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PHARRELL WILLIAMS ON SYNAESTHESIA

PHARRELL WILLIAMS FOR LIBERATUM IN HONG KONG

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KAREN ELSON ON THE MODEL AS THE MUSE

A CONVERSATION WITH STEVE MCCURRY IN INDIA

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liberatum

Global Multimedia and Multidisciplinary Cultural Organization Empowering and Inspiring Minds to Promote Social Change and Raise Consciousness

Liberatum at Louis Vuitton, Champs-Élysées, Pari

Liberatum at Louis Vuitton, Champs-Élysées, Paris @louisvuitton

The world is burning, the Amazon disappearing, cou

The world is burning, the Amazon disappearing, countries being bombed, Afghan women without rights, if real people got a ticket to the Met Gala, this is what it would look like. 🖼 @brownskinhazel

Liberatum at Louis Vuitton, Paris. @louisvuitton

Liberatum at Louis Vuitton, Paris. @louisvuitton

𝐓𝐇𝐄 𝐄𝐗𝐏𝐄𝐑𝐈𝐄𝐍𝐂𝐄 𝐎𝐅 𝐄𝐌𝐁𝐎𝐃𝐈𝐌𝐄𝐍𝐓

Desire and the body are often subjects in my work because our ideas around them are rife with conflict. Working with friends, lovers, and strangers, I investigate relationships and open my subjectivity and theirs to new forms of engagement. Examining the power of images to construct knowledge, I bring to the fore that which is often glossed over or ignored.

I’ve recently become interested in how language gives and denies access to the experience of embodiment. Making pictures can be a fundamentally physical yet silent act. Moving in tandem with my subject, I explore photography’s ability to ground experience.

The inherent fragility of the body recurs as a motif. Sexual longing radiates from the photographs but is often tinged by the anxiety of power, emasculation and death. Being human is fraught with risk and uncertainty, a bind my work embraces. - Matthew Papa

Photographer 📸 Matthew Papa

𝐓𝐇𝐄 𝐌𝐄𝐋𝐎𝐃𝐘 𝐈𝐍 𝐒𝐂𝐀𝐑𝐒

“I’ve never been photographed like this before… with all of my scars, I mean.” Catrin said to me.

It left us both thinking of what is the limit on scars? How much can we see? Are we all becoming a part of the world where scars need to look “pretty” too? Just enough, so we can use them to remind ourself that our lives are better?

But not too much… so we can bear looking at them?

Catrin was returning from a Ski trip in the French Alps, when the coach’s brakes failed and the crash happened.

96% of her body suffered third degree burns leaving her with a 1 in a 1000 chance for survival. Following three months in coma, 200 surgical procedures and 4 years of rehab, Catrin defied destiny.

To the prying eyes that meet her every time she steps out of the house, she looks back at them with tenderness and empathy.

“If my scars make you feel better about yours then I am happy for you. I understand you. And that’s what I expect from you as well. Empathy, not sympathy. My scars make me special… unique… differently beautiful. They are life’s brush strokes… and I am in love with this painting.” - Sujata Setia

Photographer 📸 @butnaturalphotography 👩🏻 @catrinpugh
@zebedeetalent

𝐇𝐀𝐈𝐑 You would have told me last yea

𝐇𝐀𝐈𝐑

You would have told me last year I’d be posting a picture like this on the internet and I would have laughed. As soon as I started having body hair, I was told to feel shame about it. To hide it. but really, really importantly: to shave it. asap. And when I say I was told, I don’t mean by society, by ads, by billboards. I mean by a parent. An adult figure I trusted and looked up to. Someone I assumed had the ultimate truth. Someone that thought they were doing this to protect me, who didn’t know better. I’m not mad at them. I am disappointed that society forced this unto my 10-year-old self. I learned to hate myself so young. I used to shave every morning, never missing a single day. As I navigate my use of social media, I want to always push myself further and share vulnerability and open-hearted conversations. You don’t owe anyone any way of presenting yourself. This goes for acne, body hair, mental health, gender affirmation, everything. And I wanna keep posting about this stuff more and more, because it matters, and we need it. This is the most nerve-wracking picture I’ve ever posted here. I love my hair, I haven’t shaved my pubic hair in years, I trim it when. and. if. i. want. to. For my own comfort and pleasure. But in summer, I do shave the sides, I still hide it out of discomfort and I still feel shame at the thought that people would notice longer hair peeking out.I’m tired of hiding it. I asked my partner if he’d want to shoot it for me. So that we’d create something beautiful I could share to feel comfortable with my discomfort. I’m beyond lucky to have a partner with whom to create, to trust with my ideas, to know that he’ll create something beyond my expectations, something my creative mind couldn’t think of but that will exactly represent what I am trying to convey. He works with vulnerability in the most exceptional way. It is so special to have someone to create with, especially someone who makes art that I highly admire and look up to. I am beyond privileged for this. And for the fact that he loves me as I am, as I come, and as I explore all of my vulnerabilities, and encourages me to continue to do so. - Leks @leksendrine

