Damien Hirst - Natural History Series

Damien Hirst is a world famous English artist whose work I find extremely interesting. He was born in 1965 in Bristol. but grew up in Leeds and later on studied Fine art in Goldsmiths college. He first came into public attention in 1988, when he created and curated Freeze, an exhibition held in an abandoned warehouse in which his fellow Goldsmiths colleagues and him showed their work. 

Damien Hirst's $100 million diamond skull

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Hirst developed an interest in investigating the idea of death. From the early age of sixteen he would visit the anatomy lab of Leeds Medical School in order to make life drawings. In 1991 he started working in his most famous series so far, and my personal favorite, 'Natural History'. He had dead animals put in minimalist steel and glass tanks and preserved in formaldehyde - sometimes having been dissected first. His first ‘Natural History’ works were a pair of fish cabinets, created whilst studying, called ‘Isolated Elements Swimming in the Same Direction for the Purpose of Understanding’. Shortly after that ‘The Lovers’, ‘Anaesthetics (and the Way they Affect the Mind and Body)’, 'Stimulants (and the Way they Affect the Mind and Body)' and the renowned shark piece, ‘The Physical Impossibility of Death in the Mind of Someone Living’ followed.

Physical Impossibility of Death in the Mind of Someone Living (1991)

Since 1991,Damien Hirst has included animals variously divided, crucified, skinned and in positions of prayer to the series. In 2006, Hirst exhibited a triptych titled ‘The Tranquility of Solitude (for George Dyer)’ , which incorporated three flayed sheep carcasses in a remake of Francis Bacon’s ‘Triptych May–June 1973’. 

Personally, as a photography student, I find his work very influential and overall fascinating. The fact that his work is so morbid, yet so beautiful, makes you question the concept of death and the sadness that comes with it. 

Movie Review: Carrie (1976)

Carrie is adapted from a very famous Stephen King novel of the same name and let me tell you, it is awesome!

Carrie is a quite odd teenager, who is constantly being bullied and made fun of by everyone in her school. She has a ridiculously religious mother, who physically and verbally abuses her, and who is basically a nutcase. At some point, Carrie realizes she has telekinetic abilities which she eventually learns to control.

                                   

She is asked to go to to prom by one of the most popular guys in her school (who does it out of the best intentions), and they are voted King and Queen. When they go to receive their crowns, some troublemakers who hate her pour pig's blood on her in order to humiliate her. After that, chaos. Carrie basically loses her shit (that's the best way I can put it), locks everyone in the school and lets everyone burn alive. She then goes home, where her mother tries to murder her because she thinks she's possessed, but yet again, Carrie loses it, kills her mum and then brings down the house to ashes, while she is inside.

Overall, I really loved this film, I thought it was very weird and at some point it really gets uncomfortable to watch, but still remains fascinating. One of the only things I didn't appreciate was John Travolta's acting, but nonetheless I would highly recommend watching this movie, especially when with friends.

7.5/10

McBusted Tour

OMFG!

Now, most people know me as a hardcore metal fan, but truth be told Mcfly and Busted hold a very special place in my heart. I believe I was about 12 when I discovered their music and I got very hooked on it very quickly.

After Busted split in 2005, I lost interest in this kind of music and focused more on metal bands. Maybe it was due to my big brother's influence on me or maybe it was due to going through that rebellious phase everyone goes through, but nonetheless I stopped listening to Mcfly, Busted etc. It was only after I came to uni in 2010 that I rediscovered my love for them. I bought the albums, I learned the songs on guitar and, I'm not gonna lie, I 'fell in love' with Dougie yet again.

Unfortunately, when Mcfly celebrated their 10th year anniversary with a couple of awesome shows at the Royal Albert Hall, I was out of the country, which was devastating for me.. But now, now they're going on tour.. with Busted! Well, 2/3 of Busted, but it'll still be awesome! I'm beyond excited, as I've never seen either live before and, I have to admit, I'm fangirling even though I'm a 20 year old, quite mature individual..

I'm pretty sure I'll get to relive my childhood in the most awesome way possible. 

Roll on April 2014!

Onision: Crazy or Genius?

Right, first of all I should probably clarify that I'm a fairly new subscriber, so I don't know a whole lot about the guy and I don't plan on stalking cuz you know.. that's just creepy.


                            

From what I gathered so far, there's been a lot of drama in this dude's life, which he dealt with in a certain way and I guess people think he's a psycho because of that, which is ridiculous. Each person deals with pain in a different way, you can't judge someone based on his reaction to things.

