All the Soarings of My Mind begin in My Blood

Crest Hardware Art Show

2009-06-07T11:09:00.000-07:00

It's that time of year again- time for the Crest Hardware Art Show! I posted about it last year, but just to let you know it is an art show of all hardware inspired art that is held in the Crest Hardware store in Williamsburg, Brooklyn. Last year I had four photos in the show and this year I am putting in the two photos below. Please come out as it looks to be even more fun than last year- they are building a stage in Macri Park (the corner of Union and Metropolitan, right by Kellogg's Diner) where there will be bands and djs, including my man, all day long along with beer and food.

Art, Music, Sunshine and Alcohol- it can't get much better than that, right?

Amorphous Metals, Brooklyn.
All photos Copyright © 2009 Laura Helms

Crest True Value Hardware &
Urban Garden Center
558 Metropolitan Avenue
Brooklyn, New York 11211
www.CrestHardwareArtShow.com

The Art of Amateur Photography

2009-05-11T07:23:00.000-07:00

Random amazing photos from SuperBomba's Flickr stream. An interview with her can be found here.

Constellation Magazine

2009-03-23T16:05:00.000-07:00

Some of my photos are in the new issue of Constellation Magazine- the Aries/Taurus issue. You can preview and buy it here. Please check it out- it's an amazing astrology based magazine made by some wonderful people who put a lot of work into it so please take a look and buy a copy!

Meadow Home

2009-03-04T17:27:00.001-08:00

I saw this house on a few blogs and I think it is just so beautiful. I've seen cavelike houses with meadows above but I think this is a really gorgeous example. Built by Hiroshi Nakamura in Chiba last year it is a really wonderful house- I wish I could live there...

More faded glitter...

2009-02-16T21:33:00.000-08:00

I've been meaning to post some of the colour photos from this shoot for, oh, around 8 months. I've just been so overwhelmed with work that the last thing I want to do when I get home is more photoshop, even if it just dedusting and colour correcting. Hopefully this will change soon. Here are two from the shoot that I had to finish this week for a magazine- I'll finish the rest once fashion week is over.

Gemma Booth's Eccentrically Adorable Photos

2009-02-14T18:22:00.000-08:00

Love this interview with Gemma Booth, a fashion photographer who's quirky photoshoots always make me smile. She has a super cute blog, GemBlog, which she updates with fun new work. You can also find her photos on her website. Gemma seems like she would be great fun to work with.

Flasher chic

2008-11-11T18:23:00.000-08:00

Some photos I took with the clothing line Wowch for Oak, a New York Boutique. Very silly but fun..

Puppy Love

2008-10-08T19:48:00.000-07:00

Anyone want an adorable little poodle puppy? My boyfriend found him abandoned Saturday night at the park at S5th and Marcy in Williamsburg, and we've been looking for his owner ever since then. We've had no luck, so we are trying to find a wonderful home for him to go to. He's the best little puppy! We would keep him but we have three cats and a small apartment, so it just won't work for us right now. He has a great personality and is great fun to be around. I've been taking him out every morning for my run around the track so he is super energetic.

This cute little baby deserves a great home and lots of love- he will definitely give you lots...

E-mail me!

Images of Untrusted Divine Things

2008-10-06T18:24:00.000-07:00

One of my most favourite people, Jun Iseyama, in the world, who is also one of the best artists I know, is having a show in Chelsea at the moment. The opening was on Friday, so I went to see her (she's moved far away from here which is very saddening) and catch up with others but the definite highlight was seeing her beautiful works. While some might find them disturbing with their sexual yet childlike imagery, I find so much beauty in the grotesqueness of the caricatures and the flashes of colours across the paper.

From the press release:

With Images of Untrusted Divine Things, Iseyama merges her own cast of hybrid, sexualized, and child-like characters with scenes from Goya’s infamous Caprichos series. Mimicking, tweaking and deconstructing the iconic scenes of 18th century Spanish social and political satire, Iseyama develops a foundation to express her own desires, anxieties and fears.

