Entrance (a.k.a. Guy Blakeslee) just released the great Promises EP and is gearing up for a full-length early next year via Thrill Jockey. In the meantime, he’ll be guest editing magnetmagazine.com all week. Readers, you’re in for some really good stuff.
Blakeslee: Pheromone Hotbox is a beautiful new book of photographs by Amanda Charchian. Shot all over the world—in Cuba, Israel, Iceland, Morocco, Costa Rica, just to name a few places—the book presents raw and intimate portraits of nude female artists in exotic and mysterious locations and situations. I must admit that the project is close to my heart: Amanda is my girlfriend, and we’ve lived together for six years, so I’ve been lucky to observe her working and growing as an artist for quite some time, and I even assisted one of the shoots, holding the lights and helping distract the guard in Carlsbad Caverns, N.M. Amanda followed three basic rules for the creation of the images in Pheromone Hotbox:
“The first precept was that I would find a surreal location in advance, but until I arrived, I didn’t know what I was going to do. My images became an imprint of discovery, a reaction to the time, space and subject.
“The second construct was that the artist should be foreign to the setting—a Sri Lankan actress in Cuba, a Serbian furniture designer in Costa Rica, a Chilean painter in Corsica.
“The act of undressing was a third integral variable in the process, heightened by adrenaline at the intersection of fear and excitement. In that elevated state, I used the camera to point to their elemental characteristics, and document the rawness of the moment.
“By applying these formulas to my adventures, I have, many times, felt connected to something bigger than me, something conspiring toward magic … ”
