Tortoises doing their thing. Photo via Wikimedia Commons

There's a TV show in the Netherlands called Vroege Vogels (or "Early Birds"), which has for years provided a weekly round-up of nature sightings in the country. For the most part, it's pretty tame, family-friendly entertainment. But in a segment this March, the show featured a goldcrest—Europe's tiniest bird—fucking another goldcrest. Oh, and the other bird was dead.

This alone would have been shocking. But even weirder, Vroege Vogels actually had a go-to specialist on the subject, who they called on to examine the footage. His name is Kees Moeliker.

"The program makers called me on a Saturday morning at breakfast and said, 'You'll be interested in this!'" Moeliker told VICE. "I was thrilled to see it. I immediately confirmed this was a clear case of avian necrophilia."

Moeliker's "expertise" dates back to 1995 when one day, in his office as director of Rotterdam's Natural History Museum, he saw a mallard duck fly headlong into the glass building. The bird fell to the ground. Moments later, a second mallard, began mating the dead animal where it lay.

Moeliker got a pen and paper and began documenting the ass-fucking for the next hour and a quarter until common decency compelled him to intervene.

Kees "The Duck Guy" Moeliker in Rotterdam's Natural History Museum. Photo via Wikimedia Commons

The resulting 2001 paper—"The first case of homosexual necrophilia in the mallard Anas platyrhynchos"—made little impact until it was spotted by the organizers of Harvard's Ig Nobel Awards for improbable research. The Ig Nobels are a parody of the Nobels with prizes given out for achievements that "first make people laugh, and then make them think." (Last year's recipients included a scientist who subjected himself to bee stings on 25 different locations of his body, to determine which would be most painful. This year's awards will be presented later this month.)

Moeliker won an Ig Nobel in 2003, which led to a flood of media attention, a TED talk, and a reputation as the de facto world specialist on animal necrophilia.

"After that, people started sending me their observations—and since nobody else was studying these behaviors, I became the expert. In the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is king!"

Moeliker's files now contain about 60 reliably documented cases of animal necrophilia involving 41 species of birds, mammals, reptiles, and amphibians, as well as what Moeliker says is the only known case of "osteophilia," a tortoise that was seen humping an empty shell in Azerbaijan in 2014.

But his findings are only the tip of the iceberg as far as freaky animal sex goes. Besides necrophilia, lots of other paraphilias have been noted in the wild. Zoophilia, or inter-species sex, has been observed between Antarctic fur seals and king penguins, and between dolphins and porpoises (in both cases against the will of the smaller animal). Many primates are known to practice incest, and female greater horseshoe bats share sex partners with their moms. Bonobo chimps, who seem to use sex as a kind of social glue, do it pretty much every way you can. And behind every case of weird animal sex, there's a researcher diligently watching it happen.

It's only in the last couple of decades that these divergent sexual behaviors in animals have come under the microscope of mainstream science. Before, it happened, but it was pretty hushed up. Moeliker, for example, put off writing his duck paper for six years because "when I looked in the academic record there were no references to this behavior."

Indeed, while scientists had been documenting animal necrophilia for at least a century, their research was rarely published. When it was, it was published in such a way as to deliberately slip under the radar.

For example, American ornithologist Robert W. Dickerman wrote a 1960 paper in the Journal of Mammalogy based on his observation of homosexual necrophilia in two ground squirrels. Afraid his paper would be rejected if he described the act outright, Dickerman coined the euphemism "Davian behaviour" for what was taking place.

On Motherboard: The Female Animal That Has a Penis

Another challenge in documenting and analyzing animal sex behaviors is withholding human judgment. For example, bonobos' pleasure principle extends to include behaviors we, as humans, would categorize as incest and pedophilia. And it's known that male orangutans regularly force copulation on females, which is hard not to see as rape.

The temptation to look at nature through the prism of our own values is both tempting and rewarding, said Harriet Ritvo, a natural history professor at MIT, "because nature is like the Bible: You can find anything you want in there."

She offered the example of 1950s primatologists studying baboon societies. "They used the fact that there were dominant males who have a harem as an argument to support conventional power dynamics within families and gender roles and so on," she told VICE.

But a couple of decades later, when a team of women primatologists studied those same baboons, they discovered that "if you look at the females and not the males, there's a female hierarchy that's more important," Ritvo said. "It depends who's doing the looking and where you look."

Even if we can accept that the animal kingdom is as sexually diverse as human society, it's impossible for us to say with any certainty what any of these behaviors mean without knowing the animals intentions.

"There are problems with applying those terms to people in the sense that you draw boundaries and establish categories that may seem firmer than they actually are," said Ritvo. "But if you think that animals have less self-consciousness than people do, then one of the questions you have to ask yourself is: Are you sure you know what the animals have in mind? Animals have a much more restrictive expressive range than humans and just because it looks like something else does it mean the same thing."

For his part, Moeliker is quite sure his mallard duck was no necrophiliac.

"It has to be a dramatic death, the animal must have died in the same position it would be in for copulation, and it has to be a recent death because there have to be hormones around the body," he said. "It's not the same as human necrophiliacs who are after sex with a non-struggling, non-responsive body and are often serial killers. I've not found any ducks like that."

