Intended Consequences, powerful series of portraits of women who were brutally raped in the Rwandan genocide and the children they bore as a result.

A visitor looks at Jonathan Torgovnik's photographs at Rencontre d'Arles. Photograph: Gerard Julien/AP/Getty

Jonathan Torgovnik has won the Discovery prize at this year'sRencontre d'Arles photography festival for Intended Consequences, his powerful series of portraits of women who were brutally raped in the Rwandan genocide and the children they bore as a result. Torgovnik, who is based in South Africa, photographed in Rwanda for three years and interviewed all his subjects about their experiences. He is co-founder of Foundation Rwanda and, in his acceptance speech, said he would be donating a large portion of his prize money of €25,000 (£19,850) to the organisation, which supports the women and children and raises awareness about the consequences of sexual violence through photography and film.

The Latin American Photobook (Aperture), a historical overview of the form edited by Horacio Fernandez, deservedly won the historical book award.

One of my personal favourite photobooks from 2011, Red Headed Peckerwood (Mack) by Christian Patterson took the author book award. A blend of fact and fiction, oblique narrative and found ephemera, the book retraces the infamous killing spree of Charlie Starkweather, 19, and his 14-year-old girlfriend, Caril Anne Fugate, across Nebraska and into Wyoming in 1958. I enthused about the book when it came out and also included it in my list of best photobooks of 2011. It is a beautifully realised project, despite its visceral subject matter, and fully deserves the prize.

British-based independent publishers Mack are on a roll at Arles, having now won the author book award two years running – Taryn Simon's A Living Man Declared Dead and Other Chapters was last year's winner.

The festival's opening week concluded on a celebratory note on 7 July with a well-received screening of Journal of France, a film on the great French photographer Raymond Depardon made by his wife and sound recordist, Claudine Nougaret.

For graffiti writers the ever-dwindling rewards and ever-increasing penalties are ending the romance

• • This weekend marked the beginning of the end for the creaking A-class rolling stock of London underground's Metropolitan Line, the oldest trains on the system.

Among the anoraks and spotters marking the passing of these clattering metal anachronisms, an unlikely group of Londoners may well be paying their respects. The most hardcore of the capital's graffiti writers are this week mourning the death of The Big Met, for nearly 30 years their most prized target. The tube line most reminiscent of the New York subway – its tall carriages, smooth spacious side panels, lengthy routes that run overground to right into the centre of the city – have been since the mid-80s the province of only the highest tier of graffiti writer.

Graffiti serves as varying degrees of irritant to most users of the tube. It is ever present in the corners of one's field of vision, apparently motiveless and meaningless beyond it's own assertion of presence. There are other users, however, for whom all the scrawls and scribbles, stick letters and bubbles are an ever changing bulletin, a daily highscore board detailing associates and rivals movements and achievements.

I was 12, indestructible and wondering who I was when I first awoke to the adventure of graffiti train writing. It represented a chance to define myself, and as I had always been artistically inclined, it looked like something I could be good at. Once immersed in the scene, the lure and the lore of the tube proved hard to resist. All other achievements in graffiti were walks in the park by comparison. "Real writers paint tubes", I learned. There were photos swapped, cat and mouse stories told, legends created. A London graffiti vernacular sprang up, lines and depots gained nicknames.

In time, through an old friend and veteran tube writer, I was introduced to the tunnels and underground layups. My first time underground brought me to a new world. A space that lay beneath 7 million people, not built for humans, rarely seen and even more rarely explored. To get to the trains involved ducking cameras, traversing catwalks, climbing down poles. Writers hid in alcoves as conversing cleaners and security guards walked past inches away. Wading through layers of black powder, eventually the trains were reached, stabled in a depot deep under central London. Four hours went by in a series of pounding heartbeats and high adrenalin. That night was my first introduction to the DDS crew, a collective of writers, who over many years, more than any other graffiti artists in Britain, have come to symbolise the London underground graffiti culture.

