{Apocatastasis}

George Georgiou: Hidden: Psychiatric Hospitals (1999 - 2002)

2012-01-30T23:50:00.007Z

George Georgiou

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Early treatment of mental disorders

2012-01-30T23:41:00.002Z

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Wilhelm von Gloeden (1856-1931)

2011-12-07T01:22:00.012Z

Von Gloeden - Homoerotic Photographs

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Mary Ann Cotton - Notorious Poisoner

2011-12-04T03:53:00.006Z

Mary Ann Cotton– She's dead and she's rotten!

She lies in her bed with her eyes wide open.

Sing, sing!

"Oh, what can I sing? Mary Ann Cotton is tied up with string."

Where, where?

"Up in the air – selling black puddings a penny a pair."

Mary Ann Cotton 1832 - 1873

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Anatomically correct marzipan

2011-09-12T10:39:00.006+01:00

Sculpted using marzipan by Austrian artist Helga Petrau-Heinzel.

Dame Barbara Cartland in marzipan.

“I saw a picture of Dame Barbara in an exhibition, a bizarre pink lady, and I just couldn’t stop myself.
I had to sculpt her and because she looked so artificially sugary, I used marzipan.
It seemed to prove that sweet material cannot only create cute things.
On the contrary - the bitter sweet side tempted me.”
- Helga Petrau-Heinzel

Artist's website

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Illustrated book - Fragonard Museum: The Ecorches

2011-08-31T00:51:00.008+01:00

The 18th Century anatomical ecorchés of Honoré Fragonard

If the Founding Fathers wanted to visit Body Worlds they could have. Or pretty darn close, at least - they just needed to visit one of the many European cabinets of anatomical curiosities, to see the work of anatomists like Honore Fragonard.

Fragonard's eighteenth-century ecorches were the clear precursors to Gunther von Hagens' "Body Worlds" exhibits: preserved, injected, partially dissected bodies in lifelike, dramatic poses, with ragged strips of muscle draped like primitive clothing over exposed vessels and nerves. The effect is eerie - like a Vesalius illustration sprung to (half-)life...
- Bioephemera, "If the Founding Fathers wanted to visit Body Worlds..."

Book review: Fortean Times
(click on image to enlarge)

For further information and images, visit Bioephemera.

(Photo: http://musee.vet-alfort.fr)

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Lie in a ditch and you will survive a nuclear holocaust

2011-08-23T20:19:00.005+01:00

PROTECT AND SURVIVE (1976)

Episode One: Nuclear Explosions Explained. Effects of atomic weapons.

Episode 2: The Warnings Attack, fall-out and all-clear warnings

Episode 3: What to do when the warning sounds.

Episode 4: Stay at Home. Techniques for sheltering in place.

Episode 5: Choosing a Fall-Out Room. Choosing a safe room.

Episode 6: Refuges. Building an “inner refuge”.

Episode 7: Materials To Use For Your Fall-out Room And Refuge. Radiation shielding materials.

Episode 8: Make Your Fall-out Room and Refuge Now. Preparing for an attack.

Episode 9: What To Put In Your Fall-out Room. Essential supplies.

Episode 10: Action After Warnings. Detailed “immediate action” drill.

Episode 11: Water and Food. Provisions for 14 days.

Episode 12: Sanitation. Makeshift toilet arrangements.

Episode 13: Fire Precautions. Expedient firefighting techniques.

Episode 14: The Importance Of Your Radio. Portable radio as a vital aid.

Episode 15: Life Under Fall-Out Conditions. Survival during an attack.

Episode 16: What To Do After An Attack. Post-attack actions.

Episode 17: Sanitation Care. Essential hygiene.

Episode 18: Water Consumption. Safeguarding and rationing water.

Episode 19: Food Consumption. Rationing food.

Episode 20: Casualties. Expedient casualty care and mortuary actions.

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Unethical Psychological & Medical Experiments

2011-08-14T21:07:00.026+01:00

David Reimer
1965 – 2004

In 1965, a baby boy was born in Canada named David Reimer. At eight months old, he was brought in for a standard procedure: circumcision. Unfortunately, during the process his penis was burned off. This was due to the physicians using an electrocautery needle instead of a standard scalpel. When the parents visited psychologist John Money, he suggested a simple solution to a very complicated problem: a sex change. His parents were distraught about the situation, but they eventually agreed to the procedure. They didn’t know that the doctor’s true intentions were to prove that nurture, not nature, determined gender identity. For his own selfish gain, he decided to use David as his own private case study.

David, now Brenda, had a constructed vagina and was given hormonal supplements. Dr. Money called the experiment a success, neglecting to report the negative effects of Brenda’s surgery. She acted very much like a stereotypical boy and had conflicting and confusing feelings about an array of topics. Worst of all, her parents did not inform her of the horrific accident as an infant. This caused a devastating tremor through the family. Brenda’s mother was suicidal, her father was alcoholic, and her brother was severely depressed.

Finally, Brenda’s parents gave her the news of her true gender when she was fourteen years old. Brenda decided to become David again, stopped taking estrogen, and had a penis reconstructed. Dr. Money reported no further results beyond insisting that the experiment had been a success, leaving out many details of David’s obvious struggle with gender identity. At the age of 38, David committed suicide.

Further reading: John Colapinto. As Nature Made Him: The Boy Who Was Raised As a Girl. Toronto: HarperCollins, 2000.
ISBN 0-00-200047-4

"The Pit of Despair"
1960

Their cruel experiments Harry Harlow conducted on monkeys. In 1960, exploring the question of exclusion of individuals and methods of protection against her, Harlow took away baby monkey from his mother and placed in a cage all alone, and chose those babies who have contact with his mother was the most robust. The monkey was kept in a cage a year, after which it was released.

Most specimens were found various mental disorders. The scientist concluded that: even a happy childhood is not a defense against depression. The results, to put it mildly, is not impressive, such a conclusion could be done without a cruel experiments on animals. However, the movement to protect the rights of animals began just after the publication of the results of this experiment.

Little Albert and the White Rat
1920

John Watson, father of behaviorism, was a psychologist who was apt to using orphans in his experiments. Watson wanted to test the idea of whether fear was innate or a conditioned response.

Little Albert, the nickname given to the nine month old infant that Watson chose from a hospital, was exposed to a white rabbit, a white rat, a monkey, masks with and without hair, cotton wool, burning newspaper, and a miscellanea of other things for two months without any sort of conditioning. Then experiment began by placing Albert on a mattress in the middle of a room. A white laboratory rat was placed near Albert and he was allowed to play with it. At this point, the child showed no fear of the rat.

Then Watson would make a loud sound behind Albert’s back by striking a suspended steel bar with a hammer when the baby touched the rat. In these occasions, Little Albert cried and showed fear as he heard the noise. After this was done several times, Albert became very distressed when the rat was displayed. Albert had associated the white rat with the loud noise and was producing the fearful or emotional response of crying.

Little Albert started to generalize his fear response to anything fluffy or white (or both). The most unfortunate part of this experiment is that Little Albert was not desensitized to his fear. He left the hospital before Watson could do so.

Landis’ Facial Expressions Experiment

In 1924, Carney Landis, a psychology graduate at the University of Minnesota developed an experiment to determine whether different emotions create facial expressions specific to that emotion. The aim of this experiment was to see if all people have a common expression when feeling disgust, shock, joy, and so on.

Most of the participants in the experiment were students. They were taken to a lab and their faces were painted with black lines, in order to study the movements of their facial muscles. They were then exposed to a variety of stimuli designed to create a strong reaction. As each person reacted, they were photographed by Landis. The subjects were made to smell ammonia, to look at pornography, and to put their hands into a bucket of frogs. But the controversy around this study was the final part of the test.

Participants were shown a live rat and given instructions to behead it. While all the participants were repelled by the idea, fully one third did it. The situation was made worse by the fact that most of the students had no idea how to perform this operation in a humane manner and the animals were forced to experience great suffering. For the one third who refused to perform the decapitation, Landis would pick up the knife and cut the animals head off for them.

The consequences of the study were actually more important for their evidence that people are willing to do almost anything when asked in a situation like this. The study did not prove that humans have a common set of unique facial expressions.

Monkey Drug Trials
1969

While animal experimentation can be incredibly helpful in understanding man, and developing life saving drugs, there have been experiments which go well beyond the realms of ethics. The monkey drug trials of 1969 were one such case. In this experiment, a large group of monkeys and rats were trained to inject themselves with an assortment of drugs, including morphine, alcohol, codeine, cocaine, and amphetamines. Once the animals were capable of self-injecting, they were left to their own devices with a large supply of each drug.

The animals were so disturbed (as one would expect) that some tried so hard to escape that they broke their arms in the process. The monkeys taking cocaine suffered convulsions and in some cases tore off their own fingers (possible as a consequence of hallucinations), one monkey taking amphetamines tore all of the fur from his arm and abdomen, and in the case of cocaine and morphine combined, death would occur within 2 weeks.

The point of the experiment was simply to understand the effects of addiction and drug use; a point which, I think, most rational and ethical people would know did not require such horrendous treatment of animals.

Milgram Study
1974

The notorious Milgrim Study is one of the most well known of psychology experiments. Stanley Milgram, a social psychologist at Yale University, wanted to test obedience to authority. He set up an experiment with “teachers” who were the actual participants, and a “learner,” who was an actor. Both the teacher and the learner were told that the study was about memory and learning.

Both the learner and the teacher received slips that they were told were given to them randomly, when in fact, both had been given slips that read “teacher.” The actor claimed to receive a “learner” slip, so the teacher was deceived. Both were separated into separate rooms and could only hear each other. The teacher read a pair of words, following by four possible answers to the question. If the learner was incorrect with his answer, the teacher was to administer a shock with voltage that increased with every wrong answer. If correct, there would be no shock, and the teacher would advance to the next question.

In reality, no one was being shocked. A tape recorder with pre-recorded screams was hooked up to play each time the teacher administered a shock. When the shocks got to a higher voltage, the actor/learner would bang on the wall and ask the teacher to stop. Eventually all screams and banging would stop and silence would ensue. This was the point when many of the teachers exhibited extreme distress and would ask to stop the experiment. Some questioned the experiment, but many were encouraged to go on and told they would not be responsible for any results.