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This article originally appeared on VICE Denmark

There's a struggle for survival raging in the Sydhavnen district of the Danish capital. Urban renewal, gentrification, modernisation, whatever you want to call it, has collided with the historically blue-collar Copenhagen borough, and the impact is impossible to overlook. Newly erected skyscrapers cast long shadows over the neighbourhood's council houses. Equity, career and ambition clash with the old residents' colourful tracksuits and weedy gardens.

Photographer Casper Aguila Christoffersen spent some time in Sydhavnen trying to capture that antithesis. Scroll down to see the result.

Nyl MC, a veteran of Rio's roda de rima. All photos by Phil Clarke Hill

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Huddled near the shore of Rio de Janeiro's Guanabara Bay, a dense crowd is chanting lyrics about life on the city's outskirts, swaying to a track called "Nowhere" by local up-and-coming MCs Pedro Ratão and Cortesia da Casa.

Here, no crime is said. Hold onto your police report. Your silence will be your manuscript.

Every Tuesday night in the city's emerging Botafogo neighborhood, aspiring rappers and fans gather for a roda de rima, literally a "rhyme wheel" but best understood as a cross-class rap cypher complete with rap battles, freestyles, and sometimes, bigger performances. As the night progresses, wannabe MCs saunter to a circle's center, hoping to make a name for themselves in the local hip-hop scene.

These public, usually free events aren't limited to one place, or time: Nearly every night of the week in Rio, a roda can be found, whether it's in the city's wealthier Zona Sul ("South Zone"), its often overlooked and crime-ridden Zona Norte ("North Zone"), and Zona Oeste ("West Zone"), or the favelas, the low-income hillside communities scattered in between. But while some circles consist of amateurish battles, replete with goofy braggadocio, the rodas represent what hip-hop has often been about from its very start in late 1970s New York City: an open cultural space for the marginalized to be heard.

For many rappers in Rio in 2016, especially now that the planet's gaze has moved on from the Olympics, the rodas are a vital venue for protesting police brutality.

Cacife Clandestino and Start Rap onstage for a larger show in the Meier neighborhood of Rio's Zona Norte

While police killings of people of color continue to ignite protests in the United States, the sheer number of human beings gunned down by cops in Brazil is staggering. By some estimates, the country's police kill at least 2,000 people a year, or roughly six per day; between 2008 and 2013, one report by the Brazilian Public Security Forum suggested police had killed more than 11,000 civilians. That's about the same number of people that American police killed in a roughly 30-year period between 1983 and 2012—despite having a population 50 percent larger than Brazil's.

And if police violence in Brazil can be considered an epidemic, Rio's residents represent a collective patient zero. According to Amnesty International, police and other security forces killed more than 2,500 people in the city between 2009, when the city was chosen to host the Olympics, and this past August, when the Games started. And as the Olympics approached, the pace seemed to only hasten, the human rights group said, with heavily militarized police—who also suffer high casualties in the line of duty—setting out to "secure" neighborhoods authorities described as dominated by gangs and deadly drug traffickers. During a two-week period at the height of the Games alone, at least eight people were reportedly killed.

As police violence has escalated, so too, has the popularity of the roda de rimas, which first got organized and won notice around 2010. To avoid overlapping events on the same night, various groups use Facebook and other social-media platforms to coordinate Rio's open-mic circuit.

Having performed in the scene for nearly a decade, Nyl MC, a well-known local rapper, believes rodas are more structured than they once were—that they're in their "second generation." Originally from the city's North Zone, the rapper said his music is meant to add depth to how people perceive his city.

"I identify with this narrative of being a young, black man from a periphery neighborhood," he told VICE. "Our neighborhoods appear in the media with high rates of violence and deaths, but they're treated as a locale that doesn't have anything more than that. in the world. We have numbers equivalent to war."

A breakdancing battle in Iraja in Rio's Zona Norte

With that in mind, Nyl stressed the significance of the rodas as an outlet for the youth. "The street is a space for everyone, and hip-hop started on the streets," he said. "There's nothing more natural than occupying them."

Rap's roots in Brazil go back to in São Paulo, sometime around the late 1980s, when the world was still getting to know American hip-hop. For years, the genre was largely relegated to the country's cultural outskirts, with samba and funk dominating the charts. But recently, the cultural energy devoted to hip-hop has intensified, and its epicenter has shifted, almost naturally, to class- and race-conscious Rio.

Fans look on at a show by Start Rap, Cacife Clandestino and Planet Hemp

It's something Gabriela Vieira, who currently goes by the name "NegaBi," has noticed since she started rapping at the rodas in 2011. "The rodas have been a huge presence here for us," she told VICE. "They are escapes."

But as a political and economic crisis in Brazil persists, NegaBi said she worries the city will revoke permits for the rodas. Already, she said, some have shut down due to finances, a loss that is consequential at this tumultuous moment in Rio, she argued, when police violence and other systemic issues do not seem to be letting up, even post-Olympics.

"If you take away the rodas, we're going to be stateless, without a location to have a voice," she said. "When people go to parties, they don't go to discuss. They go to dance. At the rodas, no; since it's on the street and something more simple, people stop to listen."

NegaBi performing at the Meier Roda de Rima

Like many rappers, NegaBi's music reflects her surroundings, growing up in the low-income neighborhood of Padre Miguel. She says she knows people who have died in the crossfire between police and assailants, or simply been killed by accident. "I'm tired of seeing this part of the community dying, and it's hard for you not to link together a preconception with the daily homicides we see," she said. "In rap, we talk a lot about this."