Iseyama navigates a balance between past and present, Japan and the West, self awareness and naïveté, darkness and comedy. These contradictions are manifested in her visual style. Dark, dry, graphite lines collide with wet, drippy, vibrant bursts of watercolor.

Story Is There For The Taking

2008-10-03T21:49:00.000-07:00

A few images from the lookbook I shot for Staerk's Spring/ Summer 2009 collection, The Storyteller. Everything in the collection was so beautiful, it's hard to choose just a few images to put up here. Camilla is an amazing designer with such a strong sense of style and proportion- with every collection she seems to refine and streamline her look into one that is both wholly original and totally wearable.

You can see the runway show here, and view past collections, learn more and buy current styles at Camilla's site here.

Waffle House Wedding

2008-09-29T11:52:00.000-07:00

These photographs from the Gwinnett Daily Post (the local paper in Gwinnett, Georgia) are pretty amazing. Taken by the staff photographer, Benjamin Hager, they are wonderfully evocative.

Russia! Russia! I see you now, from my wondrous, beautiful past I behold you! How wretched, dispersed, and uncomfortable everything is about you...

2008-09-28T10:26:00.000-07:00

Combining some of my passions (photography, russia and farming) is this new audio slideshow by James Hill on the NY Times' wesbsite- Russia, the Land. Some of the photos aren't great, but it is definitely interesting to watch, especially if you've ever read any of the many great Russian novels about agrarian life there.

Someday I'll make it there, and actually get the opportunity to use the Russian I worked so hard to learn.

Clingstone, Rhode Island

2008-09-09T21:36:00.000-07:00

My dream house.

169 Bowery, June 2008

2008-09-08T18:52:00.000-07:00

It's a cage without a key

2008-09-05T21:49:00.000-07:00

Here are a few more photographs of one of the metal shops that I mentioned in this post. Work Manufacturing is a fully equipped metal, machine and wood shop run by Alex Kravchuk hat specializes in vintage-inspired industrial design. They've worked on quite a few restaurants in New York, such as Moto and Smith & Mills, so you may have seen their work before.

Work Manufacturing, Williamsburg, Brooklyn.
All photos Copyright © 2008 Laura Helms

You can visit Alex's website here.

2008-08-07T06:56:00.000-07:00

My external hard drive that has everything, everything, on it died last night! I'm so upset I couldn't sleep and I'm such a mess right now. Pray that Tekserve can save all of my data!

Though deep set and somewhat shadowed

2008-08-06T19:06:00.000-07:00

I'm planning a trip out to LA in the next couple months to shoot, and the #1 place I want to photograph is Cal-Earth, a super adobe village in Hespiria. This sustainable desert village was founded by Nader Khalili, a Iranian-American architect who created the superadobe system. These structures are built by layers of sandbags that are set in a circular plan with four point barbed wire between each layer for stability, and is corbeled at the top to create a domed roof. Khalili invented this building type after years of studying traditional adobe buildings in Iran and while working with NASA on moon buildings. The amazing thing about these buildings are that they are hurricane, flood and earthquake resistant and are also sustainable, adaptable and totally affordable.

This is from an article in the Washington Post:

Khalili traces his mid-career epiphany to a realization that 800 million people were consigned to "totally unsuitable housing," through war, natural disaster or unkind history. As an architect, he concluded that "the only thing they had in common to them was the earth under their feet." In the Iranian desert, he studied structures that had stood for 4,000 years. He found that they were largely shell structures -- domes, arches and vaults -- made from earth, water, air and fire.

Khalili's Superadobe structures respect the age-old form but include modern innovations, such as polyester bags, cement mixed in to strengthen the mud and barbed wire for structural support. They can be built for very little money anywhere relief officials and housing authorities are open to something other than steel and concrete boxes.

I first learned about Cal-Earth on NPR after Khalili died in March- I wasn't able to find the very interesting segment that they did on him at the time, but this is a good little story about the superadobe village. The history of these structures is just incredibly fascinating to me, and they are really gorgeous buildings- I think I could take some very gorgeous photos there.