For nights after that, I saw the trains and tunnels in my sleep. The mix of adventure and rebellion, victory and comradeship was intoxicating. There are many others, like me, who have had that experience, and many who have made it in and out of the train yards and tunnels under the city far more times than I did. There are a few of those who have made it their lives work, and for years have risked their safety and liberty repeating that London underground graffiti experience with a dedication and commitment that borders on obsession.

But in pre-Olympics London 2012 things have changed. LU's current policy of immediately removing painted trains from service means now that artwork never runs, and with ever more intense CCTV surveillance and hi-tech security being used to guard the trains, painting tube trains became a darker, more clandestine pursuit. Security patrols in depots mean those who make it in can only get safe painting time of mere minutes, instead of the hours they once enjoyed. This compromises the quality of what is possible to achieve, say the writers.

I was caught and prosecuted, paid large fines and worked off lengthy community sentences. The scene changed, my life had changed, and I moved into legal and more indelible forms of self-expression. Having stayed in sporadic contact with the graffiti scene, I was approached many years later by what became the protagonists of my documentary about graffiti on the underground, and was amazed to hear not only that the network was still getting regularly hit, but that the tactics used today were unheard of in complexity. Not only this, said my hooded friends, but we've been filming it all. But the more time I spent with them and the footage, the more it seemed clear that the culture of tube graffiti is facing its last days. An aggressive graffiti cleaning campaign is under way, graffiti artists are the subjects of large-scale police operations, and lengthy jail sentences now handed down. For many writers the fun and the romance is gone, replaced with hard slog and homework in exchange for ever dwindling rewards and ever increasing penalties. They speak in frustrated tones about being misunderstood and demonised. Their motivations are pure, they say, they want to paint the best and most beautiful art they can and they appear baffled that the public is so ungrateful.

Because they have experienced it, they don't realise that most Londoners will never know the feeling of seeing one of their carefully painted "window down whole cars" in full colour, with cartoon characters and a message, rolling through their station on a grey Monday morning. And the way things are headed, they may never do.

bodybuilder's world

belgian photographer kurt stallaert has conceived a series of hyper-realistic images entitled 'bodybuilder's world'. the personal project
suggests an imaginary world with a literal 'powerful twist'. at first glance the subjects look ordinary in their daily surroundings,
but on closer inspection they have been augmented to look like avid members of the professional fitness sport. the faces of the individuals,
often those of children, are attached to the superhuman trunk of a bodybuilder generating a peculiar sense of curiosity, particularly
within the everyday life setting.



the faces of children are attached to those of bodybuilders



the subjects are often within an everyday life setting


 


 

lara db

07.09.12  

The richest woman in the world, according to a respected business magazine, is not Oprah Winfrey, Queen Elizabeth II or L'Oreal heiress Liliane Bettencourt.

It's a relatively unknown Australian mining magnate. So who exactly is Gina Rinehart?

Asked once to sum up her concept of beauty, Gina Rinehart did not point to the pearls that so often adorn her neck.

Nor did she rhapsodise about the ochre landscape of her beloved Pilbara, a beautiful, if unforgiving, expanse of land in the northwest corner of Australia.

Instead, she spoke of the unlovely commodity that has made her family rich, and the giant holes in the ground from where it came. "Beauty is an iron mine," she famously remarked.

When her father, Lang Hancock, discovered one of the world's biggest reserves in the early 1950s, the export of iron ore was banned in Australia because it was deemed such a scarce and finite resource.

Continue reading the main story

Gina Rinehart

• Georgina Hancock born in Perth in 1954, studied in Sydney
• Father Lang Hancock made huge iron ore discovery in Western Australia before her birth
• Married lawyer Frank Rinehart in 1983
• After father's death in 1992, Gina became executive of the company
• Widowed with four children

• Rinehart 'world's richest woman'

Tens of thousands of iron ore shipments later, royalty payments from that Pilbara mining field in Western Australia continue to swell her coffers.

