Hey boys. It is that time of year again. Justin Monroe is looking for a few good men to grace the pages of his 2014 calendar. If you are fit, confident, and just plain sexy, please send photos and stats to: photography@justinmonroe.com
We already have some amazing submissions. Anyone else out there?
Club Kids: Sexy fashion forward club kids for a gritty party scene.
Lost Boys: Mischievous but good at the core. Under 25 years old or appears to be.
If you think that you would work for any of these roles, please email images of yourself and contact information to: jmonroephotography@sbcglobal.net
-ML
In a recent interview with GQ Magazine, Adam Levine made a comment putting down Honey Boo Boo and her family. “Seriously, Honey Boo Boo is the DECAY of Western civilization” the Maroon 5 frontman and “American Horror Story” told GQ. ”Just because so many people watch the show doesn’t mean it’s good.
So many people witness atrocities and can’t take their eyes away from them, but that doesn’t mean they’re good. That show is literally The. Worst. Thing. That’s. Ever. Happened. It’s complete f***-ng ignorance and the most despicable way to treat your kids. F*** those people. You can put that in the magazine: F*** those idiots. They’re just the worst. Sorry, I’m so sensitive to that — like, I don’t know, man, it’s upsetting. Just to clarify, I said, ‘F*** THOSE PEOPLE.’”
After reading this article, we could not help but bring attention to this by backing the youngest and newest gay advocate Honey Boo Boo. ”Aint nothing wrong with being gay. Everyone is a little gay.”
Alanna (Honey Boo Boo) and the rest of her family from Thanksgiving night and all the way through Christmas Eve, were standing outside of their home from 6 p.m. to 9 p.m. every night, meeting and taking pictures with fans who bring toys and food donations for those who are less fortunate. If that’s not enough, the family took donations in their fan mail to increase their pile of donations, spending $3,200 recently on buying toys to ensure kids have something under their trees. But somehow, even with all of the charity, and not to mention the love and support the family provides each other with on screen, haters come in the form of much more powerful, educated, and well-off public figures. “Haters gonna hate!”
Adam Levine called Honey Boo Boo “the DECAY of Western civilization.” We don’t see him and his entire family donating their time and money, in the thousands, toward the betterment of their community. Levine earns $6 million a season on The Voice and Honey Boo Boo earned anywhere from $50,000 to $200,000 over the course of the season on her hit show. Mama June, Honey Boo Boo’s mother turned down a larger house that TLC offered her family after the show became a hit, so that she could stay an integral part of her community.
This family totally loves one another. There is very little drama, and no question about how much mama June loves her four daughters. If you can understand Sugar Bear with his mouth full of dip, you would know he feels the exact same. While their show has been green lighted for a second season, the group still continues to live their regular lives in the tiny county of McIntyre, Georgia. June is doing everything she can to make sure that fame affecting her family is not an option.
June won’t even entertain the idea that the show will change her family. She has refused to hire a manager because she doesn’t want to book gigs that would take her away from her daughters. As for the money that they are surely raking in, it all goes in a trust for the girls, save for what they spent on a new car and four-wheeler. The family continues to live off of Sugar Bear’schalk mining paycheck. June isn’t oblivious to the fact that all this hoopla could end at any time. She says, “Reality TV don’t last more than three years. People have a good run for about three years. Some people fizzle out within a couple of weeks. We’ve had about 10 weeks and if it stays for the next three years, great.”
June recognizes that many critics think the family is embarrassing themselves–as if these people could ever be embarrassed! June says, “I don’t feel like I should be embarrassed about anything. I didn’t say I am representing Southerners. I’m not representing people in Georgia. I didn’t even say I was representing people in our county. I’m just representing our family. People will say, ‘You’re white trash.’ Whatever. You don’t even know me. But it is what it is. You’ve got critics. You’ve got people who love you and people who hate you.”
We would love to see Adam Levine stand outside of his house if only for a couple hours to accept donations with his family. To put down a family that loves each other so much and treat each other and others so well is a “disgrace to Western Civilization.” Money, fame and fortune are not what makes up a good person. It makes us wonder if Adam Levine has even watched any of the episodes or if he has formed a judgment from random images and clips floating around in the media. We would recommend for him to watch it and then form an opinion.
Interested in Justin Monroe, boys in briefs, books, calendars, underwear or drinks? If you live in NYC, come meet Justin at his book signing this Saturday hosted by Rufksin NY.
Justin Monroe and his freaks will be taking over The Abbey November 24 to celebrate the release of his Rock Bottom book. Special guest performance by our favorite “IT” girl V Bozeman.
