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FUCKING NEW YORK press updates

FUCKING NEW YORK press updates

The FUCKING NEW YORK Kickstarter campaign has been an incredible ride and a runaway success: with another three days to go, the book is over 200% financed! This means that the book is now definitely going into production, and you can expect to receive your copy of the book sometime in September 2016!

This means that you have only three days left to pre-order your copy of FUCKING NEW YORK. Don't miss out! The book may be available later, but at a signficantly higher price.

The press about the book has been uniformly ecstatic. Keep reading for some of the best quotes!


“Ecstatic, orgasmic communion with the city.”
Fucking New York offers a thoroughly exciting, provocative and playful take on the absurd relationship between New Yorkers and their city. With a subtle sense of humor and seductive play of light and shadow, the empty streets of New York themselves become protagonists of this magnificent book.”
“Que se passe-t-il quand les villes font l’amour? Fucking New York est l’aboutissement d’une série de photos où les femmes prennent leur pied dans la ville du tout possible.”
“A striking tribute to the passion and hustle that makes the city tick.”
“We’re just as sexual as men and our desire for pleasure is just as important. Nikola Tamindzic knows this; he’s created a work of art that speaks volumes and comments on a social stigma that needs to be destroyed. The heart of the matter is that women like to fuck… and some of us like to fuck New York.”
“Millions of citizens’ throbbing lust buried under traffic lights and newsstands and coffee chains. Fucking New York has a manicness to it reminiscent of American Psycho.”
“New York is a disgusting, dirty, rude, unpleasant city, and we who live here and love it want it in us, on us, and about us. At once an epithet, an exhortation, a desire, and an active state, Fucking New York is a dizzy swirl. The Bronx is up and the Battery’s down, and the women are humping concrete all over town.”
“Every once in a while someone comes out with something that makes you bite your lip in both attraction and envy, like goddamn, thank you. This is how we feel about Nikola Tamindzic’s newest book Fucking New York.”
“Sometimes you just want to grab hold of those buildings, throw yourself at the sidewalk and ugh, ugh, ohhh. Fucking New York is about fucking New York, that powerful appreciation for whatever it is that makes you tolerate this city’s many flaws and fuck-ups, that love manifesting itself physically as a series of poised sexual abstractions. It helps that Nikola’s photos are always beautiful. He makes pressing your breasts at a window look eloquent, enchanting. Hmm. Hmmmm. Hmmmmmm.”
“Take-charge, don’t-give-a-fuck women coping a feel, licking, sucking, and writhing against fire hydrants, on police cars, with brownstone lions, along grungy sidewalks, and against filthy windows — all gorgeously shot and styled. The fucking, which plays on the city as a voyeuristic candy land, is abstract, playful, strange, beautiful, ecstatic, and occasionally downright possessed.”
“Unprecedented is the word. A dreamlike trance of celebratory sexual solidarity. A silent, organic declaration of female empowerment. As if the term ‘male gaze’ had been buried definitively in a time capsule for a 100 years, to be mocked and laughed at a century later, along with the countless galleries and magazines across America who serve up feminism as a commodity on a daily basis in order to cash in and sell product to a hyper-charged, fad-obsessed, click-bait addicted, super-sensitive swath of confused, guilt-ridden consumers.”
“Distant, architectural, slightly removed from reality, quietly sensual photographs — their flow broken up by in-your-face closeups and an occasional overtly humorous shot. The uncanny/unreal city feeling the images evoke are reminiscent of surrealist painter Giorgio de Chirico’s plazas, punctuated with Lynchian humor.”
“He's certainly nabbed our curiosity.”

PAPER magazine feature on FUCKING NEW YORK

"It's quite a relationship we have with New York — unhealthy, frustrating, often abusive (especially when rent is due), and yet so irresistible. New York is like that bad boy or a girl you always wanted to make your own, and never quite could, but man, the sex was always amazing," says photographer Nikola Tamindzic. That myth that every New Yorker's greatest relationship is with the city itself inspired his series of photographs, FUCKING NEW YORK, which takes women and their love affairs with the city to their natural, carnal ends. A fashion photographer who got his start shooting nightlife for Gawker, Tamindzic's been working on the project for four years, and has launched a Kickstarter to bring it to final book form.

