VINTAGE MENS MAGAZINES: A VACATION IN HELL

Sometimes I think the critics are right and Dante really was one of the handful of writers who shaped the Western mind. He certainly seems to have influenced 50s mens magazines. Cover after cover looks like a scene out of Dante's "Inferno."

Here (above) the guy is running away from a tribe of nymphomaniac amazons, and the only way he can escape them is to run across a field of crazed weasels.

Coming up with stories for these mens magazines must have been a real chore. After all, the same publisher probably put out confession, crime and adventure magazines, and these must have siphoned off a lot of stories the mens magazines could have used.

The writers must have thanked God for old staples like cheating housewives and prostitutes, but even these could get stale. Frequently the staff had to fall back on the tried and tested method of taking ordinary events, sleazing them up a bit, and locating them in graphic Hell.

Take this picture (above), for instance. Nothing out of the ordinary happening here but the blocked-out eyes and minimal, kids printing set/ransom note lettering at the bottom of the page make it look like something weird and taboo is going on.

If the weird and taboo thing can be shown to happen in Hell (as it is above), so much the better. Pulp paper didn't take black very well, but the publishers turned a liability into an asset by emphasizing subject matter that played better in dark grey.

Grey gave the page a weathered, amateur look, as if it had been printed by ghouls in some underground cavern, and the editor just happened to find it stuck to the bottom of his shoe...just the thing for a magazine that claimed to break all the rules.

And how do you like the black & white photography (above)? It underlines the noir belief that the world is a dark place, illuminated by shafts of light.

Black and white can make the most innocent event seem sordid, especially if the photo is tilted and crudely retouched. Here (above) even happy old Bing Crosby is made to look like a skulker in the corridors of Hell. The actress on the right shows a lot of leg, but would still look innocent if the same picture were to appear in full resolution in Life magazine. Here, at half resolution and retouched, she looks like a denizen of the underworld.

Here (above) the downshots and headless bodies add to the effect of the noir lighting. We're obviously in some Clive Barker-type catacomb. Tattooing is made to look sooooo creepy here. But that's what the reader wanted. The reader wanted to be taken out of the crowded commuter train to an unfamiliar and dangerous world, and the magazine obliged.

Here (above) bandleader Xavier Cougat draws a terrific caricature of the singer on his left. Light-hearted and innocent you say? No way! The Hell theme favored by sleaze magazines demanded that the execution of the drawing take place in Hades. The ripped headline graphic, dark shadows and downshot angle reveal that we're in a slime-covered alcove in a nightmare alley full of screams and demented laughter.

No activity was so wholesome that it couldn't be portrayed as Hellish. "Who does Disney (above) think he's kidding?", the magazine seems to ask. No innocence here. The text promotes Disney but the choice of graphics locates him in Hell. The layout artist chose cramped, fever dream compositions, planting the idea that Disney films are somehow sinister and malevolent.

All this emphasis on Hell may only have been half intentional. Some of it must have resulted from the kind of flash camera that press people used in those days. Some of it must have come out of WWII when a lot of graphic artists had to learn how to make the bad guys look demonic. After the war we had a lot of skilled propaganda artists with nowhere to go, except the sleaze magazines where these techniques were still appreciated.

I've said what I had to say about graphic Hell, but I can't resist commenting on the boring composition above. Ugh! I hate to see amateurs attempt the wild stories and graphics of the pros.

Here's a similar pictorial theme done with more panache. The young woman carousing with a beer bottle is underlit and in a dark place, suggesting Hell. The picture of the man suggests that she was bullied into this life by a dominating gangster. The two pictures are so evocative that we can't help but make up stories to fit them. Before we even read the text we imagine the girl resisting the fast life at first, then learning to accept it. We draw the tragic conclusion that it's a joyless, crazy world, but she wouldn't leave it if she could.

The mistake the amateurs made was to suppose that prostitution is interesting all by itself. It's not. If the girl was coerced into it, or forced to do it to feed her baby, or if her choice leads her to discover the unimaginable, then you've got a story...just be sure to locate it in graphic Hell.

BTW: Many thanks to the "Here Comes Madness" blog, which is where I stole these pictures from. Thanks also to Anonymous for telling me about the site in a comment. The blog's URL:

http://mkupperman2.wordpress.com/magazines-the-whatsisname-collection/

Also BTW: I couldn't bear to end this without calling attention to the name of an article listed on the cover of "Wildcat Adventures" above. The article is "Death Cruise of the Two Nude Cuban Cuties," surely one of the best names for an article that I've ever encountered. Sigh! Geniuses truly walked the Earth in those days.