Even after the glitter fades

2008-07-28T19:45:00.000-07:00

I photographed the most insanely beautiful apartment yesterday- the apartment of William Basinsky, an avant-garde composer. He has been living in the Helca Iron Works building on North 11th in Williamsburg for 20 years in this gorgeous 4,000 sq. foot apartment. Billy and his boyfriend are moving to their Los Angeles apartment full time as the rent has just become too much, and the neighbourhood changed beyond recognition. While the vaulted ceilings might be decaying and falling apart, the apartment is one of the most glamorous spaces I've ever been in- a place with so many stories to tell.

The original ironwork in this closed up staircase is just incredible- Helca also did the ironwork on the Flatiron Building and many other New York landmarks.

Sinking Down

2008-07-20T09:57:00.001-07:00

While this is meant to be my blog about my photography, and photography in general, there are sometimes going to be things that I will feel like I have to post about them. I've been depressed by the the way meet is raised in CAFO's in America for a long time, and the article about the end of catfish farming in the Mississippi Delta in today's New York Times just adds to my sadness over the situation. My boyfriend is from Mississippi and all of his stories about growing up are about the intense poverty of the area so it is awful to hear about another mainstay of the local economy disappearing, but it is disgusting to think that we are raising catfish on pellets made of corn and soybean products. I have a huge problem with the idea of raising animals to eat something that they are not biologically meant to eat, whether they are cows, pigs or fish. A good article about the after-affects of our attempts to play with nature is Michael Pollan's Our Decrepit Food Factories

She dreamed of her wanton luxury

2008-07-19T08:04:00.000-07:00

Most days I spend my time retouching gorgeous photographs by the photographer Robert Polidori. I always loved his work and somehow ended up working with him, which is fantastic as I am always surrounded by beautiful images. For the past few months we've been working on a project on Versailles- he's been shooting there for 25 years and, while he published a book on Versailles in 1996, a new book of his images will be published by Steidl around Christmas. The book and shows of the work have been occupying most of our time- he just had a show at the Edwynn Houk gallery in New York and there are upcoming shows in Paris, Toronto and London. It can get rather exhausting to work on thousands of images of the same place, however beautiful they are, which was why it was rather good that I happened to watch Marie Antoinette again last night. I've seen it several times before, but it was more fun to intimately recognize all of the rooms and to see how they connected to one another (it has been a long time since I've been to Versailles in real life). It's such gorgeous building. And don't even get me started on the clothes in the film!

All Photos Copyright © Robert Polidori

Hardware Art

2008-07-11T20:59:00.000-07:00

The hardware art show I have some pieces in (that I spoke about a few weeks ago) was covered in the local section of the New York Times last Sunday. You can read it here.The show has been extended due to a high amount of interest so if you're in the area you should check it out while at the same time picking up any supplies you might need for your home or garden.

Let me put you on ice

2008-07-11T20:47:00.000-07:00

I've been rather busy the last few weeks with work and figuring out some things in my life. I haven't been shooting as much as I'd like, but I've been doing a lot of scanning which is always a good thing. I finally got around to scanning some photos from when I was in Blackpool three summers ago- looking at these photos and seeing Bizarre Eats and No Reservations doing shows on Britain has made me so incredibly homesick, more homesick than I've been in awhile.

All photos Copyright © 2005 Laura Helms

The wonderful Jeska at Lobster and Swan did a post on my photography last week. You can see it here.

In the stillness of remembering

2008-06-27T21:21:00.000-07:00

My scanner has been on the fritz for the last week, so I sadly can't post any of my newest photos. The hours I would have spent scanning the last few days I've instead spent going through photographer's sites I've bookmarked and photos I've saved. Many things I saved long ago have made much more of an impact on me now. One photographer who's work I noted but hadn't really looked at was Ali Richards, a Briton who does incredibly beautiful work. Her Playgrounds series shows abandoned cars in former places of play- run-down, weed infested playgrounds that exhibit no sign of life. She writes, "Both the rubbish and the cars continue to exist long after they have been forgotten; they become invisible and morph into their new environments. It’s so appealing that nature absorbs these grotesque invaders, these smouldering masses, the environment and intruder almost violating each other in a torrid union, morphing into one another. The transformation complete these objects lie dormant to be rediscovered at a later date, the consequences of earlier actions finally becomes evident."

