Interview Madge

I will go and buy this. I will make a coffee. I will sit in a comfy armchair, with my mug of coffee with this and enjoy....

Madonna in the flesh.

I picked up a beautiful photography book from the local charity chop, for a mere £2.25, the book: Madonna Nudes 1979, by the photographer, Martin Hugo Maximilian Schreiber.

It immediately got my attention as I was on the look out for everything feminine and pretty, my eyes passed some very stunning, delicate silk scarves when I was presented with Madonna's voluptuous breasts. I had heard of a media controversy story over these specific images a while ago now, so I wanted to see what all the fuss was about.

The images were shot by photographer (see above, is name is huge!) in '79, Madonna then was trying to earn some cash and was a model for photographic students, teachers and hobbyists alike. The photographer Schreiber, was a teacher at New School/Parsons in New York City, teaching a course titled, “Photographing The Nude”. For this class the school supplied the models or sometimes the teachers were given a choice, Schreiber didn't choose Madonna. Although, when she was booked for his class, he loved having her to photograph as it was 'a welcome relief from the average, lumpy but sweet art-class model' the class was so used to studying. Over the years Schreiber came across Madonna whether it be on a train, or passing in the park in New York City and in the year 1985, Playboy magazine published four of his images he had shot of Madonna.

Madonna.




The book I picked up is ' a celebration of the human form, a dedication to an innocent, determined, young woman and to all figure models. It is a tribute to her...' The immediate references (the subject, the cropping choices) I saw whilst flicking through the images of Madonna seems to heavily evoke Man Ray's past images of nudes and the human form. The format of the photograph, being in a grey tone, also highlights Man Ray as an influence.

As for the controversy of the images, I don't understand what the problem is, at the beginning of the book we see the original (but photocopied) model release form, and Madonna being a strong minded, independent woman, and not forgetting her concert outfits and some style choices, she isn't one to shy away and show a little flesh.

Man Ray.

Design History class....1980's

In the design history class we had the other day, we watched a documentry about the 1980's- the pop culture, the media, new romantics, sex, drugs, sexuality, singers etc It was kind of like a quick overview of the 80's.

I found the documentry interesting. I found it quite fascinating that in the 80's gay men would dress in lumber jack shirts with chunky boots (to come across as butch) for a night on the town, and nowadays the stereotypical dress code for lesbians is very much the same as this- checkered shirt, with junky boots.

Two of the main people that stood out to me from the documentry is Boy George and Annie Lennox for there brash gender roles they had at the time. Boy George was very feminine, wether he was for a specific reason is unsure, and yet on the other hand Annie lennox for a certain performace dressed as Elvis- as a sort of way of saying fuck stereotypes. In the 80's androgonoy was literally skin deep: something I'm quite fond of.

The idea of sex was highly focused. It seems as though sex was a recurrent theme in the 80's until the back end of the 80's when 'a new disease, known as AIDS crept upon Britain' and scared the jeeebies out of everyone. During the time when AIDS were on every news channel and was apparent on every newspaper, women started to become more stronger in socitey: led by Madonna, of course, in showing how powerful women are and as Madonna says in a clip we saw on the footage


- 'Pussy rules the world'