Thursday, February 28, 2019

Alejandro González Iñárritu first Mexican to serve as Cannes jury president



Alejandro González Iñárritu first Mexican to serve as Cannes jury president


The Birdman director will oversee prize deliberations at the film festival in May, making him the first person from his country to do so

Catherine Shoard
27 Feb 2019

Alejandro González Iñárritu has been named president of this year’s Cannes film festival. Iñárritu, who won the best director Oscar two years running for Birdman and The Revenant, is the first Mexican to chair the panel.
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Pete Souza's best photograph / Obama lays into Putin




‘Putin understood exactly what was being said’ …
Presidents Obama and Putin in Normandy, France, 2014.





Pete Souza's best photograph: 
Obama lays into Putin 

‘Trump acts as if Russia is our best friend.
But it’s our adversary. And this is how you should talk
to an adversary’

Tim Jonze
Thu 28 February 2019


I
wasn’t supposed to be here for this picture. It was taken on the 70th anniversary of the Normandy landings – all the heads of state had gathered there and were coming out of an impromptu luncheon. The official photographers from each country had been kicked out – we were all supposed to leave the building. But I have a knack of making myself small and sticking around.

The shot shows the kind of interaction President Obama had with President Putin during his tenure. It was 2014, a particularly tense time between the two countries. You can see in the facial expressions and gestures that this was a very serious conversation. There are interpreters stood behind them, but I get the impression from Putin’s face that he understood exactly what was being said in English.
I was within earshot. I can’t recount specifically what they said, but I knew the subject matter. Can I say what it was? It was about … some of Russia’s actions in the world. Let’s leave it at that.
This conversation went on for a while: they weren’t thinking about me. To them, I was just one of many people in the room, coming and going in different directions. I started out shooting horizontally and tighter, and then switched to vertical, backing up to show their entire bodies. Compositionally, that seemed to show the body language better.









I first met Obama on his very first day in the US senate in 2005. I was impressed by the way he interacted with people, not just on the podium but on a one-to-one level. And from a photographer’s standpoint, I saw right away how comfortable he was in the presence of a camera. I could be in some pretty intimate situations with him and me being there with a camera didn’t seem to bother him at all.
I would tell friends that I was photographing a senator who was going to become the president of the United States. But on other occasions I’d see him deliver these long-winded answers during town hall meetings and wonder if he really had it in him. He was so policy-oriented that he would sometimes give 10- or 15-minute answers when people wanted a quicker response. I sensed he was losing some people, but he got better at that over time.
I call our relationship a professional friendship. I don’t go to his house for dinner with him and Michelle, but I would get invited to the holiday party that he has for his office. How would I describe him? I’d say he was intelligent and very disciplined – about work, exercise, diet. And he’s very competitive in all aspects of his life. We’d do these long flights on Air Force One where we would play the card game Spades and he would be really competitive. That’s just his nature.

I took 1.9m photos in my time as White House photographer. I was with my cameras at the White House every day for essentially eight years. I wasn’t photographing every second of every day, but I was always ready to. The stressful aspect was not the job but its effect on my personal life, because I felt I always needed to be with Obama. You never know when history is going to take place. So for eight years my personal life was on hold. By the time his presidency ended I was worn out.









I also worked as White House photographer for Ronald Reagan. That was a different era. I was a young man, Reagan was in his 70s and I didn’t know him that well. I didn’t have the same sort of access that I had with Obama. We were shooting film and there was no such thing as social media. And Reagan was just a different type of person – very formal, didn’t do nearly as much – and so my coverage wasn’t nearly as exhaustive.
I’ve noticed how you don’t see any behind-the-scenes photographs of Trump. What you see is the reality show – a cabinet meeting or oval office meeting where the entire press corps is there the whole time. I don’t feel like there are any unguarded moments.
Obviously the investigations into Russian collusion gives this picture an extra layer of meaning. It shows the way you should interact with the president of Russia. It should be tense. Trump still does not acknowledge that Putin is the guy who directed people to meddle with our election. Instead, he interacts with him as if they’re best friends. This is our adversary, and this is the way you should talk to an adversary.
• Pete Souza will be speaking at The Photography Show at the NEC, Birmingham, 16-19 March; www.photographyshow.com.

