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Tuesday, November 10, 2015

17 Incredible Vintage Photos From London’s ’70s Punk Scene

Photographer Derek Ridgers spent more than ten years documenting the music and people he loved.

1. British photographer Derek Ridgers spent more than a decade documenting the hedonistic world of London’s club scene in the ’70s and ’80s.

“Clubs have always been about … tribes, word of mouth, clothes, hair, dancing, positing, getting high, all the teenage tropes,” he writes in his collection of photos from that period, 78 — 87 London Youth, out now on Damiani Press.

At a moment when England was struggling with miners’ strikes, IRA bombings and general civil unrest, the club scene offered a heady respite, a chance to escape everyday banality and elevate into something different, something special.

2. For Ridgers, and many of his generation, punk was a way to challenge the status quo.

Derek Ridgers Photography

3. As John Maybury writes in the forward of Ridgers’ book:

Derek Ridgers Photography

“Beautiful kids (youth is always beautiful) were doing everything in their power to disguise their good looks and to subvert conventions of fashion and style, and even of beauty itself.”

4. The result was something new and unorthodox.

The result was something new and unorthodox.

Tuesday, November 10, 2015

17 Incredible Vintage Photos From London’s ’70s Punk Scene

1. British photographer Derek Ridgers spent more than a decade documenting the hedonistic world of London’s club scene in the ’70s and ’80s.

2. For Ridgers, and many of his generation, punk was a way to challenge the status quo.

3. As John Maybury writes in the forward of Ridgers’ book:

4. The result was something new and unorthodox.

5. And something wholly beautiful in its own right.

6. Ridgers chronicled the scene for magazines like NME and The Face.

7. Ridgers told BuzzFeed that he’s always been careful to maintain a distance from his subjects.

8. “It was very much a part of my process that I was essentially just an observer,” he said.

15. Ridgers’ next book, Skinheads 1979-1984, will be out this July.

16. For more on Ridgers and his amazing catalogue, check out DerekRidgers.com.

Wednesday, April 29, 2015

This Photographer Imagined What It’s Like For An Astronaut To Adjust To Life Back On Earth

1. Late last year, photographer Tim Dodd found himself as the lone bidder for a Russian high-altitude space suit on an auction website.

3. Since winning, Dodd told BuzzFeed, he has been planning how to use them. And so was born the “Everyday Astronaut” series.

5. In the poignant series, Dodd, who said he’s had a love for space since he was a kid, is seen as he undergoes normal daily activities as a recently returned astronaut might. He mows the lawn on a Segway. He fills a cone with space ice cream.

7. Before winning the auction, the Cedar Falls, Iowa resident said he spent a lot of time dreaming about what he would do if he actually won (a not-so-difficult feat, considering he was the only bidder).

9. “When I won it, I was shocked and almost panicked,” he said. “I felt like I had a huge responsibility to do something ridiculous with it.”

11. This actually isn’t the first we’ve seen of the 29-year-old photographer: He’s also known for documenting the love story of his friend Taylor Morris, a soldier who lost both legs, an arm, and a hand in Afghanistan.

13. Dodd said his favorite picture in the series is him sadly riding a playground space shuttle, which he said “portrays a fairly genuine depression about NASA currently being without a manned space program.”

15. Life as a pretend astronaut isn’t all glamorous, though. When astronauts wear suits like this, Dodd said, they are attached to a unit that cools them. Without that luxury, the photographer’s suit gets incredibly hot.

17. Dodd experienced the full effect of the suit’s warmth while wearing it for a shoot at Florida’s SpaceX rocket at the Kennedy Space Center, after a few people asked him for photos.

19. “Literally, there were puddles of sweat at my feet,” he said. “It was miserable.”

21. For a time, the space suit was most of what Dodd thought and spoke about, he admitted, adding that the whole thing has become a running joke between him and his friends. “I’m really lucky my girlfriend hasn’t broken up with me!” he said.