CAROL BURNETT: GENIUS

When I think of funny women on film I think of Imogene Coco and her work with Sid Caesar, of Madeline Kahn as Eunice in "What's Up, Doc?", and of Carol Burnett in her best TV sketches from "The Carol Burnett Show" in late 60s and early 70s. That's her in the video above playing Joan Crawford in a parody of "Mildred Pierce."

The problem with Burnett's show was that the sketches were sometimes too long. There weren't as many commercials on TV in those days, and you had to stretch out ideas to fit the longer time slot. That's okay when the ideas were as good as the ones here, but that wasn't always the case.

Burnett was hilarious when she was working on all cylinders. She had a real talent for playing feisty, low rent characters like Eunice (above) in the family sketches. Those sketches struck a chord with audiences, maybe because so many people actually lived that way.

So far as I can tell, domestic arguments used to be a lot more common than they are now. Couples would argue about who came from the more high class family, the man's drinking, dinner not being ready on time...things like that. Nobody ever attempted to answer what the other person actually said, or look for a solution.

If you were accused of drinking too much you would respond by saying your wife kept a dirty house. Arguments like that never end, they just recur and recur, a chance to blow off steam I guess, or a ritual to reconcile the two to the fact that neither of them will probably ever change. Anyway, there was a lot of that going on, and Burnett was really good at making fun of it.

One more quick sketck...it only takes a minute and twenty seconds and in that short time it succeeds in explaining everything that's wrong with modern music.

On a completely different topic, I thought I'd put up a sequence from "The Miracle Worker." I posted about that film a few days ago and was surprised to find that nobody had seen it. I thought it was one of those films like "Citizen Kane" that everybody sees. Well, if you haven't, then here's an eight-minute clip to enlighten you. It's hilarious.

Above, an SCTV parody of the same film. Thanks much to Anonymous for sending me this. But who sent me the "Mildred Fierce" parody at the top of the page? I need to know who to thank!

I CAN'T FIND MY KEYS

EXT. THEORY MANSION:

UNCLE EDDIE (VO): "(Cry of anguish) Aaaaagh! I can't find my keys! I have to be somewhere and I can't find my keys!"

INT. THEORY MANSION:

UNCLE EDDIE (VO): "Tracy, you're my secretary...do you know where my keys are?"

TRACY: "Sorry Uncle Eddie, I haven't seen them. Have you tried the living room?"

INT. LIVING ROOM:

UNCLE EDDIE (VO): "Florence! Have you seen my keys?"

FLORENCE: "Keys? Hmmm...no keys around here. Maybe they slipped into a crack in one of the sofas."

BAMBINA: "I just looked. Nothing in this sofa."

YVETTE: "Nothing here either, Uncle Eddie! Have you tried the kitchen?"

ON THE WAY TO THE KITCHEN:

UNCLE EDDIE (VO): "Hi, Weirdina. Have you seen my keys?"

WEIRDINA: "Sorry Uncle Eddie, I can't think about that now! I'm writing a poem. It's about famine and pestilence and man's inhumanity to man!"

UNCLE EDDIE (VO): "Oh, uh...right. Sorry I interrupted."

INT. KITCHEN:

UNCLE EDDIE (VO): "Penelope...do you know anything about my keys?"

PENELOPE: "Keys? Mmmmm, no. No keys here."

CHARLOTTE: "They're not up here either, Uncle Eddie."

PENELOPE: "I don't see anything down here."

UNCLE EDDIE (VO): 'Monica, have you..."

MONICA: "Nope, sorry. Ask Tracine."

ON THE BALCONY:

TRACINE: "Maybe you left them in the car. (Then, shouting down to the street) MINERVA! SEE IF UNCLE EDDIE'S KEYS ARE IN HIS CAR!"



ON THE STREET:

MINERVA: 'Keys? Okay!"


MINERVA: "Hmmmm, let's see...keys, keys, keys...hello, what's that?"

MINERVA (VO): "...They're here! I FOUND THEM!"

MINERVA (VO): Hi, little boy! Will you take these keys and give them to Uncle Eddie inside the house?