Pete Souza’s CV









Pete Souza.

Born: New Bedford, Massachusetts, 1954.
Trained: Boston University and Kansas State University
Influences: Henri Cartier-Bresson and W Eugene Smith,
High point: “Being employed as chief official White House photographer for President Obama.”
Low point: “Going freelance in 1996 – I was broke.”
Top tip: “Shoot pictures every day.”
THE GUARDIAN

2016

2017



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Wednesday, February 27, 2019

Unseen and intimate portraits of Kate Moss revealed in new Mario Sorrenti book

Unseen and intimate portraits of Kate Moss revealed in new Mario Sorrenti book


7 SEP 2018
BY SIMON MILLS
The year is 1993; the hot movies are Jurassic Park and Groundhog Day while the pop charts are buzzing with debut album releases by newcomers Bjork, Radiohead and Suede. The state-of-the-art automobile of the moment is the Citroen Pallas, upstart tech outfit Apple has recently launched its revolutionary Newton gizmo and Kate Moss, from Croydon, England, on the brink of attaining bonafide supermodel status, is just 19 years old.


A new luxuriously packaged book from Phaidon entitled simply Kate is a collection of 50 portraits of a young Moss taken by her then-boyfriend, photographer Mario Sorrenti back in 1993. Moss was to become Sorrenti’s muse, following in a long line of artist-muse relationships such as Alfred Stieglitz and Georgia O’Keeffe, Robert Mapplethorpe and Patti Smith, and Irving Penn and Lisa Fonssagrives.
Kate moss by mario sorrenti phaidon
Many of the book’s images have never been seen or published before. Here’s Kate asleep, Kate playing on her Nintendo Gameboy, Kate showering, reading, smoking, and wearing her boyfriend’s Y-fronts. She’s make-up free, uncoiffed and happily, casually naked or half dressed, in pretty much every frame. Surroundings are idyllic and modest, actions unguarded, sweet and endearing. Calvin Klein saw the commercial potential of Sorrenti’s pictures of Moss and signed him up for a memorable ‘Obsession’ campaign. Photographer and muse became international fashion superstars.

Sorrenti, the book’s introduction tells us, had first met her in 1991. ‘I remember sitting next to her and feeling like my heart was going to stop her beauty overwhelmed me.’ Accordingly, his pictures – all dreamy, Penn-ish black and white, all apparently spontaneous and intimate to the point of voyeuristic intrusion – capture the magic intensity of a young man and woman in love. Every delicate picture evokes a tacit sense of playful trust between photographer and subject. You feel like you are playing gooseberry just by looking at them.
Who but Kate Moss can make the act of pegging clothing to a washing line – completely starkers, naturally – look like a fashion moment?



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Monday, February 25, 2019

Oscars 2019 verdict / Lovely surprises can't compensate for shock horrors

Alfonso Cuarón, Nancy Garcia Garcia, Yalitza Aparicio, Marina de Tavira y Gabriela Rodríguez


Oscars 2019 verdict: lovely surprises can't compensate for shock horrors


The Academy voters got it right with gongs for Olivia Colman and Alfonso Cuarón, but Bohemian Rhapsody and Green Book have been sorely overrated





Play Video
3:20
 Must-see moments from the Oscars 2019: Spike Lee, Lady Gaga and Olivia Colman – video

Peter Bradshaw
Monday 25 February 2019


I
n the end, there was enough good news – or news that made a certain sort of sense – for this not to be simply another exasperating Academy Awards pageant of mysteriously over-promoted nonsense. Olivia Colman already had the title of queen of all our hearts, and, just when it looked as if Yorgos Lanthimos’s The Favourite was going to go home with nothing at all, Colman added the Academy Award to her bulging silverware cabinet – and of course gave a speech of great charm and grace.
Her prize acceptance game this year has been off the chart: stylish, polished and with just enough pinch-me-I’m-dreaming astonishment to rival Helen Mirren’s triumphal awards season tour of 2007, when she was winning everything for her own queenly performance. Colman (Anne), Mirren (Elizabeth II), Dench (Elizabeth I) … Brits in crowns generally do it for the Academy.And there was justice in seeing Alfonso Cuarón picking up the best director, best cinematography and best foreign language Oscars for his magnificent artwork Roma. I have no problem with Spike Lee and his co-writers David Rabinowitz, Charlie Wachtel and Kevin Willmott picking up the award for best adapted screenplay for their fierce satire BlacKkKlansman. (Although I think I might have preferred to see Nicole Holofcener and Jeff Whitty get it for Can You Ever Forgive Me?) The 2019 Oscar prize list was speckled with honourable wins.


