Happy Birthday Kate Moss

I've loved Kate Moss ever since I saw a Mario Testino exhibition at the National Portrait Gallery in London and saw her face up close, slathered in turquoise paint looking straight into the camera's lens. This Christmas, my obsession continued when I was given a lovely coffee table book of beautiful Kate Moss images at Christmas. The book's published by Rizzoli and the images have been collated by Jess Hallett and Jefferson Hack. My favourite images of her are when she is at her most natural and caught slightly off guard. Today also marks her 39th birthday, so here's a selection of images to celebrate.

Photographer: Corinne Day

Photographer: Corinne Day

Photographer: Mario Sorrenti

Photographer: David Sims

Photographer: Corinne Day

Find Momo

Graphic designer Andrew Knapp has created this super cute Tumblr featuring his black and white border collie concealed within images of Northern Ontario. Although the photographs are beautiful objects in themselves, half the fun is looking for little Momo in these Where's Wally-style images. Can you spot him?

Images: Find Momo

Getting into the festive spirit: Alastair Hendy's Christmas House in Hastings

Food writer and stylist Alastair Hendy has created a Tudor escape in the middle of Hastings' Old Town. The Christmas House, or 135 All Saints Street, is one of the most complete Tudor houses in Hastings. Hendy has meticulously stripped it back to its original form, transforming the former town mortuary into a cosy haven of open log fireplaces and traditional enclosed wooden beds. Stepping into the low door, you really are taken back in time. For fives pounds entry fee, you get to see this lovingly restored project, plus a little tumbler of spiced mulled wine in the kitchen.

The house is also the setting of Hendy's fairytale, The Elves & The Baker, which is beautifully illustrated in an accompanying Christmas House storybook given on entry. The best bit being the delicious recipes in the back- mulled fruit and nut christmas chocolate bar, almond and cherry sugar hearts, flowerpot baked ginger cakes and advent pretzels.

This is the second venture of Hendy, the first is his Home Store on the High Street in Hastings Old Town (most of the images below are of the Home Store). AG Hendy & Co Home Store is a purveyor of candle sticks, vintage kitchen ware, linen tea towels and traditional tools. The back room also serves as a little kitchen or impromtu restaurant, where you can eat seaside delights such as cod fish stew, soused cucumber, fennel and black pepper, and crab bisque.

Images: Alastair Hendy

Paris in colour in 1914

Ok, so perhaps my blog has focused alot lately on all things French and Parisian, but aren't these photographs beautiful?

 

Via: http://www.retronaut.com/2012/11/paris-in-colour/

Source: Musée Albert-Kahn

Flying Houses by Laurent Chehere

French photographer Laurent Chéhère has created this magical and surreal series of photographs using traditional photography and digital manipulation. Flying Houses takes a variety of Parisian houses out of the claustrophobic street scene, allowing them to float in the sky like kites. Inspired by the short-length film The Red Balloon by Albert Lamorisse, Chéhère explored the Belleville and Menilmontant arrondissements of Paris for traditional but tired looking buildings that looked in need of release.

Laurent Chéhère exposed the series Flying Houses at Dock en Seine City of Fashion and Design in June 2012, where he won the Prix Special. The series is being shown in China at the 2012 Pingyao International Photography Festival.

The images are also being shown at an exhibition at La Galerie Paris-Beijing on Rue Vertbois, Paris, until December 8.
See more: www.laurentchehere.com

Images: www.laurentchehere.com

Borrow Build Abandon by Jamie McGregor Smith

This documentary series by Somerset born photographer Jamie McGregor Smith explores the legacy of the 2004 Athens Olympics. They seem to suggest a modern ruin, similar to the Ancient Greek ruins of the Acropolis and Delphi, that has come about from the the country's current economic downturn. Only three of the twenty-four stadiums, built at a cost of $15 Billion, are currently in public use, the remaining requiring an annual $100 million in upkeep costs. McGregor Smith says, "Olympic construction highlights the continued trend of public borrowing for structures that have limited shelf life. They come at a huge cost of limited natural resources, requiring energy consumption and carbon emission that far defies the intelligence and understanding we've been fortunate to develop.. We need to consider the possibility that all human construction in future could have the technology of functional adaptation". Watch this space London. 

Images

via