If at any time the subject indicated his desire to halt the experiment, he was told by the experimenter, Please continue. The experiment requires that you continue. It is absolutely essential that you continue. You have no other choice, you must go on. If after all four orders the teacher still wished to stop the experiment, it was ended. Only 14 out of 40 teachers halted the experiment before administering a 450 volt shock, though every participant questioned the experiment, and no teacher firmly refused to stop the shocks before 300 volts.

In 1981, Tom Peters and Robert H. Waterman Jr. wrote that the Milgram Experiment and the later Stanford prison experiment were frightening in their implications about the danger lurking in human nature’s dark side.

The Stanford Prison Experiment

1971

This study was not necessarily unethical, but the results were disastrous, and its sheer infamy puts it on this list. Famed psychologist Philip Zimbardo led this experiment to examine that behavior of individuals when placed into roles of either prisoner or guard and the norms these individuals were expected to display.

Prisoners were put into a situation purposely meant to cause disorientation, degradation, and depersonalization. Guards were not given any specific directions or training on how to carry out their roles. Though at first, the students were unsure of how to carry out their roles, eventually they had no problem. The second day of the experiment invited a rebellion by the prisoners, which brought a severe response from the guards. Things only went downhill from there.

Guards implemented a privilege system meant to break solidarity between prisoners and create distrust between them. The guards became paranoid about the prisoners, believing they were out to get them. This caused the privilege system to be controlled in every aspect, even in the prisoners’ bodily functions. Prisoners began to experience emotional disturbances, depression, and learned helplessness. During this time, prisoners were visited by a prison chaplain. They identified themselves as numbers rather than their names, and when asked how they planned to leave the prison, prisoners were confused. They had completely assimilated into their roles.

Dr. Zimbardo ended the experiment after five days, when he realized just how real the prison had become to the subjects. Though the experiment lasted only a short time, the results are very telling. How quickly someone can abuse their control when put into the right circumstances. The scandal at Abu Ghraib that shocked the U.S. in 2004 is prime example of Zimbardo’s experiment findings.

Stanford Prison Experiment website

The Monster Study

1939

The Monster Study was a stuttering experiment on 22 orphan children in Davenport, Iowa, in 1939 conducted by Wendell Johnson at the University of Iowa. Johnson chose one of his graduate students, Mary Tudor, to conduct the experiment and he supervised her research. After placing the children in control and experimental groups, Tudor gave positive speech therapy to half of the children, praising the fluency of their speech, and negative speech therapy to the other half, belittling the children for every speech imperfection and telling them they were stutterers.

Many of the normal speaking orphan children who received negative therapy in the experiment suffered negative psychological effects and some retained speech problems during the course of their life. Dubbed “The Monster Study” by some of Johnson’s peers who were horrified that he would experiment on orphan children to prove a theory, the experiment was kept hidden for fear Johnson’s reputation would be tarnished in the wake of human experiments conducted by the Nazis during World War II. The University of Iowa publicly apologized for the Monster Study in 2001.

The Aversion Project

1970s and 1980s

Dr. Aubrey Levin

South Africa’s apartheid army forced white lesbian and gay soldiers to undergo ‘sex-change’ operations in the 1970′s and the 1980′s, and submitted many to chemical castration, electric shock, and other unethical medical experiments. Although the exact number is not known, former apartheid army surgeons estimate that as many as 900 forced ‘sexual reassignment’ operations may have been performed between 1971 and 1989 at military hospitals, as part of a top-secret program to root out homosexuality from the service.

Army psychiatrists aided by chaplains aggressively ferreted out suspected homosexuals from the armed forces, sending them discretely to military psychiatric units, chiefly ward 22 of 1 Military Hospital at Voortrekkerhoogte, near Pretoria. Those who could not be ‘cured’ with drugs, aversion shock therapy, hormone treatment, and other radical ‘psychiatric’ means were chemically castrated or given sex-change operations.

Although several cases of lesbian soldiers abused have been documented so far—including one botched sex-change operation—most of the victims appear to have been young, 16 to 24-year-old white males drafted into the apartheid army.

Dr. Aubrey Levin (the head of the study) is now Clinical Professor in the Department of Psychiatry (Forensic Division) at the University of Calgary’s Medical School. He is also in private practice, as a member in good standing of the College of Physicians and Surgeons of Alberta.

Learned Helplessness

1965

In 1965, psychologists Mark Seligman and Steve Maier conducted an experiment in which three groups of dogs were placed in harnesses. Dogs from group one were released after a certain amount of time, with no harm done. Dogs from group two were paired up and leashed together, and one from each pair was given electrical shocks that could be ended by pressing a lever. Dogs from group three were also paired up and leashed together, one receiving shocks, but the shocks didn’t end when the lever was pressed. Shocks came randomly and seemed inevitable, which caused “learned helplessness,” the dogs assuming that nothing could be done about the shocks. The dogs in group three ended up displaying symptoms of clinical depression.

Later, group three dogs were placed in a box with by themselves. They were again shocked, but they could easily end the shocks by jumping out of the box. These dogs simply “gave up,” again displaying learned helplessness.

The image above is a healthy pet dog in a science lab, not an animal used in experimentation.

Project MKULTRA

Project MKULTRA, or MK-ULTRA, was the code name for a CIA mind-control research program, run by the Office of Scientific Intelligence, that began in the early 1950s and continued at least through the late 1960s. There is much published evidence that the project involved the surreptitious use of many types of drugs, as well as other methodologies, to manipulate individual mental states and to alter brain function.

Experiments included administering LSD to CIA employees, military personnel, doctors, other government agents, prostitutes, mentally ill patients, and members of the general public in order to study their reactions. LSD and other drugs were usually administered without the subject’s knowledge and informed consent, a violation of the Nuremberg Code that the U.S. agreed to follow after WWII.

Efforts to “recruit” subjects were often illegal, even discounting the fact that drugs were being administered (though actual use of LSD, for example, was legal in the United States until October 6, 1966). In Operation Midnight Climax, the CIA set up several brothels to obtain a selection of men who would be too embarrassed to talk about the events. The men were dosed with LSD, and the brothels were equipped with one-way mirrors and the “sessions” were filmed for later viewing and study.

In 1973, CIA Director Richard Helms ordered all MKULTRA files destroyed. Pursuant to this order, most CIA documents regarding the project were destroyed, making a full investigation of MKULTRA virtually impossible.

North Korean Experimentation

There have been many reports of North Korean human experimentation. These reports show human rights abuses similar to those of Nazi and Japanese human experimentation in World War II. These allegations of human rights abuses are denied by the North Korean government, who claim that all prisoners in North Korea are humanely treated.

One former North Korean woman prisoner tells how 50 healthy women prisoners were selected and given poisoned cabbage leaves, which all the women had to eat despite cries of distress from those who had already eaten. All 50 were dead after 20 minutes of vomiting blood and anal bleeding. Refusing to eat would have meant reprisals against them and their families.

Kwon Hyok, a former prison Head of Security at Camp 22, described laboratories equipped respectively for poison gas, suffocation gas and blood experiments, in which 3 or 4 people, normally a family, are the experimental subjects. After undergoing medical checks, the chambers are sealed and poison is injected through a tube, while “scientists” observe from above through glass. Kwon Hyok claims to have watched one family of 2 parents, a son and a daughter die from suffocating gas, with the parents trying to save the children using mouth-to-mouth resuscitation for as long as they had the strength.

Poison laboratory of the Soviets

The Poison laboratory of the Soviet secret services, also known as Laboratory 1, Laboratory 12 and “The Chamber”, was a covert poison research and development facility of the Soviet secret police agencies. The Soviets tested a number of deadly poisons on prisoners from the Gulag (“enemies of the people”), including mustard gas, ricin, digitoxin and many others. The goal of the experiments was to find a tasteless, odorless chemical that could not be detected post mortem. Candidate poisons were given to the victims, with a meal or drink, as “medication”.

Finally, a preparation with the desired properties called C-2 was developed. According to witness testimonies, the victim changed physically, became shorter, weakened quickly, became calm and silent and died within fifteen minutes. Mairanovsky brought to the laboratory people of varied physical condition and ages in order to have a more complete picture about the action of each poison.

In addition to human experimentation, Mairanovsky personally executed people with poisons, under the supervision of Pavel Sudoplatov.

The Tuskegee Syphilis Study

The Tuskegee Study of Untreated Syphilis in the Negro Male was a clinical study, conducted between 1932 and 1972 in Tuskegee, Alabama, in which 399 (plus 201 control group without syphilis) poor — and mostly illiterate — African American sharecroppers were denied treatment for Syphilis.

This study became notorious because it was conducted without due care to its subjects, and led to major changes in how patients are protected in clinical studies. Individuals enrolled in the Tuskegee Syphilis Study did not give informed consent and were not informed of their diagnosis; instead they were told they had “bad blood” and could receive free medical treatment, rides to the clinic, meals and burial insurance in case of death in return for participating. In 1932, when the study started, standard treatments for syphilis were toxic, dangerous, and of questionable effectiveness. Part of the original goal of the study was to determine if patients were better off not being treated with these toxic remedies. For many participants, treatment was intentionally denied. Many patients were lied to and given placebo treatments—in order to observe the fatal progression of the disease.

By the end of the study, only 74 of the test subjects were still alive. Twenty-eight of the men had died directly of syphilis, 100 were dead of related complications, 40 of their wives had been infected, and 19 of their children had been born with congenital syphilis.

Unit 731

Unit 731 was a covert biological and chemical warfare research and development unit of the Imperial Japanese Army that undertook lethal human experimentation during the Second Sino-Japanese War (1937–1945) and World War II. It was responsible for some of the most notorious war crimes carried out by Japanese personnel.

