The reluctant father

Photographer Phillip Toledano didn't particularly want to be a father. But then he and his wife had a daughter.

Loulou seemed like such an alien thing, that the first time I heard her sneeze, I was filled with joy.

It was the first human thing I'd seen her do that made any sense to me.

Imagine listening to someone speaking a foreign language, and then suddenly you hear the word "McDonald's."

I was somewhat of a reluctant father as well. I think it's ok to feel that this stranger in your life maybe isn't the greatest thing ever. Newborns are hard; you do feel like chucking them out the window at times. Your interaction with others, especially with your spouse, becomes weird and one-sided and not at all about your needs and desires. But that's how it is...you fake it 'til you make it. Of course, I love my kids to pieces now and it's difficult to remember when that wasn't the case.

A new kind of beauty

Photographer Phillip Toledano explores the concept of human beauty at a time when people, through surgery and drugs, are able to re-make themselves.

Perhaps we are creating a new kind of beauty. An amalgam of surgery, art, and popular culture? And if so, are the results the vanguard of human induced evolution?

NSFW.

America the Gift Shop

More new work from the busy Phillip Toledano: America the Gift Shop.

If American foreign policy had a gift show, what would it sell?

I like the Cheney shredding secret documents snow globe.

Video game faces

If you can brave the Flashcrapular flippa-dee-do-da interface, Evan Baden's Illuminati photos are worth a look. They depict people's faces bathed in the light of their computer screens, iPods, and video games. See also Phillip Toledano's Video Gamers series. Toledano is also behind the fantastic Days with My Father. (via conscientious)

Update: Also see also Dennis Chamberlin's Screen Culture photos. (thx, blaine)

Phone sex operators

Slideshow of photos of phone sex operators by Phillip Toledano. (via waxy)