Collaboration #3: Alice Birchmore - Make-up Artist

Alice is my go-to lady when it comes to make-up, she is incredibly talented and always listens to my ideas. We work together on most shoots and this one is no exception! I will email across a few ideas on make-up, and when make-up is being done on the day of the shoot i will be there to input my ideas!

Collaboration #2: Biomechanina - Model/Designer

(photo by me)

I have worked with Stacey before, and she's a really good model to work with. She has the perfect 'look' for the shoot, being slightly spacey and alien-like. She is incredibly creative, and always brings brilliant ideas to the table. She also has her own Latex clothing brand; Eustratia and is very good with styling hair! I will be working with Stacey and Laura(designer) to put together 3 styled outfits. 

Collaboration #1: Laura Ruxton - Clothing Designer.

I will be borrowing some items from designer Laura Ruxton. Here are some of the pieces i will be borrowing:

Fashion - Alexander Mcqueen S/S 2010

Roswell UFO Incident.

""Roswell," the very mention of the word brings images of a crashed UFO, aliens, government cover-up, autopsies, hidden debris, guarded charred bodies, and weather balloons. In the history of UFO reports, no case has received the world-wide attention as the Roswell event of 1947. Not only did the alleged crash of a flying saucer create mass coverage at the time of the event, but remains today as an often discussed case by which all other cases are judged. Ironically, the alleged crash story originally died as quickly as it began. It would be many years before UFO researchers refueled the fire behind its enormous potential. Most all of us are familiar with the famous Roswell headline stating that the Army had captured a "flying saucer," and then the retraction a few hours later, substituting a balloon for the crashed saucer. At the time of the original event, a sense of naivety and trust gave birth to a rapid, quiet acceptance of the retraction, and there the event died. But, fortunately, it was resurrected in 1976, and has kept pace with all other events of the last 50+ years. It would be January 1976, when ufologists William Moore, and Stanton R. Friedman were mulling over some interview notes from two witnesses whom Friedman had met with. A man and a woman, who both had knowledge of a crashed saucer in July 1947 in Corona, New Mexico were the key witnesses. A retired Air Force officer, Major Jesse A. Marcel asserted that he had first hand involvement in the crash debris, and the Air Force cover-up. The woman was Lydia Sleppy, who had been employed at an Albuquerque radio station KOAT. She claimed that the military had covered-up the story of a crashed saucer, and the bodies of "little men," who were aboard the craft. She also claimed that the Air Force had literally stopped the sending of a teletype news report of the incident. The USA Military had announced to the world that it had captured a flying saucer on a remote ranch in Corona, and then about four hours later corrected the story, saying that what was found was just a weather balloon with a radar reflector kite. We have two stories. Which one is the truth? Though subsequent confirmations of the balloon theory continue, as long as we have firsthand witnesses who defy this explanation, the investigation must continue. Of all of the explanations given to Project Bluebook, it is quite strange that the Roswell story was never mentioned. The story that died so quickly was rarely mentioned from the beginning, the only one, to my knowledge, was in a mid-1950's lecture by UFO enthusiast Frank Edward. It seems that from the beginning, a grass roots group of believers would perpetuate this grand story. When we solve the puzzle of the many UFO reports, it will be due to this grass roots movement. The truth is hard to kill. It would be June 24, 1947, when the term, "flying saucer" was coined by pilot Kenneth Arnold. He used this term to describe UFOs flying over Mr. Ranier, and only a couple of weeks later, the phrase was used by the Air Force to explain what had been found in Corona, New Mexico. The alleged crash debris was flown to Eight Army Air Force Headquarters in Ft. Worth, Texas, and somehow between the time that Jesse Marcel Sr. had handled the "other worldly" material and its arrival in Ft. Worth, the strange material had lost its luster, and became just a weather balloon. The Air Force had effectively murdered the eye witness accounts, and made fools of all who were involved. Marcel would categorically state that the debris he held in his hands, and showed to his family, was not the same material shown in photos of the "balloon wreckage." What happened to the saucer debris? An uncertified, but controversial document might provide an answer. Supposedly a brief prepared for then President-elect Dwight D. Eisenhower, this document was authored on November 18, 1952. It asserts that on September 24, 1947, President Harry S. Truman ordered the genesis of the highly top-secret "Operation Majestic-12," to study the remains of the Roswell crash. These papers would arrive in a plain manilla envelope, postmarked Albuquerque, in the post of Los Angeles television producer Jaime Shandera in December 1984. In the early part of 1987, another copy was given to Timothy Good, a British ufologist. Good released it to the British press in May. These documents caused quite a stir, but their authenticity cannot be established beyond doubt. The jury is still out on the MJ-12 papers, but many ufologists view it as a hoax. The issue itself is not insurmountable, however, as a huge amount of evidence still remains to establish the Roswell crash as a reality. The Roswell saga actually began in Silver City, New Mexico on June 25. Dr. R. F. Sensenbaugher, a dentist, reported sighting a saucer-shaped UFO fly over, that was about one-half the size of the full moon. Two days later, in Pope, New Mexico, W. C. Dobbs reported a white, glowing object flying overhead, not too far from the White Sands missile range. On the same day, Captain E. B. Detchmendy reported to his commanding officer that he saw a white, glowing UFO pass over the missile range. Two days later, on June 29, Rocket expert C. J. Zohn and three of his technicians, who were stationed at White Sands, watched a giant silver disc moving northward over the desert. On July 2, a UFO was tracked at three separate installations; Alamogordo, White Sands, and Roswell."