Some of the numerous atrocities committed by the commander Shiro Ishii and others under his command in Unit 731 include: vivisection of living people (including pregnant women who were impregnated by the doctors), prisoners had limbs amputated and reattached to other parts of their body, some prisoners had parts of their bodies frozen and thawed to study the resulting untreated gangrene. Humans were also used as living test cases for grenades and flame throwers. Prisoners were injected with strains of diseases, disguised as vaccinations, to study their effects. To study the effects of untreated venereal diseases, male and female prisoners were deliberately infected with syphilis and gonorrhea via rape, then studied. A complete list of these horrors can be found here.

Having been granted immunity by the American Occupation Authorities at the end of the war, Ishii never spent any time in jail for his crimes and died at the age of 67 of throat cancer.

Nazi Experiments

Nazi human experimentation was medical experimentation on large numbers of people by the German Nazi regime in its concentration camps during World War II. At Auschwitz, under the direction of Dr. Eduard Wirths, selected inmates were subjected to various experiments which were supposedly designed to help German military personnel in combat situations, to aid in the recovery of military personnel that had been injured, and to advance the racial ideology backed by the Third Reich.

Experiments on twin children in concentration camps were created to show the similarities and differences in the genetics and eugenics of twins, as well as to see if the human body can be unnaturally manipulated. The central leader of the experiments was Dr. Josef Mengele, who performed experiments on over 1,500 sets of imprisoned twins, of which fewer than 200 individuals survived the studies. Dr. Mengele organized the testing of genetics in twins. The twins were arranged by age and sex and kept in barracks in between the test, which ranged from the injection of different chemicals into the eyes of the twins to see if it would change their colors to literally sewing the twins together in hopes of creating conjoined twins.

In 1942 the Luftwaffe conducted experiments to learn how to treat hypothermia. One study forced subjects to endure a tank of ice water for up to three hours (see image above). Another study placed prisoners naked in the open for several hours with temperatures below freezing. The experimenters assessed different ways of rewarming survivors.

From about July 1942 to about September 1943, experiments to investigate the effectiveness of sulfonamide, a synthetic antimicrobial agent, were conducted at Ravensbrück. Wounds inflicted on the subjects were infected with bacteria such as Streptococcus, gas gangrene, and tetanus. Circulation of blood was interrupted by tying off blood vessels at both ends of the wound to create a condition similar to that of a battlefield wound. Infection was aggravated by forcing wood shavings and ground glass into the wounds. The infection was treated with sulfonamide and other drugs to determine their effectiveness.

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Vintage female nudes

2011-07-31T21:52:00.018+01:00

Photographer: Unknown

Photographer: Jean Agelou (1900)

Photographer: Unknown

Photographer: Edwin Bower Hesser

Mrs. Eskenasy, by Madame d’Ora (circa.1924)

Photographer: Unknown

Nude with Hat and Bowl of Artificial Fruits, Posed amongst Undulating Stage Props

Frantisek Drtikol

1920’s nude - Albert Arthur Allen

Photographer: Vikova (1921)

L'escrimeuse - Franz Loewy

Photographer: Horst P Horst (1939)

Caprice Vennois by William Mortensen (circa 1930)

Photographer: Frantisek Drtikol

Photographer: Dora Maar

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Yasumasa Morimura - self portraits

2011-07-31T18:57:00.009+01:00

Widely known as the artist who transforms himself into the Mona Lisa and movie actresses, Yasumasa Morimura has won international acclaim for his unique and avant-garde expression of 'beauty'. Since 1985, his focus has been his 'self-portrait series', consisting of unique reconstructions of art masterpieces in which the subject's face is substituted with that of Morimura himself. Through careful study and analysis of the themes, artists, and historical background of these works, Morimura searches out their raison d'etre and transforms them according to his own interpretations. His ability to deconstruct, subvert and simultaneously create an homage is what enables his work to continually defy categorization.

Reprinted from Luhring Augustine press release, 2001.

Self Portrait after Marilyn Monroe

Self Portrait after Liza Minelli 1

Self Portrait after Greta Garbo 1

Self Portrait after Greta Garbo 2

Self Portrait after Ingrid Bergman

Self Portrait after Audrey Hepburn

Self Portrait after Brigitte Bardot 1

Morimura at Artnet

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Ghost towns

2011-07-23T01:39:00.018+01:00

KOLMANSKOP (Namiibia):

buried in sand

Kolmanskop is a ghost town in southern Namibia, a few kilometres inland from the port of Lüderitz. In 1908, Luederitz was plunged into diamond fever and people rushed into the Namib desert hoping to make an easy fortune. Within two years, a town, complete with a casino, school, hospital and exclusive residential buildings, was established in the barren sandy desert. But shortly after the drop in diamond sales after the First World War, the beginning of the end started. During the 1950's the town was deserted and the dunes began to reclaim what was always theirs.

Soon the metal screens collapsed and the pretty gardens and tidy streets were buried under the sand. Doors and windows creaked on their hinges, cracked window panes stared sightlessly across the desert. A new ghost town had been born.

A couple of old buildings are still standing and some interiors like the theatre is still in very good condition, but the rest are crumbling ruins demolished from grandeur to ghost houses.

Prypiat (Ukraine):
Chernobyl worker's home

Prypiat is an abandoned city in the "zone of alienation" in northern Ukraine. It was home to the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant workers, abandoned in 1986 following the Chernobyl disaster. Its population had been around 50,000 prior to the accident.

Until recently, the site was practically a museum, documenting the late Soviet era. Apartment buildings (four of which were recent constructions not yet occupied), swimming pools, hospitals and other buildings were all abandoned, and everything inside the buildings was left behind, including records, papers, TVs, children's toys, furniture, valuables, and clothing, etc. that any normal family would have with them.

Residents were only allowed to take away a suitcase full of documents, books and clothes that were not contaminated. However, many of the apartment buildings were almost completely looted some time around the beginning of the 21st century.[citation needed] Nothing of value was left behind; even toilet seats were taken away. Some buildings have remained untouched. Many of the building interiors have been vandalized and ransacked over the years. Because the buildings are not maintained, the roofs leak, and in the spring the rooms are flooded with water. It is not unusual to find trees growing on roofs and even inside buildings. This hastens deterioration, and due to this, a 4-story school partially collapsed in July of 2005.

{More images here}

SAN ZHI (Taiwan):
a futuristic resort

In the North of Taiwan, this futuristic pod village was initially built as a luxury vacation retreat for the rich. However, after numerous fatal accidents during construction, production was halted. A combination of lack of money and lack of willingness meant that work was stopped permanently, and the alien like structures remain as if in remembrance of those lost. Indeed, rumors in the surrounding area suggest that the City is now haunted by the ghosts of those who died.

After this the whole thing received the cover-up treatment. And the Government, who commissioned the site in the first place was keen to distance itself from the bizarre happenings. Thanks to this, there are no named architects. The project may never be restarted thanks to the growing legend, and there would be no value in re-developing the area for other purpose. Maybe simply because destroying homes of lonely spirits is a bad thing to do. San Zhi can also be seen from an aeriel view here.

CRACO (Italy):
a fascinating medieval town

Craco is located in the Region of Basilicata and the Province of Matera. About 25 miles inland from the Gulf of Taranto at the instep of the “boot” of Italy. This medieval town is typical of those in the area, built up with long undulating hills all around that allow for the farming of wheat and other crops. Craco can be dated back to 1060 when the land was in the ownership of Archbishop Arnaldo, Bishop of Tricarico. This long-standing relationshop with the Church had much influence over the inhabitants throughout the ages.

In 1891, the population of Craco stood at well over 2,000 people. Though there had been many problems, with poor agricultural conditions creating desperate times. Between 1892 and 1922 over 1,300 people moved from the town to North America. Poor farming was added to by earthquakes, landslides, and War - all of which contributed to this mass migration. Between 1959 and 1972 Craco was plagued by these landslides and quakes. In 1963 the remaining 1,800 inhabitants were transferred to a nearby valley called Craco Peschiera, and the original Craco remains in a state of crumbling decay to this day.

ORADOUR-SUR-GLANE (France):
the horror of WWII

The small village of Oradour-sur-Glane, France, is the setting of unspeakable horror. During World War II, 642 residents were massacred by German soldiers as punishment for the French Resistance. The Germans had initially intended to target nearby Oradour-sur-Vayres and mistakenly invaded Oradour-sur-Glane on June 10th 1944.

According to a survivor’s account, the men were herded into barns where they were shot in the legs so they would die more slowly. The women and children, who had been held in a church, all perished when their attempt to escape was met by machine-gun fire. The village was razed by the Germans afterward. Its ruins still stand today as a memorial to the dead and a reminder of the events that took place.

GUNKANJIMA (Japan):
the forbidden island

This island is one among 505 uninhabited islands in the Nagasaki Prefecture of Japan about 15 kilometers from Nagasaki itself. It is also known as "Gunkan-jima" or Battleship Island thanks to its high sea walls. It began in 1890 when a company called Mitsubishi bought the island and began a project to retrieve coal from the bottom of the sea. This attracted much attention, and in 1916 they were forced to build Japan’s first large concrete building on the island. A block of apartments that would both accommodate the seas of workers and protect them from hurricanes.

In 1959, population had swelled, and boasted a density of 835 people per hectare for the whole island (1,391 per hectare for the residential district) - one of the highest population densities ever recorded worldwide. As petroleum replaced coal in Japan in the 1960’s, coal mines began shutting down all over the country, and Hashima’s mines were no exception. In 1974 Mitsubishi officially announced the closing of the mine, and today it is empty and bare, with travel currently prohibited. The island was the location for the 2003 film ‘Battle Royale II’ and inspired the final level of popular Asian videogame "Killer7".

ADYKHAN (Russia):
memories of the Soviet Union

Kadykchan was one of many small Russian cities that fell into ruin when the Soviet Union collapsed. Residents were forced to move to gain access to services like running water, schools and medical care. The state moved them out over a period of two weeks, and they were taken to other towns and provided with new housing. Once a tin mining town of 12,000 people, the city is now desolate. In their hurry to leave, residents left their belongings behind in their homes, so you can now find aging toys, books, clothing and other objects throughout the empty city.

