Photos and art pieces by Brooklyn-based Jesse Hlebo, who also makes zines, cassette tapes, and other rad objects that exist in real life, through Swill Children.

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Of all the spots in the world to find work as a paramedic, fate brought Michael Julius to Putnam County— one of the poorest places in Florida. This strange and forgotten locale, which Julius characterizes as a sprawling, sandy 827 square mile plot of land “pocked with hundreds of small lakes, and tucked in tangly forests,” provides Julius’ on-the-job photo series, Rescuing Putnam, with a shockingly vivid sense of physical space. It’s the lurking presence of Putnam’s residents, living (and dying) “in trailers and shacks, along webs of unpaved roads,” that provides Rescuing Putnam with its resigned, melancholy psychological space.

Throughout a decade of bloody ambulance rides and smoldering ranch homes, Julius’ camera served as his closest confidante, silently sharing both the madness of these unsettling emergency response calls, as well as the warm, intimate world of the medics and firemen who commit themselves to this stressful way of life. Insig.ht conducted a fascinating interview with Julius, where he reflects on the growing sense of disillusionment that crept up on him over the years:

Statistically, this is a career that doesn’t lend itself to a lengthy service. The average career span for your basic garden-variety medic is 3-5 years. For me, the burnout was as much about the physical toll on the body as anything. Every three days I would essentially stay up all night. This, compounded by the repetitive aspect of the job, is exhausting. By repetitive I mean that I eventually realized that I was seeing the same people over and over. Some are actually sick though many are not, or at least not in an emergent sense. The skill-set to evaluate the needs of your sick and hurt patients eventually became a hindrance because I saw how so many of them were in fact not sick at all. It’s frustrating. Towards the end of my career I told a drug seeking patient, who had just finished performing a hilariously bad seizure, “You know, seizure patients usually urinate on themselves.” I wanted to see her piss herself. That’s pretty cynical.

We end up at the same houses. Houses full of thieves and alcoholics, with the same adolescent boys sitting on fence posts, or car hoods, or tossing footballs; and, when we arrive they pitch their thumbs, mumbling, “They’re in the back.” And in the back are the same old patients, face down in their vomit. It breaks my heart to see these boys conditioned to this. The very last patient of my career spit on me and said, “Clean that up, bitch”. It’s a river of misery and it goes on forever.

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It’s about girls who sleep in abandoned cars and set things on fire. It’s about the great things in life. The stars in the sky and lots of malt liquor.

Harmony Korine on Act Da Fool, his soon to be released short film for rad fashion label Provenza Schouler.
Consider us stoked. Peek at some behind the scenes photos and the film’s gorgeous poster after the jump, and read more about the collaboration at Nowness.

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There’s a buzzing in the air, a dual feeling of danger and excitement— destruction and creativity— in the fallen urban environments that fuel director Shan Nicholson’s work. His lush new video for El-P’s haunting instrumental “Time Won’t Tell,” revels in a nostalgia for the anarchic freedom of childhood, and heralds the pleasure of building something new out of the ashes of something old.

It’s almost a direct dramatization of the themes underlying Downtown Calling, Nicholson’s first documentary and the story of New York City in the late 70’s. Narrated by Debbie Harry, it’s a movie all about self-made entertainment blossoming from an environment of social unrest and economic chaos. In retrospect, it seems crazy. What enabled the downtown renaissance in New York when many other major metropoleis just crumble with a whimper? What’s the magic ingredient that makes the boys in “Time Won’t Tell” play instead of fight?

In that same era, the EPA decided to give rad photographers money to take amazingly frank pictures of urban decay, and they called it Documerica. Somehow it feels like the whole thing would be decried as “communism” these days, making the existence of these images all the more miraculous. After the jump, take a look at some of Danny Lyon’s phenomenal photographs of New York kids from Documerica.

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The idea of photography as a way - to experience the world as it is not, in different ways - is fascinating to me, transforming the known into an unknown unapproachable virtual reality that is able to contain an enormous power.

So sayeth artist Anne de Vries and, amazingly, his work is actually able to back it up. Take one look at his pictures and it becomes clear: anything, no matter how utilitarian or mundane, can be reconfigured, distorted, replicated, or marked in just such a way that it is no longer a familiar object, but a foreign concept. It turns out the boundary between reality and unreality is remarkably thin. Our minds are constantly on the lookout for a foothold into the abstract: stick a pair of eyes on a chunk of wood or and a soul is born. Combine colorful construction paper with eerie smut and suddenly sex is something altogether alien. A few well-placed exercise balls and a couple smears of paint, and our dreamy muscle man is now inhabiting a breathtaking nowhere space.

Since his materials are digital and limitless, it’s impossible to predict the form de Vries’ next project will take or the possibilities it might reveal. But one thing you can rely on is that he will give the people what they want: something new. De Vries champions the image as an act of creation, rather than documentation. Construction rather than reproduction.

If you work as an artist with the same medium you cannot avoid the question, why make more images if there are already so many? This question became central in my practice, through my work I try to find answers and formulate more questions.