Play Video
2:11
 Olivia Colman's Oscars speech: 'this is genuinely quite stressful!' – video

But best picture for Green Book? (Best original screenplay, too, over The Favourite and Paul Schrader’s First Reformed.) The news of that win lands like a dead weight on Oscar night, increasing the inevitable disappointment and tristesse that always settles on any awards ceremony in its closing minutes, as the unacknowledged frustration of the losers’ 80% silent majority seeps into the atmosphere. A friend of mine said that by the time this awards season was over, this film should have the word “REALLY?” added to its title. Green Book REALLY? becomes this year’s technical winner of the “best picture” accolade and surely now is added to the list that includes Crash, Chicago and Argo in the What Were They Thinking? categories.

 Green Book isn’t a bad film, and it is possible to overindulge one’s high cinephile disdain. Mahershala Ali (winner for best supporting actor) and Viggo Mortensen give very slick and technically accomplished performances as the African-American jazz musician and composer Don Shirley and Tony Vallelonga, the Italian-American nightclub bouncer who finds himself driving Shirley through a tricky tour of the 1960s deep south. Ali’s performance is extremely elegant: he has the command and address of a classical actor in a classical role. But – to quote another of the night’s winners – this really is shallow stuff, which in another, sterner universe would be straight-to-video. Its well-intentioned white/black balance is glib.

 The other truly mystifying triumph this year is Bohemian Rhapsody, the story of Freddie Mercury and Queen, a project clouded by its association with its disgraced director Bryan Singer. Now, whatever else might be wrong with this film, it isn’t Rami Malek’s likable, spirited and now Oscar-winning performance: the impersonation of Mercury that he carried off with great elan. However, it has to be said that he wasn’t as good as the other four nominees: Christian Bale for Vice, Bradley Cooper for A Star Is Born, Willem Dafoe for At Eternity’s Gate and indeed Viggo Mortensen for Green Book.

But for this moderate film to have been such a big winner, even picking up the Oscar for editing (as well as sound editing and sound mixing), really seems very silly. As with Green Book, it feels as if the Academy has reached into the bargain bin of those video stores that no longer exist, the bin just by the till, and capriciously plucked out a couple of also-rans for glory.
It was, however, great to see Regina King win best supporting actress for her delicate, luminously intelligent performance in Barry Jenkins’ If Beale Street Could Talk. Here is where the awards’ hive-mind consensus has got it right, and her success makes up a little for the way that this excellent film was overlooked this year.
There was a time when we thought that Bradley Cooper’s version of A Star Is Born might win big this year. It is an excellent movie, which deserved an awful lot more than just best song – although the steamily passionate live performance that Lady Gaga and Cooper gave of Shallow tonight earned them the scene-stealer award and created a Twitter gagstorm about how their respective partners must be feeling.


Play Video
1:03
 Lady Gaga sings Shallow and pays tribute to Bradley Cooper in Oscars speech – video

Elsewhere, it is difficult to question the resounding best animation win for Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse, a brilliant film that future generations of cinephiles will be treasuring long after BoRhap has been forgotten. And there was a best documentary Oscar for the truly gasp-inducing Free Solo. It was good to see Hannah Beachler and Jay Hart win best production design for their amazing work on Black Panther.
As ever, we have to hope that great movies such as, say, Debra Granik’s Leave No Trace, Lucrecia Martel’s Zama, and Lee Chang-dong’s Burning will survive their hurtful snubs, and concentrate on the success of Roma – although even here I have a twinge that Cold War, directed by Paweł Pawlikowski and produced by Tanya Seghatchian, did not get the moment of glory that it deserved.
Yet Roma is a wonderful film, a thrilling journey into the past, all but defying gravity in its staggering set pieces and crowd-scene choreography with profoundly mysterious and moving moments. It is superbly acted, unbearably moving and visually electrifying. It is the evening’s real winner.

