LULA

Saints preserve us, I dont know how much longer I can wait for Lula issue ten. Photos from the editorials are already online so PEOPLE HAVE A COPY ALREADY!! I'm on a wait list at the only newsagent in the city to stock Lula and they call me as soon as the air mail version arrives.

I was in there last week getting a few gorgeous mags and was pestering them about when Lula is going to arrive. They know my name but refer to me as "Crazy Curls". I love their array of mags so much (and am so addicted to Lula) that I put up with the lecherous proprietor just to get my hit. Sometimes I get a premonition of when they will call, and I often go scampering straight across after work and throw cash across the counter before shielding my latest-precious copy with my body and disappearing into the night... Yes, that's exactly how it goes down.

Issue nine was co-edited by Karen Elson (!!!!) and was dedictaed to talented redheads (!!!!) THAT IS WHAT I'M TALKING ABOUT!! IT'S THAT AWESOME!!

I'm generally very good at sharing my things and giving mags away but not Lula. I once gave a copy to an ex-friend and it's honestly the only thing I miss about her - that she still has my Lula and would have no idea what it is. Brings a tear to my eye just thinking about it... getting a back issue is harder than getting a heart transplant. Sigh. Please be today, please be today, please be today....

Sandra Freij for Lula #10.

I have so much to post for you! It's incredibly frustrating to be internet-less at home, and it's having an absurd impact on my studies as I'm rushing to uni whenever free to write and use the connection. It has cleared space for a quieter perception to surface - actually reading and looking at things in hard copy is very beautiful, you know. I sometimes wish I could make a little magazine of this blog so i could send you all a paper-copy; I swear it's different to see the images in print as opposed to seeing them solely on-screen. The colour is never the same, and the pixilation on-screen drives me bonkers. I'm trying to translate the beauty of the prints to you all and it really upsets me that you cant all have your own copy to cut up and put on your walls, hide under your pillows, cart around with you to make reality prettier etc etc...
What the hell was I jabbering on about? Right, yes, LULA!! LULA ISSUE 10!!! By the grace of God, my beautiful, much longed-for Lula mag fell into my hands this morning when I went out for a walk to the bookstore at uni (sunshine and fresh air is imperative to thesis writing, as are coffee and lollypops).
This issue has been much longed for and there has been significant animosity between myself and the immoral folk at the newsagent how usually get it for me. Suffice it to say, I was planning to pay an exorbitant amount for a copy on ebay, when I went into the newsagent on campus today and there it was just looking up at me. It was like I'd been LED THERE! AND - they charged me $10 for it. Any of you addicted to Lula will understand the phenomenon that is that price, let alone just happening upon a copy flagrantly left lying there for anyone to buy!! And I GOT IT!!!!
So.... tears of joy wiped away and lippy retouched (it's been a rough-as-guts week here in Doll World, just about anything will do at this stage folks) here are some pictures by Sandra Freij for a story which appeared in Lula #8 entitled "Be My Friend" (she has done the most fantastic shoot for #10, but i can't get the images online at the moment).
ENJOY!!

Jonas Lofgren

I came across Jonas Lofgren's work in Lula mag. Love at first gasp!
Dear Mr Lofgren,
If you ever need someone to carry your pencil case for you - I am she.

His website is massively awesome: http://www.bildmekanik.se/

Joanna Newsom in Lula 10.

Forgot who the photographer was - sorry!

Muse for Monday, 16th August, 2010 - Karen Elson.

Lets all just pause for a minute before the commencement of our busy day, and acknowledge the extraordinary talents of Karen Elson. Her record is on high rotation at my house, she's long been a Tim Walker muse, she's married to Jack White, has children and guest-edited Lula magazine for their red-haired muses issue. An attitude to carry with me whilst I present my first post-grad conference paper today.

A happy day to all! xo

C'mon you little heartbreaker...

Anyone familiar with this blog should recall my frustrating and lengthy relationship with the love of my life, Lula magazine. Issue 11 is out, this is Charlotte Gainsbourg by the genius Nan Goldin on the cover, and the image is blurry here; which I feel is actually very representative of the amount of time I will have to wait to actually get my copy. COME ON!!!!! I'm not above offering, ahem, incitements to the freaks at the newsagency to get to the top of the wait list (I'm currently third). Third aint cutting it!! I'm off over there after work today to encourage them to hustle one for me... cue my prettiest smiles and most epic karate chops.

Dead Dolls

Righto, well... with a title like this I'll just let rip:

As I'm studying fashion-photography for my thesis, I found myself pouring over old mags today and I happened upon my copy of "Lula",8.
Within these gorgeous covers I saw the 'Doll House'.
It had the same impact on me now, as it did then: FREAKY.
I flipped out over this the first time I saw it... it's so... unsettling.
Heather Benning's Doll House is situated in an isolated Saskatchewan field. Benning replaced one whole wall with plexi-glass, so her viewer can see into the rooms (and that sentence is so "1st year art history student'- but, whatever).
She redecorated the rooms with furniture typical of the 1960's. The entire piece is empty, besides spare furniture and natural lighting. And there-in lies the 'freak-factor'.
Obviously, I can't say what Benning hoped to create with this particular work; all I can share, is the impact it has had on me.
AMAZING, HORRIFYING, SPOOKY, SENTIMENTAL, GHOSTLY, SO BLOODY WELL-CONCEIVED AND EXECUTED!
It immediately put me in mind of Victorian Mourning Photography.
I read about this 'Memento Mori' photography at length in 2nd year.
I make no apology for linking the two; to me, they appear completely entwined.
In my reading I found this: A quote from Stanley Burns’ book "Sleeping Beauty: Memorial Photography in America":

"These photographs were a common aspect of American culture, a part of the mourning and memorialization process. Surviving families were proud of these images and hung them in their homes, sent copies to friends and relatives, wore them as lockets or carried them as pocket mirrors. Nineteenth-century Americans knew how to respond to these images. Today there is no culturally normative response to postmortem photographs."

Ummmmmmmm yeah.
Part of me finds these photographs hell freaky, another part of me finds them beautiful and the art student in me finds them interesting. I can vouch for the fact that we don't really take photos of dead-folk here.
And yet - since I first discovered them, I've felt a strange pull towards these pictures. I can kind of understand the wish of the living to keep the departed close and 'alive'.
I'd like to send them all home to Heather Benning's empty doll's house.