http://www.ufocasebook.com/Roswell1.html

The original "Alien Autopsy" video. 

For me, in researching for this project, it isn't about proving if it really happened or not. The above video has been claimed to be a hoax many, many times. I don't think i'm in a place to prove either way. I enjoy the mystery surrounding the incident, and in terms of translating it into a photoshoot i like the idea of an alien crash landing to earth, the focus not being on an actual 'crash' of sorts.. but a lost alien who crashed to earth and then left her aircraft behind, now she wanders the moors dressed in the best of unusual, space-y, futuristic fashions! 

Richard Avedon

“American photographer. He studied philosophy at Columbia University, New York (1941–2), and from 1942 to 1944 served in the photography department of the US Merchant Marine, taking identity photographs of servicemen. He then studied photography under Alexey Brodovitch at the New School for Social Research, New York, from 1944 to 1950; from 1945 to 1965 he worked under Brodovitch and Carmel Snow for Harper’s Bazaar, contributing fashion photographs. As a young boy he had seen various fashion magazines and had been particularly impressed by the photographs of Martin Munkacsi. This influence remained in evidence in his own fashion work for Harper’s Bazaar, since he, too, photographed the models outside and in motion in order to arrive at dramatic, sometimes blurred, images. From 1950 he also contributed photographs to Life, Look and Graphis and in 1952 became Staff Editor and photographer for Theatre Arts. Towards the end of the 1950s he became dissatisfied with daylight photography and open air locations and so turned to studio photography, using strobe lighting. In 1965 he left Harper’s Bazaar to work for Vogue under Diana Vreeland and Alexander Liberman. Avedon presented fashion photography as theatre, and his innovative style greatly influenced other photographers; his work of the 1960s hinted at the energy and sexual explicitness of the period.

