bangbangdotdot

i am creating a new blog titled 'bangbangdot.com'

just a new place to put my pics up, a fresh start for the year fast approaching. keep an eye out!

an impression of bowie

model: sam littlemore

fast food international

after having an incredibly eye-opening and somewhat confronting day, i watched and even more incredible eye-opening and very confronting movie, Fast Food Nation.

This morning our extremely aggressive and obtusely macho landlord called to say he would take possession of all our household belongings if we weren't out by 2pm (that gives us three hours to call, book and have removalists come and transport the collections of clothes cds, books, photos, pots and pans and everything else that sums up our lives in physical form)

i might add here that a week ago all of our flatmates literaly packed up and ran, after he and two thugs with crowbars stormed into the house to switch off the electricity over a dispute of an alleged missing $2000.

my boyfriend dan and i, thinking that surely if we were reasonable with the landlord, he in return would treat us with respect. we had continued to pay our rent until we packed a suitcase and moved to his dad's temporarily while we wait for our new house to be available. we left our boxes at the warehouse, locked in our rooms with a very polite note asking the landlord to call us if he needed our stuff out earlier than our departure date, the 8th june

and so we got the call this morning, with a generous three hours to get out, or they would take our stuff as theirs.

after speaking with him i reasoned a 24 hour extension.

and so we went to the studio to pack our remaining stuff. i the dark, no electricity you see. our playstation had been taken (perhaps a present for the landlords niece) and there he was with his two thugs, treating them with as much aggression and derision as he did us.

now this landlord, was not actually the owner! he was apparently a middle man, a heavy, hired by the owner to act as boss and do all the dirty work, and i tell you, this guy was one piece of dirty work. the other two were somewhat odd, but were sympathetic to our situation, though i must say, these scavengers were straight out of a Dickensian novel, i could see them scouring around the tip in 'Our Mutual Friend' taking gold teeth out of dead bodies found in the Themes (great book by the way!)


these poor tip rats were being screwed over by him too. he was getting them to remove and dispose of all the leftovers in the house, from kitchen cabinets to 80s romance novels to pot plants, and in return they could sell it. honestly, put together, the rubbish that everyone left behind would have summed up to maybe $30? the amount of work these two men would have to do would be at least 2 days worth, no, 3 seeing as they seemed to be quite intoxicated.

and so, here i come to my point. after watching Fast Food Nation tonight, the heavy feeling i have in the pit of my stomach has just got a whole lot heavier.

what we experienced today, the helplessness, powerlessness and abuse is a microscopic model of daily life all over the world. and whats worse, is that this abuse and misuse, and lying and cheating is what keeps this world clock ticking, its what keeps the pay cheques keeping on coming, the cheap clothes and cars and holidays and computers cheaper, and extra large beef burgers ever larger.

i cant help but feel that we are at the parallel to the fall of the Roman Empire. The orgies and gluttony are suffocating us, and starving the rest of the world. And i know you could say that its really the US who in this case are the Romans, so really they are going to fall, but, sorry to say, the whole damn world is pretty much a part of this empire, watch the dominoes fall.


sorry to be so bleak, its just everyday i (and most other people) carry on happy in my little life, but every now and then you cant help and just say SHIT!



ps. i think i may just have to go back to vegetarianism. (minus chorizo, thats not really meat is it?)


xc

free reign of free range chickens

i went and photographed chickens for Pace Eggs last week. and i must say, i thought i would never eat chicken again after witnessing the life of a battery hen, but to be honest i was pleasantly surprised.

the chickens were healthy and shiny and air-conditioned and overall well treated. this was not a battery hen farm, i am not sure how pleasant that would be

Cybele's Photobooth: Destination 1 PURPLE SNEAKERS

I have started working on a new concept, where i travel around to different parties and clubs in Sydney, setting up a photobooth and snapping the night away.

