Paradis Magazine

[taben]

Here are a few snaps of Mariacarla's editorial:






[snaps taken by taben]

I think this is an amazing editorial, beside a couple of shots that are truly horrendous

 

[Algama]

The second picture is very, very beautiful. I like the third too. Amazing.
Thank you very much for taking the time to snap these.

 

[matthaeus123]

thanks. Can't wait till scans

 

[delboy]

Thanks tab

 

[gatano]

thanks taben!
when you say a few, it means there are more?
who is the photographer?

 

[prosperk]

Paradis is a magazine with pictures of fashion models in the nude, with some other cultural editorials… confusing nudity and p*rno is dangerous, watch out…
but anyway, i'm not arguing…

I'm not going to argue either but you made a thought-provoking comment all the same. There are a few other interesting remarks in this thread too. It's 1970s-style T&A, which we describe today as soft p*rn. Rather as with Playboy back then - and Lui - you pull readers with a bit of flesh and once they've looked at the girlies, then they might start reading the "cultural editorials" when perched on the lavatory. Paradis doesn't just publish nude sessions with fashion models. There have been some T&A shoots of actresses as well. It's a cut above using actual p*rn models.

In the end, this kind of imagery is a bit of a waste of time for any fairly active heterosexual man because the images remind him of what he saw when he got out of bed that morning, especially in the case of girls with unreconstructed bodies with natural t*ts and so on. Look at the shoot by Max Farago. They might press his buttons by showing him what is waiting for him at home when he finally gets out of the office, presuming a certain monogamous attitude in his relationships. It's soft p*rn. It shows slightly risqué photos of girls you might take home to meet mother rather than dead-eyed crack-whores from the former Eastern Bloc gurning with various orifices in poses that remind most well-adjusted men of butchers' shops.

Nudity is different. Nudity is often hailed as art. There is nothing new in this. You could but little magazines in the 1950s containing "artistic studies of beautiful young women in tasteful poses". What you did with those images in the relative privacy of the nearest public toilets was up to you and nobody was going to bother you anyway because the police were too busy hauling homosexuals out of the cubicles - Taxi Zum Klo stuff - to concern themselves with sex-starved but otherwise normal citizens shaking hands with the unemployed. Teller's shots of Mariacarla in several come-hither poses over tables and what-not is not art. If anything, it is sadism because the reader has no chance of realising the thoughts flashing through his fevered imagination. That said, Paradis also publishes desirable men. There is a short story with Jude Law, but he remains fully dressed. It's a nod to the girls and the gays. And for the more committed Fashion Queens and Trannie types, there is a Dancing Girls story by Miles Aldridge. A couple of the shots might appeal to Max Mosley S&M types.

Kishin Shinoyama's Kabuki study with an accompanying article is one of my favourite pieces. I also enjoyed the Polidori story and the Allen Jones conversation piece. Brian Eno wrote a good piece on song as well and Fawcett's recollections of John Lennon are eminently readable whilst perched on the throne in the morning. Of course, in order to evaluate Paradis, you really have to spend the ten bucks for a magazine whose pages you can turn rather than basing any judgements on scans posted on a website.

Some people see €10.00 as a high price, compared to other semestrials, but you have to take various factors into account. For a start, Paradis is independently produced. While this allows more editorial freedom, permitting the inclusion of content that would never make it into, say, Vogue Hommes International or even Arena Homme Plus, it means that the publication is not subsidised by sister titles within the corporate framework of a large publishing house. It also means that the publisher is free to opt for high quality materials and processes in terms of paper, inks, engraving and repro. Just on that score alone, you cannot say that you do not get your moneysworth when you buy Paradis, unless you tend not to read the squiggly bits between the pictures.

Is it a fashion magazine? No, although it contains a significant fashion and luxury-oriented element. Old school soft p*rn mag à la Lui or Playboy circa 1974? Absolutely, although the actual quality is streets ahead of those titles, with their ambitious young women from nowhere getting their kit off for the photographer and the publisher while some ghostwriter typed out a preposterous bio about hoping to study for a Ph.D or work with children in order to con the more gullible readers into imagining that they were sharing that intimate but solitary moment of ecstasy with a girl they could marry rather than someone who was headed for a fatal appointment with a dirty needle in a back alley somewhere.

Paradis makes no such pretence. You can't have Mariacarla or Daisy or any of the enticing lovelies letting it all hang out across the pages of Paradis. Maybe that pushes it away from p*rn into the territory of art. Might be worth discussing. In the meantime, I have it on my coffee table because it always contains articles worth reading. It always educates me. And I think that can be said for a lot of the readership. The sum total of my opinion of the naked girls when turning the pages extends no further than mental notes like "Oh! Nice t*ts!" or "Nice-looking girl" in passing before I move on to the interesting stuff.

PK

 

[taben]

thanks taben!
when you say a few, it means there are more?
who is the photographer?

