LIVING OFF DEATH - YOVANI SOLÍS EMBALMS EX-PRESIDENTS, MIDGET WRESTLERS, AND VICTIMS OF THE NARCO WARS
Every day I ride a tram back and forth between my house and office. I’ve taken it for years now. The route goes through some of Mexico City’s nicest neighborhoods, like Colonia Roma, but it also passes one of its roughest: the Doctores, where each street is named for a famous physician. Last year, on an April morning, I was gazing out the window of the tram when I spotted two oversize trailers backed up to the door of what looked like a nondescript residential house. A large group of photographers were snapping pictures around the trailers as soldiers stood around the perimeter, blocking off the street. It was an unusual sight, but it didn’t provoke any Roswellian suspicions.
Later that day, as I was watching the news, I learned that the house I saw on the tram is something like a stopover to the afterlife—like a mom-and-pop-shop mortuary.
The scene kept replaying in my mind until curiosity finally got the best of me and I decided to return to the house and see who was inside. I knocked on the door, expecting some creepy, vampire-looking old guy to answer. Instead, I was welcomed inside by a sweet and soft-spoken young man named Yovani González Solís, who is the sole employee of La Embalsamadora la Piedad (Mercy Embalmings).
The first thing I asked Yovani about was the trailers I’d seen while riding the tram, one of which was currently docked to the house from the sidewalk. He told me that the trucks were full of bodies, and that they were being delivered to him. Autopsies in Mexico are handled by the Forensic Medical Service (SEMEFO), a government agency tasked with identifying bodies and investigating violent deaths. But people like Yovani are relied on for the cleaning and embalming. It’s mortuary outsourcing, basically.
When I asked Yovani where the stiffs on the trucks came from, he said they were transferred from Tamaulipas’s infamous narco mass graves—victims of a series of brutal drug-cartel executions that happened last year. I was shocked and thought it best for me to leave to reflect on what was going on at Yovani’s house, but I asked him whether it was OK to come back some other time to talk more about his work. He said yes.
Jimi Hendrix in the crowd at the Martin Luther King Jr. Benefit Concert at Madison Square Garden on June 28, 1968.
THE ORIGINAL PAPARAZZO TALKS ABOUT HIS LIFETIME OF PARTY CRASHING
RON GALELLA HATES GANG BANGS - THE ORIGINAL PAPARAZZO TALKS ABOUT HIS LIFETIME OF PARTY CRASHING
Before the concept of paparazzi became what it is today—swarms of faceless, Hollywood-hungry fools with digital cameras, no clout, and even less class—Ron Galella was sneaking into parties via dumbwaiters, snapping shots of Madonna, Bowie, and Liza dancing post-rails at Studio 54, and relentlessly stalking Jackie O. outside her Upper East Side apartment.
An opportunist and workaholic, Galella scrabbled his way up the twisted ladder, eventually becoming thephotographer of celebrities—a distinction that may not have been sanctioned but was definitely recognized. He’s been beaten to a pulp by Marlon Brando (after which he wore a football helmet when Brando was around), sued by Jackie O., and barred from dozens of exclusive clubs while at the same time being incredibly valuable to the industry because, from the 60s through the 80s, literally no one was doing what he did. During this period, his work appeared regularly in Time (which deemed him the “godfather of US paparazzi culture”),Harper’s Bazaar, Vanity Fair, Vogue, and People. He captured intimate moments no one else had the balls to even attempt to photograph.
Today, at 81, Galella has seen everything the glamorous world of movie stars has to offer, and he’s got it all documented and catalogued. The basement of his New Jersey mansion is overstuffed with meticulously categorized shots of everyone from Andy Warhol to Elizabeth Taylor to Goldie Hawn to Elvis Presley. He’s currently working on a book about Jackie O., his greatest obsession, but he took a break to talk to us about his long years of shoving cameras in famous faces and graciously offer a selection of unpublished photos from his archives.
A candid shot of Ron surrounded by his decades of candid shots. Portrait By Benjamin Wlody.
VICE: Do you consider your work invasive?
Ron Galella: Well…
I have to ask, considering you’ve been punched and sued more than a couple times.
[laughs] I’m controversial, you see. Some celebrities think they are private, like Jackie Onassis. She thought she was private. But in public areas you are fair game. She was a hypocrite in a way, because she liked it, too. My greatest picture of her is “Windblown Jackie.” She had no makeup, no hairdo, natural pose, natural person. I was photographing this model Joyce Smith in Central Park near Jackie’s house. When we were leaving the park, I spotted Jackie. She didn’t see me, but I followed her to the corner of 85th and Madison and hopped in a cab. If I had followed her on foot, she would have spotted me and put on her sunglasses, and I don’t like that kind of shot. My taxi driver blew his horn; I think he was interested in looking at Jackie. When the horn sounded, Jackie turned and looked right at the cab. I got the shot. Then I got out of the cab and gave Joyce Smith another camera so she could get some shots of me going after Jackie.
