7:29 AM

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Alice Cooper, "School's Out" from School's Out (1972).

(This one goes out special to the people I'll be uncorking a bottle of bub with at 5 o'clock this afternoon.)

[photo: Candida Höfer, Trinity College Library Dublin I, 2004, 2004]

Romantic Reality

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75-year-old photographer Paul Jasmin grew up in Helena, Montana, but found himself attracted to the glow of Los Angeles from a young age. His new book, California Dreaming (from which the photos above and below are taken) captures a warmth, intimacy, and sense of possibility in the L.A. people and places it features.

"You can paint with a camera," Jasmin says. "That’s what I try to do with photography... it’s always about making something romantic of reality. I grew up in a housing project in Montana but to me it was heaven because I was always dreaming."

Jasmin with friend and student Sophia Coppola [Nowness.com]

Visit Nowness to read an interview with Paul Jasmin, and go here to see more photos from the book. California Dreaming is available from Steidl.

Best Foot Forward

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United Nude Frame shoe, $545.
Shop the rest of the Rem D. Koolhaas-designed
collection at unitednude.com, or visit
the U.S. flagship store, which opened
May 20 in NYC.

Image of the Day

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Susan Sontag at a symposium at the
Darius Ogden Mills House No. 1 (now The Atrium)
on Bleecker Street, NYC, 1962.
Photo by former Village Voice photographer Fred W. McDarrah.
I've always loved this image for some reason.

11:15 AM

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Julie Doiron "Lovers of the World" from I Can Wonder What You Did With Your Day (Jagjaguwar, 2009) info

(Photo: Penn Cove, Whidbey Island, January 2010)

Need vs. Want

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Want. No particular reason. It would just be fun to wear, and I'd probably be going somewhere fun if I were wearing it. Instead, I'm going to class, in jeans and a hoodie. Not as chic.

Feather Wrap-Front Dress by Morgane Le Fay,
$1,499 (originally $4,300) at Gilt.

Image of the Day

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Louise Bourgeois with her marble sculpture Eye to Eye, 1970. Bourgeois died yesterday at the age of 98. “Ms. Bourgeois’s sculptures in wood, steel, stone and cast rubber, often organic in form and sexually explicit, emotionally aggressive yet witty, covered many stylistic bases,” writes Holland Cotter. “But from first to last they shared a set of repeated themes, centered on the human body and its need for nurture and protection in a frightening world.” Visit nytimes.com to read Cotter's obituary and see a slideshow of Bourgeois's work.

Sorry for all the obits lately, but these people are giants – we can't let them go by without a mention and a quick little bloggy celebration of their lives and achievements.

Photo Raimon Ramis [via the Centre Pompidou].

Indecisive Moments

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Photographs by Guy Bourdin from the book Guy Bourdin Polaroids (Editions Xavier Barral).

Polaroids is out of print but you can see more images at the publisher's website and search for it at Abe Books. A new 272-page book on Bourdin by Shelley Verthime and Pascal Dangin, In Between, is out today from Steidl.

Image of the Day

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Memorial Day Parade, Walla Walla, Washington, c. 1892.
Photo by F. Fortin

I Do Believe It's Time

and Strath


Smith "The Weight" from Easy Rider OST
(1969, Dunhill Records)


Dennis Hopper, 1936-2010

Images of the Day

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Bill Owens, from his Suburbia series (1972).
[click to enlarge]
Happy Memorial Day weekend, America!