In 1966 Tom Ruddock – a Dutch guy from Amsterdam – traded all his Kinks records for a camera. Went to the local swimming pool, put the camera in a plastic bag, and went into the water.

Later, he moved to San Francisco and became an Artist. In 1986 he moved back to Berlin, and was accepted into the Berufs Verband Bildender Kunstler Berlin (BBK). When he came back to America to settle down he put the camera away for almost a year. Eventually he was prompted to pick it up again. So that’s what happened: down to Los Angeles to be a fashion photographer.

The rest is history, together with Misha he became at the late 90’s the “in-house” photographer for Lisa Boyle and Sung Hi Lee for many years. His most beautiful work however, is BlueNudes. Together with design artist Sean, Tom runs BlueNudes, the most creative and artistic website I’ve seen in many years.

Tom, it’s good to be back and I will call you soon!

Believe it or not, Maxx Manboeuf cannot attend every show with hot chicks in Japan. But he sure is trying hard! Check out his hundreds of ‘natural look’ photo’s on Flickr.com.

I guess you can say I am a fan of the photo’s by Nobuyoshi Araki. This 65 year old Japanese photographer sure knows how to take pictures! Although mostly a bit on the rough (pornographic) side, he also has very subtle work. Watch the master at work? Buy his Arakimentari on dvd. Check out his official site (which unfortunately is mainly in Japanese) and his photobooks at Amazon. And you can still buy the 2000 Euro Limited Edtion Araki book from Taschen.Araki interviewed by Jérôme Sans @ Taschen.com

Article about an exhibition of Araki’s work in London.

Excerpt from the article:

Are they art or porn, I ask him? “Each work definitely has a pornographic aspect,” he says. “Otherwise it would just be eroticism, which is clean, intellectual – and uninteresting. I’m upgrading them with a bit of dirt. We all like dirt.” They’re porn, then. But porn that the models themselves relish making. Women come up to Araki in the street and beg to be photographed by him.

“All the girls who do the bondage really enjoy it,” Araki says. But then why do they look so serious? “The rope is like a lover touching the body. It’s serious love, I suppose.” At that he leans forward and, in double-speed, gently throttles me with my own neck scarf. “Bondage!” he guffaws.

Araki says his work is really only about himself; it’s an ongoing process of personal exposure. Much of it, his portraits of children above all, reveals his marvellous, contagious joie de vivre. But other parts show the monstrous eccentricity of a man who uses plastic dinosaurs as his alter ego and describes vaginas as the origin of all visual art.