KOWLOON WALLED CITY (China):
a lawless city

The Kowloon Walled City was located just outside Hong Kong, China during British rule. A former watchpost to protect the area against pirates, it was occupied by Japan during World War II and subsequently taken over by squatters after Japan’s surrender. Neither Britain nor China wanted responsibility for it, so it became its own lawless city.

Its population flourished for decades, with residents building labyrinthine corridors above the street level, which was clogged with trash. The buildings grew so tall that sunlight couldn’t reach the bottom levels and the entire city had to be illuminated with fluorescent lights.

It was a place where brothels, casinos, opium dens, cocaine parlors, food courts serving dog meat and secret factories ran unmolested by authorities. It was finally torn down in 1993 after a mutual decision was made by British and Chinese authorities, who had finally grown wary of the unsanitary, anarchic city and its out-of-control population.

FAMAGUSTA (Cyprus):
once a top tourist destination, now a ghost town

Varosha is a settlement in the unrecognised Republic of Northern Cyprus. Prior to the 1974 Turkish invasion of Cyprus, it was the modern tourist area of the city of Famagusta. For the last three decades, it has been left as a ghost town. In the 1970s, the city was the number one tourist destination in Cyprus. To cater to the increasing number of tourists, many new high-rise buildings and hotels were constructed.

When the Turkish Army gained control of the area during the war, they fenced it off and have since refused admittance to anyone except Turkish military and United Nations personnel. The Annan Plan had provided for the return of Varosha to Greek Cypriot control, but this never happened, as the plan was rejected by Greek Cypriot voters. As no repairs have been carried out for 34 years, all of the buildings are slowly falling apart. Nature is reclaiming the area, as metal corrodes, windows break, and plants work their roots into the walls and pavements. Sea turtles have been seen nesting on the deserted beaches.

By 2010, the Turkish Cypriot administration of the de-facto Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus plan to reopen Varosha to tourism and the city will be populated as one of the most influential cities in the north of the island.

AGDAM (Azerbaijan):
once a 150,000 city of people, now lost
,
The eerie city of Agdam, Azerbaijan was once a thriving city of 150,000 people. It was lost in 1993 during the Nagorno Karabakh war; though the city was never the setting of combat, it fell victim to vandalism while occupied by Armenians. The buildings are gutted and empty, with only the graffiti-covered mosque remaining intact. Agdam residents have moved to other areas of Azerbaijan, as well as into Iran.

Source: 0ddee.com

* * *

Ray Caesar - digital artist

2011-07-18T02:30:00.006+01:00

Day Break

Side Saddle

Peggie's Dance

Precious

Sweet Victory

Atlas of Anatomy

Wallflower Study

Pecker

Returns of the Day

Silent Partner

Second Sight

Fly Trap

Artist's website

* * *

Yuka Yamaguchi

2011-07-15T18:02:00.006+01:00

Souzou

Bird Eat Bird

All I Can See

Chicken Fight

Tough Skin, Juicy Heart

Bone To Flesh

Soul Pumping

There You Are!

Friendship

Artist's Website

* * *

Hitler invented the sex doll - the Borghild Project

2011-07-12T03:28:00.009+01:00

“The Borghild-project – a discreet matter of the Third Reich”

by Norbert Lenz

The world’s first sex doll – or "gynoid" – was built in 1941 by a team of craftsmen from Germany's Hygiene Museum in Dresden. The project was supervised by the famous preparator and technician Franz Tschakert. The ”Father of the Woman of Glass”, which happened to be the sensation in 1930’s Second International Hygiene Exhibit, used his skills and experience to create a kind of doll the world had never seen before.

Franz Tschakert and his "Woman of Glass" (1936)

The ”field-hygienic project” was an initiative of Reichsführer SS Heinrich Himmler, who regarded the doll as an ” counterbalance” (or regulating effect) for the sexual drive of his stormtropers. In one his letters, dated 20.11.1940 he mentions the ”unnessessary losses”, the Wehrmacht had suffered in France inflicted by street prostitutes.

”The greatest danger in Paris are the widespread and uncontrolled whores, picking by clients in bars, dancehalls and other places . It is our duty to prevent soldiers from risking their health, just for the sake of a quick adventure.”

The project – called Burghild in the first place – was considered ”Geheime Reichssache” , which was ”more secret than top secret” at the time. Himmler put his commander-in-chief SS-Dr. Joachim Mrurgowsky in charge, the highest ranking officer of Berlins notorious SS-institute.

All members of the team – also Tschakert – were bound to secrecy.

In July 1941, when Hitler’s army attacked russia, an unknown but ambitious Danish SS-Doctor called Olen Hannussen took over from Mrurgowsky. Perhaps he was the one who changed Burghild to Borghild, which is nothing more than the Danish equivalent.

Hannussen pushed everybody forward to make the project a success. The ”galvonoplastical dolls” – manufactured in a bronzemold – were meant to follow the Stormtroopers in ” desinfections-trailers” into the enemy`s land, in order to stop them visiting ”infection herds” - linke front-brothels and ”loose women”. At least, this was Himmler ‘s plan. A psychiatrist Dr. Rudolf Chargeheimer , befriended with Hannussen and also involved in the project, wrote him a letter to clearify the difficulties.

”Sure thing, purpose and goal of the dolls is to relieve our soldiers. They have to fight and not be on the browl or mingle with ”foreign womenfolk”. However: no real men will prefer a doll to a real woman, until our technicians meet the following quality standards-

1. The synthetic flesh has to feel the same like real flesh

2. The doll’ s body should be as agile and moveable as the real body

3. The doll’s organ should feel absolutely realistic.”

Between June 1940 – 1941 IG Farben had already developed a number of ”skin-friendly polymers” for the SS. Special characteristics : high tensile strength and elasticity. The cast of a suitable model proved to be more difficult.

Borghild was meant to reflect the beauty-ideal of the Nazis , i. e. white skin, fair hair and blue eyes. Although the team considered a doll with brown hair , the SS- Hygiene-Institute insisted on manufacturing a ”nordish doll”. Tschakert hoped to plastercast from a living model and a number of famous female athletes were invited to come to his studios, among them Wilhelmina von Bremen and Annette Walter.

In the process Tschakert realized it was the wrong way. In a letter to Mrurgowsky he came to the conclusion: ”Sometimes the legs are too short and look deformed, or the lady has a hollow back and arms like a wrestler. The overall appearance is always dreadful and I fear there is no other way than to combine.” While Mrurgowsky still favoured a ”whole imprint” of NS- diva Kristina Söderbaum, the Borghild-designer decided to build the doll’s mold in a ”modular way”.

Kristina Söderbaum

In Tschakerts view the doll should be nothing more than a” female bestform”, a ”perfect automaton of lust”, that would combine ”the best of all possible bodies”. The team agreed on a cheeky and naughty face , a look-a-like of Käthe von Nagy, but the actress politely declined to lend her face to Tschakert’s doll.

Käthe von Nagy

After Mrurgowsky’ s exit , Dr. Hannussen rejected the idea to cast a face from a living person. He believed in an ”artifial face of lust”, which would be more attractive to soldiers.

In his logbook he wrote:

”The doll has only one purpose and she should never become a substitute for the honourable mother at home... When the soldier makes love to Borghild, it has nothing to do with love. Therefore the face of our anthropomorphic sexmachine should be exactly how Weininger described the common wanton’s face.”

Today Arthur Rink, born 1919, a master of art and student of Hitler’s favourite sculptor Arno Breker, is the only living eye-witness of the most discreetly kept project of the Third Reich.

After a short practical training at the renowned "Käthe Kruse” doll plant, he worked since 1937 in Tschakerts studio at the German Hygiene-Museum in Dresden. He joined the Borghild-team as early as 1940: There was on sculptor (rink), a varnisher, a specialist for synthetic materials (Tschakert), a hair-dresser , a lathe operator and - in the beginning- a mechanic from ”Würtemberg’s Metallfabrik” in Friedrichshafen. The first construction-document showed that Tschakert had planned to use” a simple aluminium-skelleton”. But soon he changed his mind and decided to use Elastolin. The synthetic flesh was another problem. Rink: ” The material was not easy to find. Mr. Tschakert, an expert on plastics, had tried several materials based on rubber or butyl-rubber: All came from IG Farben or from the Rheinischen Gummi- und Celluloid Fabrik. One material was called Ipolex, it was extremly tearproof, but it developed yellow spots when cleaned with certain detergents.” At this stage Rink gave the doll‘ s torso the finishing touch, working with plaster and a mixture of ”Schwarzmehl (?) and glue” Under Hannussens strict directions ”ten wanton-faces” (Rink) were modelled, and used by Dr. Chargeheimer in psychological tests. Chargeheimer and Hannussen were convinced, Borghild’s success would depend in a major way on her ”facial expression”. Contrary to common believe , that men get only aroused through female sexual characteristics they thought it all would ”depend on the right face”. Rinks plasters were used to produce some model-heads in a showroom-factory in Königsberg. Varnished and hair-dressed they looked a bit like wigholders.

Purpose of this costly exercise was to find out what type of woman the soldiers would really fancy. Or like Chargeheimer wrote to Hannussen – ”the idea of beauty harboured by the SS might not be shared by the majority of our soldiers.” He even considered ”the vulgar could appeal to most ordinary men”. The results of Dr. Chargeheimers tests at the barracks of Soldatenheim St. Helier are not known. Fact is, that at this time, Rink and Tschakert had already finished a complete model of the doll. Arthur Rink made a solemn declaration about what happened next.

”Three types of dolls were planned : Typ A :168, Typ B : 176, Typ C : 182 cm.

Typ B would be the first to go into serial production. The members of the project were divided about Borghild’s breasts. The SS favoured them round and full, Dr. Hannussen insisted on “a rose hip form, that would grip well” and he won the dispute. The first model of Borghild was finsihed in september 1941. She was exactely the “nordish type”.

The idea of our hairdresser to give the doll a “Schneckenfrisur”(earphones of hair) was rejected by Hannussen. He wanted her to have “a boyish hair-do” to underline that Borghild was “part of the fighting forces”– a field-whore and not an honourable Mother.