from indie, to rock, to rave, to trash nights, me and my camera and trusty multiblitz lights will travel far and wide throughout the nightscape of sydney.this will hopefully evolve into a body of work that i will exhibit at the end of the year.

it seemed appropriate to start this magical traveling photobooth spectacular at Purple Sneakers, one of the first places i started taking party photos at, almost two years ago!

enjoy.....










for more pics from last friday's purple sneakers, come this way

a new day, a new year, same old shit!

an A bomb cant kill a cockraoch, but i'll tell you what can.

last night i found this ugly leggy thing above the bed. it looked as though it had two incongruous bodies.

after putting it in a glass and inspecting it under the light, i saw that it was a thousand legged creature (centipede) sucking the life out of a cockroach. it was just sitting there sucking. gyrating against the glass (quite gross).

within a few minutes the vile creature had ripped off all the roaches legs (apparently he collects legs, thats how he's got so freakin many).
he looked quite like the specimen below...a tinsy bit smaller though.

in the morning, the cockroach was a pair of paper thin wings. the cetipede had had its feed. scary!...

ARAIS covershoot

i had lots of fun with the kids from drum and Jade Mcrae, Beau(Starky), Dan(Hilltop Hoods) and Toby(Human Nature) got down and dirty at Blue Murder Studios for another Drummedia cover. it was also used for WA Drum and Melbourne's Inpress.







best of luck to all you guys, and to everyone else, looking forward to the universal afterparty!!!! hopefully i'll get some more candid shots there...

shesaidhesaid

a meeting of minds.



me and my dear friend bobby have decided to combine our powers; me as a photographer, he as an amazingly talented writer and come together in blogform. as the spice girls once said when two become one.

basically each week i will post a photograph, and bobby will reflect this in the written word. the following week he will write a piece which i have a week to create an image in response to.

she said he said will be an outlet for our creative yearnings, where we spur eachother on in unknown directions, kind of like our very own choose your own adventure.

so keep an eye and an ear clearly posted to this exciting hybrid site.

placebo ii

placebo @ horden pavillion 2006

white ghost

Young And Restless

JJJ interview

Some really wonderful opportunities have arisen recently through my recreational photography, one stemming from taking photographs of peoples shoes at Splendour in the grass. my friend Nick Findley suggested Claire Frost from JJJ artscrew do an interview on me, so here it is! follow the link and you can hear the audio recording too. scary to hear your own voice through a speaker.





J ARTS CREW :: Splendid Feet
By Claire Frost
NSW | 14.08.2006

Splendour In The Grass is as much about footwear fashion as it is about the music. Cybele Malinowski caught it on camera. Cybele Malinowski likes to take photos of people’s feet. “When I was a teenager I didn’t look at a boy’s eyes, I didn’t look at a boy’s hair or his shirt. You look straight to the feet." The Splendour in the Grass weekend just gone (or ‘Splendour in the Mud’ as it has been affectionately named) featured some of the most impressive, innovative and diverse displays of festival footwear fashion you could ever hope to see at an Aussie music festival. So it goes without saying that Cybele had a field day, and spent most of her time with her camera aimed towards the ground. “I was at Splendour last year as well, and the shoes really got me! The footwear! And I must say this year, compared to last year, it was phenomenal! I saw, literally, 500 different styles of gumboots. It was insane!”

“I think that feet - or more so, shoes - explain a lot, not only about a person, but about a situation. I mean where else would you see thousands of people walking around in fluro gumboots. It’s so novel. And honestly I’ve never seen so many gumboots in my bloody life!” There were gumboots to suit every personality. From the tragically fashionable animal-print designer gumboots selling at one entrepreneurial market stall for $100 a pop; to neatly buckled Gucci numbers; to colourful kiddie gumboots suitable only for very little people with very little feet. There were bright yellow galoshes with matching raincoats; painstakingly home-decorated white gumboots complete with glitter, fluro faux fur, pom-poms and posca pen doodlings. And at the other end of the spectrum were the daggy-but-practical, all-terrain black gumboots - a highly sought-after commodity purchased from hardware shops along the Pacific Highway from Sydney to Brisbane.

