So… It has been well over a year since my last post.

A combination of being busy with work, spending an average of over 4 hours per researched entry and being frustrated that My Design Fix had turned into something that mainly documented the creative pursuits of others while neglecting my own led to the blog taking a serious back seat for a while.

But I’m back – and hopefully with a vengeance. The photo above is a sneak peak of one of the architectural projects that has been keeping me busy on the construction site for much of the past year.

So stay tuned – I’ll be back with more after this short commercial break…

Aidan

The Helsinki Cathedral in Helsinki, Finland. Designed by Carl Ludvig Engel.

I love this photo – it was as if the pigeon was reading my mind, placing himself perfectly in the photograph’s composition.

Sorry for the lack of posts lately – Most of my spare time the past month and a half has been taken up with a design competition entry that I have been working on. It’s all finished now so my resolution for February/March: More regular blog entries!

Sam Haskins is a South African photographer best known for his contribution to nude photography during the 60’s and 70’s.  During this time he also published a number of photography books, some of which include Five Girls (1962), Cowboy Kate (1965) and November Girl (1966).

Five Girls explored a fresh approach to photographing the nude female figure and contained important first explorations with black and white printing, cropping and book design which went on to become a key feature of all his subsequent books.

Below are some of the more famous photographs of Gill, one of the models featured in the book:

"Gill was an art student in Johannesburg in the early sixties. Not a professional model, she just walked into the studio one day and was a total natural in front of the camera.

There were stories of Vietnam soldiers taking copies of Five Girls (often gifted to them by their wives or girlfriends) to war, so Gill was also a Vietnam pinup. The fan mail generated by Five Girls in the 60s included letters from both men and women." - Sam Haskins

You may recognise two of the photos from a more recent artistic project as they were used for the album cover artwork for The Last Shadow Puppets – a side project of Alex Turner of the Arctic Monkeys and Miles Kane of The Rascals.

For more info on everything Sam Haskins visit:

www.samhaskinsblog.com 

www.haskins.com

This film has been on my list of things to blog about for a while so I figured this would be a fitting follow up to my previous entry; a tribute to the late Julius Shulman.

Narrated by Dustin Hoffman, Visual Acoustics explores the monumental career of 98-year-old architectural photographer, Julius Shulman. Populating his photos with human models and striking landscapes, Shulman combined the organic with the synthetic, melding nature with revolutionary urban design. The resulting images helped to shape the careers of some of the greatest architects of the 20th Century, with Shulman documenting the work of Richard Neutra, Rudolph Schindler, Pierre Koenig, John Lautner, and many others.

For those of you who happen to be in Melbourne there is a screening of Visual Acoustics this weekend (Sunday August 2) as a part of the Melbourne International Film Festival. I’m afraid I’ll just have to wait for the theatre release or when it comes out on DVD though.

For more information visit the official website at www.juliusshulmanfilm.com

“What good is a dream house if you haven’t got a dream?” -Julius Shulman

Just a few months shy of his 99th birthday, Julius Shulman, the photographer famous for his iconic photos of modern homes and a glamorous post-war Los Angeles, died at his home in L.A. on Wednesday the 15th of August.

His love and  respect for Modernist architecture, his amazing photos and his contagiously charming personality led him to be a well respected champion of the modernist architecture movement.

Shulman’s architectural photography career began by chance at the young age of 26 when his photos of an incomplete house designed by Richard Neutra impressed the architect so much that he offered him money for them and invited him to take more. This talent for photography not only launched his own career but arguably the careers of many of the period’s most famous architects such as Rudolph Schindler, Pierre Koenig, John Lautner, Eero Saarinen, Charles and Ray Eames, and Raphael Soriano (who designed Shulman’s own house, which he lived in for decades.)

His work, whether in black and white or colour, was never just about composition and light. It was about lifestyle. He was the first architectural photographer to plant men, women, and children like props inside buildings.

 Photo: Genaro Molina

Above is a photo of Julius Shulman at work photographing the now famous Stahl House (Case Study House #22) and below is a link to a short video of Julius talking about his most famous  photograph that could easily be said to be the signature image of 1960’s Los Angeles.

For a great article that gives an insight into the life of the charming, brilliant, and cantankerous architectural photographer in 36 exposures visit the LAmag website here.

I’m back! I thought I’d kick things off with a photo I took while exploring the Bayon Temple in the ancient city of Angkor Thom, Cambodia. I took this using my 38mm wide angle lens and black and white medium format film.

This shot was taken with my Diana+ on 120 format slide film.

Domestic Bliss – An editorial photo shoot for W Magazine is a collaboration between Steven Klein and Brad Pitt and also starring Angelina Jolie. Shot in July 2005, the photo shoot was inspired by married life in the 1950’s and 60’s.

‘Brad Pitt opted to set it in 1963 (the year he was born), a time when the last traces of squeaky-clean Fifties were giving way to something more complicated. “The face was still being maintained,” Brad Pitt says, “but things were starting to crumble underneath.”’ - Christopher Bagley. W Magazine

The scenes, furniture, clothes and style play homage to the mid-century modern era but I particularly like how the photography of that era has also been referenced – the above image being inspired by one of the more iconic Case Study House photographs by Julius Shulman. Below is the photograph taken in Case Study House #21, which was designed by the architect Pierre Koenig (who is also standing in the image).

Case Study House #21 (1960) designed by Pierre Koenig. Photo: Julius Schulman

This theme of the perfect 50’s and 60’s lifestyle with the undertone of things being ‘not-so-perfect’ reminds me a lot of many of Shag’s paintings that depict a similar era. Check some out in a previous entry here.

Second photo: Julius Schulmann. All other photos: Steven Klein

Check out the many photos from this shoot at W Magazine here.

Also check out Steven Klein’s impressive website www.stevenkleinstudio.com to see these photos along with some of his other work.