Fun seeing Liberatum at @louisvuitton all around t

Fun seeing Liberatum at @louisvuitton all around the world 🌎

𝐋𝐈𝐁𝐄𝐑𝐀𝐓𝐔𝐌 𝐱 𝐋𝐎

𝐋𝐈𝐁𝐄𝐑𝐀𝐓𝐔𝐌 𝐱 𝐋𝐎𝐔𝐈𝐒 𝐕𝐔𝐈𝐓𝐓𝐎𝐍

Earlier this year, Liberatum received an invitation from @louisvuitton to collaborate with them to mark Monsieur Louis Vuitton’s 200th anniversary. Liberatum was chosen as one of 200 visionaries around the world including Drake, BTS, Frank Gehry and Gloria Steinem to contribute artistically to a special global project entitled #LOUIS200.

Happy Birthday Louis! Liberatum turned 20 this year and it gives us great pleasure to celebrate your 200th year of birth with our 20th!

The windows of the LV Maison Stores will come alive with digital versions of our creation and the Louis 200 digital catalogue will also be live – this can be seen at https://louis200.com and accessed via a QR code in the windows themselves.

The celebrations will expand to include all Louis Vuitton stores globally with a focus on our Liberatum creation in every window for half a day on 14th October. Louis Vuitton will also showcase a reinterpreted and reimagined trunk created by Liberatum as part of the project.

Louis Vuitton is donating €10,000 euros on behalf of Liberatum to a charitable organisation. Liberatum will share the information on their donation shortly. Furthermore, the 200 trunks will be digitized and shared across Louis Vuitton’s social platforms before going to auction at Sotheby’s this coming December. All proceeds will be donated to an organization.

A Liberatum Original Artwork for Louis Vuitton envisioned by Pablo Ganguli:

Against the backdrop of a shimmering pink universe full of sparkling stars and luminescent planets, the artwork symbolises a galaxy full of dreams, profound life changing journeys and past experiences to expand human consciousness. Bodies of all shapes and ethnicities suspended in the air, flying into the universe in a magnificent sculptural form and gravity defying dance. It is a poignant representation of the uniqueness of the human interconnection and how deeply we influence and affect each other in our journeys. The tree of human life.

Liberatum Credits:
Photographer 📸 @kevinoux
Art 🖼 @adecoratedwoman
Producer: @braziliansweetheart
Creative Director: @auksas
Art Direction: @sizaaaa

𝐓𝐇𝐈𝐒 𝐑𝐄𝐌𝐀𝐑𝐊𝐀𝐁𝐋𝐄 𝐋𝐈𝐅𝐄

Perhaps the most "spiritual" thing any of us can do is simply to look through our own eyes, see with eyes of wholeness, and act with integrity and kindness.

Practice sharing the fullness of your being, your best self, your enthusiasm, your vitality, your spirit, your trust, your openness, above all, your presence. Share it with yourself, with your family, with the world.

Allow yourself to feel whatever you are feeling. Notice any labels you attach to crying or feeling vulnerable. Let go of the labels. Just feel what you are feeling, all the while cultivating moment-to-moment awareness, riding the waves of “up” and “down,” “good” and “bad,” “weak” and “strong,” until you see that they are all inadequate to fully describe your experience. Be with the experience itself. Trust in your deepest strength of all: to be present, to be wakeful.
- Jon Kabat-Zinn

Photographer 📸 @butnaturalphotography 👧🏽 @joannedion_

𝐀 𝐅𝐎𝐑𝐌 𝐎𝐅 𝐌𝐈𝐒𝐎𝐆𝐘𝐍𝐘

Why don’t we call menstruation by its name? Euphemisms serve a purpose. They give us words to talk about things that are considered culturally taboo. The impact of typical menstrual taboos is clear: they can lead to significant challenges in menstrual management, adverse reproductive health outcomes, social ostracization, disease, and even death.

Menstruation stigma is a form of misogyny. Negative taboos condition us to understand menstrual function as something to be hidden, something shameful. And by not naming a thing, we reinforce the idea that the thing should not be named.

