Bazaar II was our second issue about the market (taken in the broadest sense) following the semi-collapse of the US and world economies.

This time out we shifted our focus from the rarified realms of the art-market, to the business of business in general in the densely interconnected world of late capitalism. When digging for the root of all evil the devil is in the details, and we sought him out in a folio of interviews entitled 'How's Business?' in which we asked a wide range of small-time entrepreneurs — from corporate psychics in Dubai to Zoroastrian graveyard directors in Texas — this one deceptively simple question.

Added Value
Photography by Boru O'Brien O'Connell, Styling by John Mollett

Running throughout the issue were a series of still-lifes loosely illustrating the libidinal ooze which flows between the material economy of objects and the marketplace of images which mediate them to their ravenous publics.

In keeping with global trends in production the job of gathering objects to be shot was outsourced — in our case to an amateur food-stylist. There was no communication between the stylist and the photographer before the shoot and the stylist was not present for much of the actual shooting.

This Brand is My Brand,
Photography by Boru O'Brien O'Connell

This Brand is My Brand was a series of still-lives accompanying an article by the same title I wrote on the phenomenon of Nation Branding; a diabolical industry in which governments hire branding agencies to develop national logos and marketing strategies to define and espouse the virtues of their 'National Brand.'

Without the perverse feedback loop of it's elaborate PR machine, some of the more astounding claims of the Nation Branders (that branding will save Africa...) are set against the stark, primary-colored backdrop of their more concrete accomplishments — namely a gaggle of anemic and uninspired logos for what look like erectile disfunction pills, spray-on fruit juices, animal plastic surgery clinics and various other saccharine-sweet, sugar-free, free-range, organic placebos:
+=,+=,=, =, =, =,=, +=, =, ++=.

Photography by Micheal Schmelling, styling by Avena Gallagher

A gang of four hot, young Iranian rockers leave everything behind, escaping the brutal repression of the Islamic Republic to follow their rock and roll dreams in the land of the free... All of this is kind of, somewhat, arguably true of Iranian rockers-in-exile HyperNova, and disturbingly the FOX news's of the world cannot get enough.

Bidoun intervenes to craft a press-kit that would confound even the most neo-conservative culture warrior.