Friday, June 17, 2011

Unexpected celebrity encounters captured on film

Photo blog Awesome People Hanging Out Together records those moments when stars collide ? Woody Allen chilling out with Michael Jackson, Nancy Reagan sitting on Mr T's knee ...

? See more pictures from the blog here

New York, 1975, and some of the greatest stars in pop history stand side by side: Roberta Flack, John Lennon and Yoko Ono, David Bowie, Art Garfunkel and, surprisingly, their accountant . . . oh wait, that's Paul Simon. The appeal of the best pictures and videos posted on a celebrity-struck website called Awesome People Hanging Out Together lies in wondering how these people met, what they said to one another, and if the apparently casual meeting implies a deeper connection. Did Bowie dig Simon & Garfunkel? And did Woody Allen find that he had a lot in common with a young Michael Jackson?

The pictures on the blog range from the ridiculous ? Nancy Reagan sitting on Mr T's knee ? to the sublime, when genuinely awesome people exchange tantalising words we cannot hear. This is the case in a double portrait of Andy Warhol and Alfred Hitchcock by Jill Krementz. The great director of Psycho and Vertigo, seated like a resting sumo wrestler in a little armchair, seems amused by whatever Warhol, kneeling before him in casual reverence, is saying. This is a fascinating moment because you seem to see a meeting of minds: Warhol paying homage to a master and Hitchcock bestowing approval on the younger pop genius.

In fact, the entire concept of Awesome People Hanging Out Together is like one of Warhol's celebrity art projects of the 1980s such as his magazine, Interview, or his appearance in the television series The Love Boat. The surreal meeting of Reagan with Mr T, whom she invited to a White House Christmas Party in 1983 so long as he came as Santa Claus, could be right out of Warhol's diaries, or indeed his dream life. Yet like Warhol himself, the website fascinates because just when you think it is totally banal (huh, Stephen Fry stood next to Lady Gaga once? Who knew?) it surprises you with true mystique. Sylvester Stallone expresses a sense of what fame is in a double portrait with Pel�: all right, it may just be his default super-serious expression, but it does look as if the star of Rocky feels real awe at standing next to a living legend. When these moments of recognition strike, this gallery of encounters becomes much more than a bizarre distraction.


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