Menstrual euphemisms and taboos are old. But not all societies view menstruation negatively. Mentions of periods are found in the first Latin encyclopedia (73 AD):

“Contact with [menstrual blood] turns new wine sour, crops touched by it become barren, grafts die, seed in gardens are dried up, the fruit of trees fall off, the edge of steel and the gleam of ivory are dulled, hives of bees die, even bronze and iron are at once seized by rust, and a horrible smell fills the air; to taste it drives dogs mad and infects their bites with an incurable poison”. - Hello Clue

Photograph 📸 @theevelynsparks

𝐏𝐄𝐎𝐏𝐋𝐄 𝐀𝐑𝐄 𝐒𝐓𝐀

𝐏𝐄𝐎𝐏𝐋𝐄 𝐀𝐑𝐄 𝐒𝐓𝐀𝐑𝐕𝐈𝐍𝐆 𝐓𝐎 𝐃𝐄𝐀𝐓𝐇 𝐄𝐕𝐄𝐑𝐘 𝐒𝐈𝐍𝐆𝐋𝐄 𝐃𝐀𝐘

It sounds like a dystopian science fiction novel — as climate change cooks oceans and forests, a pandemic endangers billions of people, and world hunger surges, a handful of mega-wealthy men are pumping billions of dollars into their own personal space travel companies.

But it’s happening right now and David Beasley, the head of the World Food Programme, thinks that money could be put to better use.

In a tweet on June 26, Beasley called on Jeff Bezos, Richard Branson, and Elon Musk to contribute the $6 billion needed to save 41 million people in 43 countries who are at risk of starving this year. It might sound like a big ask, but for these billionaires it’s an amount that’s tantamount to pocket change.

Bezos is worth $192.6 billion, Branson is worth $6.3 billion, and Musk is worth $165.9 billion. Together, that’s $364.8 billion, which could prevent people from starving to death 60 times over, according to Beasley’s estimation. - Global Citizen

📸 A succession of disasters hit Sudan in 1988. First drought, then flooding. A plague of locusts devoured what little grows on the land, and hunger and civil war claimed many victims. The famine in the south drove over a million people north towards the capital. Photographer: @jamesnachtwey

𝐓𝐇𝐄 𝐋𝐎𝐕𝐄 𝐓𝐇𝐀𝐓 𝐒𝐄𝐓𝐒 𝐘𝐎𝐔 𝐅𝐑𝐄𝐄

Freedom and love go together. Love is not a reaction. If I love you because you love me, that is mere trade, a thing to be bought in the market; it is not love. To love is not to ask anything in return, not even to feel that you are giving something- and it is only such love that can know freedom.

When I understand myself, I understand you, and out of that understanding comes love. Love is the missing factor; there is a lack of affection, of warmth in relationship; and because we lack that love, that tenderness, that generosity, that mercy in relationship, we escape into mass action which produces further confusion, further misery. We fill our hearts with blueprints for world reform and do not look to that one resolving factor which is love.

It is love alone that leads to right action. What brings order in the world is to love and let love do what it will.
- Jiddu Krishnamurti

Photographer 📸 @sophiekietzmann Beautiful humans: @sadistitt @fuckeduplines

𝐌𝐎𝐕𝐈𝐍𝐆 𝐁𝐄𝐓𝐖𝐄𝐄𝐍 𝐆𝐄𝐍𝐃𝐄𝐑𝐒

A dancer in a long red dress stands alone in the darkness, facing away from the audience. A keening voice rings out and the dancer’s arms flutter slightly, as if awakened by its mournful sound. “Eres una rosa,” you are a rose, the singer intones. The dancer’s body sways slightly, as if gathering energy, before turning around in one swift motion.

What the audience sees is both expected and unexpected: a flamenco dancer coifed and dressed in traditional style, fierce eyed, focused. But there’s a twist: This dancer is a man — Manuel Liñán, the creator and star of the show “Viva!” @manuellinan

Flamenco being what it is — a centuries-old music and dance that developed out of the collision of cultures in southern Spain — what follows is as surprising as it is refreshing. A performance executed entirely in drag, by Mr. Liñán and six extraordinary male dancers, wearing colorful dresses and the fringed shawls known as mantones, hair done up with peinetas (decorative combs) and flowers. While one dances, the others accompany with songs, exhortations and palmas, the rhythmic clapping of hands. - Marina Harss, The New York Times

Photographer 📸 @camilafalquez

𝐖𝐇𝐀𝐓 𝐌𝐀𝐊𝐄𝐒 𝐀 𝐌𝐀𝐍

Photographer Soraya Zaman is queer and non-binary. Their (Soraya asks to use the pronoun ‘they’ when addressing them) project American Boys is about trans men — people who were identified as female at birth, but who feel they are men.