The series glories in women who have a sexy, borderline pornographic rapport with the five boroughs. They bare it all on city streets, penetrate pipes, and wrap themselves around fire hydrants in ecstatic, orgasmic communion with the city. "It became this expression of reverse voyeurism," Tamindzic explains. "These private moments were happening in public, and all the power of the voyeur was taken away, because clearly, these women couldn't give a fuck whether you see them or not, or what you think of them."

Stoya in FUCKING NEW YORK.

Stoya in FUCKING NEW YORK.

"Most of the participants are writers, artists, magazine editors, entrepreneurs, and political activists," Tamindzic says of his casting, which features a whole host of women, including recognizable New Yorkers like porn star Stoya or writer Rachel Sklar. "There are people from their early twenties to mid-sixties, many different body types, people from all kinds of cultural, ethnic and social backgrounds. A real cross-section of New York, I hope."

There are still some elusive, perfect "fucking New York" shots still out there to be created, though. "The bull on Wall Street, covered in lighter fluid, and set on fire," Tamindzic shared, when asked for one of them. "Since we couldn't really make that happen, my friend Candice rubbed her ass in Trump's face—and that was pretty much perfect."

Read the entire feature on papermag.com. Buy FUCKING NEW YORK on Kickstarter.

GOTHAM x BEAUTIFUL SAVAGE x NIKOLA TAMINDZIC

Abby Brothers in Against the Wall by Nikola Tamindzic

Abby Brothers in Against the Wall by Nikola Tamindzic

Gotham magazine today featured a "10 Photographers to Know" list by Chad Saville, editor-in-chief of Beautiful Savage, a fantastic art & fashion glossy in New York City, and I am honored to be on this list.

Nikola Tamindzic’s boundary-pushing aesthetic evokes both desire and restraint, celebrating clean composition with a spirit of rebellion. Much of his portfolio was shot in natural light, in the moment... and in locations that he probably snuck into. Nylon, The New York Times, Gawker, and Maxim are just a few of his clients. He’s also featured in the Fall 2014 issue of Beautiful Savage magazine.
— Chad Saville, editor-in-chief of Beautiful Savage magazine

Some of my photos from the upcoming Fall 2014 issue of Beautiful Savage have already been previewed on this blog. The Gotham article also features Jamie Nelson, Dwayne Michael Campbell, and others — see Chad Saville's Top 10 Photographers in New York City Right Now.

PDN: “SEX WITH THE CITY”

Untitled 30/93 (The Standard), from Fucking New York.

Untitled 30/93 (The Standard), from Fucking New York.

A wonderful write-up about Fucking New York from Frank Webster in PDN:

In his latest book, Fucking New York, Nikola Tamindzic ponders whether a New Yorker’s love for the City is the most important relationship in his or her life, asking the question to the point of absurdity: What would screwing New York City actually look like? The project evolved into distant, almost architectural, slightly removed from reality, though quietly sensual photographs — their flow broken up by in-your-face closeups and an occasional overtly humorous shot. The uncanny/unreal city feeling the images evoke are reminiscent of surrealist painter Giorgio de Chirico’s plazas, punctuated with Lynchian humor.
Frank Webster, PDN Online

ANIMAL NY: “new york: city I'd like to fuck”

ANIMAL NY: “new york: city I'd like to fuck”

Untitled #99/39 (29th street), from Fucking New York.

Untitled #99/39 (29th street), from Fucking New York.

A great, fun write-up on Fucking New York by Marina Galperina in Animal New York:

Sometimes you just want to grab hold of those buildings, throw yourself at the sidewalk and ugh, ugh, ohhh. Photographer Nikola Tamindzic’s newest project Fucking New York is about fucking New York, that powerful appreciation for whatever it is that makes you tolerate this city’s many flaws and fuck-ups, that love manifesting itself physically as a series of poised sexual abstractions. It helps that Nikola’s photos are always beautiful. He makes pressing your breasts at a window look eloquent, enchanting. Hmm. Hmmmm. Hmmmmmm.
Marina Galperina, Animal New York

THE NEW YORK TIMES: “a chronicler of nightlife melancholy”

THE NEW YORK TIMES: “a chronicler of nightlife melancholy”

by Eric Konigsberg, published in The New York Times, May 21, 2008

Nikola Tamindzic went out late on Friday night to shoot pictures at Trash, a weekly themed party at 40C, an East Village nightclub.

Mr. Tamindzic is a night-life photographer — equal parts Ron Galella, Weegee and Terry Richardson — with clippings in Time Out New York, Black Book and The Village Voice. The Voice named him Night-Life Photographer of the Year in 2006.