I understand that he was married to someone who cheated on him and got pregnant with another man's baby which lead to a divorce and her being a dick and still collecting money off him due to not getting a prenuptial contract. While she was having a so-called mental break down in which she threatened to kill herself and frame him, he decided to film her in order to have evidence if she did attempt anything. He then uploaded the video online for a short period of time and then decided to take it down, but people had already downloaded it and is still online to this day. Viewers keep saying that filming her wasn't an appropriate thing to do, and keep blaming him for her meltdown but in my opinion he just did what anyone should do in that situation which is make sure they have evidence of what was happening in case anything went wrong.

Onision was also friends with multiple famous Youtubers such as Shane Dawson, Swiftkaratechop and Cyr, but eventually decided to end those friendships for whatever reasons. People judge him on that aswell, saying he can't maintain proper relationships with people and keep asking exactly what happened between him and the other Youtubers, which is not a very nice thing to do. Surely at the end of any friendship people get hurt, one way or another, but when you have thousands of people needing explanations it can really take a toll on you.

                    
Undeniably he has an odd sense of humor, some people like it, some don't. Sometimes he acts like a nutcase, which encourages people to call him a psycho. Personally I find him very entertaining and quite like OnisionSpeaks which is a channel in which he talks about his life and shares his thoughts. The main reason why I feel people keep calling him insane is that he is very open about his life and experiences he had, and is very graphic as to what happened in specific situations. People tend to not understand why he did/does certain things, which can lead a more immature audience to make fun of what they don't understand, as people do.

What I really like about Onision is that he takes full advantage of all the bad things that happened to him and doesn't really let them bring him down. He entertains people with all these crazy stories, and maybe teaches them a thing or two about what it's like to be surrounded by shitty people. He makes the most of the situations he finds himself in, therefore I declare him a genius.

Hipstamatic War Photography: Pros vs Cons

Hipstamatic War Photography.. Where do I even start?


I recently wrote a uni essay on this topic, specifically on whether or not the use of Hipstamatic is acceptable when it comes to documentary photography, and I'm afraid I can't answer with a simple yes or no. What started off as a simple picture story by Damon Winter, became the topic of numerous arguments and caused controversy for its unusual medium (iphone) and editing (Hipstamatic).


                                   

Damon Winter was awarded 3rd place from Pictures of the Year International, and his story was even featured on the front page of The New York Times, which angered a substantial amount of people. Most of them argue that due to the rise of social media in the past few years, photography has become an utter joke. “What we knew as photojournalism at its purest form is over and POYI just killed it,” Chip Litherland said on his blog. “Well, they didn’t kill it so much as just dig another knife deeper into the back of its decaying corpse.” Many photographers/reporters believe that a photojournalistic image should show real mood and emotions, and most definitely not use prefixed filters to make it look ‘pretty’. Nick Stern, an internationally acclaimed News and features photographer, felt very strongly about this. In his CNN post he writes: “Every time a news organization uses a Hipstamatic or Instagram-style picture in a news report, they are cheating us all. It’s not the photographer who has communicated the emotion into the images. It’s not the pain, the suffering or the horror that is showing through. It’s the work of an app designer in Palo Alto who decided that a nice shallow focus and dark faded border would bring out the best in the image... The image never existed in any other place than the eye of the app developer.”

                                   

Other photojournalists seem to completely disagree with Litherland and Stern. Benjamin Lowry, a New York based photographer, argues with Stern over the widely known social network Twitter. He claims that “it's not the price of the camera, but the content of the image that makes the story.” Others, while on a heated Twitter argument, state that the decision to use Hipstamatic is no different than the decision to use Black and White film, as they both have to do with the aesthetics of the photograph and not the content. As long as the content is not manipulated and is constant then the aesthetics of the photograph should not matter. A number of amateur photographers said that photojournalists that document the same event often end up having undistinguishable photographs, therefore the option to use Hipstamatic or Instagram creates something different to the others’ photographs, and ends up being more memorable.


Whether one chooses to agree with the argument that Hipstamatic and Instagram photographs should only be used by amateur everyday people or with the argument that the apps give character to the photographs even though they’re documentary, the only certain thing is that this will not be the last of Hipstamatic/Instagram professional photography. It has already won over the internet, or at least became a trending topic all over social media, and even made its way onto the front page of The New York Times. One should expect that this is only the beginning.