Excerpt from the magazine:

The little red book which contains hightlights from The thought of Mao Tse-tung is the most influential volume in the world today. It is also extremely dull and entirely unmemorable. To resolve this paradox, we, a handful of editors in authority who follow the capitalist road, thought useful to illustrate certain key passages in such a way that they are more likely to stick in the mind. The visual aid is Sharon Tate and, to give credit where credit, God knows, is due, she will soon be seen in the Twentieth Century-Fox motion picture, Valley of the Dolls.

The Thought Experiment is a blog run by Elizabeth Lamanna:

This animal is a thought experiment. I will try to keep it upbeat and interesting, but it may occasionally swing through bat country, go off broadway, or veer into vapidity as I attempt to disentangle what feels like the crushing simultaneity of where my choices have lead my life.

I realized about a month from turning thirty that I had spent the past year acting like I was going to be audited, as if, casting my memory back through the past ten years, I panicked. Maybe not without reason. Throughout this last decade, I’ve jumped a few ships, burned a few bridges, worded up, partied down, hung loose, and obeyed my thirst, and been just about rolled under by the waves almost as many times as I deserved. The final countdown of my twenties suddenly woke me up to the fact that somewhere along the way, I’d lost track of myself. (more)

About Elliot Landy:

Elliott Landy (born in 1942) is a photographer best known for his iconic photographs of rock musicians. A 1959 graduate of the Bronx High School of Science, ten years later he was the official photographer of the 1969 Woodstock Festival. His photographs have appeared on the covers of such magazines as Rolling Stone, LIFE, and The Saturday Evening Post. Landy’s portraits have also graced the covers of many of the best known albums of the era, including such classics as Bob Dylan’s Nashville Skyline, Van Morrison’s Moondance, and The Band’s second album, eponymously titled The Band. From 1967 to 1969, Landy travelled with and photographed Janis Joplin, Jimi Hendrix, and Jim Morrison. He has published several collections of his work. (wikipedia)

Check the same photo on his official website.

Previously on Skandalon: Peanuts.

Previously on Skandalon: Barry Blitt

Artist’s statement: “This work is about simulation. Creating a clone or a copy of the “real” on paper. It is not a fake, it takes the place of the “real” for a moment, whilst looking at the image. The aim is to create likenesses of icons, where in the image, the simulations of icons, threatens the difference between “true” and “false,” between “real” and “imaginary”. The “real” subject becomes not necessary. The photographic image or the icon is more important and more seductive. It doesn’t matter to the viewer if the portrayal is not the “real”—as long as it looks like him or her—it creates a temporary confusion. This is the confusion the work searches to create. We think we are looking at something real, but we’re not. They are false images of look-alikes of the real thing.” (Read more)

The Steel Helmet, Samuel Fuller, 1951, featuring Gene Evans. [screen capture]

The Mechanic, Michael Winner, 1972, starring Charles Bronson. [screen capture]

She reads, he writes.

Howard L. Bingham @ M+B Gallery: “Ali Spying on Foreman”, Zaire, #C37, 1974, cibachrome print.

About Sebastian Krüger: “Krüger considers himself a portrait painter. Although many of his early commission jobs were for cartoons and caricature type images, Krüger’s free time was dedicated to his greatest love, portrait painting. In 2005 Krüger made the decision to discontinue painting cartoon or caricature-like genre commissions. Nowadays Krüger mostly paints for himself or creates commissioned pieces for private collectors.” (read more).

“Feel-good nostalgia tells us that 1969 was the height of the hippie, warm-fuzzy era of peace and love, and that this week’s other 40th anniversary, of the Woodstock music festival, was its pinnacle: A moment where individualism, non-conformity and the creative impulse reigned, where repression was challenged and, in many ways, fell.

But that’s rose-coloured hindsight of a fractious time that unleashed demons as much as it seeded naïve idealism. The Cielo Dr. killings, and the murders of Leno and Rosemary LaBianca in Los Feliz a day later, were as much a product of those times. No one embodies this dark flowering more than the murderers’ puppetmaster, Charles Manson. And his stamp on the culture is arguably deeper and more lasting than Woodstock’s.” (The Star, “Charles Manson Was The Real Face of 1969” by Murray Whyte, August 8, 2009).

About Secchiaroli: “Tazio Secchiaroli (1925 - 24 July 1998) was an Italian photographer known as one of the original paparazzi. He founded the agency Roma Press Photos in 1955. Secchiaroli is thought to be the inspiration for the Paparazzo character in Fellini’s film La dolce vita.” (Wikipedia). Read NYT’s obituary about Secchiaroli. Visit his official website. Check the book on Amazon.

“Books, which as objects of desire have seemed to have scant place in Hollywood’s slick, visual sensibility, have a new role in the business of television. Reality stars, who as nonunion actors are unreliably compensated (mostly in perks), have begun to see books as nearly mandatory, if they’re to cash in on their celebrity. A wide range of TV personalities — Chelsea Handler, Kate Gosselin, Bethenny Frankel, Countess LuAnn de Lesseps, Kathy Griffin, Melissa Gilbert, Mary Tyler Moore and Tori Spelling — have all produced memoirs and advice manuals recently. Maybe book publishing and the TV business, both of which are endangered by the Internet juggernaut, are a match made in heaven. TV gives books visibility; books give TV solidity and gravitas.”

Photo by Kevin Van Aelst: “Kevin was born in Elmira, New York and did most of his growing up in central Pennsylvania. He recieved a B.A. in Psychology from Cornell University in 2002 and an M.F.A. from the University of Hartford in 2005. He currently lives and works in New Haven, Connecticut. He has taught photography classes at the University of Hartford Art School, Middlesex Community College, and currently is teaching at Quinnipiac University and ACES/Educational Center for the Arts High School Program. He is a recipient of a 2008 fellowship grant from the Connecticut Commission on Culture and Tourism. Photos of his can be seen weekly illustrating “The Medium” in the New York Times Magazine.” (Van Aelst’s biography).

You may already know some of his work: the apple sculpted like the world, the fingerprints series, the fractal egg, and much more.

Artist’s statement: “My color photographs consist of common artifacts and scenes from everyday life, which have been rearranged, assembled, and constructed into various forms, patterns, and illustrations. The images aim to examine the distance between the ‘big picture’ and the ‘little things’ in life—the banalities of our daily lives, and the sublime notions of identity and existance. While the depictions of information—such as an EKG, fingerprint, map or anatomical model—are unconventional, the truth and accuracy to the illustrations are just as valid as more traditional depictions. This work is about creating order where we expect to find randomness, and also hints that the minutiae all around us is capable of communicating much larger ideas.”