Borghild’s presentation in Berlin was a great success. Himmler was there and Dr. Chargeheimer. While the gentlemen examined her artificial orfices , Franz Tschakert was very nervous, but Himmler was so enthusiast that he ordered 50 Borghilds on the spot. It was considered to move to a special production facility , because Tschakert’s studio was too small to cope with the production of 50 dolls. In the face of more and more unpleasant developments in the east Himmler dropped his plans one week later and cut instead our budget.

In the beginning of 1942, some weeks after Stalingrad, the whole project was put on hold. All construction-documents had to be returned to the SS-Hygiene-Institute. The bronze-mold for Type B was never finished. I have no clue of whereabouts of the doll, but I presume, that she - like all my plasters and studies - was send to Berlin. If she was kept in Tschakerts studio in Dresden, it is most likely that she was destroyed in Februray 1945, when allied bombers destroyed the city.”

Fact is: the bombs devastated the Hygiene-Museum . Two models of the woman of glass – Taschkert masterpiece were destroyed.

Photo subtitles:

Arthur Rink was kind enough to contribute the only photos left from the Borghild-doll.

“They are small contact-sheets: Facial study no2. Dominant and Body Total, sideways. I found both photos in the bin of the museum‘s laboratory. I have no other pictures, because it was forbidden to take photos.”

Body Total,sideways shows the first Borghild-doll as presented in 1941 to Himmler at the SS-Hygiene-Institute in Berlin. The influence of Rinks teacher Arno Breker is evident. Breker‘s work is a hypertrophy of the natural bodys expression. The doll is aesthetical refined and reduced to a max of sexual appeal. According to Rink the torso was meant to stay “without artificial hair”. It is possible that the reason for that, was a simple consideration of the hygienic risks .

About the author:

Norbert Lenz, born 1966 in Hamburg, is a freelance-journalist contributing regulary to magazines like Stern, Max and Focus.

The translation was provided by his wife Susanne Lenz.

* * *

Ryohei Hase

2011-07-12T02:48:00.006+01:00

Non Title

Non Title 2

Non Title 3

Non Title 4

Mary Musth

Child's Mind

Can Not Prevent It

Melancholy

Artist's website

* * *

Marc Almond & Jim Foetus - "Ghost Rider"

2011-07-09T06:35:00.004+01:00

Wishing a Very Happy Birthday to {Apocatastasis} favourite, Marc Almond!

* * *

Inside a New Orleans House of Ill Repute

2011-07-09T06:20:00.006+01:00

Images from Storyville, New Orleans: Being an Authentic, Illustrated Account of the Notorious Red Light District.

* * *

Hirotoshi Itoh's stone sculptures

2011-07-02T00:46:00.005+01:00

Stone sculptures

Let's Wrap the Atomic Bomb

Profile

Shell

Laughing Stone 10

Morning Plate

Before Liberation

Good Direction

Stuffed Stone

Stone Bag

Coin

Artist's website

* * *

Vladimir Clavijo-Telepnev

2011-06-10T15:03:00.009+01:00

Alice In Wonderland

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Cards

* * *

Sensuality

* * *

Children

* * *

Artist's website

* * *

Louise Bourgeois (25 December 1911 – 31 May 2010)

2011-05-30T04:16:00.019+01:00

Femme Maison, 1946–7

Femme Couteau, 2002

Fragile Goddess, 2002

Cell XIV (Portrait), 2000

In and Out, 1995

Arch of Hysteria,1993

St Sebastienne, 1992

Three Horizontals, 1998

Seven in Bed, 2001

Spider, 1996
Installation

The artist's fascination with the figure of the spider – endlessly fertile mother and sinister predator – made itself felt in numerous works. This is Maman (1999), an enormous sculpture that took up residence on the banks of the Thames in 2007 .

Fugue, 2003
Screenprint.

Je T'Aime (detail), 2005

Spiral Woman, 2003.

Blooming Janus, 1968

Eyes, 2001

Untitled (I have been to hell and back), 1996

* * *

The following was written by Germaine Greer for the Guardian newspaper. It appeared in the Guardian on 6 June 2010, the week Ms Bourgouis passed away.

Louise Bourgeois's greatest creation was the contradictory story of her life

^'An artist's words are always to be taken cautiously." So said Louise Bourgeois, an undeniably great artist, who died last Monday at the age of 98. The people penning her eulogies had no time, and their editors little use for caution. The familiar tropes were trotted out, one after another, words that Bourgeois had rehearsed dozens of times. When asked about the formative influences on her work, Bourgeois would never name any other artist. Instead she referred to her invalid mother, her faithless father, and his English mistress. In this narrative she was a lifelong girl-child. Of her husband, Robert Goldwater, and the curious circumstances of the adoption of a first son Michel after only a few months of marriage, and the bearing of two more, Alain and Jean-Louis, she had little to say. A gullible world is only too ready to believe that her work is "highly influenced by painful childhood experiences" and that the "maman" she has been portraying since the early 1990s as a spider is her actual mother, not just any misremembered mother, and not herself. "Her sculpture was molded by trauma" ran last Monday's headline in the Washington Post. Among the many statements of Bourgeois is one that runs: "If your need is to refuse to abandon the past, you have to recreate it. You have to do sculpture." The word "recreate" suggests invention, hence transcendence. If Bourgeois's work was only about herself, we would not now be celebrating her as an innovative genius.

The great themes of her work are threaded on a narrative string that is as manufactured as the works themselves, which is not to say that Bourgeois was a liar or a humbug. She made a rational and respectable decision: if her works were to be reduced by successive generations of writers to pieces of evidence in a personal case history, then the case history itself would be an artwork. She would manage her own text.

She was seldom required to account for herself before she became the first woman to be accorded her own retrospective show at the Museum of Modern Art in New York in 1982, when she was already 71. The account she gave of herself then has been improved, in some cases embellished, and in others simplified, as the years went by. It was in 1982 that fledgling gallerist Jerry Gorovoy gave up his job at the Sidney Janis Gallery to become her assistant/manager; he is still involved with the Studio Louise Bourgeois after 28 years. Just how much he has to do with the techniques of production that have been producing multimillion dollar versions of Maman for galleries all over the world is anybody's guess. Bourgeois kept him under wraps that he has never seen fit to cast aside. Few people are aware that in 1993 he was the model for The Arch of Hysteria.

When 31-year-old Robert Goldwater met 27-year-old Louise Bourgeois in Paris in 1937, he was a professor of art history at the State University of New York, and a close friend of the influential critic Clement Greenberg and Alfred H Barr, founder director of the Museum of Modern Art. She was a graduate of the Sorbonne and a perpetual art student. When she married Goldwater and went to live with him in New York, she found herself at the centre of the American art establishment. In 1941, Barr persuaded a donor to buy her sculpture Quarantania for Moma and in 1969 it was illustrated in Goldwater's What Is Modern Sculpture? Later, Bourgeois would dramatise her scorn for art historians in a performance piece called Confrontation (1978), but her relationship with her academic husband, who was curator of the Rockefeller collection of primitive art, not only allowed her to handle some of the most charismatic objects ever made by human hands, it also brought her into close contact with artists who had fled occupied Europe, such as Max Ernst, Marcel Duchamp, André Breton and Joan Miró. She is now said to have loathed them all because they were "father figures". She certainly acknowledges no influence from any of them.

Though Bourgeois's art practice is understood to be both discontinuous with the masculine tradition and a reaction against it, and she has been hailed as a feminist heroine as a result, it is an identification that she rejected, saying with typical disingenuity: "I am lucky to have been brought up by a mother who was a feminist and fortunate enough to have married a husband who was a feminist, and I have raised sons who are feminists." She claimed to be an artist, not a woman artist. Hapless male critics struggle to understand what is going on in her work, why female figures have breasts that work as arms, why a sculpture called Fillette shows a bulbous scrotum beneath a veiny shaft and moth-eaten glans, and just why it is that her work seems so perverse and challenging – if it is not, after all, feminist.

Bourgeois came to artistic maturity long after motherhood, widowhood and menopause. On the brink of old age, she became as a child again, free to reinvent herself and her world. Hard became soft, iron became glass, out turned to in; categories existed only to be subverted. From within her beyond-feminist panoply of contradictions, Bourgeois will continue to mock all certainty, not least certainty about the artist herself.

* * *

Louise Bourgeois by Robert Mapplethorpe (1982)

For me, sculpture is the body. My body is my sculpture.

* * *

* * *

Quentin Crisp

2011-05-30T01:44:00.003+01:00

"Euphemisms are unpleasant truths wearing diplomatic cologne."

* * *

Karen Greenlee

2011-04-08T05:12:00.000+01:00

"That's my nature,and I might as well enjoy it."

* * *

* * *

Eva Braun as Al Jolson

2011-03-10T20:45:00.003Z

Eva Braun Blackface Reveals Her Love Of Jewish Film

By Nathan Burstein
text: the Jewish Daily Forward

Hitler’s girlfriend apparently loved a film focused on the struggle to maintain Jewish tradition.

A recently released photo now making the rounds online shows Eva Braun in 1937, in an image the dictator’s mistress titled “Al Jolson and Me.” Internet chatter about the picture has focused on Braun’s use of blackface, citing it as further evidence of the Nazi leadership’s racism.

But what online commenters have largely neglected is that the image is a tribute to “The Jazz Singer,” the 1927 Hollywood classic about Jakie Rabinowitz (Al Jolson), a Jewish man disowned by his family after he pursues a career in jazz rather than follow in the professional footsteps of his father, a cantor. The first feature-length “talkie,” the movie depicts Jewish life on Manhattan’s Lower East Side, including a Yom Kippur service and songs titled “Kol Nidre” and “Kaddish.”

Ten years after its release, as Germany geared up for war, Braun decided to pay tribute to the film, evidently one of her favorites from Hollywood. (Life.com reports that “Gone With the Wind” was another.)

