Things We Found on the Internet, Vol. 1

We’re doing a new reg­u­lar fea­ture where we col­lect all of the strange and won­der­ful things we find thanks to this inter­net of ours that are too short or too spe­cif­ic to war­rant their own post. Here goes noth­ing.

1. Gritty shots of Berlin from the 80s by Kurt Tauber

Great pho­tos of a very much divid­ed Berlin in all of its Cold War mood­i­ness by Ger­man pho­tog­ra­ph­er Kurt Tauber who was allowed to trav­el between West and East Berlin with his cam­era. The pho­to set includes a Porsche that some­one spray paint­ed with the word “punk”. Icon­ic. We could­n’t find much more infor­ma­tion on these pho­tos in par­tic­u­lar so we’ll let them speak for them­selves.

In March of 1970, Tauber first vis­it­ed Berlin as an 18-year-old on a school trip and took his first pho­tographs of the Berlin Wall, this would lead to a num­ber of trips over the next two decades that led to hun­dreds of pho­tos being tak­en (sad­ly, not avail­able on the inter­net), enough so that it prompt­ed the East Ger­man Stasi to open a file on him. The full set of pho­tos can be found here and here.

2. Jef Hartsel skating in Venice Beach in the mid 80s, wearing a Joy Division shirt.

These are shots of skate leg­end Jef Hart­sel doing tricks in a JD tee, from the July 1988 issue of Pow­eredge mag­a­zine, adver­tis­ing Alva’s wheels. There’s some­thing about the com­bi­na­tion of clas­sic skate­board­ing and Joy Divi­sion that seems so aes­thet­i­cal­ly pro­found. Has any­one earnest­ly tried to make goth skaters a thing yet?

In his own words, Hart­sel explains the moti­va­tion for wear­ing the shirt: “To me, I’ve been infat­u­at­ed with Eng­lish cul­ture way more than Amer­i­can cul­ture … it was all because of The Clash, The Sex Pis­tols, Joy Divi­sion and all that. I always say that the best thing that came out of the punk rock move­ment was all the good music that came after­wards. All the stuff com­ing out of Eng­land, are you kid­ding me? My favorite graph­ic designer—Peter Sav­ille of Fac­to­ry Records and all that shit. All I want­ed to do was go to Man­ches­ter and hang out at the Hacien­da, the Porter Club and all of that.”

We agree, Jef, The Hacien­da was def­i­nite­ly a moment we all miss, and for good rea­son. Check out the rest of the 2016 inter­view with him and Ed Tem­ple­ton over at Slam City.

3. Ian Curtis and Joy Division at TJ Davidson’s Rehearsal Room, Manchester, 1979

Shot by Kevin Cum­mins on August 19, 1979, this is the leg­endary rehearsal at TJ David­son’s rehearsal room on Lit­tle Peter Street in Man­ches­ter that gave the world the music video for Love Will Tear Us Apart. This shoot has tak­en on a spe­cial place in music his­to­ry, and after its pub­li­ca­tion would go a long way influ­enc­ing the visu­al mythol­o­gy of the band going for­ward.

The som­bre qual­i­ty of these pho­tos owes itself to the glossy black paint cov­er­ing every wall of the space, the high-con­trast black and white shots, and the pho­tog­ra­pher’s own admis­sion that he avoid­ed tak­ing pho­tos of the band smil­ing. Cum­mins recalls, “I want­ed … to cre­ate an image for them so that peo­ple would look at them and think they were per­haps a lot more cere­bral than they were and to make them slight­ly unat­tain­able.”

Sad­ly, Ian Cur­tis would take his own life just a few months lat­er, short­ly before he and the band were due to begin their debut North Amer­i­can tour.

We might get around to doing a full his­to­ry of this shoot one day. In the mean­time, the pho­tos are col­lect­ed in a book pub­lished by Cum­mins, titled, Joy Divi­sion: Juvenes. Grant Gee’s doc­u­men­tary, released in 2007, goes into detail regard­ing the visu­al lan­guage of the band, includ­ing this shoot, and is high­ly rec­om­mend­ed view­ing.

4. Peter Murphy performing upside-down with Nine Inch Nails

At a 2009 per­for­mance in New York, Nine Inch Nails was joined by Peter Mur­phy of Bauhaus, who was sus­pend­ed upside down from the ceil­ing by a chain. Mur­phy helped Trent Reznor and the band per­form “Rep­tile” and “Strange Kind of Love” as well as a ren­di­tion of Bauhaus’s “Bela Lugosi’s Dead”.

The pair con­tin­ues to col­lab­o­rate to this day, with Mur­phy and Reznor hav­ing released the song “Swoon” ear­li­er last year.

There are sev­er­al great videos of this per­for­mance float­ing around online, but being lucky enough to have seen it live must have been a true expe­ri­ence for the ages.

5. Stills of Lou Reed from Andy Warhol’s screen test

Lou Reed sat silent­ly for Andy Warhol’s cam­era for a few of near­ly 500 “Screen Tests” shot between 1964–66, Warhol’s cam­era lin­gered on Reed for 4 silent min­utes, cap­tur­ing every move­ment up close, with Reed hold­ing a coke, apple, or her­shey’s choco­late bar.

Warhol called them “stil­lies” or “film por­traits” and the goal was to shoot the sub­ject as they were, the film would then be screened or played back in slow motion. You can see one of them, sim­ply titled “Coke” on Youtube.

6. Wu Tang Clan for The Source Magazine, January 2001

Scanned by @public—mags on Tum­blr.

7. David Choe’s Marketing for Need for Speed Underground 2

In 2004, a 24-year-old David Choe, then work­ing with Wieden & Kennedy in Port­land, land­ed his first major com­mer­cial com­mis­sion, cre­at­ing pro­mo­tion­al art­work for Need for Speed: Under­ground 2. His raw graf­fi­ti lines and fre­net­ic sketch style gave the cam­paign its “visu­al hip-hop” edge, as col­lab­o­ra­tors lat­er described it.

Beyond print ads, Choe’s draw­ings were brought to life in two ani­mat­ed TV spots pro­duced with the design stu­dio MK12, where his hand-drawn char­ac­ters col­lid­ed with in-game footage. A Toy­ota Corol­la GT‑S wrapped in his art­work was even includ­ed as an unlock­able car inside the game itself.

The project marked a turn­ing point, cement­ing Choe’s leap from under­ground artist to a ris­ing force in the con­tem­po­rary art world.

8. Francis Bacon in his studio

In 1973, Peter Stark pho­tographed artist Fran­cis Bacon in his infa­mous­ly chaot­ic stu­dio. See­ing the com­bi­na­tion of piles of paint tubes off to the left, the brush­es behind him in front of the murky mir­ror, and the detri­tus all over the floor real­ly does a great job of explain­ing the cre­ative process of one of the 20th cen­tu­ry’s great painters.

9. Glen Luchford, Damaged Negatives Series

These are pho­tos select­ed from the out­takes of Luchford’s pro­fes­sion­al pho­to­shoots done through­out the 90s, the neg­a­tives dam­aged for one rea­son or anoth­er, fea­tur­ing some of the most icon­ic mod­els of the decade, such as Kate Moss.

In 2013, the pho­tog­ra­ph­er released this series in the form of a book, reflect­ing his ver­sion of the Japan­ese phi­los­o­phy of wabi sabi, which focus­es on find­ing beau­ty in imper­fec­tion and the inter­ven­tion of nat­ur­al process­es in the cre­ation of art.

10. Robert Smith shot by Richard Bellia, 1985