The elevated police presence in Rio stems from UPPs, or "pacifying police units," installed in the city's favelas in the late 2000s. Depending on whom you ask, and where they live, the program is seen as a successful operation—making once-dangerous favelas attractive to tourists—or a disastrous occupation leading to horrible violence on the streets.

The first favela to be "pacified" was Santa Marta, a community close to the beaches of Botafogo. On a recent night there, the neighborhood was celebrating the ten-year anniversary of "Hip-Hop Santa Marta." Attendees drank beers and kids ran through the square, while a handful of UPP officers patrolled the outdoor party, their hands affixed to their holsters.

When fans were ready to enter the samba school where the event was being held, the only entrance fee was a kilo of rice, beans, or pasta—a donation to the community. Inside, breakdancers faced off on a makeshift cardboard stage, while popular MCs performed throughout the night. The host, Big Papo Reto, rapped to the crowd, "They know what it's like to live in a war; you only have to open the window."

A breakdancing battle in Botafogo

Rogerius Rozendo, a member of the local rap group "Santa Máfia," said the night marked a decade of "resistance inside of this community," as well as eight years of what he considers to be a police occupation. "When they entered in 2008, they came to 'makeover' our community, but they did so with aggression," he argued.

This used to be a monthly gathering, but it's been less frequent since the UPP arrived, Rozendo explained. Luckily, he said, the platform that the roda offers has spread all over the city and cannot be contained. "When rap first came out, it was more popular in the lower-class areas," he said. "Now, it's mixed, and everyone comes to enjoy it. The favela on the mountainside is a continuation of a wealthier street down below and visa versa."

"That's the thing about the rodas—the idea of the street." Rozendo continued. "There's no difference between classes."

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They will be around long after we're long gone. Photo via Shutterstock

When you've lived with rats as long as I have, you become paranoid. Every suspect sound and fleeting shadow could be a rat waiting to pounce. I moved out of my last apartment, in Brooklyn's Gowanus neighborhood, after it became infested with rats in the wake of Hurricane Sandy; the Gowanus Canal overflowed, which drove the rats farther inland. They invaded my garbage, gnawed on old pork chops, and left them to rot on the kitchen floor. I could hear the rats scurrying in the walls.

When I moved, I thought I'd gotten away from them—but soon enough, construction began on my block, and they appeared once again. My roommates and I put out traps and poison, hired exterminators, and covered up holes with steel mesh. Still, they came (presumably through the basement, which was littered with rat shit).

We couldn't leave food out on the counter—or anywhere, really. I once foolishly placed an entire loaf of sliced bread on top of my refrigerator. The next morning, I found the bag empty, gnawed and discarded in the laundry room. The rats also figured out how to open our trash can, which has a locking lid. Once, we placed a pile of magazines on top of the can to keep them out; I later walked into the kitchen to find a rat hanging from the lid with his two front claws chewing furiously on the can's plastic exterior—very pliable to a rat's teeth, which are as strong as steel. (Fun fact: A rat's jaws wield an impressive biting force of about 7,000 pounds per square inch.)

So I have very few reasons to like rats. But the other day, I was typing away at my desk when a rat materialized on the hardwood floor of my bedroom. It ran under a chest of drawers, cornering itself. I grabbed a few loose coins and tossed them at him, hoping he'd run out—but he continued to hide. Eventually, I walked over and kicked the drawer repeatedly, hoping he'd get the idea. He ran out and flew up a flight of stairs.

Since that fateful morning, I've learned more about rats and developed a begrudging respect for them. I've come to accept that we live alongside one another. I'm no longer at war with them, and that's a good thing, because rats are inescapable. They exist in staggering numbers, and they'll be here long after we're all gone.

There are around 2 million rats in New York City. Even if you never see them, the evidence of their presence surrounds us. They descend over parks at night like "one big shadow," according to one exterminator in this New Yorker story.

They are remarkably resilient, virtually indestructible, and built to survive. Rats have lived through nuclear testing and can swim underwater; an exterminator once told me they can hold their breath for up to four minutes, which is how they make their way into toilet bowls. Norwegian rats, NYC's only existent species, are basically built to eat and multiply. According to Robert Sullivan's Rats: Observations on the History & Habitat of the City's Most Unwanted Inhabitants, spotting one at night means about ten are nearby. "One pair of rats," Sullivan writes, "has the potential of 15,000 descendants in a year."

I've since learned that the reason the rat came into my room that day was either because its nest was disturbed, or it simply couldn't cut it in the hunt with the other rats at night. Rats are nocturnal, so if you see one during daylight hours, it's because it's been out-competed and has no choice but to brave the elements in the sun. "If humans can't make it with one job, they get another one to pay the bills," another exterminator told me. "If there's not enough food, they'll come out in the daytime looking for it—they have no choice."

Rats thrive around humans because we produce so much garbage. While rats may be getting rid of our waste, they also create their own, spreading their urine and feces all over the place. The economic cost of damage from rats in the United States is, according to estimates, $19 billion a year—"many times greater than any other invasive animal species."

Each year rats eat 42 billion tons of our food at a cost of $30 billion worldwide.