Concurrent with his commercial assignments, Avedon produced portrait photographs of both celebrities and ordinary Americans. In his book Nothing Personal (1964), which includes portraits of figures such as the philosopher Bertrand Russell together with images of prisoners, the mentally ill and the poor, he created a disturbingly contrasting picture of society. In 1976 he photographed American businessmen and political leaders for a portfolio in Rolling Stone. His portraits, made with a view camera and often printed larger than life, are stark images with plain white backdrops, with the sitter generally looking directly at the camera. The unflinching quality of such works is especially evident in a series of portraits of his dying father exhibited in 1974 at the Museum of Modern Art in New York. He adapted this style for In the American West, a series of portraits produced from 1979 to 1984 for the Amon Carter Museum in Fort Worth, TX. The harsh realism of these portraits of miners, oil workers and slaughter house workers provides a powerful, if bleak, record of working life in the region. A major retrospective exhibition of Avedon’s photographs was mounted in 1994 at the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York.” http://www.moma.org/collection/artist.php?artist_id=248

Louise Dahl-Wolfe

“Louise Dahl-Wolfe, one of the most celebrated photographers of the thirties, forties, and fifties, was a uniquely American artist whose work had enormous ramifications for Horst, Avedon, Penn, and other great photographers who followed her.  Working in the heyday of Harper’s Bazaar with editor-in-chief Carmel Snow and renowned fashion editor Diana Vreeland, she came to fashion photography at a time when formal, sometimes stilted European elegance was the norm and infused it with her fresh new vision–informal, intimate, and undeniably American.  She pioneered the use of natural lighting in fashion photography and also brought many of her famous portrait subjects out-of-doors.” http://www.vivandlarry.com/classic-film/spotlight-louise-dahl-wolfe/

Irving Penn

“Penn has won renown as much in editorial photography as in advertising illustration, and his innovations especially in portraiture and still life have set him apart stylistically. In later years he turned to television commercials as a outlet for his unique talent. One of the most imitated among contemporary photographers, his work has been widely recognized and extolled.” http://www.photo-seminars.com/Fame/irving_penn.htm

Horst P. Horst

“Horst P. Horst was born in Weissenfels, near Weimar in 1906.

He passed away in 1999.

Known for: Extravagant fashion plates, exquisite still-lifes, nudes, and interiors, and

renowned portraits of people such as Gertrude Stein, Jean Cocteau, and

Coco Chanel.

• Horst originally wanted to be an architect. In 1930, he worked as an apprentice to Le Corbusier in Paris.

• He photographed for Vogue and House and Garden.

• Horst's mentor was photographer, George Hoyningen-Huene.” - http://www.agallery.com/pages/photographers/horst.html

Cecil Beaton

“Born in 1904 in London and coming of age at the peak of the 20s, Cecil Beaton was in love with the worlds of high society, theater, and glamour. Beauty in his hands was transformed into elegance, fantasy, romance and charm.
His inspired amateurism led to a following among fashionable debutantes and eventually a full fledged career as the foremost fashion and portrait photographer of his day. He was so attuned to the changes of fashion that his career maintained its momentum for five decades; from the Sitwells to the Rolling Stones. Beaton died in 1980.” http://www.staleywise.com/collection/beaton/beaton.html

Baron Adolph de Meyer

“In 1909, the American publisher Condé Nast purchased Vogue, which at the time was a weekly society magazine, chronicling the lives of the rich and famous. Though Vogue quickly became more widely accessible to the mainstream public under the direction of Nast, his vision and goal for the magazine remained focused on catering specifically to high society.

Eager to get his magazine on the map, Nast quickly hired Baron Adolph de Meyer, a highly accomplished photographer from Europe. Rather than hiring models, de Meyer used society women and celebrities for his Vogue photographs who often wore their own clothing and accessories though they were likely to be the creations of the top-of-the-line designers of the times. Despite his success as a photographer for Vogue and Vanity Fair (also a Condé Nast publication), de Meyer left the magazine in 1921 for one of its only competitors at the time, Harper’s Bazaar, with a contract offering him more money.

Around 1934, a new editor with a mission to redefine Harper’s Bazaar led to the end of de Meyer’s illustrious career with the magazine. He died in Los Angeles in 1949, virtually forgotten as a photographer.”  http://www.fanpop.com/spots/fashion-photography/articles/190/title/baron-adolph-de-meyer-vogues-first-fashion-photographer

Eugenio Recuenco