“I think perhaps one of the other reasons I was focusing so much on people’s gumboots was because I didn’t have any myself. I left mine at home and I was a bit gumboot jealous.” Gumbooted festival goers were at the top of the footwear food-chain, casting smug looks down at cold, wet feet struggling through shin-deep mud puddles that swallowed up flimsy thongs and made sure that the ubiquitous canvas Dunlop Volley would never be quite the same shade of white again.

Occasionally discomfort sparked innovation: “There was a man in bare feet - he’d obviously got his feet completely drenched in mud and crap - and he’d got plastic bags and tied them around his feet, so he was walking around like a space man. I captured that one.” And some punters just wanted to get back to nature: “The bare foot man. This guy was a hippy. Lovely guy, very friendly. And his feet almost become part of the ground. It was quite beautiful - they almost looked like branches of a tree."

When Cybele isn’t taking pictures of dirty feet at festivals, she’s in her Sydney studio doing product, design, architectural and fashion photography for big clients. At 25 she’s already been working professionally for two years and runs her own business, Blue Murder Studios. “That’s really exciting and scary and hard, but there’s so much possibility. And it gives me the freedom to direct my photography in the area that I want to be in, rather than working for somebody else. I’m really trying to make my social photography and my music photography financially viable.”

On a typical Friday night, Cybele grabs her camera and ventures out to local bars and clubs and grimy underground rock and roll venues, in search of indie kids with attitude (the bigger the ego the better the photograph) and looking to “capture the raw youth and sexual energy that comes out with alcohol and night time and music.”

When she first started taking 'crowd' photos she was firmly in the minority. “There would be about 20 cameras focusing up on the stage and I was the one who was roaming around the dark corners at the back." But things are changing. "I think many websites, and street press as well, have realised the value of taking photographs of the crowd. Because if you think of a magazine, every week kids go and look at that magazine to see if they’re in it. There are a lot of photographers who photograph bands and they do a great job of it, but there’s so much happening off the stage that people miss. And I think it's really important to capture that. And of course the people in the photographs love it too.”

Cybele Malinowski’s photographs are published across a range of media, including music magazines and street press, on music and social websites, on the online photo-sharing site, flickr, and on her own website: Blue Murder Studios

Lily Allen @77

The procession of punters awaiting the Lily Allen show traverses down William St. Where around 700 eager fans wait in vain to squeeze into the underground bar with 150 capacity. The guest-list alone almost reaches that figure, despite being cut earlier in the day. It’s a small venue for a small girl who has exploded in an even smaller amount of time. The irony of having such a well publicised, well choreographed pop success in the humble walls of 77 is rather fitting. A product of underground hype funnelled through the internet into the mainstream.

Talk about hype! A 21-year-old myspace boom child. Pushed from the ordinary to the extraordinary in a matter of weeks. “Thankyou Australia for all your support over all these…year…….over all this year” she corrects herself. Topping number one in UK for her latest release ‘Smile,” she grins at the crowd as she sips on her cider and puffs a cigarette.

Her sweet yet somewhat satirical lyrics, ‘mockney’ accent, teamed with a beaming smile, big baby eyes and angel voice and shining white air max sneakers are a recipe for success. Backed by a band consisting of two ultra Brit pop looking fellas, one on base, the other on the laptop and keys, the whole crowd sings along to her contagious lyrics, and laughs along between songs when she muses about her quick success. She almost talks more than she sings. Unaffected by her new fame, she smiles and makes eye contact with each member of the crowd. She’s won us over.

This girl is cool. A much more appropriate teen idol than the Paris Hiltons or Nichole Richie’s, she has made it through her talent and proverbial balls. She is one cool girl, with a healthy and feisty attitude towards life, a great big, unaffected smile, and some beautifully uplifting songs to boot.