Yes, there are 29 pics of Mariacarla in total, plus a few that she is not in!
And it was shot by Juergen Teller

 

[flyingace]

ugh, I don't like Mariacarla's ed at all, only the 6th picture looks more interesting. I'll never get tired of saying how much I hate Teller's photography. It would be nice if when turning the pages apart from saying "nice t*ts" as prosperk said, you could say as well, nice picture! so that the photos of naked girls don't turn into some kind of warm up to the interesting contents, instead of being part of the interesting contents .
Anyway, the Kishin Shinoyama and Brian Eno things sound interesting, and could someone scan or take some snaps of the Miles Aldridge ed? Thanks.

 

[tigerrouge]

Paradis got a mentionin an article in the Sunday Times last week, here's the relevant excerpt from the overall much longer article (about English people working in France

An Englishman's home is his chateau by John-Paul Flintoff
http://women.timesonline.co.uk/tol/...article4345041.ece?token=null&offset=0&page=1

Jonathan Wingfield, a journalist and publisher, made a similar point [about the use of English in French popular culture] when I went to see him at the offices of his magazine, Paradis, which combines long stories by great writers with photographic essays comprising page after page of full-frontal nudity.
"The people who I work with," Wingfield says, "have been watching English-language films since they were 10. It’s part of their culture. You don’t get that in England. Anybody who has been watching French films since that age in England is pretty unusual."
Wingfield came to Paris reluctantly, as part of his degree in languages and journalism. "It was very difficult when I started. Suddenly I was dealing with quite high-profile French writers and philosophers and trying to hold my own, discussing the use of semicolons in their text."
Having worked so long in France, he has no idea whether he’d have been better off financially in the UK. On balance, he reckons there’s no great difference: "As a general rule, salaries are better in London than in Paris," he says, "but then the astronomical cost of living in London justifies this."
After a decade as editor on Numéro, Wingfield and a colleague decided two years ago to launch Paradis in their spare time. The idea was to tap into the ancient French tradition of eroticism. To show me what he has in mind, Wingfield flicks open a copy of Lui (Him), a magazine that he says every French man read in the 1970s. It opens on a page that seems to show Hitler spanking young boys.
"When we launched, people said, 'Oh, so it’s a t*ts-and-**** magazine.' But you might find that, for want of a better term, we have a lower nipple count than French Vogue."

 

[prosperk]

Here's the rest of what was written about Jonathan Wingfield in that ST piece:

Despite buying into the time-honoured French tradition of eroticism, Wingfield sounds close to contemptuous about much French culture precisely because so much of it is backwards-looking.

“Pretty well everything in France is based on the past. In London, people go to Tate Modern, but here the thing to do is go to the Louvre,” says Wingfield. “And you eat in a brasserie because it has been there since the 1930s. People say that they live in a nation that has been peculiarly blessed, but I ask them: who was the last artist who had a major show here that will be remembered in 50 years?”

Wingfield’s French is fluent and his accent is convincing too. But his fiancée is English and they speak English at home. They both often travel to the UK for their work, and read British newspapers on the internet. Wingfield says he has not thought about returning to the UK, but that British people in Paris do seem to hang around together.

“I didn’t know many people when I first came, and you have a choice between learning the language to meet people or knowing nobody. But gradually

I discovered that I had more international friends. And then you find that you have become an expat.”

I don't think Johnny would have told Flintoff that he came to Paris reluctantly. And I don't think he's contemptuous of French culture. It is true that many French people tend to rest on the nation's laurels, eulogising a past that never actually happened, but he is acutely aware of the "new France", as are many of us who make a living through writing in this country, "ex-pat" or not. We are sometimes scornful of the more conservative elements exerting a stranglehold on France's evolution but that is a far cry from having contempt for French culture.

He's right about French artists, though. They are, at the moment, distinctly forgettable. But the rest of the French Arts scene is quite vibrant. And the nipples in Paradis are sexier than the ones in French Vogue...

 

[gatano]

Yes, there are 29 pics of Mariacarla in total, plus a few that she is not in!
And it was shot by Juergen Teller

thanks for the info, dear taben, so what's missing? something more gross or more elegant?
and the content of the few where she is not in what is instead in?

 

[taben]

^ A little bit of both (gross and more elegant)

There are 3 pics of 3 random people, and a couple of pics with no people at all!

 

[gatano]

^ A little bit of both (gross and more elegant)

There are 3 pics of 3 random people, and a couple of pics with no people at all!

good to know ... possibly you will show us more ... anyway I used "gross" because most of you find it this way ... not me, even if she is _literally_ dirty I need more to be impressed surely I doubt to see anything elegant from this editorial ... still it's interesting

 

[Yanka]

Thanks for everyone who's posting pictures. Please post more! I'm going through serious Paradis withdrawal symptoms.

 

[ANTONIOATAIDE]

Juergen's ed with Mariacarla is so the same. Juergen Teller is getting very redundant.
does anybody have the ed with Pilati's house?

 

[Finn]

Few one´s from the ed, scanned by me.

 

[KKnardi]

thank you! please scan more!

 

[Algama]

This ed's been bashed a lot, but I still think that there are some great pictures there.
Thanks for scanning Finn.

 

[gatano]

thanks

 

[kuli_trendy]

oh my goooodd...what a crotch shot!!!