Zaman traveled around 21 states to collect stories of transmasculine people who had to go through not being accepted by their families, religious stigma, and their own fears. In April 2019, the book about the participants of the project was published in the US.

“This project had a humble beginning back in the summer of 2016. I just wanted to take images that meant something and were personal to me. I was looking to explore expressions of trans-masculinity. But that quickly changed with each new person I met and photographed. It became apparent that honoring and sharing stories, validating and centering everyone in a positive and uplifting way, was necessary and important, especially in the now changing political climate. These are affirmative images of everyone featured that show a glimpse into their lives at a specific moment in time, their personality, honesty, humor, beauty, vulnerability, and strength.

The project title, American Boys, is an intentional call out to this nostalgic, internalized idea of American boyhood and the notion that masculinity belongs exclusively to cis men. It unpacks the belief that gender identity must align with one’s sex assigned at birth. I also hope it allows people to look and challenge the way they themselves perceive traditional binary gender roles.” @sorayatzaman

📸 @sorayatzaman

𝐓𝐇𝐄 𝐑𝐎𝐀𝐃 𝐓𝐎 𝐇𝐄𝐀𝐋𝐈𝐍𝐆

Love never dies a natural death. It dies because we don't know how to replenish its source. It dies of blindness and errors and betrayals. It dies of illness and wounds; it dies of weariness, of witherings, of tarnishings.

You don't find love, it finds you. It's got a little bit to do with destiny, fate, and what's written in the stars.

You cannot save people. You can only love them.
- Anaïs Nin

Photographer 📸 @arianne.clement.photography

𝐓𝐇𝐄 𝐅𝐀𝐂𝐄 𝐎𝐅 𝐀 𝐖𝐎𝐌𝐀𝐍 𝐖𝐇𝐎 𝐒𝐀𝐈𝐃 𝐍𝐎 𝐓𝐎 𝐀 𝐌𝐀𝐍

Zivar Parvin, 37 years old, Iran. After her husband died, her brother-in-law proposed to her. Her answer was no.

On the night of July 9, 2011, her brother-in-law (along with his wife) threw acid on Zivar and her 18-year-old daughter Yasra while they were sleeping.

18 days after the acid attack, Yasra died. Zivar lost her left eye completely. The photo in her hand pictures Zivar before the acid attack. - Lens Culture

Photographer 📸 Asghar Khamseh

𝐓𝐇𝐄 𝐔𝐍𝐈𝐓𝐄𝐃 𝐒𝐓𝐀

𝐓𝐇𝐄 𝐔𝐍𝐈𝐓𝐄𝐃 𝐒𝐓𝐀𝐓𝐄𝐒 𝐃𝐎𝐄𝐒𝐍’𝐓 𝐊𝐍𝐎𝐖 𝐇𝐎𝐖 𝐓𝐎 𝐌𝐈𝐍𝐃 𝐈𝐓𝐒 𝐎𝐖𝐍 𝐁𝐔𝐒𝐈𝐍𝐄𝐒𝐒

Read this excerpt from an old article. We could all clearly see that the US war in Afghanistan was another disaster in the making with very little chance for Afghans to be able to rebuild a better future without Taliban control. - Liberatum
———————————-

After the Taliban government refused to hand over terrorist leader Osama bin Laden in the wake of al-Qaeda’s September 11, 2001, attacks, the United States invaded Afghanistan. The Taliban leadership quickly lost control of the country and relocated to southern Afghanistan and across the border to Pakistan. .

From there, they have waged an insurgency against the Western-backed government in Kabul, international coalition troops, and Afghan national security forces.

In the eighteenth year of the war, and in their fifth year of being responsible for securing the country, the Afghan National Defense and Security Forces (ANDSF) continue to face significant challenges in holding territory and defending population centers, while the Taliban continues to contest districts and carry out suicide attacks in major cities. .

For more than four years the war has been at a stalemate, with, according to official U.S. government estimates as of 2019, only 53.8 percent of Afghan districts under government control or influence, 33.9 percent contested, and the remaining 12.3 percent under the control or influence of the Taliban. .

The ANDSF continue to suffer heavy casualties and, while actual figures have now been classified by the U.S. military, senior Afghan officials estimate that for several months in 2018 as many as thirty to forty ANDSF personnel were killed every day. 2018 also saw a record-high number of 10,993 civilian casualties, with the UN documenting 3,804 deaths and 7,189 injuries. .

