viz.

I don’t know what to make of these new ads for Marc Jacobs featuring Victoria Beckham. This New York Times article covering the ads asks “When is a Fashion Ad not a Fashion Ad?” And I’m not sure what the answer is. Jacobs has a history of using images that don’t feature his clothes but are touted as being “interesting” and “provocative.”

I ran across an interesting blog on Lens Culture that argues that a recent French magazine cover (posted below) equates Obama to a young, inexperienced boy.

Blogger Jim Casper writes:

This magazine is currently on the racks at news stands all over Paris, and the cover image has become one of those giant back-lit advertisements that blare from the outsides of kiosks on the streets, and ads at bus stops, and posters lining the hallways of the metro stations.

I’m wondering why the debate over meat-eating and the treatment of animals keeps happening on women’s bodies. This newest addition to the controversy happened on America’s Next Top Model when the contestants were taken to New York’s meat-packing district where they participated in a photo-shoot dressed in various articles of clothing made out of raw meat.

See this earlier discussion of iconographic photography on the campaign trail.

First spotted at Wonkette

The above picture comes from a website that offers pageant photo retouching. Creepy, huh? It came up during a Google search after I read this article in Newsweek about the rising trend among parents to have their children's grade school pics retouched, as early as the second grade.

Continuing with the recent trend of discussing the fallacies of photography, as well as pictures with guns in them:

Timothy Noah at Slate has been keeping an eye out for evidence that Barack Obama is, in fact, the Son of God. In his latest post, he linked to this picture of Michelle Obama from Reuters:

According to Noah, the framing and Obama’s posture suggest a passing resemblance to this woman:

Behold, the generic and intimidating Lego "Bad Guy" for their new Indiana Jones series:

Image: www.lego.com

As you may realize, Lego is engaging in a bit of revisionism: in the original films (at least in the first and third films), the "Bad Guys" were Nazis. Yet notice here that something is conspicuously absent from this little guy (in Lego lingo, a "minifig")...

The New Yorker recently published an essay by John Updike on the National Gallery of Art’s exhibition “The Art of the American Snapshot 1888-1978.” The essay contains some information on the history of snapshots, and analysis of the same.

Photo by Marcio Madeira for men.style.com; first spotted at Boing Boing

So I'm not surprised to see that this particular aesthetic has made its way onto the runways and into the designs of John Galliano; I'm surprised it hasn't happened sooner (maybe it has? anyone?). What's interesting to me is the particular form these designs take, with their unmistakably medieval inflection: these designs are as much about the Inquisition as they are about Guantanamo. Is this trenchant (or maybe obvious) political critique, drawing a connection between the draconian measures of the Bush administration (so barbaric! so medieval!)? Or does it go too far, making light of serious infractions by implicitly connecting Lynndie England with court jesters and clowns?