The Hancocks were not the sole beneficiaries. The multi-billionaire fervently believes that her father's discovery also made Australia prosperous, which partly drives her recent quest for influence, gratitude and respect.

It is partly borne of a lifelong sense of grievance - that Australia's traditional east coast elites have not recognised her family's contribution to the country's development, nor the local media.

With an estimated net personal wealth of $A29 billion ($US29.3bn, £18.79bn), Rinehart has in recent years gone from being Australia's richest woman to Asia's richest woman to arguably the world's.

Australian business magazine BRW has named her the world's wealthiest woman, and Citigroup has also predicted that the 58-year-old businesswoman will soon top the global rich list, with more than $100bn (£64.8bn) of assets to her name.

Gina Rinehart is said to make nearly A$600 (£393) a second

The royalty stream from that initial discovery - the "rivers of the gold," as it has been called - still contributes to her wealth, but it pales alongside the value attached to her mining interests in Western Australia and Queensland.

Continue reading the main story

“Start Quote

Whatever I do, the house of Hancock comes first”

She hates being called a mining heiress because she considers herself a self-made businesswoman who turned her company around after her father's death in 1992.

From a worldwide perspective, her spiralling wealth illustrates the shift in economic activity from the west to the east. From an Australian one, she embodies the shift from the east to the west. Once it was media moguls like the late Kerry Packer who topped the Australian rich lists. Now it is minerals magnates who are profiting from the country's China-fuelled resources boom.

Rinehart has set out to become both a magnate and a mogul, which is why she is the subject of so much attention and controversy.

Along with her mining interests, she now owns a share of Channel Ten, one of the three major commercial television networks, and has also become the single biggest shareholder in Australia's second largest newspaper group, Fairfax Media, although she reduced the size of that stake last week.

The group publishes three of the country's most venerable mastheads - the Sydney Morning Herald, the Melbourne Age and the Australian Financial Review, and the suspicion among many Fairfax journalists is that she will attempt to turn them into mouthpieces for her right-wing views.

The dark joke is that the Sydney Morning Herald might become the Sydney Mining Herald. However, she has not been able to gain seats on the board because of a dispute about her refusal so far to accept the group's declaration of editorial independence.

Her father Lang Hancock was a huge influence on her

Her mining company, Hancock Prospecting, is essentially her life. She has few outside interests. She does not go in for the normal blandishments of wealth, like art, racehorses or a private plane.

She is renowned for her 24/7 work regime, and a tunnel-visioned determination. Her personal feuds are the stuff of legend and her long list of adversaries has included her father, his business partner, her first husband, her Filipino mother-in-law, Rose Porteous, and now three of her children.

Rinehart spoke at an anti-tax rally in Perth in 2010

Famously litigious, many of her battles have ended up in court. "Whatever I do, the house of Hancock comes first," she once told a reporter. "Nothing will stand in the way of that."

Like her rambunctious father Lang, who railed against the scourge of "Canberra-ism," and "eco-nuts" in the environmental movement, her political views are a blend of conservatism and libertarianism.

An early heroine was Britain's Iron Lady, Margaret Thatcher, whom she met over lunch in 1977. Afterwards, the young Gina took much more care to dress in a business-like fashion, got a new hairdresser and started to wear more make-up.

Another intellectual hero was the free-market economist Milton Friedman. One of the reasons she cited for raising her children in the US, aside from her marriage to the Harvard-educated Frank Rinehart, was the hope that they might be taught by Friedman.

She is also a climate change sceptic, and close to the British Viscount, Christopher Monckton. On a visit to Perth last July, during which he delivered the Lang Hancock Memorial Lecture, Monckton spoke of Australia's need for an equivalent of Fox News, which could be funded by the "super-rich".