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Sunday, February 24, 2019

Barcelona’s homeless model Nastasia Urbano is back in front of the cameras The former face of Yves Saint Laurent has returned to the studio after living on the streets of the Catalan capital




Nastasia Urbano poses in a silk dress. FOTOGRAFÍA DE OUTUMURO / ESTILISMO DE FERMÍN Y GILLES

Barcelona’s homeless model Nastasia Urbano
is back in front of the cameras

The former face of Yves Saint Laurent has returned to the studio after living on the streets of the Catalan capital

PATRÍCIA SOLEY-BELTRAN
22 FEB 2019 - 08:01 COT

Former Vogue cover model Nastasia Urbano has returned to the studio almost 25 years after she retired. In the 1980s, she modeled for the world’s best photographers and directors, including Irving Penn, Helmut Newton and David Lynch. She appeared on the cover of numerous international magazines and worked with major fashion brands such as Armani and Loewe, appearing as the face of the Yves Saint Laurent perfume Opium. She danced in Studio 54 with model Jerry Hall and actress Melanie Griffith and dated film icon Jack Nicholson. The world was at her feet.
But the press she has received recently has not been about her successful modeling career but on the difficulty of her current situation. Last November, the 57-year-old was evicted for the third time and forced to live on the streets in Barcelona.
Her story made the headlines – but it shouldn’t have been such a surprise. The modeling industry is precarious. Models, who are often underage, work with little or no legal or union protection in an unstable and arbitrary market. The reality of their working lives is a far cry from the glamor of the advertisements they appear in.Nastasia Urbano, whose real name is Consuelo Urbano, was born to Spanish immigrants in a factory in Switzerland. Her mother worked at the factory and Nastasia joined her at the age of 16. Her meteoric career began when a photo of her at the beach wound up in the hands of a modeling agency. It’s been 24 years since she last modeled. Not that you can tell.
Nastasia speaks five languages and arrives on time. The stylists play with different outfits and accessories while the photographer, Manuel Outumuro, and his assistants prepare the set at the spectacular Fonollar Palace in Barcelona. Nastasia glides over to wardrobe. “You can do what you want with me,” she says.
One of the challenges in photography is finding the perfect light. Nastasia carries it within her. Two of her former partners tried to extinguish it – the first wanted to pull her away from her career, and the second, her husband and the father of her two children, encouraged her to invest all her money in his projects. It was a lot of money. Nastasia says that at one point in the 1980s she signed a contract for $1 million for 20 days of work. “I left these relationships by myself because one day I woke up and said: ‘It’s over’.”





I DIDN’T SEE MYSELF AS EITHER BEAUTIFUL OR UGLY
FORMER MODEL NASTASIA URBANO

For some, beauty is an enigma; to others, it’s a construction. For Nastasia, it’s about “knowing how to carry your age well, accept your wrinkles and that your hair is not like it once was. Being happy within so that it can be seen on the outside.” Is this how she feels? “I never thought anything about myself, I didn’t see myself as either beautiful or ugly. Perhaps I felt special, that’s what I was told I was.”

What Nastasia enjoys most is being in front of the cameras. “I love immersing myself in my own world, forgetting about what’s around me, playing a little with the clothes that suit me, being myself,” she says.

“You’re a machine,” photographer Outumuro tells her. All the shots are good. Nastasia believes photographers are the most interesting characters in the fashion industry but she recognizes “a bad one could destroy you.” She remembers Vogue photographer Irving Penn as “very silent, he gave you very few directions,” and cult filmmaker David Lynch as “very affectionate and intimate, exactly the opposite to what he projects in his strange films.” But her favorite shoot was with Steven White in the Italian Alps, playing in the snow with huskies and remembering her childhood in Switzerland.


The team applauds her when the modeling shoot comes to end and she smiles, embarrassed and humble. They are not the only ones to have been enchanted by the 57-year-old – one of the most important modeling agencies in Spain is interested in signing her.
English version by Melissa Kitson.
EL PAÍS

Nastasia Urbano / De 'top model' en Nueva York a sintecho en Barcelona




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