Dazed and Confused's July 2011

Hello Dazed! This summer Dazed and Confused has brought one of their best issues to date, in my opinion. I finally got the time to sit down and flick through one of my favourite magazines before the August issue was sent through my door and boy was it a treat.

The front cover oozes vibrant sexyness with a brilliant shot of the one and only Beyonce Knowles looking as strong and beautiful as ever. The fantastic shoot by Sharif Hamza captured Beyonce's pop icon status perfectly, capturing the confident, fierce and breathtakingly beautiful 27yr old star. The juxtaposition of the run down location and the incredible outfits (made especially for the shoot) created a vibrant, incredibly cool and perfect atmosphere to capture one of this generations most successful and talented stars. Here's a little taster for all you bloggers...











After the Beyonce shoot, comes "In Bloom" a fashion shoot by photographer Viviane Sassen and styled by Katie Shillingford. This shoot has to be one of my favourite magazine pieces. The colourful flower field location clashing with the bold colours of the clothes modeled, creates the most visually vibrant and audacious fashion stories I have ever seen and I absolutely loved it and can't wait to try something similar myself.

So cheers Dazed for refreshing the fashion scene this summer. I was getting a little bored of the dull, unimaginative shoots that have been filling the fashion magazines at the moment.

Harry Potter and The Deathly Hallows Part 2 premiere

Well to all you Potter fans like me out there you will be glad to hear that the new and final (sob) installment does not disappoint. I attended the Leicester Square premiere last night of Harry Potter and The Deathly Hallows Part 2, walking the red carpet adorned with hundreds of screaming fans starting from Trafalgar Square and through to Leicester Square (a 1/2 mile walk in killer heels, not fun but no falling on my face thankfully!)The crowd was incredible, all there to support a woman who wrote one of the most fantastic children books we've had in a long time J.K.Rowling, and for that I thank her for bringing me so much joy as a child right through to my teenage years and adulthood and also thank you for encouraging a generation of computer gamers and TV watchers to read again!

The last film is definitely the best yet and I encourage EVERYONE to go see it straight away.

After the film I was lucky enough to go to the after party, rubbing shoulders with some of the best actors. It was a brilliant night filled with booze, delicious food and dancing. I managed to score Alan Rickman (Severus Snape), Helena Bonham Carter (Bellatrix LeStrange), David Bradley (Argus Filch) and Emma Watson's (Hermoine Granger's) autographs, but met many more of the cast!

It was the best night of my life and a perfect end to over 10 years of loosing myself in the world of Harry Potter and all his friends! A very emotional night not only for the cast and the creator J.K herself but for all us adoring fans too as we see the end of an era come to a close.

Some Summer Snaps

London's Calling

On Friday I went up to London for the first time in a while to see some new exhibitions before they all finished. First I headed to Whitechapel Gallery to see one of my favourite photographers Paul Graham. I love his snapshot style portraits that capture the individual perfectly. His vibrant colours and great compositions make his portraits unique and inspiring in so many ways. The exhibition covered the various projects throughout his impressive photographic career. I absolutely loved it and the exhibition catalogue is definitely on my birthday list!















I then headed on down to Tate Modern, one of my favourite exhibition spaces to see some of my favourite pieces in their permanent collection as well as having a look at what they have new to show. I was pleasantly surprised to view an exhibition of Diane Arbus, one of my favourite photographers, as well as Burke + Norfolk: Photographs from the war in Afghanistan, and a piece of work by an unknown photographer to myself, Tayrn Simon.

Diane Arbus









The Burke + Norfolk exhibition was really fascinating, Simon Norfolk went back to some of the sights John Burke photographed back in the C19th, recapturing contemporary versions of Burke's original Afghanistan images. The exhbition was really thought provoking and I loved Norfolk's vibrant, beautiful images of a war torn country, avoiding directly rephotographing Burke's original images and staying away from the cliched black and white war torn images, instead showing beautiful parts of the country along with war images.









I love London, it is definitely my favourite city and I am so lucky to live so close. I always just pop up, without planning to see anything in particular and love just wandering around the art galleries all around London and finding out about new artists. So I encourage you all to just take a day out your busy schedules, head up to London and just wander around all the art galleries. Apart from the big exhibitions it's always free to do so!

Laila Muraywid

As you regular bloggers may recall, last October I went to Paris for the Paris Photo weekend, whilst I was there I went into a little art gallery and came across an artist, that I recently rediscovered during the daunting process of packing all my belongings up and moving out of my student accommodation of the past three years. When I saw Laila Muraywid's work I found it breathtaking and took a brochure home (which is how I rediscovered her again) and so I thought I would share her work with all of you out there. She is a photographer, sculptor and painter and her work is fabulous. She hand makes all the bejeweled props that you see in her images and also paints over the top of the photographs to add bits of colour.

Her work is daunting, powerful and most of beautiful, exploring and celebrating the various female form. She is a huge inspiration for me and I love her work so I hope you do to!

Old Disposable Found, Finished and Developed

Just as the title suggests, I found an old disposable camera that only had a few photos taken on it, so I used it up, developed it and loved the results of pictures taken over a year ago with recent spur-of-the-moment shots. Enjoy!

Click on image to enlarge





Self Portraits (above)