Why were you so obsessed with Jackie O.?
There were a lot of reasons: Physically she was beautiful, with big, wide eyes. She had a whispering, soft, little-girl voice like Marilyn. The biggest factor, which creates glamour in any woman, was that she had mystique. She was mysterious. She was quiet. She only gave three interviews her entire life. Mystique is what is lacking in most celebrities today. Everyone is so quick to expose themselves; it’s vulgar. When there is mystery we want to know more. It leaves something to be desired.
When did you start working as a paparazzo?
I had no money for a studio coming out of art school, so I just shot on location. The world was my studio. It was necessity. I would shoot celebrities in their environment: at events, the airport… Of course, with Jackie, I would just wait outside her doorstep and she could take me anywhere. When I shot, my style was very candid, spontaneous, and unrehearsed. My letterhead even says, Photography with the Paparazzi Approach. I wanted real emotions. Whereas today, it’s all posed. At a premiere, the paparazzi just yell the celebrities’ names; they want the celebrity looking into their camera. I never wanted that. I wanted people doing real things. That’s what makes great pictures: genuine emotions. We want to see celebrities in human situations, so we can say, “Look, they are just like us!” It tells a story when they’re doing things. A posed picture says nothing.
Danish photographer Kim Thue is the type of person who would commonly be referred to as a badass. He has spent the past few years shooting in Big Wharf, one of the the biggest and most dangerous slums ofFreetown, Sierra Leone, where the locals affectionately call him “The Notorious K.I.M.” The gritty black and white photos he took during his travels in west Africa have now been collected in the ominously dubbed Dead Traffic, a new photo book that is being published by Dienacht.
Here’s what Kim had to say about his new book in a recent interview:
“Despite Sierra Leone being renowned for its brutal civil war, I didn’t have a hidden political agenda, a specific humanitarian issue, or even a clear story in mind whilst making the book. I went to Freetown, not as a photojournalist, but as a stranger with a camera and an open heart. What I hope to have created is something the viewer can tune in to emotionally. Something that hits a nerve without being coercive in nature, and without staking a monopoly on a specific kind of truth. A collection of images simply suggesting that the inextricable coexistence of beauty and dread is an ever present theme within this vigorous and inclement city.”
Kim Thue will celebrate Dead Traffic with an opening at the Freelens Gallery in Hamburg this Thursday, which will be followed by a six-week exhibition in the gallery. You can pre-order the book here, watch a video here,read an interview here, and follow Kim’s work at Prospekt Agency.
In 2011 I travelled from Italy to Bucharest, where I spent a few weeks photographing the sewage system of Gare Du Nord (the city’s main train station) and the children who call it home.
Under the guidance of a heavily-tattooed 30-year-old man who calls himself “Bruce Lee,” they spend their days begging in the street and sniffing a toxic paint called Aurolac. They meet every afternoon in the sewer, form a circle and begin their ritual. “It makes us forget the hunger and the piercing cold for a few minutes, but then everything gets worse and you want to die. This is why a lot of us end up cutting ourselves with knives and razor blades,” explained Bruce, as he showed me his own scars.
Next to him sat Valentina, 27, who complained that the rats and the mice gnawing at her head would not let her sleep at night. Her friend Fiorentina, was 33 years old and two months pregnant. Her deformed hands are the hands of someone who was born and lives underground in conditions of excruciatingly poor hygiene, and who continuously uses drugs. Her son will almost certainly be born with physical deformities, too.
Then there was Costel. At 14 years old, he seemed to be the most pampered of the group, though his face hadn’t escaped the ravaging effects of Aurolac. He told me he liked living in the sewers, which are currently inhabited by an estimated 5,000 people.
In 2012, Europe’s biggest consumer brands are starting to invest in Bucharest, but the subterranean legacy of Ceausescu’s dictatorship continues to live its halflife in the sewers.
You know that feeling you get when you’re so infatuated with someone that you could literally puke, and the only way to accurately express your megafeelings would be to cut the person open and live inside their ribcage? Well, Nick Haymes’ book, Gabe, is the visual representation of that.
Some background info:
In 2007, a 14-year-old Gabe Nevins auditioned for the part of an extra in Gus Van Sant’s film Paranoid Park. A baby-faced skateboarder from Oregon, Van Sant was so enamored with Gabe that he impulsively cast him in the film’s lead role, playing a skateboarder who accidentally kills a security guard. Soon after the film wrapped, Gabe met photographer Nick Haymes on an editorial shoot. Haymes, like Van Sant, instantly felt there was something special about Gabe (his long flowing locks and girlish features were clearly a powerful combo), and what was supposed to be an afternoon photoshoot turned into four years of obsessive documentation of Gabe’s life.
