, quietly violent gallery documents sunken hulls and rusting boats. Mostly comprised of cast-offs for insurance fraud, Nouadhibou Bay still remains a maritime mystery.

To view the complete gallery, visit Good Magazine.

by Laura Neilson

If a picture tells a thousand words, then consider Todd Selby a visual raconteur. Since the summer of 2008, the Orange County, CA-born, NYC-based photographer has shown an expanding and eclectic cast of creative characters—artists, musicians, writers, designers and the like—in their private homes on his website The Selby, an online Architectural Digest for the hipster set.

With a penchant for exploring real-life spaces and the personalities behind them, Selby chooses subjects whose domestic habitats are no less colorful than those of fantastic fiction. From funky, cluttered studios in New York’s Lower East Side to elegant and polished Parisian apartments and rustic hideaways near the beach, Selby’s project has made him a houseguest in residences around the world.

His new book, “The Selby Is in Your Place,” is a lush, 250-plus page collection featuring 33 of these enviable abodes—most of which have never been shown on the site before. Through Selby’s vivid lens, subjects like Karl Lagerfeld, Purple Magazine’s Olivier Zahm, model Erin Wasson, and Simon Doonan and Jonathan Adler offer voyeurs spectacular peeks into their fashionable homes, where the relationship between personal style and interior space is most strikingly reflected.

Here, Selby talks to us about putting the book together, his own aesthetic preferences, and his dream shoot.

How did you choose what to include in the book?

It was hard to choose what shoots to put in and it took a lot of planning with my editor. I knew that I wanted most of the shoots in the book to be never before seen, so that meant that I needed to do a lot of shoots exclusively for the book. I did a lot of traveling and a lot of shooting, and kept my favorite shoots just for the book. And then after, we looked over those shoots and tried to include some of my favorites that had already run on TheSelby.com.

Is there a particular aesthetic that you tend to gravitate towards?

I tend to not like minimalists. I like maximalists and you can definitely see that preference in the people I chose to be in the book.

In Lesley Arfin’s intro, she describes a kind of envy we all tend to feel towards other people’s lives. Did envy come into play when choosing your subject’s homes?

No, not really. I tend to pick my subjects based on inspiration rather than a sense of personal envy.

When you go into a subject’s home, do you do it solo?

Almost all of the shoots were done by me solo style. The only time I bring someone is if is the space is very challenging in terms of lighting, or if it is part of an editorial assignment, like Helena [Christensen] for Vogue Paris.

For a while it felt like “nesting” had negative connotations—becoming boring, a homebody, domesticated, etc.—but now that association seems to have shifted.

Staying in is the new going out.

What’s your favorite room in a house?

The living room. It has no real purpose and it’s just there for show, usually. Therefore its purpose is often more artistic, than purely functional.

Since Karl Lagerfeld’s a photographer also, did he dictate much of the shoot?

Karl is the man. He was 100% supportive of me and my project. Being a photographer himself was part of the reason perhaps that he was willing to take the time and open his home to my project.

Whose home do you wish you could shoot, but can’t?

Good question, I like this. I would shoot Napoleon in his island prison of Elba the night before he escaped.

If you could swipe any piece of artwork or furniture from one of your subject’s homes for yourself, what would it be?

The Neistat Brothers‘ “Juicy” couch of course.

To get the book, visit Powell’s or Amazon.