We Love You So – Where The Wild Things Are – Spike Jonze

Do you find your world bland and uninspiring? Is there a widespread dearth of eye-catching subjects to photograph in your normal, everyday life? Matthieu Lavanchy’s work reminds us that you can always just make something up. You can literally make something beautiful to take a picture of, right now, and all you need is some cardboard and soiled mattresses and wood scraps and moldy carpet.

Lavanchy, who is only 23 and already amassing accolades galore, is a New Yorker by way of Switzerland and a pal of Tiny Vices superstar Tim Barber. He photographs meticulously crafted sculptural installations and otherworldly interiors that exist in no other world than the image itself. These are magical nowhere places that seem to spring straight from Lavanchy’s sneaky subconscious to remind us of life’s terrifyingly endless possibilities.

Over the past few years Aurel Schmidt has been steadily earning her stripes and securing her position as one of the country’s premiere contemporary artists, which in NYC in the late 2000’s can be about as difficult a thing to pull off as there is. Canadian-born, the Vice camp favorite has mastered a hand-style that is both rare and completely arresting in this digitized age- a style which is only made more powerful buy how well it is executed.

Check out Aurel’s page at Tiny Vices to see more of her drawings and this interview to learn more about what makes an artists brain work when they are detailing the finer points of New York’s unwanted insects, cigarette butts, and discarded refuse. A beautiful lot!

If the words “gigantic” and “comic” and “anthology” make you tingle with delight when combined in one sentence, get ready to tingle hugetime. Gutter is an anthology of comics and drawings edited by Victor Kerlow and produced by Tiny Vices, featuring 100 pages of full-color work by a bundle of artists all equally worthy of each other’s company.

Among the many scribblers included are Eamon Espey, Genevieve Simms, Gavin McInnes, our old favorite Travis Millard, Joana Avillez, Frank the Addict, Ben Jones, Andrew Gonzales and a zillion others. At seventy bones, the book is no drop in the bucket, but it’s worth putting on the Christmas list just in case you get lucky.

David LaChapelle cohort and rad fashion photographer Kenneth Cappello wasn’t always entrenched in the glamorous world of Hollywood starlets– once upon a time Cappello was just another punk kid in Houston, Texas, taking pictures of his friends on their boards. In his collection Acid Drop, the sharply observant photographer teleports us to a moment of idealized suburban angst, eye-popping duds and gravity-defying hairstyles. Released through Tiny Vices and the Aperture Foundation, Acid Drop is a photographic marvel and, yes, a nostlgaic love song to a specific era– but it’s also a reflection of a universal adolescent spirit.

Well, it’s about time! Magic picture maker and WLYS friend Tim Barber finally got around to revamping his mega-photo-tastemaker-archive Tiny Vices and we are definitely stoked. Spaces for books, shows, portfolios, and all the links any creative director could ever want to chase. As he notes on the site they will be slowly adding new artists and new features over the coming months. It’ll be just like revisiting an old buddy.

No surprises here, which is to say, Ryan McGinley has just put up a new crop of mind blowing photos on Tiny Vices that will no doubt change the current trajectory of modern post-blog photographers the world over. No surprises.

If pick up one issue of Vice this year, make it their reliably dazzling annual photo issue. It’s got so many great images crammed into one tiny package! The latest issue features new work from art star mainstays like the kinetically youthful Ryan McGinley, Tiny Vices curator Tim Barber, and identity politics documentarian Catherine Opie, amongst excitingly fresh talent like Dana Goldstein and Jamie Lee Curtis Taete. Grab a copy at some fancy store near your house, or save a tree and just look at all the pretty photos online, here.