GENDER BENDER



Looking from the outside in - people, place and practice

Wednesday, August 17, 2011

Genderswap


There's nothing like a good genderswap. I love these pics, since they push the bounds of what is normal and how a certain gender should act and look...





Courtesy of Vogue US.

Monday, August 15, 2011

Sexist Ad



Have ads really changed a lot from this one, or are they just sexist in a different way?

Friday, August 12, 2011

Shooting Up


Some shocking pictures taken by the brilliant photographer, Ed Ou. He photographed women in New York using drugs, mostly shooting up heroin. He also shows the other effects of drug addiction, such as homelessness.







Thursday, August 11, 2011

Sweaty People

I love this photo essay! Photographer, Sacha Goldberger took photos of joggers, asking them to sprint for him and then pose right after...some very sweaty people.








Tuesday, August 9, 2011

Under a nuclear cloud

Ed Ou is a Taiwanese Canadian photographer. Here is a very moving and disturbing reportage he did, called: UNDER A NUCLEAR CLOUD


SEMEY, KAZAKHSTAN, NOVEMBER 24 Nurse Larissa Soboleva holds two-year-old Adil Zhilyaev in an orphanage in Semey, Kazakhstan Nov. 24, 2008. Adil was born blind and afflicted with Infantile Cereberal Paralysis (ICP) and hydrocephalia, as a result of his mothers exposure to radiation during years of Soviet weapons testing during the Cold War. He was abandoned by his parents, and is now cared for in an orphanage.



"During the Cold War the Semipalatinsk Nuclear Polygon covering 18,500 square kilometers on the steppe of northeast Kazakhstan, was the site of a secret Soviet nuclear testing programme. Through four decades, the Soviet Union test detonated over four hundred nuclear weapons in the atmosphere and underground in preparation for a nuclear war that never took place.


The locals were used as guinea pigs to test the effects of radiation on human populations. Villagers living close by were given no protection or warning of the dangers of radiation. The Soviet military prohibited doctors from attributing the sharp rise in illnesses and deaths from cancer, leukemia, and radiation exposure in the region to the nuclear tests.


 

Today, only the frenetic chirp of a Geiger counter warns us of the invisible radiation that makes this nuclear wasteland so dangerous that scientists hesitate to spend any amount of time there. Yet, almost two million villagers spend their entire lives in and around the affected area, roughly the size of Italy - drinking ground water, growing crops, and grazing their livestock off the highly irradiated land.



Radiation has silently devastated three generations of people in Kazakhstan, creating health problems ranging from thyroid diseases, cancer, birth defects, deformities, premature aging, and cardiovascular diseases. Life expectancy in the area is seven years less then the national average of Kazakhstan. Suicides are common. Even though nuclear testing ended twenty years ago, these conditions and genetic mutations are passed down for generations to come. " (Ed Ou)

Friday, August 5, 2011

Skoonheid (Beauty), South African film with LGBT theme



Can't wait to see this film! I love that finally there is an Afrikaans film with a LGBT theme. The Afrikaner culture is overall rather conservative, especially when it comes to issues related to homosexuality. I am so glad that finally this taboo subject has been touched on. 

Wednesday, August 3, 2011

God Grew Tired of Us

More of this wonderful film. Also refer to Lost Boys for the first part of the film.