Continue reading the main story

Other rich women

• Christy Walton - widow of John, son of the founder of Wal-Mart, Sam Walton
• Liliane Bettencourt - daughter of L'Oreal founder Eugene Scheueller
• Johanna Quandt - third wife of German executive who rescued BMW
• Oprah Winfrey - television host and media mogul, one of the world's richest self-made women
• Birgit Rausing - art historian from Sweden inherited packaging firm Tetra Laval after death of husband
• Rosalia Mera - after dropping out of school to make dresses before her teens, the Spaniard co-founded retail company Inditex, which owns Zara

Rinehart was not present at the private meeting, but few doubted the identity of the "super-rich" person whom Monckton had in mind. When a video of his remarks was posted online, it heightened speculation that she was pursuing some kind of Foxification strategy in Australia.

I have also been told by one of her associates that she met Rupert Murdoch earlier this year, partly to discuss Fox News.

Given that the newspapers published by Rupert Murdoch's Australian arm, News Ltd, boast a 70% share of Australian readership, and that Fairfax has the remaining 30%, the widespread fear is of a conservative duopoly, and an end to editorial pluralism.

Rinehart's $A165m (£107m) stake in Channel Ten has already lost more than half its value and Fairfax, which last week announced 1900 job cuts, is not seen as a particularly attractive investment. Like her father, who started two newspapers, the profit motive is not a major consideration. Her investment, it is thought, is about political influence.

Besides, the amount of money involved is for her comparatively small. As an associate recently explained to me, she is adopting the same approach that the super-rich use when purchasing luxury yachts or private planes, which is not to invest more than 10% of their wealth.

In her ongoing drive for influence, the debate two years ago over the Labor government's plans to hit the mining sector with a super profits tax was a major milestone.

Unusually for a woman who has preferred to exert a behind-the-scenes influence, Rinehart led the chant of "axe the tax" at a protest rally in 2010 aimed at the then Prime Minister Kevin Rudd.

Her billionaire activism lent itself to easy caricature. A reporter from the Fairfax-owned WA Today joked that it was possible to hear her gold bracelet jangling "a note-perfect version of 'Money, Money, Money' as she pumped her fist". Within weeks, however, Rudd had been ousted, and his successor, Julia Gillard, immediately announced a climbdown over the mining tax.

Rinehart met the Queen when the British monarch visited Perth

Just as Rinehart wants influence and gratitude, she is also determined to maintain rigid control of her company. Presently, she is locked in a highly-publicised legal battle with three of her four children over a family trust set up by Lang Hancock for his grandchildren.

The trust, which owns a share of her company, was due to settle its assets last September, when Lang's youngest grandchild, Ginia, turned 25. But Rinehart allegedly tried to push back the date that her children could become trustees until 2068.

Determined to retain sole control, she warned her children they faced ruin if they refused to bend to her will. "Sign up or be bankrupt tomorrow," she threatened in an email. "The clock is ticking. There is one hour to bankruptcy and financial ruin."

Her three eldest children described the manoeuvre as "deceptive, manipulative, hopelessly conflicted and disgraceful". It is not so much about greed. Rinehart offered her three estranged children big payments to go along with her plan. It is more about control.

Commentators expect the same aggressive approach with her media strategy. After all, Australia's richest ever person is used to getting her own way.

As 2012 Summer Olympics in London approach, expect lots of rampant sex, and smuggled in booze and drugs by athletes at Olympic village