Braun is hardly the only person to have been inspired by The Jazz Singer. Though its enthusiastic use of blackface — worn by Jakie during performances — has appalled later generations of filmgoers, the film has also inspired a number of tributes and parodies, including a 1980 remake with Neil Diamond.

and even an episode of “The Simpsons.”

Still, the revelation that Braun was among the film’s fans is bizarre and unsettling, even if just a tiny footnote in the perversities of that time.

* * *

More Eva

2011-03-08T01:43:00.001Z

by Irina Ionesco

* * *

Vintage lesbian erotica

2011-03-04T23:45:00.004Z

* * *

"Hansi The Girl Who Loved the Swastika"

2011-02-13T03:00:00.012Z

Hansi the Girl Who Loved the Swastika was produced in the US by a Christian comic book publishing company, Spire Christian Comics, in 1976.

(click images to enlarge)

Hansi is based on Maria Anne Hirschmann who lived in the Sudetenland in 1938 when the Germans took it over from Czechoslovakia. That year Maria won a "contest" to join the Bund Deutscher Mädel (BDM).

She joined the organization and became a volunteer nurse at military medical clinics across the western front of Germany. At the conclusion of the war, she was captured by vigilant Russian soldiers, who constantly threatened her with rape. Finally she escaped and rejoined her long lost sweetheart in Switzerland.

Eventually they emigrated to America, where she runs ex-Nazi Christian support groups in prisons and half-way homes across California.

Here is the comic book in full (including advertisements):

* * *

2011-01-26T03:23:00.000Z

* * *

Morgue Art

2011-01-20T21:09:00.019Z

Ernesto Muniz:

Andres Serrano:

* * *

Teetotal

2011-01-15T05:51:00.001Z

* * *

Tura Satana

2011-01-10T22:25:00.009Z

(as Varla in Russ Meyer's Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill!)

"There are a great many similarities between Varla and myself. Varla was an outlet for some of the anger I felt growing up. She was also a statement to women all over the world that you can be a take-charge person and still be sexy. She also showed the women world-wide that women don’t have to be weak, simpering females. They just go after what they want and usually get it."
- Tura Satana

When I was dancing burlesque was an art - classy and elegant and requiring talent. I got out of it when it started to become raunchy and lost the art. Now they call it nude dancing, but its plain old pornography as far as I`m concerned.
- Tura Satana

* * *

Karl Hubbuch (1891-1979)

2010-12-21T22:53:00.006Z

Lissy im Café

Zwei Modelle

Hilde Twice

Die Bardame Erna

Jeder zeigt was er hat (Bruno und seine Damen)

Die Drillinge

* * *

Barry X Ball

2010-12-18T21:51:00.005Z

Barry X Ball

* * *

Japanese bath, 1870

2010-12-18T21:45:00.002Z

click on image to enlarge

* * *

Crypt exhumation

2010-12-18T01:53:00.003Z

Rough translation:
Removal of the remains of a lady of 67 years, in the cemetery of Itabaiana - Sergipe.
This video has the proper authorization of the family.

No other information available.

* * *

Toshio Saeki

2010-12-12T02:21:00.008Z

Toshio Saeki (佐伯俊男) is a Japanese artist and mangaka born in 1945, famous for his paintings and drawing focusing on erotica, violence, and perversion.

Saeki's paintings often feature men and women as well as demons, animals, corpses, and other creatures in various erotic or violent settings. His work has received warnings from the Japanese government, though it has never been officially banned. His works are collected avidly by erotic art fans in Japan, America, France, and other parts of the world. Saeki has said that he enjoys using his art to shock people and he doesn't really involve himself in the extreme activity of his best known works.

* * *

Eva

2010-12-11T14:49:00.000Z

* * *

Anatoly Rakhimbaev - press photographer

2010-12-10T01:10:00.006Z

Anatoly Rakhimbaev was born in Tashkent in 1957 in the family of the chief designer of “UZBEKFILM’ movie studio.

In 1979 he graduated from the geological faculty of Tashkent State University. He worked for 12 years as a chief geologist in the Kyzyl-Kum desert. At the same time he went in for photography. He exhibited his first photos in “Panorama” photo club. His works were noticed and then in 1989 he was invited to work as a photographer in a “Tashkentskaya Pravda” newspaper.

That was the beginning of his way as a professional photographer. In 1994 Anatoly joined the Union of Art Photographers of Russia. In 1999 he became a member of the Union of Uzbekistan Artists.

Cooperation with Massmedia

Uzbekistan: “Business Vestnik Vostoka”, “Molodezh Uzbekistana”, Vremya I My”, “Pravda Vostoka”.

Russia: “Ogonyok”, “Itogi”, “Rossiyskaya Gazeta”, “TV Park”, “Izvestia” (staff photographer since 2003), literary miscellanies “ASSMOPRESS”(1994-1999).

Denmark: “Sygeplejersken”.

USA: The New York Times, Financial Times.

He also cooperated with “Panos Pictures”, “Associated Press”, “PhotoXpress”, “Best Pictures” agencies.

Exhibitions

1990 – photo-exhibition of the Ministry of Health on Near-Aral Region in Nukus and Tashkent.
1994 – photo-exhibition “One Earth Is One Family” in UN office in Tashkent. The same exhibition in Paris in June 1994.
1997 – photo-exhibition “National and International Aspects of Ecological Catastrophe of Aral Sea.
1997 – personal exhibition of black and white photography in “Diydor” gallery arranged for the author’s 40’s birthday.
1997 – Ecological Photo-exhibition organized by Conrad Adenayer foundation in Bishkek.
2000 - Exhibition of Union of Uzbekistan Artists to the 9th Anniversary of Uzbekistan Independence.
2001 – exhibition at the UN Agency on Drugs Control in Tashkent.
2001 – photographs for “Tashkent” publication arranged for the 10th anniversary of Uzbekistan Independence.
2002 – exhibition at the “Centre of Contemporary Art” arranged for the opening of “House of Photography” in Tashkent.

* * *

Ruth Bernhard

2010-12-09T09:42:00.002Z

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I Want To Be Evil

2010-12-08T15:32:00.005Z

* * *

Eartha & Dizzy at Newport Jazz Festival, 1954.

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Skin two...

2010-12-08T15:27:00.001Z

Rubber beauty masks, worn to remove wrinkles and blemishes, 1921.

* * *

Not necessarily stoned, but beautiful...

2010-11-25T04:15:00.008Z

R U EXPERIENCED?
(1989)

This video was filmed in 1988 by John Bentham & spouse for Jettisoundz. It features a 7-year-old Caresse P-Orridge (one of Genesis Breyer P-Orridge's daughters) and Fred Giannelli. The indoor scenes were shot at 33 Roundhill Crescent, Brighton. The wall hangings are Tibetan and Nepali. And the outside scenes were shot in Derek Jarman's garden in Dungeoness.

* * *

"The carefree days are distant now, I wear my memories like a shroud..."

2010-10-31T18:12:00.006Z

* * *

John Isaacs, artist.

2010-10-28T14:23:00.008+01:00

The Unseen Structure

If not now then when...?

Bad Miracle

Scapegoat

The Matrix of Amnesia

I can't help the way I feel

Are we not the same you and I

John Isaacs @ aeroplastics

John Issacs biography at Museum 52

* * *

Pierre Molinier

2010-10-05T03:50:00.010+01:00

Born on Friday 13 April 1900, Molinier was the son of a house painter and decorator specializing in marble and wood imitation; his mother a dressmaker, and his aunt an ironer. Molinier's school years were spent with the Brothers of the Agen "Ecoles chrétiennes", although he pretended he had been educated by the Jesuits.

At the age of 13, he began working with his father as an apprentice painter and took evening courses at the Agen Municipal School of Drawing. Having been in love with his younger sister for a long time, in 1918, he took a photograph of her on her deathbed : later he said that, on that occasion, he caressed her legs and ejaculated on the First Communion dress she was wearing. Fantasy, pure fabrication or reality ? Anyway, it was the starting point of his quest for an androgynous identity, which would be a recurring theme throughout his life and work.

Around that date, he settled down in Bordeaux, place de la Bourse, in the Saint-Pierre Quarter. The following year, he set up his own business, as a house painter. He did his military service from 1920 to 1922, then stayed in Paris where he visited museums frequently. In 1923, he moved to 5 rue du Parlement-Saint-Pierre, still in the Bordeaux Old Quarter.

The first exhibition of his paintings took place in 1927. Every year until 1951, he showed several paintings (figurative or fauve landscapes and portraits) in the Bordeaux "Salons". In 1928, he exhibited a painting in Paris, at the famous "Société Nationale des Beaux-Arts", and founded the "Société des Artistes indépendants bordelais" together with several other painters. During 1931, he moved to the apartment where he would stay for good and would have his artist studio ("L'Atelier du Grenier Saint-Pierre"), 7 rue des Faussets, in the Bordeaux Old Quarter.

In 1940, Molinier was mobilized as a male nurse, then taken prisoner by the Germans; after being demobilized, he took refuge in the Bordeaux countryside with his family. Four years later, his father committed suicide by overdosing on medicine.

Giving up figuratism, he made his first abstract painting Satin blanc. After the presumed visit of the Dalai Lama envoys, who asked him to reproduce symbolic mandalas, his inspiration changed into esoterism: this alleged visit was dated by Molinier, vaguely, around 1936; considering the evolution of his paintings, 1946 would be much more likely. In 1948, he made the first painting characteristic of his erotic period, Les amants à la fleur.

The following year, tired of his infidelities and provocative behaviour, his wife left their marital home. In 1950, he built a farcical "Premature tomb" topped with an engraved black cross:

"Here lies Pierre MOLINIER Born on 13 April 1900 died around 1950 He was a man without morals He was proud of it and gloried in it No need to pray for him."

He took photographs of himself, posing in his studio as crucified and having committed suicide, as well as on his deathbed in his apartment.

1951 was the major turning point in Molinier's artistic career: he broke off from the "Artistes indépendants bordelais", following a scandal at the Fall Salon caused by his veiled painting Le grand combat, which represents an entanglement of bodies engaged in a love joust.

