solve this time. pretty sure yeah

         

Hard to believe that they are going through this AGAIN.

melina and Rihanna catching flack on the Gawker empire over the photo spread referenced by bbc above.

I posted about this topic not once but but twice earlier in 2011, and my feelings really haven't changed. The labels clearly INSIST on this level of 'I wanna know what video I will get before I commission a job' these days, so I am willing (in my own, internal, nobody cares what I think kind of calculations) to cut directors a good bit of slack. However -- why, oh why, does the same artist, on the same label go back to the same strategy with the same director that had them paying a settlement last time we all danced this dance?

Maybe the press swirl around the S&M/ LaChapelle thing was enough to off-set the cost of the settlement? Because this quote from the jezebel.com post, sure isn't purdy: Famous performers probably need to stop hiring Melina Matsoukas to direct their music videos: her "inspiration" process betrays far too heavy a reliance on the inspirations of others.

         

so they're gunning to be on the cutting edge, richard prince-style, you think?

interesting times, either way.

         

I'm amazed that this is even a story. 90% of videos posted on this site I can instantly recognize from the ffffound images they're referencing.

         

budget: do you have an invite?

         

@BUDGET - 90%? you must be exaggerating as for rihanna/melina - once a thief, always a thief

         

budget - I'm not amazed that a director used visual references to get a job, just that the same director/artist/label combo went back to such fraught territory less that a year after all the uproar.

         

warhol did this with nico in the sixties - not exactly original in the first place.

         

If the video was great it offsets the controversy. After the good We Found Love this feels less forward in progression than the last.

Watch Yelle's style be comped by the pop starlets this year.

Or just work with someone else. It's the same over and over.

         

models.com fashin.livejournal.com Which brings us to “You Da One,” and its similarities to the work of an awesomely named Norweigan photographer, Sølve Sundsbø. Billboard explains: “Back in 2008 Sundsbø created these manipulated light and shadow skin creations in an editorial for Numero titled 'Points a la Ligne.' In the spread, model Edita Vilkeviciute poses nude with the light projections slithering on her body and rocking a remarkably similar bowl cut wig to the singer.” www.billboard.biz

         

Cor blimey! Well if we are going to do the awesome pointy finger kind of thing on this, lets go right back to Man Ray and Heinrich Heidersberger's "Projected Nudes"

There is also Yasutaka Nakata's video take with Toshiko on the 'subject'

         

of course the references go back and back, to sundsbo and beyond. but isn't there a clear difference between homage and not being able to think of ideas? i suspect solve doesn't suffer from the latter. homage only seems to work when it understands its subject matter and uses it to fuel something new.

the mystery of melina is that she is capable of some interesting ideas. unfortunately i can't help but view her work with a general mistrust now, given her magpie like tendency to grab whatever glimmers and weave it into whatever she's doing. i hope she springs something that proves the detractors wrong. in the meantime she might want to stick a lawyer on the callsheet.

         

Sundsbø. Billboard explains......the ridiculous, as is the legal conjecture contained in this discourse (Mr. Prince’s appeal has yet to be heard) These projections can be verified to originate with the photography of Man Ray, who in the late 1920’s used the projections on the torso of his Beau of the day Lee Miller (the other innovator of solarization) It was a theme they consistently explored and returned to as their substantial catalogue attests! It was then further extended in the 1940’s by Ray’s compatriot Heidersberger Melina needs no legal brief for the usage of these body light projections Its ‘Fair comment’