After 8 songs she is finished. When the audience calls out for more, she laughs “I’ve only got the one album! I’ve got nothing more.” But the crowd is hungry. As soon as she walks off stage three people jump at her abandoned lighter, and two girls almost break into a fight over her set list. The people are hungry. The media is hungry. I almost had a punch up with an over eager photographer who thought I might get in the way of him and his money shot. Is this the start of something big? Will we, the lucky ones, be saying in ten years we were there? We were there at 77 with Lily Allen.

16, 17, 18 candles....

i just realised i am almost 25. eep!

Come Together 2006

i had the pleasure of photographing these rockers for the cover of the drum for the upcoming come together festival .







it was freeeeezing! dan and i had to jump around like gogo dancers until the lads arrived for the shoot, and by the end of it, i had stripped down to a singlet as we raced these boys in dodgem cars. a fun day out indeed

evergreen terrace

my mother, brother and i went and visited my granfather, poppa on easter friday. when we arrived, there were signs over all entrances stating 'DANGER. CONTAMINATED ZONE.' we buzzed the nurse, no answer. 'well, they're clearing out another one' said justin as we watched a large trolley approach. we followed the trolley into 'evergreen 3' (the minimum security dimensia ward at RSL war vets, narrabeen). a small man tired with age pulled himself up a wheelchair ramp. i watched the energy and life exhasuting out of him, while performing such a simple task, and it was as i thought 'gee, at least poppa isn't like this' that i realised this was poppa.

his toothless smile gaped open and he hugged us all with more strength that a man at the peak of his life, and i squeezed back, with all i had. there was a faint smell of dencorub and urine.

we spent an hour showing him how to turn on the tv, which he insisted was broken. i looked around the room. so sparse. a framed painting of my mum, regal and untasteful. black and white images of my grandfathers past placed haphazardly on the wall. a chair. a bed and a set of drawers. he had four times this, four times the photos, but over the past year, he has thrown most of his possesions over the balcony.

there were some beautiful plants outside, made moist from his daily urination into the wild.

we walked for about 50m. he was overjoyed. though i noticed he winced when he saw my brother type in the unknown security code to 'escape this place.'

arm in arm we walked. he couldnt hear us. but that didnt matter. he was happy. happy easter.

by the time we got back we were practically carring him. and this time when justin typed in the security code, he was not at all interested in memorizing it. we were home.

we escorted him into the dining hall. everyone slowly looked up. men on one side, women on the other. poppa walked over and sat with the girls. (he was always a bit of a ladies man). as we left i called out 'happy easter!' and everyone chanted it back at me. one old gentleman dressed as a bunny, jumped up and screamed 'bye!' while a little lady stared at me, unyielding, lips pursed shut.

Ultimo Siege. 2400

twenty four hours after the escaped prisoner was found hiding out in a flat in Pyront, they settle in for a long night. (apparently, a cop told me, they are getting payed over $600 for the night shift. not bad )

Ultimo Siege

so, i have a near crash with a vespar, right where i had my crash a few weeks ago, which has taken my beloved car, mercury off the road for five weeks!

and then, after the motocyclist slinks off the scene, we turn around the corner, and there are 50 cops, with guns and knee pads and even more press pestering around, and even more residents gossiping and marvelling over the exitement, as a man, a supposed escapee from long bay jail back in Nov 05, hides within a housing commision apartment, fifteen hours have passed since neighbours alarmed police of this man's hiding. he still waits, protected by a cream brick wall. waiting. for what? we'll see. the police mumble on their walkie talkies, the journalists jot down residence's words, and the ex-prisoner waits.

and its only 9.30am.

Love Boat rocks the tides of Sydney Harbour!

you know those days when you sit back for a second, and look around and breathe in the joy and think, this is how i will remember my youth (or in my case, quickly vanishing youth!). well during this whole balmy cruise, as i sipped on cheap alchipops, and danced to the mares, and sang to the valentinos and screamed and jumped to the presets, it was there. already sentimental for the moment i was in. never wanting it to end.

congrats purple sneakesrs and spectrum, and all the cool cats who came aboard, it was one great party.