In 1952, he got in touch with the French novelist and art collector André Malraux in order to exhibit his paintings in Paris. Also, his daughter Françoise, with whom he had been in love for a long time, left the family apartment. He wrote to André Breton, the leading figure of the Surrealism movement, in 1955, and sent him a portfolio containing photographs of his paintings. Breton fell in love with "those magical works" and sent him a series of enthusiastic letters praising his work: "You are today a master in vertigo", he wrote in one of them.

After exhibiting 18 paintings and a few drawings at the Paris gallery run by Breton "A l'Etoile scellée" (27 January - 17 February 1956), he contributed to several issues of the magazine Le surréalisme, même. He met the writer and poet Joyce Mansour, "the Divine", and started taking erotic photographs.

In 1957, he bought a shady bar near Bordeaux called the "Texas-Bar" for his so-called "natural daughter" Monique, who was a notorious prostitute. Three years later, he was involved in a domestic dispute with his separated wife in their summer home where she returned from time to time, slapping her violently and firing a gun above the head of his cousin: for both acts, he spent a month in prison. He gave up his house painting business, in order to devote the rest of his life to his art. The following year he was convicted with fines and damages for his assaults; his wife was granted a divorce.

In Summer 1962, Raymond Borde came to Bordeaux to shoot the film Molinier, an homage to the painter's world (private screenings of an uncut version were held in 1964, and a public screening of the censored version in 1966).

He wrote to Emmanuelle Arsan (author of the erotic novel Emmanuelle) in May 1964 and met her in Paris in December. As a result, they engaged in passionate correspondence, and Molinier represented her in several of his works. They would not meet again until the Spring of 1967 in Bordeaux.

Numerous meetings with the Surrealist painters Clovis Trouille and Gérard Lattier took place during 1965. He shot a rudimentary film, Mes jambes.

His plans for publishing an album of photomontages on Le chaman et ses créatures began to take shape in 1966, and Roland Villeneuve, a specialist of the Devil, was approached to write the preface. Many publishers gave up printing the album, and it was eventually published in 1995.

Numerous meetings with the Surrealist painters Clovis Trouille and Gérard Lattier took place during 1965. He shot a rudimentary film, Mes jambes.

In a particularly pivotal exchange of correspondence with the Austrian art historian Peter Gorsen, in December 1967 he met Hanel Koeck, a German sadomasochist and fetishist of legs and shoes. During his childhood, he was surrounded by women, and often wore their shoes and stockings, and so this meeting began a lengthy and impassioned correspondence with her, who paid him several visits. She became the model of many of his paintings and photomontages. Within this same period, a young friend and model, Jean-Pierre Bouyxou, shot Satan bouche un coin, a film where Molinier appears in his fetishist apparel.

In 1969, according to him, he ordered the exhumation of his father's corpse and kept his bones inside a wooden box in the shape of a small coffin, rue des Faussets. The same year, an album (Molinier) of his paintings was published by Jean-Jacques Pauvert.

In 1970, Molinier had a painful gall-bladder removed that had caused him constant suffering. Two years later, Peter Gorsen published in Munich an album of photographs and photomontages (Pierre Molinier, lui-même), with an important essay in German.

In March 1975, Molinier took a series of photographs of the young Swiss painter, Luciano Castelli, dressed as a transvestite, and another series with Thierry Agullo, an iconoclastic Bordeaux artist, on the theme of Indecency. At the end of the month, Peter Gorsen paid him a visit (for the first and only time) accompanied by Hanel Koeck.

The last of his family troubles occurred in September of this year, when his son Jacques died in an accident while handling explosives. As a consequence, he resumed his contacts with his daughter, Françoise.

At the end of February 1976, he took a series of photographs of Thierry Agullo, dressed in women's attire, continuing on the theme of Androgyny that had played a major part in his life.

On March 3rd, 1976, Molinier committed suicide by shooting himself in the mouth, something he had foreshadowed, time and again. His body was transferred to the Bordeaux morgue, then to the Faculty of Medicine, as he had bequeathed his body to the establishment in 1970. After being dissected, his remains were buried in a Bordeaux cemetery.

* * *

Pierre Molinier
1900 - 1976

* * *

Irina & Eva

2010-10-01T04:59:00.005+01:00

Irina Ionesco poses in front of her portrait of daughter, Eva.

I know this photo was taken at a gallery exhibition, but I don't have details. I've been sorting through my folders and found more Ionesco work to share, but unfortunately they're all in the "title unknown", "details missing" pile.

Maybe when I post them someone can mail me with information. Would you do that for me? Would you???

SO, after I've cropped and tidied up these stray images, I'll post them here. (I'm so good to you all.)

* * *

Parasitic twins

2010-09-25T20:15:00.016+01:00

Frank Lentini "The Human Tripod" (1889-1966)

Lentini had 3 legs, 2 sets of genitalia, 16 toes, and 4feet. (fourth foot growing from third leg). One of Lentini's stunts was to kick a football with his third leg. He also used the extra appendage for a stool. He married and had 4 cildren.

Betty Lou Williams (1932 - 1955)

Betty Lou was the daughter of a poor black sharecropper. She always looked beautiful and shapely in her two-piece bathing suit on the circus sideshow stage, but growing out of the left side of her body was the bottom half of another body. This other body that grew from the left side had two legs and one misplaced arm.

Betty Lou Williams lived during the Great Depression in the United States. She used her deformity to make money and did fairly well economically.

She died at the age of 23. Many of her closest friends say that she died of a broken heart, jilted by a man that she truly loved and admired. However, doctors says that the more probably cause of her death was from many complications that she suffered as a result of anasthma attack, aggravated by the second head that she had hide inside of her body.

Maxine Mina (dates unknown)

Not much is known about this four legged girl aside from the fact that she was born in the Philippines, and possibly at one point had use of all four legs.

May-Joe (1905-?)

Born with an underdeveloped twin, May-Joe had a third leg as well as a second stomach. He was billed as being both male as well as female, which of course was untrue. Parasitic twins are always of the same sex. Although it's speculated that May Joe may have also been a pseudohemaphrodite, born with ambiguous genitalia. Because of this he was raised, dressed, and billed as a girl until he hit puberty, and his more masculine side came out.

Perumal (1888-?)

Perumal (or Piramal) was born in Madras, India in 1888 and entered showbusiness at a young age, appearing with the Indian dwarf Soopromanien Munsamy and two pinhead children, Gondio and Apexia. He toured the United States briefly with the Ringling Bros. circus and retired to India in 1915.

According to Mannix, he was a finicky eater who employed his own Indian cooks and refused to eat anything cooked by Americans. Contrary to most of his promotional material, "Sami" was Perumal's family name, not the name of his parasitic twin. His cousin Kuppes Sami and brother Thumbu Sami assisted him in travelling and performing. However, in a similar marketing gimmick to Laloo and May-Joe, Perumal's parasitic twin was dressed and exhibited as a girl.

Little else is known of Perumal. No record exists of his exploits, romantic of otherwise, following his official retirement in 1915.

Ernie-Len (1931 - ?)

Ernie Defort was born in Winnepeg, Manitoba, Canada on July 7, 1931 and had a parasitic twin similar to Laloo's or Piramal's, attached at the sternum with two arms and two legs. He was billed as Ernie-Len or Len and Ernie, "Two Boys with One Head".

These photos are from a 1936 appearance with Conklin Shows in Vancouver. When the child was 12, his health began to fail. He was taken to the prestigious Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota, where a Dr. Henry Meyerding amputated the parasitic twin in October of 1943. Within a month, Ernie had recovered enough to return to school, although he remained somewhat depressed over the loss of his "brother".

Jean Libbera (1884-1934)

Jean Libbera was born in 1884 and died in 1934. He was best known to be the man with two bodies. He was born in Rome, Italy and spent most of his life as a sideshow freak for the circus.

He traveled with many different circuses displaying his miniature twin. His twin was named Jacques.

Jacques had hips, thighs, arms, and legs. A German doctor actually found a rudimentary structure inside of Jean's body that resembled a head. He was literally the man with two bodies.

Many people would stare at him when he was in public, so when he went out, he always put a cape of Jacques so that people would not stare at him like a freak. As a result, when he was walking down the street with his wife and children, he looked like a normal family man.

Laloo (1888 - ?)

Laloo's parasitic twin was nearly a perfect miniature man attached to his chest, although it lacked a head. It was said that Laloo shared sensations with the parasite and could feel when it was touched.

In addition, the twin had a well-developed penis and could urinate and get an erection - and often did so at inappropriate times. To prevent such an embarrassment, Laloo dressed his twin in its own tiny outfits, coordinated with Laloo's own finery.

He referred to the twin as a "sister" in order to add a touch of the risque to his act. He showed with the Ringling Bros., Barnum & Bailey Circus and appeared at the Bradenburgh Museum in Philadelphia, where he met and married a Philadelphia native in 1894.

In 1905 Laloo embarked on a tour with the Norris & Rowe Circus with the intent to tour Mexico, but the train crashed soon after leaving New York and Laloo died in the accident.

* * *

Horror Movie Posters

2010-09-25T03:04:00.003+01:00

Virgin Witch (1972)

Christine gets her big chance at modelling when she applies at Sybil Waite's agency. Together with Christine's sister Betty they go to a castle for the weekend for a photo shoot. Sybil has lured Christine to the castle for more than modelling: she is recruiting a virgin for induction into a witch's coven, led by the owner of the castle, Gerald. To their surprise, Christine is more than eager to join the coven, but begins her own secret battle for control.

The Uncanny (1977)

Wilbur Gray visits Frank Richards so he can get his book published. This book Gray has written are about cats. Cats watching everyone and controlling everything. He mentions the stories in the book are all true, and gives three examples. The first involves the murder of a cat-loving old woman who gives her entire fortune in her will to her cats. Not everyone is happy about the wills, but would have to get past the cats to get the the will. The second story is a tale of black magic between two girls and the third story is a tale of murderous revenge... by a cat.

