Renek Gaszewski [Blog]

“Gossip Girl” Leighton Meester has a wild side. And we’re not just talking about on the popular series in scenes with her GG character, Blair Waldorf’s, on-again, off-again lover, Chuck Bass (Ed Westwick). Read the rest of this entry »

Gossip Girl star Leighton Meester is the latest to find herself in the middle of a sex tape controversy. A website posted clips of the video, including scandalous use of her feet, online Friday, making the full item available to paying customers. Read the rest of this entry »

The Red Deer Public School board has said no to nude models.
Art instructors at Lindsay Thurber Comprehensive High School had proposed introducing a figure drawing course in the fall that would have required nude models posing for students.
The course was created and used by an arts high school in Edmonton, and the Red Deer school district had obtained permission to adapt it, said district deputy superintendent Pieter Langstraat.
But trustees decided this week not to allow the drawing component that requires unclothed models. While parental consent forms could have been issued for students young than 18, and the art classes could have been held before or after regular school hours, or in a secure location on the school site, the school board just wasn’t comfortable with introducing nude models to high school students.
Langstraat said trustees always ask themselves, when considering a new activity or field trip, whether it’s something they want for their students. And in this case, the answer was no, he added.

Renek Gaszewski’s Studio presents the works of fashion photographer Paolo Roversi in its gallery showrooms. For over 35 years, Paolo Roversi, born in Ravenna, Italy, in 1947, has been working and living in Paris. The exhibition of around 50 photographs will show, beyond the series Guinivere and Nudi, pictures of the studio of the artist in Paris, portraits, as well as works of his lightpaintings. Owing to the well-balanced quality of colors and the clear composition of the photographs of the artist as well as the particular charm and grace of his models, the observer of these photographs is often tempted to study them more as paintings. This effect is also a result of the technique of the artist.
Since 1980 Roversi takes pictures with a 8×10 inch polaroid camera. The prints obtain their distinctive appearance through faded shades of skin color, as can, for example, be seen in the series Guinivere. Over the period of twelve years Roversi accompanied his muse of the same name with the camera in this long-term study. As a result, a mixture of abstract forms of graphic character and very intimate studies was generated. Whether the model is dressed or naked the photographs of Guinivere are unconventional and often provocative portraits.
The series Nudi is marked by a clear composition. The observer sees naked women in full-length portraits which seem to transparently merge into the white picture background. The ladies displayed in the exhibition are top models such as Kate Moss and Tatjana Patiz. This is not the primary interest of the artist. In the book Nudi, the models are simply called by their first name, and they are photographed entirely without requisites or clothing. Thus Roversi maintains the anonymity of the displayed and shows us delicate, in their purity almost heaven-like creatures and not the stars of the fashion scene.
Roversi’s photographs are full of poetry and reflect, in all its facets, the beauty of the female body. The photographs show the artist’s ability not to lapse into superficial aestheticism but to always bestow upon his pictures a subtle aura of the enigmatic and mysterious. Particularly his technique of lightpainting, for which he illuminates the model which is standing in the dark and thus in a way traces it, makes Roversi a traveler between the worlds of photography and painting in the true tradition of the pioneers of artistic photography - the pictorialists. Around the year 1900 artists such as Alvin Langdon Coburn and Edward Steichen began to give photography a pictorial character by using soft-focus, special printing techniques, and complex light installations.
Paolo Roversi’s works have been published in various monographs, among them the lavishly arranged books Nudi (edition Stromboli, Paris: 1999), Libretto (Steidl, Göttingen:2000), and Studio (Steidl, Göttingen and edition Stromboli, Paris:2002). Paolo Roversi was the photographer for campaigns such as Cerruti, Comme des Garçons, Christian Dior, Yves Saint-Laurent, Valentino, as well as editorials for magazines such as Arena, Harper’s Bazaar, I-D, Interview, Marie-Claire, The New York Times Magazine, Italian and British Vogue, L’Uomo Vogue, and W.

Renek Gaszewski:

Federal prosecutors have dramatically increased the number of nude child photos they claim Orange County Judge Ronald C. Kline stored on his computer and assert it would have been virtually impossible for a hacker to plant them, according to court documents obtained Tuesday.
Authorities say more than 1,500 computer images of young boys were found at Kline’s home, including nude and “hard-core” photographs showing children having sex. Until now, federal prosecutors had placed the figure at more than 100. Read the rest of this entry »