UNCLE EDDIE (VO): "Oh, thanks, kid! Tell, you what...go downstairs and tell the chef I said he should make you any kind of sandwich you like. Tell him to put lots of paper parasols and little plastic swords in it. Come to think of it, I'll go with you. I'll just get my jacket and...

...hey wait a minute! Where's my jacket!? TRAAAAACYYYY!!!!!!!!!!!!"

THEORY CORNER BOOK REVIEW: "SUNDAGGER.NET"

Hello! This is Chico Cognoscenti, book reviewer for the Theory Corner literary magazine. Today we're going to explore the strange world of the modern woman's novel. The book is "Sundagger.net" by Margaret Murray.

It's a Tony Hillerman-type novel about an Anglo woman who's invited by modern Indians to participate in their sweat lodge ceremonies. It's not my thing, but I'd hoped that reading a little bit of a novel written by a woman exclusively for other women would give me some insight into the sex, and I wasn't disappointed.

Let's read a few paragraphs, shall we?



"Sara hurried, untying her hiking boots, pulling off her sweater, her black Levis, unhooking her black lace bra. the door creaked as one of Vera's seven cats, an all black streak of fur with one white paw, slipped in and meowed. Sara threw her thick, green socks in the duffle along with the clothes and slipped on the caftan....

...She saw herself in the mirror with her caftan ballooning around her ankles. Before she had time to disapprove of her big-boned face, her bright blond dyed hair, long and fuzzy, unraveling from the batik scarf she'd wrapped around her head an hour ago, she spied the gleam of her silver earrings and her turquoise choker. Quickly she took them off as well as her watch and Australian opal ring, a gift from her ex-husband, Paul, the year Dan was born. Sara dropped her jewelry in her cosmetic bag, along with her car keys, picked up her bagfull of clothes and rushed out, nearly slamming into a young woman outside the door...."

"She had a perfectly oval face, smooth peach skin, and almond shaped black eyes. Her thick, shining, black hair was twisted up in a gold and feather hair ornament. She wore a tiny orange halter and skintight blue jeans showing her perfect belly button. Sara couldn't help thinking how Deborah Yu (her co-worker) alternated between wearing similar designer tank tops made of silk with Calvin Klein jeans and logging boots...

So here was another newbie....who invariably wore skimpy bathing suits or tight short-shorts and T-strap tops without bras. This girl's firm, smooth body curved seductively...she looked both excited and fearful, her pert breasts bobbing beneath the orange jersey top."

"[This contrasted with Sara, who had] two large towels, one old and frayed to sit on inside the sweat lodge, another thick one for afterward when she would be streaming with sweat, and a pair of shapeless cotton underpants that she didn't mind getting soaked and dirty from sitting on the ground..."

Gee, women certainly seem to be fond of their underwear. It's hard to imagine a man describing his BVDs that way.

Come to think of it, women are always changing their clothes in this book, in the part I read anyway. I guess they really get a kick out of stuff like that. Of course it helps to have a cute, fluffy animal present, or to change in a room with memorable characteristics , like mildew on the floor or cold stones or peeling paint on the walls. I don't think men really care where they change. For us a toxic waste pit is just as suitable as a palace.

If you can trust the author, women are also obsessed with the details of life, and mementos...they LOVE mementos. One of the things I learned from this book is that if you're a bachelor, and you're going out with a girl, be sure to give her a one-of-a-kind gift that she can use to remember the experience...even if she didn't like you. Girls are strange, alien creatures. They don't know how silly it is to be sentimental like that, so we should take the opportunity to make them happy.

So, what's my review? My review is that I'm a guy. It's not meant for me. I'm glad I read a few pages, though.

BTW: To be fair to the author, I did some editing to highlight the clothing descriptions.

DINNER WITH "THE MIRACLE WORKER"

EXT. SOUTHERN MANSION.

SON (VO): "Meanin' no disrespect Father, but Helen's deaf and blind. Maybe you expect too much of her."

THE COLONEL: "Tarnation! What makes you think I expect too much? I let her eat off my plate don't I? I simply said she'd benefit from some table manners!"

THE COLONEL (CONT): "Bless her li'l heart! It's not her fault that she's filthy and disgusting, and possibly evil. She needs some tender, lovin' care."

THE COLONEL (CONT): "That's why I hired The Miracle Worker!"

ON THE MIRACLE WORKER: She's doing some serious chowing down. She pauses to wave when she hears her name, then resumes eating.