In 1982, the United Nations estimated that rats ate more than 42 billion tons of food at a cost of $30 billion worldwide. Rats are such a prevalent part of the food supply throughout the world that many governments put acceptable limits on how much rat contamination they deem to be safe, according to the book Rat: How the World's Most Notorious Rodent Clawed Its Way to the Top.Rats author Jerry Langton reminds us that the US Food and Drug Administration allows an average of two rodent hairs per 100 grams of peanut butter, and that the World Health Organization estimates that as much as 35 percent of all food consumed by humans has been contaminated by rodents—mostly, by rats.

It's not just our food that rats have developed a taste for, Langton writes; they're fond of the insulation that covers our electrical wires as well. Insurers and fire-safety groups estimate rats are responsible for as much as 25 percent of unintentional fires.

When you look at rats from a purely biological standpoint, though, there is much to admire. "They certainly have their place in the ecosystem," Ronald J Sarno, an associate professor of biology at Hofstra University who specializes in urban rat research, told me. According to Sarno, rats are most useful—for humans, at least—in laboratory studies, providing insights into health and genetics and behavior. "I realize they're vilified by the media, but they're pretty amazing animals, biologically. They're amazingly adaptable."

Bobby Corrigan, one of the world's leading experts on rodent control and a preeminent urban rodentologist (his nickname among colleagues at his rodent consulting firm is the "Rat Czar"), told me while expressing his respect for the animals that he doesn't believe rats should live in cities due to their dangerous and destructive nature.

"The average rat you see scurrying around the curb at night—what benefit is he bringing to New Yorkers?" Corrigan asked. "In the city, it's only a threat."

Outside the city, however, rats (and mice) are of some ecological benefit. Corrigan said that they distribute all kinds of plants through seed dissemination, and they also construct burrows in the ground, which aerates the ground and benefits the soil's ecology. Rats and mice are also a critically important part of the food chain, a key source of protein and nutrients for foxes, coyotes, wolves, dogs, hawks, owls, raccoons, skunks, and other animals.

Rodents make up 44 percent of the world's mammal population, Corrigan told me, while humans make up about 5 percent. "In terms of true success, " Corrigan said, "really the rodents have it all over everybody else."

And for some reason, I'm more at peace with that idea than I ever have been.

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A soldier. Photo by Soldatnytt

Mandatory military service in Sweden was abolished in 2010. Since then, Swedes have been given the choice of enlisting for military tryouts. Now there's a possibility that this will change. Last month, a study group assigned by the Swedish armed forces announced that compulsory military training may be reinstated in 2019. This could mean that all Swedish citizens, regardless of their gender, born in 2000 or later, will be obligated to try out for the armed forces.

A recent poll showed that 87 percent of Swedish people are positive towards reestablishing compulsory military training. The study also revealed that young people, in comparison to older generations, were quite skeptical towards the matter.

As the government is deliberating whether or not to confirm the proposal, I decided to ask some teenagers – the ones who might actually be affected by the revival of mandatory military service – about how they feel about the military, becoming a soldier, and our national security.

VICE: Do you know what compulsory military training means?
Carl, 16: You try out to see if you're fit for military service. If you're deemed fit you train for like nine months and go through a bunch of war scenarios.

It might get mandatory for you to apply. What are your thoughts on that?
Well, I've actually thought about joining the military force as a secondary career. So I think it's a pretty good thing because you get to travel around the country and meet people from different parts of Sweden – it's quite a social career! Also, I think we need to strengthen our military defence.

If Sweden went into war today, what do you think would happen?
It's really unlikely. But if Russia would invade us, I don't think we're be able to defend ourselves. But we'd be able to resist longer if the military service was mandatory.

Do you know what compulsory military training means?
Fritiof, 16: Yeah, basically? You do it after high school, right?

It might become mandatory again, you know. How do you feel about that?
I've actually thought about joining willingly. Being a fighter pilot would be cool. But I don't think I could handle it really. Having to obey a bunch of orders and having to do unnecessary stuff only to show off your loyalty. And I'm not a huge fan of war anyway, so I'd rather not.

What is compulsory military training?
AnneLotte, 17: Isn't that when... I don't really know. But like an obligation to try out for the military service?

Yes. It might be reinstated again in 2019. What if you had to apply?
Personally, I think it could be fun. But really, I don't feel like we need the army at all. The government should be able to find diplomatic solutions to issues. So I feel like, it's kind of wrong, being forced into something that you don't want to be a part of.

What if Sweden went into war today – what do you think would happen?
God! I have no idea. Our defence isn't exactly great, so I don't think we'd do too well. I haven't really thought about it.

Do you know what compulsory military training is?
Neo, 15: It's like a tryout for joining the army.

It might get mandatory for you to apply. What are your thoughts on that?
I'd rather not, really. I wouldn't want to go out into a war zone because I don't feel like it's humane to make people be a part of something they don't want to be a part of. I feel like it's unnecessary and I feel like if I would die in war... It wouldn't be very fun. I mean I've got other stuff to do.

What do you think would happen if Sweden went into war today?
I think we'd contact all the other countries and ask for help. Our army would probably go to war, but that wouldn't be good for Sweden. We're not really famous for our war skills, I mean we haven't done it in years.

Do you know what compulsory military training means?
Olivia, 16: No. What! Oh my god.

If another country attacked Sweden today, what do you think would happen?
We'd die. Or I mean, we have a military, but we'd still die.

