Happy Halloween...

.....from the editors.

(We promise to update this thing more often!)

---Chris and Amanda

dark and light

Anke Merzbach's photography is dark, elegant, and moody.

Her work is a glorious combination of antiquated fashion and photo techniques, desaturated color, dirty contrast, and models of non-traditional beauty, strength, and grace.



She uses, sometimes to the point of flamboyant excess, a lot of digital photo processing and manipulation, but despite the modern tools, the photos have an air of antique-ness, but of a past world that never really existed at all.



You can find her work on her website, or on her Flickr Stream.

tattered fairy tales

The folks at Gibbous Fashions create their couture out of scraps of discarded clothing, textiles, and other fabrics. Some from today, many from yesterday. The pieces are carefully matched, mis-matched, frayed, hemmed, stitched, and twisted onto each other, creating beautiful layers of color and texture.


Their artists' statement (of sorts), tells us that they believe that clothing should be lovingly kept, worn out, repaired, worn out again, and cared for like a cherished object. With the beautiful layers and stories woven into their pieces, it would be no challenge to treat them with such tenderness.

I believe in fairy stories

I'm going to post something unabashedly girly because Chris can't stop me.

Whichgoose handcrafts absolutely beautiful fantasy crowns from natural materials, ribbons, beads, and tiny birds. The subdued palette and organic nature of them just fits my "fairy tale ideal" to an absolute tee. Her colors, photos, and textures are like a hand-colored photograph from the turn of the century. I might have kind of a girl-crush on her....okay, I do.


If you are going to a medieval fair this summer, or need something for a niece or daughter for dress-up, or if you're like me and feel your own need to play dress-up, be sure to check out her Etsy shop!

a little bit noir

Spanish photographer Eugenio Recuenco creates dark, moody worlds inhabited by stoic, doll-like people.

His work shows up in fashion magazines, advertising campaigns, exhibitions, and even musicians get in on the action (see the Rammstein photo shoot on his website).

I love the tableau-style work that mimics old paintings and photos; the color is eye-squintingly dark and undefined, it's completely unapologetic in that regard, it's great. I find the "15th hour" series to be disturbingly humorous in a "what will she do next?" sort of way, and there is a wry smirk of kitsch in the voyeuristic/fetishism-tinged photos as well.