FATHER (VO) (CONT): "She's a Yankee gal, but she knows that finger talk."

FATHER (VO) (CONT): "Maybe she can do some good."

SON: "But Father, maybe we don't need The Miracle Worker. Maybe Helen's never going to be better than she is right now."

SON (VO) (CONT): "Look at her. She spontaneously eats the food of others. She's a true child of nature."

SON (VO): "Maybe she's better off not knowin' the rules of man."

SON (VO) (CONT): "I envy her her. She lives in a simple world of gentleness and calm..."

SON (VO) (CONT): "...a gossamar, wispy world where the only emotions felt are those of happiness and love."

SFX: FWAP!!!!!

SFX: WHACK!!!!! She hits Helen with the spoon!

SFX: WHACK!!!!!!!!!

SFX: CRU-U-UNCH!!!! She bites Helen!

SFX: CLOOOONG!!!!!!!!! Helen hits The Miracle Worker with a baseball bat!

THE MIRACLE WORKER: (ROARS)

COLONEL: "MISS MIRACLE WORKER! I INSIST...I say I INSIST that you STOP this instant, before someone gets hurt!! Helen, you come outside with me! Poor child! You must be a bundle of nerves!"

EXT. OUTSIDE ON THE LAWN:

THE COLONEL: "Oh my Gosh! Look at this! She can hear and see! It's a miracle! The Miracle Worker has done it again!

THE END

ITALIAN INSULT GESTURES

A few months ago I wanted to try doing pencil tests on Flash so I thought I'd do a little YouTube film of Italian insult gestures. It never came about. I had so much trouble getting the program to work that I finally walked away from it and did something else. Now I have a trial download of Digicell Flipbook, and the tiny film seems try-able again....except....

...except I just looked over my incomplete notes for the gestures and I can't remember how some of them worked, or what some of them meant.

This drawing (above) for example. What does it mean? It fell out of my notes, and I have no idea what I was thinking when I drew it. It's something I used to see in high school. Sometimes it provoked laughter, once a fight. But why? What does it mean?


And what is this (above)?


I forget what the top finger-pinch (above) means...my guess is that it says, "You mean less than dust to me!"

The bottom drawing (above) is one of the oldest and best insults: you simply turn your back on the other person. They're not worthy of your front.

Once the back is turned (above) the insulter has the option of intensifying the insult with a butt shake...


...maybe followed up with a tooth flick.


Some insult gestures (above) are so strong that to use them is to make an enemy for life. I have no idea what the above gestures mean, but I suspect that a mother's virtue is being questioned here.


All these little finger gestures...what do they mean? They look pretty nasty.



Whatever it is, it can't be good.


This one (above) had me puzzled, but I figured it out while posting it. It's the first of two drawings (the second one must be missing) showing a man about to do a pushing away gesture, as if to say, "Your existence is an offense to me! Go away! Just GO AWAY!"

What makes this special is the extreme anticipation to the push (above). It's not just a simple prelude to a push, it's a statement of obliteration. The pusher is so disgusted by the other person that he chooses suicide if necessary to avoid having to look at such a fool for a moment more.

I wanted to end the film on a cheerful note, maybe with a quick little story demonstrating some of the most common romantic gestures. I haven't found all the doodles yet, but I remember how it started:

A boy is sitting with his friends when a beautiful girl walks by. He does a startle response (above), then pushes his friends aside, maybe upturning the table, and he runs ahead of her and introduces himself. The boy puts on a good show but, since she gets hit on 50 times a day, the girl gives him a bored look and keeps on walking.

The boy runs to catch up. After trying everything, he pulls out his big gun...the thing that never fails...his most irresistibly charming gesture. He symbolically plucks off the girl's cheek, retrieves it and kiss it...kisses every finger of her cheek (!?)...then blows it back to her.


The poor boy! The girl is unaffected. She just walks on. The boy, outraged and broken-hearted, shakes the kiss from his hand, does a "Heck with you!" gesture, and returns to his friends, who are doubled over laughing.

As the speaker says in this video (above), Italy is fast losing it's gestural heritage. What a pity! I read that it used to be most intense in Naples, which was a noisy city where everybody hated everybody. The gestures were a way to argue between balconies when the clatter from the streets made spoken insults unworkable.

This video (above) is completely off topic. I found it when I was searching for gesture videos on youTube. It's only a minute long. See what you think.