There's this new proposal that could mean military service will be mandatory.
Victor, 15: I guess it's kind of exciting in a way, but I don't really know if I'd want to join. But if the legislation goes through I'm forced to do it anyway so... But maybe it's necessary, I mean we're kind of low on soldiers you know.

What do you think would happen if a country were to declare war on Sweden now?
I think we'd have a chance for a while, but we're a pretty small military and a pretty small country. I mean we'd never win against like, Russia, but I think we'd be able to resist a little while.

There's a proposal that might go through, which could mean that it will be mandatory for you try out for military service.
Maria, 17: I don't really know how I feel but I think it's pretty good. Personally, I wouldn't want to be forced to attend military training. So it's a no from me.

What if another country were to declare war on Sweden today. What do you think would happen?
I don't think we'd have a chance. I don't really think we're ready for it.

How do you feel about doing mandatory military service?
Tobias, 15: I guess I think it's good. Or actually, both good and bad. Because if Sweden were to be invaded by say, a world power, I don't think we could do very much about it. So it feels pretty unnecessary to train a bunch of people in war combat if they're going to die anyway. On the other hand I think it could be a good strengthener of character you know? You enhance your survival skills.

What do you think would happen if a country declared war on Sweden today?
I don't think we'd do much, 'cause we'd lose either way. And even if we resisted, we'd all just die.

@therealaretha

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Photo by Johan Larsson

Ask any Swede what comes to mind when they think about Pride, and you'll probably get an answer about rainbows, happiness, and scantily clad people celebrating the freedom to love. But depending on where you live in the world, the reality can look a lot different.

This weekend, RFSL Uppsala is hosting the Welcome Out festival, which is a Pride festival specifically dedicated to asylum seekers and LGBTQ individuals from around the world. Culminating in a parade that will take place this Sunday, the festival aims to create a space for everyone to celebrate Pride freely. I called up one of the festival's organisers, Warren Kunce, to find out more.

VICE: Where did this idea come from?
Warren Kunce: The Swedish Federation for Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender and Queer Rights are behind the Welcome Out festival. We're a local branch of the organisation.

We meet many LGBTQ newcomers who want to get involved, and we don't really have any gay bars in Uppsala. Bars are usually a meeting point for people trying to connect with other individuals in the LGBTQ community. So people tend to find their way to us. We have a drop-in centre every Thursday. With the recent refugee crisis we have many new asylum seekers, so the idea evolved from that.

What's important with this festival?
When you seek asylum in Sweden, you usually live at a housing facility, and they're often in the middle of nowhere. It was important for us to create a safe space, as that can be difficult to find in remote areas. So we started this newcomers group to welcome people to who are new in the country. The goal was actually to materialise something from these meetings, because we found that it's not very successful to only meet and chat.

We decided to create our own Welcome Out festival so that we'd be organised jointly between newcomers and a few Swedes. The main focus is that the parade will be organised by newcomers mainly, and the Swedes involved would help out if needed.

Why in Uppsala?
Well, our facilities are here in Uppsala so we wanted to do something here. Also, the city hasn't hosted a Pride parade for the last four years, sadly. So we wanted to fill those shoes.

Uppsala has two universities and plenty of international companies, so we have a lot of immigrants and foreigners coming into the city. Many people are here only for a couple of years. They may not stay long enough to learn Swedish. So the city is really growing in its diversity as well as in English, it's kind of becoming bilingual. That created a good foreground for the event.

Have you encountered any negativity, or had any difficulties?
As we're a new thing, it's been a bit difficult because people don't really understand what we are and what the festival is about. We couldn't use the words "Uppsala Pride" as they belonged to the previous Pride parade.

But overall it's been amazing. Everyone involved is doing this voluntarily. We're all doing this for the first time, so we've had to learn how to build from the ground. It's been quite exciting. Also, as an asylum seeker you don't always have the right to work. So this has become a great way for individuals who are involved to get a better idea of how the city works, get integrated, and enhance their Swedish skills. The parade is part of a two-day festival, with lectures, workshops, and support groups.

What are you looking forward to most?
We've managed to provide transport and accommodation scholarships for 61 asylum seekers to come to Uppsala. They're from refugee camps around Sweden. And they're coming in today! So to meet an greet them is a wonderful feeling. Many of them have been looking forward to this for a really long time. I feel that even if they wouldn't end up attending any of the workshops or lectures – and choose to only hang out in their hostel and meet each other – that alone would be a great accomplishment.

Welcome Out starts today, September 16, in Uppsala, Sweden. Don't miss their Pride parade this Sunday, September 18 at 1PM. For more information, check out their website.

@therealaretha

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This article originally appeared on VICE UK

In the continuation of a time-honoured tradition, another drug dealer has come a cropper after Instagramming loads of photos of himself posing with cash, jewellery and flashy cars.

Despite telling police he clearly wasn't involved in drug dealing because he didn't have any money, 29-year-old Levi Watson's social media activity suggested he may actually have been completely and fully lying. West Midlands police checked his Instagram and found photos of him posing in a literal bath of cash, as well as him and / or his hands positioned in / around / next to shiny champagne bottles, Lamborghinis, Rolexes and a load of other shit only very rich people can afford.

One of the photo captions reads: "When your sitting on over quarter of a million but you tell them it's pennies" .