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Is Raoul Gatepin a rogue anthropologist from another planet? He must have been sent here by some sinister space committee to study humanity through the lens of chilled objectivity—but it’s clear in Gatepin’s photography that he’s fallen under the spell of this planet’s sublime strangeness. His desolate, disorienting landscapes are somehow stunningly intimate, in spite of their silence. One series of odd architectural images, Piramid, calls upon a quote by the curmudgeonly hypothetical naturalist Henry David Thoreau to frame the work within a skeptical view of the everyday world. As you sink into Gatepin’s photos, however, the referenced cynicism seems little more than a sly pretense for the ugly beauty and accidental geometry he’s secretly sharing. Sure, humans are illogical, nearsighted beasts, but look how great their weird world can be!

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How can we make it so that men look like this all the time? I’m serious, is there a petition I can sign? Dave Mead took these photos of fantastically flocculent fellas donning dapper olde thyme frocks at the 2009 World Beard and Mustache Championship in Anchorage, Alaska (where else?), but I wish I could tell you that this was just a page ripped out of a standard college yearbook in the year 2010. Why can’t we live in a world like that?

Via Share Some Candy.

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Images by New York photographer Robert S. Johnson III. Don’t miss the series of eerie and intimate found photos of WWII (taken by his grandfather) that Johnson recently shared with HUH. Magazine.

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Careful examination always rewards the viewer of Allison Grant’s enigmatic photographs. Her images keep no secrets, but they do speak in a kind of code that has to be mulled over a bit before its full meaning can register in the conscious mind. Her two latest projects, Unsoiled and The Nature of Instability, toy with our ability to distinguish between natural and unnatural elements in outdoor environments. Like puzzling over a Buddhist koan, our initial confusion is always compensated with a higher level of enlightenment, a more refined awareness of the things that make up our universe and their origins. Grant recently took some time from her busy schedule to share with me her techniques, inspirations, and some exclusive images from a new project!

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Friendship and familiarity form the foundation for Nicole Lesser’s intimate photographs. The women in her work, often pictured in various states of undress, are so comfortable with Lesser’s gaze they fully drop their defenses and personify nonchalance. It all feels like a rare behind the scenes glimpse into a highly specific time in these girls’ lives. From an interview with Fjord:

I am at the age where I want to find out who I want to be, and I see my companions going through the same thing. These photographs are my personal sentiments, intimate portraits and daily snapshots of my life and those I am intrigued by.

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Pop Culture Axiom #83,576: a good persona is an invisible persona. If you can play a role to perfection, then you can transgress almost any social boundary and no one will be the wiser, but one slip and you’re a total joke. What’s the one key difference between the Trix Rabbit and James Bond? Chronic wardrobe malfunctions. Otherwise he’d just be a total badass con artist who gets tons of free cereal. Instead, he’s mocked by children and presumably left to starve to death.

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FACT: the year after Indiana University faculty member Alfred Kinsey published his famous Sexual Behavior in the Human Male, future cult leader and mass murderer, Jim Jones, began his undergraduate studies here. The way I figure, weird historical overlaps like that must be happening all the time, so why not explore a little and see what kinds of hidden treasure the Hoosier State has to offer?

So far I’ve discovered a combination haunted train/railway museum, two gas stations—one abandoned and one active—frequented by juggalos, and the secret lakeside retreat of none other than John “Cougar” Mellencamp. They will be presented here for your amusement… whenever I get around to it. Until then, enjoy this delicious pun brought to you by one of our many local churches.

I usually try to CC Satan, Shiva, and Osiris on those, just to cover my bases.

How rad would it be to live the life of Landon Metz? He travels around the world taking stunning photos in collaboration with his beautiful and talented wife, artist Hannah Metz. He put on shows, make zines and connects a league of rising art stars through his curatorial project, The Company of People. And he paints, graphic designs, and blogs, to boot. Awesome, right? The world is his oyster. Read on to find out what Landon was like as a mid-90’s tween in Phoenix, Arizona.

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Haiti Mon Amour, a found photography exhibition featuring profile pics from personal ads on Haitianconnection.com, is a strangely familiar stew of eroticism, anxiety, and hope. Anyone who has spent an idle hour strolling through the pages on a social networking site will recognize the aesthetic conventions at work here: the continuum of slightly to very unnatural poses, the self-aggrandizing text overlays, the airbrushed backdrops. One might expect these snapshots to convey some element of their “exotic” context and yet what we find here is the furthest thing from foreign.

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As if being a master of the subtly breathtaking— an ace of the ethereal— weren’t enough, Vancouver-based photographer Jennilee Marigomen comes from that rare breed of people who possess an uncanny ability to identify other rad artists, and then connect them for awesome things.

For instance, she recently assembled a photo projection show called Stream, and then simulcast it bi-coastally at Space 15 Twenty in L.A. and Pent House Gallery in Baltimore. She art directs 01 Magazine, a blog/magazine hybrid with impeccable taste and innovative content. She even manages to elevate Tumblr to an art form. Whether looking at her curation or creation, one thing is clear: Jennilee Marigomen’s eyes have superhuman powers. They can see invisible dimensions of light and space. Here, she opens up about what they look for:

Although some of your photos have people in them, you seem to avoid straight-up portraits. What leads you to pick nature over people?
The images that resonate with me are the ones that embrace a certain kind of ambiguity and leave room for interpretation. There is always a bit of uncertainty and mystery in nature… It can’t be fully controlled and is always changing and adapting - which is what my Botanophobia series is about. I’m not really interested in subjects that are too direct or give a lot away.. I want people to revisit the image with a new perception each time. Kind of like a film with an open ending. Or maybe I prefer not to take portraits because I’m a little shy.

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