FIRST EVER BLACK HOLE CREATED ON EARTH

About a month ago New Scientist magazine ran a story which claimed that Chinese scientists had succeeded in creating a mini-black hole (above), or something which mimics black holes, in the laboratory. That's amazing! I don't remember seeing that in my local paper. Maybe it was buried in the obituary pages.

Evidently the hole they created isn't exactly the same kind we encounter in space (above). This one only absorbs microwaves, though the lab that created it claimed that they'll probably be able to make one that absorbs optical light by the end of the year. This would be a very, very significant event!

It's significant because the black hole absorbs the waves and emits the energy again in the form of heat, and heat powers engines. This means that black hole solar cells could run cars (above), and do it much more efficiently than solar cells can do now. No directional solar collectors would be necessary. The cars would simply absorb the ambient light around them. Maybe this would make them appear as black silhouettes to observers.

I forgot to say that this Chinese black hole was created without benefit of a super colider like the one at CERN (above). This was done on a tabletop device made of printed circuit boards arranged in rings around a cylinder. Two Indiana scientists figured out how such a machine would work in theory and the Chinese surprised everybody by actually building it.

Thanks to Milt Gray for telling me about this.

WIGS, HANDS AND PUPPETS

I thought I'd put up a couple of the wigs and hands (above) that I scored at Halloween time. This rubber giant's hand is a thing of beauty. The photo doesn't do it justice.

Expect a story about a giant soon. I've gotta give this baby a test run!

And here's (above) the new Moe wig! What do you think?

It's (above) really versatile. Tilt it forward a bit and you get the emo look.

No, wait a minute. Emos (above) comb their hair over to one side! Here I'm a bright and happy side-combed emo.

Here (above) I'm a sad, dimwitted one.

Roll the wig back a bit, and you get Spock from Star Trek!

SPOCK: "Klingons on the starboard bow, Captain!"

Roll the wig forward and I'm Bones, the Enterprise's tempramental doctor:

BONES: "I'm a DOCTOR Jim, and I'm not going to have my sickbay turned into an amusement park!"

Spock again (above):

SPOCK: "It's LIFE Jim, but not as we know it!"

Let me turn on the color (above), so you can see what my new Esmeralda puppet looks like in blue.



I know what you're thinking: "Where's her arms?"

Here's one (above)!

And here's another (above). She appears to be shocked at something.

Boy, I love Halloween!

THEORY CORNER FOR MEN: " THE GIRLS OF CARL'S JR."

I think Playboy already did a "Girls of McDonald's" spread. Bah! Let them have McDonald's! Everybody knows the real babes hang out at Carl's Junior!


I grant you, McDonald's (above) has the best fries.

But Carl's gets the best people (above). More artsy types hang out at Carl's than any other fast food chain, at least in my area.

Here's (above) one of Carl's artsy customers relaxing at home. Orange dress, orange throw pillows, and orange walls...that takes a certain boldness...

...a boldness no doubt inspired by the orange food at Carl's.

I admit that all those burgers can put on the pounds (above) if you're not careful.

Interestingly, some people manage to stay slim no matter how much they eat. I used to be one of them.

Here's (above) another slim customer. Holy Mackerel! This girl is perfectly dressed for the Royal Order of the Muskrat Ladies Auxiliary. Theory Corner women, take note!

Carl's does seem to get a lot of worldly women (above). The young innocents seem to prefer Denny's.

The restaurant also gets a certain number of people who are utensil-challenged.

Some women bring their evil boyfriends (above).

Some women (above) bring their cell phones, which is much worse. I've learned from eavesdropping on loud cell phone calls that lots of Carl's women complain to other women about their controlling mothers.

P.S. Thanks to John for the nifty title!

"LITTLE RED RIDING HOOD" WITH CHARACTER ARCS

Character arcs are overused today, and I blame that excess on all the how-to-write books that are on the shelves nowadays. Most of the books take a simple, boring premise and shamelessly try to pump it up by character arcs.

I don't know how the people who write these books sleep at night. They've ruined a whole generation of writers by convincing them that story is less important than character embellishments. They obscure the simple fact that writing is about story. The story can and should have character conflict (like "The Odd Couple")...it can even be about character arcs (like "Twelve Angry Men")...but there's gotta be a story, and it's gotta be a really good one. You have to watch out because obsessing over character arcs can distract you from the fact that your basic story sucks.