West Midlands Crime Commissioner David Jamieson said that "hopefully the memory of his cash-filled bath and pink champagne will keep him warm at night while he spends the next seven years behind bars". But if his Instagram is anything to go by, Watson does not give a fuck. He posted the Tuesday after his sentencing: "They gave me Shmurda years, I smiled at the judge when he said 7."

The Wolverhampton drugs ring Watson was part of has collectively been sentenced to 130 years in prison for conspiracy to supply heroin and cocaine.

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All photos courtesy of DDA Press

This article originally appeared on VICE US

You might not know his name, but if you've watched porn at some point in the last 30 years, you're probably familiar with Rocco Siffredi's ten-inch-plus schlong. Nicknamed "the Italian Stallion," the 52-year-old has appeared in over 1,500 adult movies and slept with nearly four times as many women, making him a porn icon on par with Ron Jeremy or John Holmes.

Born Rocco Tano in Abruzzo, Italy, the porn star's mother originally wanted him to be a priest. But the altar boy had the "devil between his legs," as he refers to his own penis, and a career in adult entertainment became more-or-less inevitable once he went looking for it. He's fucked through four generations of porn, from starring in 35mm feature-length movies with scripts and plots, to his constant work during the VHS, DVD, and online eras of XXX production. Now, though, Siffredi seems to have had enough of the smut game. He recently announced his retirement, a claim he's made multiple times in the past. But, as the father of two, it remains to be seen if his legendary dick will no longer be in the spotlight.

Yet these biographical facts do not interest French filmmakers Thierry Demaiziere and Alban Teurlai. Their extraordinary documentary Rocco, which recently premiered at the Venice Film Festival, is a portrait of the porn star that tries to make sense of his mind. It's an introspective look at Siffredi, who opens up about the death of his brother, his sexual reaction to his mother's death, his relationship with his wife and two children, and, of course, why he likes performing carnal acts on film so much. Mostly though, the film deals with the porn star's Catholic guilt. Think Boogie Nights if directed by Martin Scorsese.

The film starts in the only way possible: a close up on Siffredi's penis. We then watch as he casts porn actresses for a movie he's directing, taking his time to ensure that the actresses are prepared and ready for the sexual extremes he desires on camera, be it anal close-ups or rough play involving choking. The filmmakers then follow Rocco to Budapest, where his wife Rozsa Tano lives, and then trail him during trips to Italy and Los Angeles. Through their subject, the directors offer bigger-picture insight into the porn industry, detailing, for example, the extremes some performers are willing to go to be successful.

One of the most harrowing scenes involves a woman putting Siffredi's fingers into her mouth, mimicking a blow job, but going so deep throat that tears well up in her eyes. Siffredi is fascinating, celebratory, and depraved all at the same time. We chatted with Rocco Siffredi after the documentary's premiere at the Venice Film Festival.

VICE: Why make this documentary now?
Rocco Siffredi: I was approached a few times to make a documentary, the first by a Polish director when I was 40. At that age, I just didn't think that I had many things to say, even though I had been in the business for 20 years. Then came some Italian filmmakers, but I believed that Italian people wouldn't understand sexuality without prejudice. Then came the French . On the other side, unfortunately, it's completely ruined the business. There's free sex all over the place, so why should you pay?

You got Kelly Stafford to come out of retirement for your final film? Why was that important?
Kelly is the biggest porn star ever for me. She is the porn star. In one way, she is like me as a woman.

Is she more powerful than you because she is a woman?
One hundred percent. There is no doubt. She is very powerful. I am attracted to people who are special. I've always been attracted to special people. When they say, this person is crazy, she is absolutely crazy, that means she must be unbelievable. I don't like average people. I don't like regular people. They are really boring for me.

Do you think you will ever retire, since you keep coming back?
I've said that after this film, I will never answer this again. It means I will never say I'll retire or I'll come back. At the moment it is off, but I will never say that I won't come back.

For more information about 'Rocco' visit the project's site.

Follow Kaleem on Twitter.

(Photos by the author)

I've only been in Xie Shuiping's disconcertingly spotless and almost completely unfurnished apartment for ten minutes and he is already preparing to whip it out. After pouring me some green tea he suddenly stands up, lifts his shirt and arches his back, thrusting his stomach forward as he slaps it loudly with both hands. This abdomen is slightly famous: the source of Xie's power and income. He looks down at it and pats it fondly.

A T-shirt hanging up in his living room in the city of Anlu, in China's east central Hubei province, bears a slogan in Chinese characters: "Xie Shuiping: King of being beaten." It summarises his job description pretty accurately. For the past 16 years, Xie, 49, has been making serious money charging people all over China to punch his stomach as hard as they can, claiming that he feels no pain there. "Some people are just curious and want to make friends with me through punching," he says, pulling his shirt back down over his gut. "Others want to challenge me."

Xie's bizarre career path has brought him a modest amount of fame in the country, with news reports about his unique "skill" and videos of various people pummelling his torso being shared a lot on social media. He started his career as a "human punchbag", as he's been dubbed in the press, in the year 2000, letting audience members at a supermarket's promotional dance and singing performances in China's southern Guangdong province whack him for small change. Having moved to Guangdong to work as a construction labourer, he soon found that these performances were more lucrative.

