DESIGNBRAINBUCKET: Girlfriends

Richard Prince captures attitude. This guy is someone that seriously knows how to grab a moment in time and bring us into it with him. There's something about the energy and rawness in his images that stop me every time I see one and get me hunting down more. He's a bit of a jack-of-all-trades with his art moving around from photography to sculpture to paintings but for someone who tries his hand at anything he seems to pretty well always get it right. Prince is definitely out there to shock ... and once his shocking tactics are in motion he's set off on his next shocking delight which means that right when you thought he had been too blatant or rash in his work, the next set is up and rolling and far move deviantly exciting than the last.

I have a personal favourite from Prince which is his 'Girlfriend' series. I think that I tie these lovely ladies in with my muse as they have that raw, rugged, confrontational sexuality to them which Prince has captured flawlessly. In an interview I read a long, long time ago with Prince (in Russh magazine) he mentioned that bikers and their girlfriends are not something that he actually has any interest in but that his fascination for this series was this idea of a factual reality that is for some reason somewhat unbelievable. Now I will admit that I have not read said interview for quite some time now and that the message may now be somewhat misconstrued, but even if it is I like the general idea of it. There is something appealing in these shots because it has a certain feel of being 'other'. These girlfriends are not like any girlfriend and probably not like yourself so while we know the images to be true, (because isn't that what a photograph is - the truth?) we still don't quite believe this scene with which we are so unfamiliar. Anyway that's probably enough from me. Basically I love it. It's raw, its exciting, its full of attitude and through all this its incredibly compelling.