Haymes has made his career intimately documenting the lives of teenage misfits and skateboarders. Gabe, his third photo book, tells the unexpectedly tragic story of Gabe Nevin’s teen years. What begins as sensuous portraits of an innocent young star turns dark as we watch Gabe struggle with drug abuse, suffer an emotional breakdown, and eventually become homeless. The book is sad and sexy and weirdly romantic all at the same time—a devastating love affair that blurs the line between artist and subject, and makes you feel like a creepy voyeur in the best way possible.
VICE: After meeting Gabe on the editorial shoot, what made you want to keep photographing him?
Nick Haymes: There was just something about him that was a bit off… or dark. I couldn’t pin him down in just one picture. When I’m really intrigued by someone I don’t like to photograph them for just a day or a week—I want to find out more. Also, he lived in Oregon at the time and, being English, I always find it fun to travel America. I wanted to go and see what sort of life he had out there. So the whole thing started off pretty naive. I never knew the end result, but then, how could I?
Right, you could never predict Gabe’s future. But that was my main question—when Gabe’s life began to take darker turns, was there ever a point where you felt a moral obligation to stop taking pictures?
Yeah, I always struggle with it morally. But he liked being photographed, and he had done some acting and thought of it as being in a role. He has an exhibitionist quality, and I’ve always admired him for his freedom. But I was having moral issues again the other day, especially now that the book is launching and unfortunately he can’t be here.
Why not?
I don’t want to say exactly, but he’s going through a weird time in his life.
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![RON GALELLA HATES GANG BANGS - THE ORIGINAL PAPARAZZO TALKS ABOUT HIS LIFETIME OF PARTY CRASHING
Before the concept of paparazzi became what it is today—swarms of faceless, Hollywood-hungry fools with digital cameras, no clout, and even less class—Ron Galella was sneaking into parties via dumbwaiters, snapping shots of Madonna, Bowie, and Liza dancing post-rails at Studio 54, and relentlessly stalking Jackie O. outside her Upper East Side apartment.
An opportunist and workaholic, Galella scrabbled his way up the twisted ladder, eventually becoming thephotographer of celebrities—a distinction that may not have been sanctioned but was definitely recognized. He’s been beaten to a pulp by Marlon Brando (after which he wore a football helmet when Brando was around), sued by Jackie O., and barred from dozens of exclusive clubs while at the same time being incredibly valuable to the industry because, from the 60s through the 80s, literally no one was doing what he did. During this period, his work appeared regularly in Time (which deemed him the “godfather of US paparazzi culture”),Harper’s Bazaar, Vanity Fair, Vogue, and People. He captured intimate moments no one else had the balls to even attempt to photograph.
Today, at 81, Galella has seen everything the glamorous world of movie stars has to offer, and he’s got it all documented and catalogued. The basement of his New Jersey mansion is overstuffed with meticulously categorized shots of everyone from Andy Warhol to Elizabeth Taylor to Goldie Hawn to Elvis Presley. He’s currently working on a book about Jackie O., his greatest obsession, but he took a break to talk to us about his long years of shoving cameras in famous faces and graciously offer a selection of unpublished photos from his archives.
A candid shot of Ron surrounded by his decades of candid shots. Portrait By Benjamin Wlody.
VICE: Do you consider your work invasive?Ron Galella: Well…
I have to ask, considering you’ve been punched and sued more than a couple times.[laughs] I’m controversial, you see. Some celebrities think they are private, like Jackie Onassis. She thought she was private. But in public areas you are fair game. She was a hypocrite in a way, because she liked it, too. My greatest picture of her is “Windblown Jackie.” She had no makeup, no hairdo, natural pose, natural person. I was photographing this model Joyce Smith in Central Park near Jackie’s house. When we were leaving the park, I spotted Jackie. She didn’t see me, but I followed her to the corner of 85th and Madison and hopped in a cab. If I had followed her on foot, she would have spotted me and put on her sunglasses, and I don’t like that kind of shot. My taxi driver blew his horn; I think he was interested in looking at Jackie. When the horn sounded, Jackie turned and looked right at the cab. I got the shot. Then I got out of the cab and gave Joyce Smith another camera so she could get some shots of me going after Jackie.
Why were you so obsessed with Jackie O.? There were a lot of reasons: Physically she was beautiful, with big, wide eyes. She had a whispering, soft, little-girl voice like Marilyn. The biggest factor, which creates glamour in any woman, was that she had mystique. She was mysterious. She was quiet. She only gave three interviews her entire life. Mystique is what is lacking in most celebrities today. Everyone is so quick to expose themselves; it’s vulgar. When there is mystery we want to know more. It leaves something to be desired.