Over the years, as news of his ability spread, he performed (i.e. got punched on stage) in bars for cash and was enlisted by various companies to promote them by doing endurance stunts. One particularly daring stunt involved him having a truck driven over his chest. "That was for a ceramic tile company in Inner Mongolia," he says. "I've never done anything more dangerous than that, though. I also let the company's staff punch me."

Sat in his home in Anlu, he explains that his stomach's resilience allowed him to haul himself up from a tough existence of labouring in Guangdong, where he struggled to make rent and was regularly threatened with eviction. He has said that he can usually earn around 20,000 Yuan (£2,260) a month from his stomach punch antics, but can command up to 40,000 Yuan (£4,500) for a big performance series.

Xie says that the extraordinary resilience of his gut is the result of genetics plus practicing kung fu and qigong, a set of ancient Chinese breathing, posture and meditation techniques. His grandfather's brother, he explains, also practiced kung fu and made money by challenging people to punch him. Xie himself became aware that he was special – or at least that a particular part of his body was – when he was around 16. "I realised that I could always win when fighting with other kids. I never felt any pain."

He claims that he hasn't felt pain from punches any time since that life-changing realisation. "I have been challenged by many martial arts masters and boxers and have never experienced any injuries. I was once on CCTV and got punched by a boxer – they took me to the hospital afterwards for a physical test and the results showed I was in perfect condition. Even from the boxer's punch I didn't feel any pain at all, just a shock of pressure and a warm and comfortable feeling inside."

Xie only feels uncomfortable during his challenges when punters go rogue and aim for his mush instead of his stomach. "There were some challengers who punched me in the face, trying to embarrass me, which made me decide to place my arms in front of my body to defend," he says. He adds that he didn't punch back, despite the obvious temptation. "Normally I react to these kinds of people by just giving them a hug."

Although Xie claims that 16 years of being heavily beaten for a living has not affected him physically, the lifestyle seems to have taken its toll on his personal life. His wife and two grown-up daughters have tried to convince him to get a more conventional job to no avail. His wife, along with one of his daughters, now lives in Guangdong and it is unclear if she and Xie are in a marital relationship beyond the paperwork.

I ask if he feels he is sacrificing his dignity by making such a spectacle of himself, and he reacts with friendly nonchalance. "No. I get more excited as I receive more punches. Before my family thought my job had no dignity, but their attitude changed. Now they neither support nor oppose it."

He may not currently have anyone to share it with in Anlu, but Xie's job has allowed him the chance to buy the shiny new apartment we meet in today. However, as he is paid gig by gig (and often punch by punch), his is not a job with a reliable pension plan. With Xie set to edge into his fifties soon, I ask him if he is considering how long he can keep on being a human punchbag for.

Turns out he's just getting started. "Eighty years old would not be a limit for me," he says with a laugh. "Actually, as I get older I am getting better. If the market is good, I will keep going."

I'd like to think that in 30 years time there would be few people in China willing to land a punch on an 80-year-old man, although I admire Xie's optimism about the long-term resilience of his body. But immediate, relative financial security aside, does all this make him happy and fulfilled?

If his claim of feeling no pain is true, zipping around the country doing performances is surely more fun that working all hours of the day on a construction site for pitiful wages, as he did before. Xie's own social media feeds are filled with photos of him on stage, stomach out, suggesting a strong sense of pride.

Does he enjoy the lifestyle as much as his photo exhibiting suggests? "Not really," he shrugs. "I just say my life is OK. There's no sense of achievement. Singers get paid better than I do, have more respect and no risk." Turns out that social media photo feeds may not be accurate indicators of happiness levels after all. Who knew?

Before I head off I consider asking Xie if he minds me giving his stomach a little whack, just so I can find out what all the fuss is about. But, frankly, the day has been weird enough already, so I decide to leave it.

@jamiefullerton1

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All stills via ''Blair Witch'

This article originally appeared on VICE Canada

"Do you see her?"

That's the opening line of Adam Wingard's Blair Witch, and it's also likely the first question on the minds of a lot of viewers planning to see this 17-years-later sequel to The Blair Witch Project (1999), which famously—and brilliantly—did not show its eponymous villainess. While it's hardly a news flash to write now that The Blair Witch Project was not the first, and probably not even the 50th, horror movie to work within the "found footage" conceit, it was and remains a landmark in the less-is-more department.

If one common denominator between the best horror films is that what you don't see is often scarier than what you do, another is that it's a bad idea for contemporary city people to go poking around in the Old, Weird America—that's where Norman Bates or Leatherface or the Blair Witch is waiting to punish you for your curiosity. The Blair Witch Project framed the fateful encounter between city mice and a woodland predator through a bobbing digital-video lens, and what it kicked off wasn't just a cycle of found-footage films, but themes of self-reflexive self-presentation that has figured into nearly every single one of its imitators.

It's arguable that no American horror movie of the last 40 years has said more about our culture of rapidly captured, real-time images—how they're made, how they're watched, and how they affect us—than Eduardo Sanchez and Daniel Myrick's lo-fi stunt production, which was so believable as a faux-documentary because it was, for the most part, being filmed live and in real time by its central trio of actors.