The Toolbox Murders (2004)

Nell and her husband Steven are looking for a business, as well as a home, when they come across the Lusman Arms apartment block. They move in and begin renovating the building, in which a series of weird killings begin to take place. When she finally discovers the supernatural evil behind it all, she gets more than she bargained for!

The Thrill Killers (1964)

Three psychotic murderers escape from a mental institution and stalk women in Los Angeles.

Macumba Love (1960)

A writer who specializes in exposing fake witchcraft journeys to Brazil to investigate a voodoo cult.

The Last House on the Left (1972)

After kidnapping and butchering two teenagers, a gang of rapists and murderers unknowingly seeks refuge with the parents of one of the victims.

Kill Baby, Kill (1966)

Dr. Eswai is called by Inspector Kruger to a small village to perform an autopsy on a woman who has died under suspicious circumstances. Despite help from Ruth, the village witch, Kruger is killed and it is revealed that the dead woman, as well as other villagers, have been killed by the ghost of Melissa, a young girl who, fed by the hatred of her grieving mother, Baroness Graps, exacts her revenge on them. Dr. Eswai, along with Monica, a local nurse, are lured into a fateful confrontation at the Villa Graps

The Girl in Room 2A (1973)

A sadistic killer cult kidnaps and sacrifices beautiful women. A young girl, just paroled from prison, moves into a strange house and appears to be the cult's next victim.

Devil's Nightmare (1971)

Six of seven tourists in a east European castle overnight are victims of a helper of the devil. Is Satan willing to spare their souls?

Deranged: Confessions of a Necrophile (1974)

A man living in rural Wisconsin takes care of his bed-ridden mother, who is very domineering and teaches him that all women are evil. After she dies he misses her, so a year later he digs her up and takes her home. He learns about taxidermy and begins robbing graves to get materials to patch her up, and inevitably begins looking for fresher sources of materials. Based closely on the true story of Ed Gein.

* * *

Scene of the Crime: Photographs from the LAPD Archives

2010-09-20T23:43:00.013+01:00

Photographer: unknown. 08-08-1969.

An extensive investigation found that on the night of August 8, 1969, five members of the Manson family plotted to murder all the persons at the home of Sharon Tate Polanski. Members of the group armed themselves, drove to Cielo Drive and killed the actress and her four guests. All suspects were charged with murder.

Photographer: Driver. 08-12-1933.

Mrs Harriet Allen, recently married to Robert J Allen, received a visit from her former sweetheart, Bruce H. Moore, who stood in the doorway and shot Mrs Allen five times. Moore then shot himself as Mr Allen ran out of the house.

Photographer: D.C. 12-23-1947.

A 19-year-old woman, Mrs Helen Bonnie Miller, was held captive in a West 6th Street hotel room by a railroad fireman, who carved his initials into her flesh. The victim was held several days in the hotel room. Donald Graeff was later booked on suspicion of kidnapping; he was also questioned in connection with the murder of Elizabeth Short, also known as the "Black Dahlia."

Photographer: Davis. 01-29-1935.
Hanging. Case information unavailable.

Photographer: Driver. 08-07-1931.

Police arrived at a Wilshire Avenue apartment to find the body of Mrs Mary Irving, (aka Mary Lindsay), who had been stabbed several times. The home was known to the police as a fancy drinking and gambling salon. A piece of galvanized clothesline was missing from the line in the yard. Later the same day, the Sheriff's office discovered Irving's live-in companion, Emmett Hicks, 41, hanging from a crossbar of the high tension tower of Southern California Edison company's power line at 99th Street near Zamora Street over a vacant lot. Police report stated, "a clear case of murder and suicide."

Photographer: Stewart. 02-25-1930.

A young man and male colleague were driving home from work when a jealous husband, Dan Bakman, accompanied by his wife in a Dodge sedan, began following them. After a chase of several miles, Bakman, an irrigation ditch contractor, ran the other car into the curb and demanded that Guy Whittsen get out of the car. Upon Whittsen's refusal to leave the car, Bakman secured a shotgun from his car and shot the young man fatally in the chest. The killing occurred almost midway between Cahuenga Pass and Burbank, which was, at the time, described as a lonely spot on Dark Canyon Road.

Photographer: Stewart. 05-14-1930.
Crime scene. Case information unavailable.

Photographer: Munns. 07-23-1932.

A robbery at a South Vermont Avenue jewelry store led to the shooting death of a 65-year-old customer, W. J. Kirkpatrick, who walked into the establishment as the hold-up was taking place and defied a gunman's orders to move into the back room along with the store's owner and a clerk.

Three bandits had entered the shop while a fourth waited in a getaway car. Two of the assailants - Frank Alvarado and Henry Johnson - were killed during the robbery of a different jewelry store a month after the Vermont Avenue killing took place. Robert York (alias Dallas Egan) and a man identified as Turcott were both tried and convicted. York was hanged at San Quentin prison in October 1933.

Photographer: Pross. 05-22-1948.

Homicide. Case information unavailable.

Photographer: G.S. 11-07-1958.
Murder-suicide on Stanley Hills Drive. Case information unavailable.

Photographer: Oliver. 10-01-1934.

Ray Groves, who was short of cash in his business enterprises, was scheduled to appear in court on a criminal matter. Before his scheduled court date, he told his wife, Mrs Melba Groves, that if he had to go to jail he would shoot her first. An argument erupted during which Groves did shoot his wife, and then shot himself in the head. He was wounded but survived and was later charged with murder and convicted.

more to follow...

this book at amazon.com

* * *

Mary Ann Bevan, "the world's ugliest woman".

2010-09-20T02:49:00.005+01:00

Mary Ann Webster was born in London, England, as one of 8 children in 1874. She worked as a nurse on her earlier years, and married a greengrocer Thomas Bevan in 1903, thus getting the full name of Mary Ann Bevan.

The symptons of Acromegaly started shortly after marriage. The disease not only causes abnormal growths, but also headaches, muscle pain, and failing eyesight. But that didn't stop her from having 4 children.

Thomas died in 1914. Wishing to find income for her family of 5, entered an "Ugly Woman" contest, and won. She was then hired as a sideshow performer by Sam Gumpertz in 1920's. He worked Coney Island Dreamland Show, and Ringling Bro's. Her sideshow career continued until her death on December 26. 1933.

* * *

Public exposure, weed and a lot of punk

2010-09-20T02:26:00.004+01:00

On this day in music:

1970

Jim Morrison of The Doors was acquitted on charges of lewd and lascivious behavior, but was found guilty of exposing himself during a concert at The Dinner Key Auditorium in Coconut Grove a year and a half earlier.

At his trial at the Dade County Courthouse in Miami, Judge Goodman sentenced Morrison to six months hard labor and a $500 (£270), fine for public exposure and sixty days hard labor for profanity. The sentence was appealed, but Morrison was never brought to trial, as he would die in Paris four months later, of a drug overdose.

1972

Paul and Linda McCartney were arrested for the second time in four weeks for possession of cannabis this time at their Scottish farmhouse in Campbeltown.

1976

The first of the two night 100 Club Punk Festival, Oxford St, London, featuring The Sex Pistols, The Clash, Sub Way Sect, Suzie (spelling on the poster), And The Banshees, The Buzzcocks, Vibrators and Stinky Toys. Admission £1.50.

* * *

Kim Noble, artist

2010-09-18T02:39:00.006+01:00

"There are 20 people living inside Kim Noble, including an alpha female called Patricia; an anorexic teenager called Judy; and a bloke called Ken. She has the most extreme form of dissociative identity disorder that psychiatrists have seen - and a unique artistic talent, too."

Paintings by "Ria":

Painting by unknown alters:

Painting by "Abi":

Paintings by "Bonny":

Paintings by "Dawn":

Paintings by "Judy":

Kim Noble.com

featured in the Daily Mail

featured in the Independent

* * *

{Apocatastasis}

George Georgiou: Hidden: Psychiatric Hospitals (1999 - 2002)

Early treatment of mental disorders

Wilhelm von Gloeden (1856-1931)

Mary Ann Cotton - Notorious Poisoner

Anatomically correct marzipan

Illustrated book - Fragonard Museum: The Ecorches

Lie in a ditch and you will survive a nuclear holocaust

Unethical Psychological & Medical Experiments

Vintage female nudes

Yasumasa Morimura - self portraits

Ghost towns

Ray Caesar - digital artist

Yuka Yamaguchi

Hitler invented the sex doll - the Borghild Project

Ryohei Hase

Marc Almond & Jim Foetus - "Ghost Rider"

Inside a New Orleans House of Ill Repute

Top Ten Sex Education Videos

It Felt Good, Didn't It

One Never Knows When the Homosexual Is About

That Mike Is Really Filling Out...

How Does It Get Hard?

I Had A Wet Dream Last Night

Some Women Still Call Menstruation the Curse

A Girl Has Three Holes Between Her Legs

Period? What's That?

You're the Guy Who Said Gonorrhea Was No Worse Than A Cold

The Intro to Your Parents' Sex Advice Videos

Hirotoshi Itoh's stone sculptures

Vladimir Clavijo-Telepnev

Louise Bourgeois (25 December 1911 – 31 May 2010)

Quentin Crisp

Karen Greenlee

Eva Braun as Al Jolson

Eva Braun Blackface Reveals Her Love Of Jewish Film

More Eva

Vintage lesbian erotica

"Hansi The Girl Who Loved the Swastika"

Morgue Art

Teetotal

Tura Satana

Karl Hubbuch (1891-1979)

Barry X Ball

Japanese bath, 1870

Crypt exhumation

Toshio Saeki

Eva

Anatoly Rakhimbaev - press photographer

Cooperation with Massmedia

Exhibitions

Ruth Bernhard

I Want To Be Evil

Skin two...

Not necessarily stoned, but beautiful...

"The carefree days are distant now, I wear my memories like a shroud..."

John Isaacs, artist.

Pierre Molinier

Irina & Eva

Parasitic twins

Horror Movie Posters

Scene of the Crime: Photographs from the LAPD Archives

Mary Ann Bevan, "the world's ugliest woman".

Public exposure, weed and a lot of punk

Kim Noble, artist