When did you start working as a paparazzo? I had no money for a studio coming out of art school, so I just shot on location. The world was my studio. It was necessity. I would shoot celebrities in their environment: at events, the airport… Of course, with Jackie, I would just wait outside her doorstep and she could take me anywhere. When I shot, my style was very candid, spontaneous, and unrehearsed. My letterhead even says, Photography with the Paparazzi Approach. I wanted real emotions. Whereas today, it’s all posed. At a premiere, the paparazzi just yell the celebrities’ names; they want the celebrity looking into their camera. I never wanted that. I wanted people doing real things. That’s what makes great pictures: genuine emotions. We want to see celebrities in human situations, so we can say, “Look, they are just like us!” It tells a story when they’re doing things. A posed picture says nothing.
Continue](http://25.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_m3rnu5X5wR1qzikspo1_1280.jpg "RON GALELLA HATES GANG BANGS - THE ORIGINAL PAPARAZZO TALKS ABOUT HIS LIFETIME OF PARTY CRASHING
Before the concept of paparazzi became what it is today—swarms of faceless, Hollywood-hungry fools with digital cameras, no clout, and even less class—Ron Galella was sneaking into parties via dumbwaiters, snapping shots of Madonna, Bowie, and Liza dancing post-rails at Studio 54, and relentlessly stalking Jackie O. outside her Upper East Side apartment.
An opportunist and workaholic, Galella scrabbled his way up the twisted ladder, eventually becoming thephotographer of celebrities—a distinction that may not have been sanctioned but was definitely recognized. He’s been beaten to a pulp by Marlon Brando (after which he wore a football helmet when Brando was around), sued by Jackie O., and barred from dozens of exclusive clubs while at the same time being incredibly valuable to the industry because, from the 60s through the 80s, literally no one was doing what he did. During this period, his work appeared regularly in Time (which deemed him the “godfather of US paparazzi culture”),Harper’s Bazaar, Vanity Fair, Vogue, and People. He captured intimate moments no one else had the balls to even attempt to photograph.
Today, at 81, Galella has seen everything the glamorous world of movie stars has to offer, and he’s got it all documented and catalogued. The basement of his New Jersey mansion is overstuffed with meticulously categorized shots of everyone from Andy Warhol to Elizabeth Taylor to Goldie Hawn to Elvis Presley. He’s currently working on a book about Jackie O., his greatest obsession, but he took a break to talk to us about his long years of shoving cameras in famous faces and graciously offer a selection of unpublished photos from his archives.
A candid shot of Ron surrounded by his decades of candid shots. Portrait By Benjamin Wlody.
VICE: Do you consider your work invasive?Ron Galella: Well…
I have to ask, considering you’ve been punched and sued more than a couple times.[laughs] I’m controversial, you see. Some celebrities think they are private, like Jackie Onassis. She thought she was private. But in public areas you are fair game. She was a hypocrite in a way, because she liked it, too. My greatest picture of her is “Windblown Jackie.” She had no makeup, no hairdo, natural pose, natural person. I was photographing this model Joyce Smith in Central Park near Jackie’s house. When we were leaving the park, I spotted Jackie. She didn’t see me, but I followed her to the corner of 85th and Madison and hopped in a cab. If I had followed her on foot, she would have spotted me and put on her sunglasses, and I don’t like that kind of shot. My taxi driver blew his horn; I think he was interested in looking at Jackie. When the horn sounded, Jackie turned and looked right at the cab. I got the shot. Then I got out of the cab and gave Joyce Smith another camera so she could get some shots of me going after Jackie.
Why were you so obsessed with Jackie O.? There were a lot of reasons: Physically she was beautiful, with big, wide eyes. She had a whispering, soft, little-girl voice like Marilyn. The biggest factor, which creates glamour in any woman, was that she had mystique. She was mysterious. She was quiet. She only gave three interviews her entire life. Mystique is what is lacking in most celebrities today. Everyone is so quick to expose themselves; it’s vulgar. When there is mystery we want to know more. It leaves something to be desired.
When did you start working as a paparazzo? I had no money for a studio coming out of art school, so I just shot on location. The world was my studio. It was necessity. I would shoot celebrities in their environment: at events, the airport… Of course, with Jackie, I would just wait outside her doorstep and she could take me anywhere. When I shot, my style was very candid, spontaneous, and unrehearsed. My letterhead even says, Photography with the Paparazzi Approach. I wanted real emotions. Whereas today, it’s all posed. At a premiere, the paparazzi just yell the celebrities’ names; they want the celebrity looking into their camera. I never wanted that. I wanted people doing real things. That’s what makes great pictures: genuine emotions. We want to see celebrities in human situations, so we can say, “Look, they are just like us!” It tells a story when they’re doing things. A posed picture says nothing.
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