“My pictures suggest a story that happened before the shot and a story that hasn’t happened yet,” Mr. Tamindzic said. “There’s a sense of melancholy. I’m thinking Lee Friedlander photographs from the ’70s. Hopefully, when it comes together it puts two contradictory layers in the photo: you’re both adoring it and not repulsed by it — but, yeah, almost repulsed by it.”

Take, for example, a picture Mr. Tamindzic took the weekend before last at a book party for Arianna Huffington: Ms. Huffington with Charlie Rose, Mortimer B. Zuckerman, Jann Wenner and Rupert Murdoch. None of the five — except for Mr. Wenner, who theatrically pretends to be holding Mr. Zuckerman and Mr. Murdoch at arm’s length from each other — appears to want to be in the photo. Yet they are all smiling gamely enough because, well, it would be horrible form to move out of the frame.

“I don’t judge my subjects,” Mr. Tamindzic said of his portraiture, which also includes studio and fashion work. He added that although he makes more money by selling pictures to glossy magazines, his primary employer (which had sent him to the Huffington event in the first place) is Gawker, the acidic media-gossip Web site. Mr. Tamindzic is 35 and grew up in Belgrade, in what was then Yugoslavia. He came to America in 2000, took a job doing Web design work, then landed in New York in 2004. It was around that time that he fell in love with photography, and during his initial months in town, he happened to end up at a Halloween party held by Gawker’s founder.

“I was bored so I took a lot of pictures and posted them online, and the next day they called and said they’d pay me to start taking their party pictures,” Mr. Tamindzic said.

His work can be viewed on his own site, homeofthevain.com (the name comes from a lyric by the literate post-punk band the Fall).

"Perfect scene: dark room, huge sofa, and two striking, gorgeous women lounging. I come over slowly, trip the shutter, smile and move away, happy that I got a lovely, natural looking photo that's going to work perfectly as a context shot for the party I'm covering. An hour later, I find myself standing next to the brunette above, as the blonde takes the stage, and I realize that it's maybe time to reconsider this whole nightlife photography business if I'm unable to recognize both Annie Lennox and Gina Gershon. Whatever, it was a very dark room."

At the nightclub on Friday night, Mr. Tamindzic sized up the crowd. “It’s very young,” he said. “Lower East Side street kids, N.Y.U. students, trustafarians.”

He leaped into action, snapping pictures of the two young women who were being paid to dance on the bar in underwear and cutoff shorts and encouraging them to mug for the camera. Mr. Tamindzic, a lanky 6 feet 3 inches tall, all legs and elbows, was purposeful and obvious, with a hefty Canon EOS 5D camera in one hand and a LumiQuest softbox flash in the other (to throw up a noirish, crime-scene photographer’s burst of intense light). He uses long exposures, then shakes the camera while the shutter is still open, causing colors to blur and lights to streak.

“I’m not recording what is really happening, but it’s something like what the brain is seeing late at night, especially if maybe you’re drunk or very excited,” he said. “I like that hour between 3 and 4 in the morning when desperation sets in, when you see all the anticipation of going out starting to fade. The masks drop and everybody realizes the night is not going to be everything they were hoping for.”

"Whenever I think about my nightlife photography, and all the things I've shot in the past, this is the shot that comes to mind, every time."

Mr. Tamindzic appeared to be at the top of his game as the clock struck 1:30 a.m.

He snapped pictures of a couple of young career women in pumps and wool coats, one of whom held a bouquet of flowers; they were out on the town for her birthday.

He photographed a rather robotic looking woman in a futuristic version of a Playboy Club waitress’s outfit.

He photographed a couple who had fallen into what appeared to be an unlikely and unaccounted-for embrace.

There was something of the character portrayed by David Hemmings in “Blow-Up” in the way Mr. Tamindzic worked the back room of the club, pulling women onto the velvet couch and coaxing them into poses — for example, a hand on someone’s stomach, or a shoulder strap undone. They were mostly shy but thrilled by his attention.

“I like to bring people to a point of vulnerability and then meet their gaze,” he explained earlier in the evening about his portraits. “That creates compassion, which hopefully is reflected in the image. If you get vulnerability out of them and then look away, that’s the cruelest thing you can do. To flinch at that point and not take the picture, the subject will throw the wall up faster than you can say — well, faster than you can say a very short word.”