While 2019 saw a slight decline, with 3,403 civilians killed and 6,989 injured, civilian casualties exceeded 10,000 for the sixth year in a row and brought the total UN-documented civilian casualties since 2010 to more than 100,000. - An old article by The Council on Foreign Relations 📸 @bebop_studio

𝐓𝐇𝐄 𝐃𝐈𝐕𝐈𝐍𝐄 𝐌𝐘𝐒

𝐓𝐇𝐄 𝐃𝐈𝐕𝐈𝐍𝐄 𝐌𝐘𝐒𝐓𝐄𝐑𝐘

You can never know if a person forgives you when you wrong them. Therefore it is existentially important to you. It is a question you are intensely concerned with. Neither can you know whether a person loves you. It’s something you just have to believe or hope. But these things are more important to you than the fact that the sum of the angles in a triangle is 180 degrees. You don't think about the law of cause and effect or about modes of perception when you are in the middle of your first kiss.

A philosopher knows that in reality he knows very little. That is why he constantly strives to achieve true insight. Socrates was one of these rare people. He knew that he knew nothing about life and about the world. And now comes the important part: it troubled him that he knew so little.

I believe there is something of the divine mystery in everything that exists. We can see it sparkle in a sunflower or a poppy. We sense more of the unfathomable mystery in a butterfly that flutters from a twig--or in a goldfish swimming in a bowl. But we are closest to God in our own soul. Only there can we become one with the greatest mystery of life. In truth, at very rare moments we can experience that we ourselves are that divine mystery.
- Jostein Gaarder

Photographer 📸 @mrelbank 👦🏾 @bxsqvi

𝐓𝐇𝐄 𝐂𝐇𝐈𝐋𝐃 𝐖𝐈𝐓𝐇

𝐓𝐇𝐄 𝐂𝐇𝐈𝐋𝐃 𝐖𝐈𝐓𝐇𝐈𝐍

The wounded child sees the Divine as operating a reward and punishment system, with humanly logical explanations for all painful experiences. The wounded child does not understand that within all experiences, no matter how painful, lie spiritual insights. So long as we think like a wounded child, we will love conditionally and with great fear of loss.

We are not designed to be critical of others or ourselves; we think ill of others only out of fear.

Again, we all have negative feelings, but not all negativity produces disease. To create disease, negative emotions have to be dominant, and what accelerates the process is knowing the negative thought to be toxic but giving it permission to thrive in your consciousness anyway. For instance, you may know you need to forgive someone, yet you decide that remaining angry gives you more power. Remaining obsessively angry makes you more likely to develop a disease because the energy consequence of a negative obsession is powerlessness. Energy is power, and transmitting energy into the past by dwelling on painful events drains power from your present-day body and can lead to illness.

Let go of how you thought your life should be, and embrace the life that is trying to work its way into your consciousness.
- Caroline Myss

Photographer 📸 @alexafayebirthstories

𝐓𝐇𝐄 𝐅𝐀𝐓 𝐆𝐀𝐘 𝐌𝐀𝐋𝐄 𝐁𝐎𝐃𝐘

Have you ever been told you’re too fat for Grindr?

According to researchers Olivia Foster-Gimbel and Renee Engeln, one-third of the gay men they surveyed reported experiencing “anti-fat bias”—even among those who weren’t classified as overweight by the Body Mass Index. These forms of everyday discrimination most commonly included “rejection by potential romantic partners on the basis of weight.”

For instance, were a “fat” gay man to approach someone in a bar, Foster-Gimbel and Engeln found that there was a “greater likelihood that the overweight man would be blatantly ignored, treated rudely, or mocked behind his back” than a heterosexual male of the same size.

Gay men face enormous pressure to fit into a very narrow view of beauty—often defined on hookup apps like Grindr and Scruff by the groups they leave out: “No Fats, No Femmes.”

Bruce, a 35-year-old man living in Chicago, was called a “fat pig” by another member of his gym. Bruce asked the gentleman out on a date, and after exchanging contact information, he received this message in his inbox:

“I didn’t have the guts to tell you this at the gym but I won’t be going with you to see the Cubs. It’s not because I have a boyfriend or anything like that. It’s because I have a hard time respecting you.

There’s really no kind way to say this so I’ll just come right out with it. You’re a fat pig. I’m not trying to judge you or anything, really. It’s just that I take care of my body and spend a lot of time focusing on my health. Just looking at you, I can tell you don’t. Yeah, you show up to workout but I’ve watched you and most of the time, all you do is cruise other guys.

The worst part is that the men you seem to check out are way out of your league. Why would anybody be interested in you when you obviously don’t give a crap about yourself? Instead of trying to drum up conversations with me and other guys, you should spend more time losing the fat.” - Nico Lang, The Daily Beast

Photographer 📸 @ilde.sandrin 👦🏻👩🏻 @red.raii @albertovelasco

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