All Photos Copyright © Ali Richards

The Disciples

2008-06-20T17:09:00.000-07:00

As someone who's been a rather obsessive music fan at times in my life, I find James Mollison's The Disciples very interesting. This show, which is currently up at Hasted Hunt, is a collection of his photographs of fans who dress up as their idols at their concerts. 50 Cent, Merle Haggard, Klaxons all attract fans who feel the need to emulate the musician's style. My favourites are probably Merle Haggard and Dolly Parton- I saw many women (and men) dressed up as her when I saw her perform at Radio City last month, and I just adore how every man at Merle's show in Alabama is wearing overalls.

Rod Stewart concert, Earls Court, London, 2005.

Dolly Parton concert, London, 2007.

Marilyn Manson concert, Italy, 2006.

Jimmy Buffet concert, New York, 2006.

P. Diddy concert, Miami, 2006.

Merle Haggard concert, Hunstville, USA, 2006.

When I was around 11 I started going to the annual Adam Ant convention in London. They were held in this crappy pub in Islington, and many of the people dressed up as him- there was Jubilee-era Adam, Kings of the Wild Frontier-era Adam, Viva le Rock, etc. I always thought the costumed fans were a little odd, but now I appreciate their passion. I guess that partially explains why I enjoy these photographs so much- they remind me of my own obsessions and celebrate these fan's passions without judgement.

Days on End

2008-06-14T12:58:00.000-07:00

So much has been written about Jamie Livingston's polaroid a day from 1979 till his death in 1997, but I just wanted to put a little post up about these amazing photographs. He started shooting one polaroid each day while he was a student at Bard and continued shooting through marriage and cancer treatment. They are an immaculate glimpse into one man's life- an artist and a normal man with just as mundane a life as anyone else.

This is the article that started all of the excitement about his work.

This image below is from the day I was born.

11-14-83

North Brooklyn Metal

2008-06-13T13:45:00.001-07:00

Amorphous Metal, Greenpoint, Brooklyn.

Being a photographer one has to be open to whatever comes to them, any opportunity to shoot, and any unexpected chance to show their work. A couple weeks ago my boyfriend told me that our local hardware store had their annual art show coming up. All of the art must somehow involve hardware, so while most of the works were large metal pieces and crazy collages I decided to photograph some local metal shops. Metal shops are amazing places- seemingly so messy and unorganized, yet dangerous work is completed effectively and safely in amongst the chaos. I definitely plan to continue shooting this project.

Amorphous Metal, Greenpoint, Brooklyn.

Works Manufacturing,Williamsburg, Brooklyn.

If you're in Brooklyn you can go check out the Legendary Crest Hardware Art Show for the next month or so.

Crest True Value Hardware &
Urban Garden Center
558 Metropolitan Avenue
Brooklyn, New York 11211
www.CrestHardwareArtShow.com

If you go see one show this week...

2008-06-12T15:02:00.000-07:00

make it:

Paul Fusco
RFK FUNERAL TRAIN - REDISCOVERED
JUNE 6 - JULY 31, 2008

Danziger Projects,
521 West 26th Street
New York City, New York.

What Comes Naturally

2008-06-11T10:51:00.000-07:00

WHAT COMES NATURALLY
CURATED BY GLYNNIS MCDARIS

JUNE 11 - JULY 12

OPENING TONIGHT
6 - 8PM

Lots of amazing artists are involved so please come and by and see their works.

Crosby Street

2008-06-09T18:19:00.000-07:00

Trying to shoot a lot more- making a lot more appointments to shoot different apartments, trying to get closer to completing this book. Last week I shot two apartments- one in Soho, one in the East Village. This is the one in Soho- the tenant is moving out in the next couple weeks after living there for the past few years. He's bought a loft a few blocks away, which sounds like it will be a great space but I've always thought there was something beautiful about this apartment. The light is sublime.

Soho, New York, NY May 26, 2008