Justin Monroe is taking over The Abbey November 24 to celebrate the release of his Rock Bottom coffee table book. There will be a special guest performance by Monroe-land’s IT girl V Bozeman.
Alluring. Provocative. Whimsical. Iconic. There are not enough adjectives in the English language to describe the impression that one gets while viewing the work of Pierre et Gilles. I have been a fan and follower since the day I picked up my camera. When I saw their book in a book store, I could not put it down. I would study each page as if I were taking notes and trying to figure out some magnificent secret. This was long before the day of digital photography and Photoshop. These creations were imaginative and otherworldly to me. I think that I spent two hours in the book store drinking in every page of this compelling book. I have long since been a fan and admirer of the talents these two posses. -Justin
French artists and Romantic partners.
Pierre was born in La Roche-sur-Yon in 1950, Gilles in Le Havre in 1953. At the beginning of the 1970s, Gilles graduated from the Ecole des Beaux-Arts in Le Havre, while Pierre was studying photography in Geneva. In 1974, Gilles corresponded for a year with Annette Messager. He settled in Paris, did paintings and collages, collected Photomatons and did illustrations for magazines and advertising. After service in the army in 1973, Pierre began working in Paris as a photographer for the magazines Rock & Folk, Dépêche Mode and Interview.
In autumn 1976, Pierre and Gilles met at the opening of the Kenzo boutique in Paris and started living together. Their apartment/studio was in rue des Blancs-Manteaux, Paris. As from 1977, it became clear that they should work in collaboration. Pierre will shoot and Gilles paint, each one working on the other works. Their work for the publication Façade brought them to the attention of the public.
The cosmos of the worldwide renowned French artist duo is a vivid, colorful world poised between baroque sumptuousness and earthly limbo. Pierre et Gilles create unique hand-painted photographic portraits of film icons, sailors and princes, saints and sinners, of mythological figures and unknowns alike. Pierre et Gilles pursue their own, stunningly unique vision of an enchanted world spanning fairytale paradises and abyssal depths, quoting from popular visual languages and history of art. Again and again, they re-envision their personal dream of reality anew in consummate aesthetic perfection.
Pierre et Gilles are among the most influential artists of our time. In their complex, multilayered images, they quote from art history, transgress traditional moral codes, and experiment adeptly with social clichés. Their painterly photographic masterpieces exert an intense visual power that leaves the viewer spellbound.
Over the last thirty years, Pierre et Gilles have created photographic portraits of numerous celebrities including Marc Almond, Mirelle Mathieu, Catherine Deneuve, Serge Gainsbourg, Iggy Pop, Jean-Paul Gaultier, Nina Hagen, Madonna, and Paloma Picasso. They work almost exclusively in an opulently furnished studio, where their subjects are costumed lavishly and placed before three-dimensional backgrounds. Pierre photographs the model, and Gilles retouches and hand-colors the print. The reproducible portrait is rendered unique through painting, which highlights each detail with carefully selected materials and accessories.
The ‘sulphur loveliness’ of fashion photography and advertising is where this art comes from, and where it belongs: amid exclusive shopping, outrageous price tags and very private parties that are the embodiment of social status. Here, perfection is not terrible but beautiful, yearned for and everlasting. Pierre & Gilles are part of a global glitterati who serve up happiness as exquisite corn and battered clich’. The stagnant male studs in Pierre & Gilles’ blended ideals certainly don’t sweat. Even vomit is portrayed as scentless, precious diamonds (L’escale, petit matin, 2003). In an erotic image of 1996, a naked man has his head and torso ‘splattered by the photo stylist’s equivalent of semen’. Gilles explains: ‘Johnny was originally meant to be a beautiful young thug, but he turned into something more vulnerable. It’s fake cum, just something we concocted. I think we used shampoo’.
Why is this schmaltzy kitsch so popular? Pierre Ardenne suggests that the ‘niceness’ of Pierre & Gilles has something to do with it. ‘The definition of the French equivalent, gentillesse… fits the work of Pierre et Gilles like a glove’: that which pleases by the familiar grace of its forms, its appearance, its manners.
Today their portraits have become a camp trademark and are as true to reality as Astro-Turf is to grass. The flagrant oblivion of Pierre & Gilles towards any awkward realities of history and culture does have a Ship-of-Fools quality to it. Also, their oeuvre, redolent with recycled popular icons, cute heroes and fantasized ideals, has a nightmarish undertone. Nevertheless, their portraits are immensely popular and any star worthy of Paris Match wants to be in one. Celebrities need to be talked about, spied on, yearned over. They are locked into the sadistic ratings game of fame. So they flock and befriend Pierre & Gilles
