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Category / Editor’s Picks

Trade Frozen in Time at the Old Antwerp Stock Exchange

When you’re looking for an abandoned adventure, you don’t typically expect to find them right in the middle of a major European city, much less inside what one of the most important and official buildings of the last five centuries. But for the past 20 years, urban explorers in Antwerp have had the very surreal opportunity of…

Is this the Real-Life Tintin?

Do you know many fifteen year olds who would circumnavigate the globe in 44 days, dressed as dapperly as a the Prince of Wales? Probably not, because, well … kids these days. In 1928, to mark the centennial of the author Jules Verne, the Danish newspaper Politiken held a competition challenging teenage boys to travel the globe unaccompanied in under…

13 Things I Found on the Internet Today (Vol. CCXLIII)

1. The Transformation of a 19th Century French Castle Artist Okuda San Miguel recently transformed a 19th-century castle in Château, France in a work titled Skull in the Mirror. After stints as a school and holiday center for children, the castle was abandoned for nearly 30 years. Five years ago it was acquired by the local Town Hall. Recently it…

The Strangely Underrated Artistry of Japanese Playgrounds

I don’t know about you, but the playgrounds where I pottered around in my day, eating too much sand and earning my first set of stitches on the jungle gym, did not look like this. Surreal nocturnal scenes of colossal, if not slightly traumatising cement playground equipment in Japan, that looks better suited for a contemporary art sculpture…

10 Clues to Unlock Paris

You should have seen the MessyNessy office today, because boy, was it living up to its messy name (get a behind the scenes look here on Insta stories). It was pretty ironic since the goal was to shoot my new book, surrounded by ‘things organised neatly’. So that’s what you’re about to see: ten very tidy portraits of…

The Hidden Speakeasy Room found at Pixar Studios where Steve Jobs Hung Out

At the Redbull headquarters, you can take a carbon slide down to the ground floor instead using the stairs, at Google you can sit around and talk strategy in ski gondolas, but at the Pixar offices, there’s something special that didn’t require all the big budget bells & whistles to count the animation company amongst the coolest workplaces on earth. Did you hear…

The Girl with the Impossible Waist

If you look up “hourglass figure” in the dictionary, Betty Brosmer’s picture should probably be next to it (if you Google it, she’s right there next to Kim Kardashian). Meet the highest paid pin-up girl of the 1950s, considered by many as the first true supermodel, Betty appeared in thousands of magazine including LIFE, Time, Fortune,…

Inside the Mansfield Mansion

It just doesn’t get much more kitsch (or pink) than screen siren Jayne Mansfield’s Sunset Boulevard home circa 1960. Floor to ceiling shag carpets, heart-shaped swimming pool, fireplaces and bathtubs, gold-plated fixtures a plenty, and of course, pink f**king everything. Photographed by LIFE photographer Allan Grant in 1960, the mid 20th century sex symbol shows…

Celebrity Icons and their Favourite Summer Book

So you might have heard I wrote a little book called “Don’t be a Tourist in Paris” and I was in need of some early feedback, so I sent it out to just a few of my close contacts. As you can see, it looks like they all really seem to be enjoying it! I think it’s going…

The First Miss Universe Pageant, 1952

Beauty pageants are a bit of a guilty pleasure of mine. We all know they’re silly and superficial but does anyone else here count Drop Dead Gorgeous as one of their favourite comedies from the 90s? What I like about this photo series that I pulled out of the trusty LIFE archives, is the behind-the-scenes element…

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