Ancestor skull covered in feathers from Papa New Guinea at the De Young museum. Photograph by Oliver Maxwell Kupper. 

Sergeant Kendall, Cypripedia, 1927 at the De Young museum. Photograph by Oliver Maxwell Kupper.

John Singer Sargent’s portrait of Caroline de Bassano, Marquise d’Espeuilles, 1884, at the De Young museum. Photograph by Oliver Maxwell Kupper. 

Exhibition view of Ralph Eugene Meatyard: Dolls & Masks, an amazing exhibition as the De Young Museum. Photograph by Oliver Maxwell Kupper. 

Talking Pictures brings together over 200 black and white images culled from Ellen Graham’s work for such magazines as People and Time, her personal archives, and her collection of family photographs. Each photograph is accompanied by a personal narrative that takes you behind the scenes of these celebrated images and breathes life into the glamour of Hollywood’s golden age. Each portrait captures a rare and unguarded moment in the lives of these highly-photographed stars, giving a truly intimate and fresh look at such legendary figures as Frank Sinatra, Natalie Wood, Warren Beatty, and Prince Albert of Monaco. Whether shooting actors, performers, or European royalty, Graham redefines the resonating myths that have come to surround these iconic characters. Ellen Graham: Talking Pictures is out now on Pointed Lead Press.

Exhibition view of Hedi Slimane’s California Song now on view at MoCA Pacific Design Center in Los Angeles. Photograph by Hedi Slimane

No Age performs at Hedi Slimane’s opening of California Song at MoCA Pacific Design Center in Los Angeles. Photograph by Hedi Slimane

Performance at Hedi Slimane’s opening of California Song at MoCA Pacific Design Center in Los Angeles. Photograph by Hedi Slimane

Thomas Ruff (b. 1958), known for his deadpan portraits and gorgeous views of the night sky and architecture, is one of Germany’s leading contemporary artist/photographers. Among his work is an exploration of the internet, that parallel visual universe teeming with sexuality of every flavor and variety. He gathers from that virtual playground erotic and often pornographic photographs that he subsequently manipulates in his computer, making beautiful–and disturbing–artwork from visual material that, for better or worse, is probably more abundant than any other type of image in our world today. The pictures, which are graphic and abstract at the same time, are accompanied by an excerpt from a forthcoming novel by controversial French writer Michel Houellebecq, whose work is similarly influenced by the sex industry. Reviewing the series in the Village Voice, Jerry Saltz wrote: “Ruff may think these images are analytic or objective, but they’re also sweetly, luxuriantly visual…Sex slips into something ravishingly, optically comfortable, and these everyday, off-world images morph into parapaintings from the Planet Love.”

As part of Pacific Standard Time, Pop tART Gallery in Los Angeles presents Bruce of Los Angeles: Beefcakes and Boundaries. In the same pioneering spirit as many others who have packed their bags and headed west, Photographer Bruce Bellas, or Bruce of Los Angeles as he came to be known, arrived in California in 1946 and immediately began challenging the norms of acceptable society. With post-war conservatism growing, Bruce of Los Angeles photographed Muscle Beach’s most beautiful male bodies and published an extensive body of homoerotic work during a time when institutionalized homophobia was the norm. His pin-up images of the male physique pressed the boundaries between art and obscenity. Having influenced contemporary photographers such as Robert Mapplethorpe, Bruce Weber, and Herb Ritts, Bruce of Los Angeles is regarded as a “creative force in the establishment of the modern American homosexual identity”. This exhibition will showcase original prints of the photographers extensive body of work as well as exhibit the work of contemporary artists who’ve found inspiration in the classic style and boundary breaking approach that mark the contribution Bruce of Los Angeles made to art as we know it today. Bruce of Los Angeles: Beefcakes and Boundaries is on view until December 21