Well, I've said all that in previous posts. What I want to talk about here is how misapplied character arcs can subvert a story that already works. "Little Red Riding Hood," for example. The original story...which has no character arcs at all...is wonderful. It's evocative and magical, and manages to dig deep into the human psyche. Not only that, it's told with great economy. Would that story be improved by adding character arcs? Let's outline a rewrite and see....

Since we're rewriting for character arcs, it'll be necessary to firm up Riding Hood's personality at the outset, so the reader'll be able to understand how she evolves during the course of the story. For that, we'll need a sequence to establish her carelessness, and show how this worries her parents. Maybe we add a few farm animals and see how vexed they are when Riding Hood neglects to feed them.

Of course we want people to like Riding Hood in spite of her flaw so we'll need some incident to set that up, too. We can forget the economy that characterized the original...our story will take a while to get off the ground.

When her mother finally gets around to sending her to Grandma's house and orders her to not to talk to strangers, we'll need to see Riding Hood's disdain for what she thinks is her mother's paranoia. Remember that we want the reader to like Riding Hood, so that disdain will have to be carefully expressed. We'll see the worried look on the mother's face as Riding hood disappears into the forest. To tie up the father's role, maybe he joins the mother and puts a comforting arm around her shoulders.

Since the arc is so important we'll need Riding hood to mutter to herself in a disgruntled fashion while walking through the forest. Maybe we should give her a pet dog so she'll have someone to voice her thoughts to. Of course we'll need to establish their relationship. We'll also need some time to establish the dog's personality, and what it thinks of what Red is saying. And...oh, yes...we may need to get rid of the dog later so we should also take time to establish that it likes to chase squirrels, and is prone to get lost in the forest.

Aaaargh! All these arc helpers are going to need time to play out. That's okay, we can buy time by eliminating details that added texture to the original story, like the "What big eyes you have" litany at the end. Character arcs are voracious eaters of time. You end up cutting the guts out of a good story just to shoehorn all the arcs and extra characters in.


Well, that's all I have space for here. You can tell from what's here already that the arcs drastically slowed down the story, gave too much attention to minor characters, trivialized atmospheric elements, and drained the story of the deep psychological/archetypal resonances of the original.

I love the story of Little Red Riding Hood. Her walk to Grandma's house is the most famous walk in Western fiction. What a pity that it can be rendered so banal by modern storytelling technique.

Good writers know they're home free when what they've written is so primal that it lends itself to satire, as in the Tex Avery remake of Little Red Riding Hood shown above. Think about the woman on the ice flow in "Uncle Tom's Cabin," or the orphan who asks for more gruel in "Oliver Twist." These are tragic figures but you can't deny that they inspire humor. Can you say the same about the arc rewrite we just did?

Would the rewritten, formula version inspire countless puppet shows, as the Brothers Grimm version did?

Could you get a Betty Boop cartoon out of it?

Would it inspire funny drawings like the one (above)?

MORE FROM MY FAVORITE PORTRAIT STUDIO

Here's more from Retroatelier, my favorite portrait photography studio (link on the sidebar). They publicize their work using pictures of models in retro settings, then offer to do similar types of photos for paying customers. They're so well-known in the Ukraine that they occasionally pack up their props and do road tours.

Believe it or not, this (above) is a recent picture.

I could see a woman getting a nude portrait if it was done as well as this (above).

Men (above) photograph particularly well when they act in front of the camera.

Hollywood-style glamour photography!

A Marlena Dietrich pose above).

This (above) could have been taken by Man Ray.

A Symbolist picture (above)! I can't believe the length these guys will go to to get an effect.

This (above) is their most versatile model. She does sci-fi, Art Nouveau, gritty 30s realism, and 50s pin-up, all with equal conviction.

So far as I can tell, a good portrait (like the one above) requires at least two sittings. The first time a lot of experiments are made. It's important to do a lot of quick and dirty pictures to find out what the camera will accept from the subject.

Here the camera has decided to accept "mean." The subject might have been the nicest person in the world, but the camera decided she was mean, and that's how the picture was taken.

Very nice (above)!

What a great idea! This (above) is portrait photography disguised as journalism. The newspaper print is fake.

A portrait (above) that suggests good times had in France in the 1930s.

Above, an imaginative way to take the portrait of a man (above) who flatters himself as being analytical.

Man, these guys are great!