#8: “FUCK YOU, YOU FUCKING RETARDS!”
I just dug up these images I shot in 2006. Silvia Night epitomized all that was honest and pure about the excess and narcissism of the Icelandic boom years, culminating in her appearance on her country's behalf at the Eurovision Song Contest in Athens. I think of her a lot these days.
---
#7: FELL ASLEEP AND WOKE UP IN A ROBERT PALMER VIDEO.
#6: THE BEACH ON AUCTION IN SUPPORT OF THE SANTA AGUILA FOUNDATION.
On the 19th of May, The Santa Aguila Foundation (www.coastalcare.org) is organizing a fundraiser at the Hermes store in Beverly Hills. I am donating a print from my series, The Beach, to be auctioned off in support of the cause.
The foundation is spearheaded by Olaf and Eva Guerrand-Hermes, who have generously supported me in the past by acquiring a number of my prints.
The Beach was shot on a remote peninsula on the Westfjords of Iceland in October 2002. I brought a team of ten people out there on a borrowed coach that had been turned into a sleeper. We got there at 3 in the morning and drove the coach straight into a ditch. Being too tired to deal with it in the dark, we went to sleep.
The following morning it started snowing. We spent the day shooting on the beach, but because of the cold weather we could only shoot in short bursts before the girls turned purple. Fortunately there was an old geothermal pool down by the sea where we kept the girls warm between shots. By the time we finished, the problem of getting the coach out of the ditch remained.
A local farmer brought his tractor and pulled us out, but in the process the coach crashed into the tractor, severely damaging both vehicles. At that point it was quite late in the evening and the already treacherous mountain roads were iced over. The coach was equipped with tires that struggled on wet tarmac, let alone on the steep and icy mountain roads, so the hero farmer ended up pulling the coach over the mountain pass.
He took us to an old herring factory that moonlights as an inn, where we cooked loads of pasta and got drunk. After promising the farmer that I'd sort out the repair for his traumatized tractor, we headed back towards Reykjavík early the next morning in our severely banged up coach.
It took me a year to pay off the damages to the two vehicles, in installments, but the pictures turned out great.
---
#5: LENNY IS LIKE A RADIOHEAD ALBUM.
This is Björn, my Los Angeles hero and savior. He lives in Highland Park with his dog, Lenny. Björn says Lenny is like a Radiohead album. At first you don't like it and think it's an abomination, then you slowly get used to it and eventually it consumes you and fills you with an overpowering feeling of love. Below is a picture of the nasty looking Lenny (black) posing with his very own, absurdly cute french bulldog, Moog (white). You can guess who gets all the pussy. Oh, and Lenny actually attacks postal workers. Highly resentful of authority, I think the uniform sets him off. Not surprisingly, he and Björn get along swimmingly.
---
#4: In New Orleans everyone is nice.
Here are a few images from the last shoot I did with Nikita. We spent 3 weeks in New Orleans last fall, shooting the fall/winter collection for 2010. In New Orleans everyone is nice. Seriously. It's probably one of the most welcoming cities I've ever been to. You should go there. You'll love it. I'm not getting paid for writing this.
---