Let the games — and the wild, drunken sex and debauchery — begin! In the run-up to the 2012 Summer Olympics, which kick off July 27, a new book reveals just what goes on at Olympic Villages worldwide — and no matter the host country, it’s always a struggle keeping booze and condoms in strong supply. According to the anonymously authored exposé “The Secret Olympics” — written by a former British competitor — organizers supplied 70,000 condoms to athletes at the 2000 Summer Olympics in Sydney, Australia. The stockpile ran out in a week.   A general view of the Olympic Village built for the London 2012 Olympic Games While alcohol and drugs are banned at Olympic Villages, competitors often fill water bottles with booze and smuggle in weed and doping agents. “When I’m there, I’m in two different gears,” says one female US Olympian, who spoke to The Post on the condition of anonymity. “I’m so focused that I see nothing else, or I’m partying my butt off.” While officials don’t condone such behavior, they don’t condemn it, either — the only thing that matters, say those who spoke to The Post, is that the image of the Olympics remain unsullied. Or, as the anonymous author writes: “What happens in the Village stays in the Village.” Remember the worldwide outrage and disbelief when swimmer Michael Phelps — who won eight gold medals at the 2008 Beijing Olympics — was caught smoking pot out of a huge bong in 2009? Or, that same year, when a stripper named Theresa White came forward to say that Phelps likes threesomes and short girls, and that he “should get another gold medal for lovemaking”? If Phelps were a major-sport athlete, none of those revelations would have been surprising. Olympians, however, are held to an impossibly high standard. “We could never be part of a reality show,” says the female Olympian. “The USOC [United States Olympic Committee] wants a particular image and brand.” Olympic Villages are vast, pre-fab communities, divided into smaller subdivisions by nation. The United States’ area has a 24-hour McDonald’s, as well as sponsored beer halls: a Budweiser House and a Heineken House. Everything is free — including the unlimited supply of condoms, stamped with sports-specific logos. (Curlers, for example, get wrappers stamped with little curling stones.) Olympians, however, say that the insatiable demand for condoms is a giant practical joke. “It’s a tradition — taking so many that they have to replace them,” says Todd Lodwick, the 35-year-old-five-time Olympic Nordic combined athlete and a two-time gold medalist. “It’s a myth: ‘Oh, look at all the sex these Olympians are having!’ ” Next >

Hot Slut Of The Day

Wil Heuser, a 24-year-old golden Adonis beauty from Louisville, KY who will temporarily blind the other house guests on the new season of Big BrotherUS by blowing flecks of gold dust in their eyes when he whips his luxurious mane back and forth. When Big Brother (or as most of you call it, "How is that shit still on?!" starts again next week, the house guests will all learn the answer to the question "Do unicorn fairy stallions exist in real life?" when Wil gallops to the front of the house with a cloud of bronze glitter floating behind him. There you were thinking that masculine beauty like this only exists in Greek myths, on top of a go go box at a gay bar circa 1992 or in an International Male catalog.

Wil is a "marketing consulting," but that's obviously just a modest and professional way of saying that he's bright shining star, because Wil was on American Idol 8 for a quick second, has a pop single called "Glitter on the Dancefloor" and has his own YouTube channel where he parodies another national jewel: Tan Mom. Wil talked to Zap2it a couple of days ago and during that interview he let it be known that lady nipples will never feel the magical tingling sensation of his glorious hair cape brushing against them, because he's strictly dickly. I know, that shocking news probably made you jump out of your vagina. Once you get back into your vagina, feast your eyes and other parts on this:

It's like if DanRad and Jennifer Aniston made a baby together and that baby later fulfilled his lifelong dream of becoming a Fabio impersonator. Or it's like if Legolas from Lord of the Rings bought all of Gerardo's old clothes in a yard sale and became a gay pop star. Perfection. I really hope that the BB live feed is nothing but Wil brushing his hair over and over again.

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Usher's Stepson Declared Brain Dead by Doctors

Usher's 11-year-old stepson has been declared brain dead by doctors following the accident yesterday when he was struck by a jet ski ... TMZ has learned. 

According to our sources, Kyle Glover (son of Usher's estranged wife Tameka Foster) has not experienced any brain activity since he was admitted to the hospital. We're told there has been no decision yet as to whether or not to take him off life support. 

Our sources say Usher arrived at the hospital last night and Tameka has not left the hospital since she got there. 

As TMZ first reported, Kyle was struck in the head by passing jet ski while riding on an inner tube on Lake Lanier in Atlanta, GA.