RIOT rages through Purple Sneakers, She's Lost Control and Gimme Gimme Gimme

A night of wild delights, with djs from Purple Sneakers, Gimme Gimme Gimme and She's Lost Control; some of sydney's coolest nights joined forces to try out the new PA at the Havana Club on Oxford St.

(aparently the Kings of Leon were kicked out by the bouncer, unawares of their indie fame...sadly i got no shots to prove it, as i was too busy snapping away at these hotties)

we built this city!

this city does kinda rock dont it!

HAPPY CHRISTMUKAH!!!

happy holidays everybody!

i am off from work, ie photography, photoshop, computer,internet, blogger, flickr! for the next week or so;

swimming and eating and drinking and singing and visiting melbourne! and pearl beach! and sunbaking and laughing and dancing and sleeping and talking and reading and eating and drinking and did i mention eating! and drinking! cocktails by the summer seas?!!

so, anyway, love you bloggers, and miss you, and HAVE A RAZZLE DAZZLE OF A FESTIVAL time Xxxx

dollywood dosshouse

i stopped the car, three times, after driving around the block four times, slowly trying to build up the courage to stop and photograph an amazing site; a hobo with a home made up of thousands upon thousands of tidbits, all catagorized into a neat mayhem underneath the bridge at Kings Cross.

the sun (which had been hiding for days) was shining through the concrete pilons, saturating this mans home in a treacle coloured sunset.

each time i drove past, the bum smiled a little more, through his antiquated beard. a teethy grin jsut visible beneath the grey forest of whiskers

this welcoming grin was the clincher. the photographer in me ached to capture this amidst his sunset home.

i stopped the car. again. walked up the windy pavement of New South Head Rd and there he was. amassed beneath his threadbare blanket. his face buried, escaping the sudden bitter wind.

the treacle glow had gone, the fire in the hearth was out, and what was once such a 'home sweet home' image had turned into the harsh reality of life on the streets.

i did not, could not disturb him. he was gone. hibernating, harboring the warmth that was quickly retreating as the sun clawed its way over the sketchy Sydney horizon.

depleted....i took this shot on the way back to the car.... dolls frolicking 4metres away from this homeless man. i want to give him a print. to put on his make-shift wall.

boudist

tribute to the boud .



Xx i'm smitten as a kitten!

just another day at Blue Murder

i was at the studio today, photgraphing childrens nursery goods, and as i was shooting these mosquito nets, i quickly toot off my top, and jumped in the shot. i would have loved to have spent more time, and used a brunette model, but hey, you gotta do what you gotta do! dont worry, i put my top back on right in the nick of time!



its somewhat frightening putting my semi nakedness up on the web, but i cant help but feel its less revealing than words. thats where the truth can really seen.

COP IT! hipster of sydney hip hop

featuring Chasm, Ozi-Battla, Melbourne guests Microphonics and the O.D of cool; Bingerthinkers, the only thing that could outshine the enraptured crowd were the magnificently D.O.P.E performers.

with a show like this:



and this:


the crowd went off, like this!




and this!



i honestly cried, it was so elating. with these boys being our friends, boyfriends, crushes, haters, since the early days of high school; i watched my beautiful friends watching them with such pride, joy, love, as these boys, now men, showed what it means to rock&rule.

love

another beautiful wednesday

sometimes the world just comes out and kisses my eyes with such beauty.

Halloween in hell's version of heaven

one two freddy's after you







three four he's at the door




five six grab your crucifix



seven eight stay up late



nine ten, your a gonna my friend






HAPPY HALLOWEEN!

follow me this way for more pics of Nat's farewell slash Liv's party slash Halloween slash debut of WHEN CHIMPS ATTACK!