Indeed, so much has been written about the making of The Blair Witch Project—the improvised dialogue; the long nights during which the crew terrorized the cast with spooky noises; the fortunate creation of Heather Donahue's iconic snot-nosed close-up—that its real-world backstory feels as mythological as any of its wonderfully vague expository dialogue about the evil history of the Black Hills Forest. One of the running, mordant jokes of the film is how heavy the cameras Heather and co are lugging around, which in turn means that they only want to shoot—or audio-tape—what's absolutely necessary, both while their documentary project is up and running normally and then later while they're being hunted. (Though the question remains why they would even bother lugging all that gear around while running for their lives.)

Flash forward a decade or so and a dozen movies were offering variations on (if not solutions to) this problem. The cameraman of Cloverfield felt obliged to document the apocalypse for posterity's sake, if nothing else; the telekinetic antagonist of Chronicle used his powers to levitate his camera and swoop it around flamboyantly. The only movie—and later franchise—to really challenge the Blair Witch brand for artistic and commercial clout was Oren Peli's Paranormal Activity, which hit upon the idea of a locked-off, stationary camera recording tiny flurries of activity around mostly sleeping protagonists, and played almost like an avant-garde structural film more than a blockbuster (or a strangely timely variation on surveillance culture in which pinhole cameras and evil forces alike watch us in our most unguarded private moments, at home alone). Paranormal Activity's underdog production history andamazing grassroots success were so similar to The Blair Witch Project's that it was uncanny, but where Myrick and Sanchez initially bungled their good fortune by signing off on a very bad sequel (Blair Witch: Book of Shadows, which dropped the mock-doc conceit and put nothing in its place), Peli parlayed his very well-played original idea into a series of mostly enjoyable sequels, especially Paranormal Activity 3, which was set in the 1990s—in the same period as the original Blair Witch Project—and uses the reduced technological capacities of the era to its advantage (including a great set piece involving an oscillating fan).

Wingard's Blair Witch (which premiered this week at the Toronto International Film Festival), by contrast, is up-to-the-minute in every way. The first ten minutes of the movie are dedicated to inventorying all the cool stuff that the main characters (who are so bland and boring that I won't bother to name or describe them) are taking into the woods on their mission to investigate what happened to the filmmakers who died in the first movie. This is an important point, because it means that Blair Witch takes place in a world where The Blair Witch Project exists, but not as a popular blockbuster movie; rather, they've seen the footage from the original film as if was a "real" thing.

The wittier possibilities of following a group of plugged-in kids are scuttled as soon as it's revealed that there's no WiFi or cell coverage—no hashtag #witchhunt or Snapchatted vignettes of creepy trees—but overall there's so much more Wingard could have done in the context of our current selfie-obsessed moment. The cameras here never matter as anything except a storytelling device. The recent and very underrated horror film Unfriended used a laptop display and Facebook chat page to hint, literally and figuratively, at a ghost in the machine—and to suggest something sinister about the social media moment. For all its cutting-edge tech, Blair Witch doesn't rethink its more analog predecessor so much as remake it, beat for beat. And in the process, it somehow says less about the collision between modernity and mythology and our collective need (and ability) to communicate physical experience through lenses and screens than a film that came out before the advent of flip-phones.

To return to that opening question—"Do you see her?"—the answer is not worth spoiling here. But it's interesting that even though Blair Witch offers an increased number of perspectives, it doesn't reveal much—and it's unlikely that anybody is going to look back on it from any angle at all.

Follow Adam Nayman on Twitter.

This article originally appeared on VICE US

We might consider both Wes Anderson and Rashid Johnson artists, but, traditionally, the business dealings of a Hollywood director is handled by a melange of agents and managers, whereas the career of a fine artist like Johnson is often managed by gallerists, dealers, and collectors. Josh Roth of United Talent Agency (UTA), however, wants to offer creatives the best business insight of both Hollywood and the white cube world, and his team at UTA's relatively-fresh fine arts division might shake up any boundaries between the two.

Essentially Roth, who previously worked as an art lawyer and is an avid collector himself, has been tasked to build a team at UTA that can offer fine artists the resources and network to get involved with projects both within Hollywood and outside it. And no, this doesn't mean we should expect Kusama-branded Starbucks cups, or Beats by Koons anytime soon.

To start, UTA—known for representing Hollywood talent like Johnny Depp and Lena Dunham—has signed a handful of artists such as Rashid Johnson, Ai Wei Wei, Sam Taylor-Johnson, and Judy Chicago. Roth and company can help pair them with, say, a show runner if they'd like to adapt something into a movie or TV show. Or the agency could feasibly assist with projects in the vein of Jay-Z's "Picasso Baby," a still-surreal blending of creative worlds that involved the rapper, Pace Gallery, Marina Ambramovich, and Salon 94's Jeanne Greenberg. The agency has already helped facilitate the release of Maura Axelrod's recent documentary on Maurizio Cattelan, as well as Pierre Bismuth's film about an Ed Ruscha sculpture, Where Is Rocky II? And on Saturday, September 17, UTA opened its Artists Space, a 4,500-square-foot venue in a former manufacturing plant in downtown LA to exhibit artwork by Larry Clark in the photographer/filmmaker's first California show since 2000. Clark's gallery Luhring Augustine collaborated on the exhibition.

Roth was appointed to head UTA's fine arts branch nearly two years ago, and it's given industry insiders plenty of time to foster paranoia and resentment over the talent agency's possible intrusion within the gallery system. Gallerists like Pace's Artie Glimcher and dealers like Stefan Simchowitz have echoed similar skepticism about UTA's move, and some have even asked what the hell the project is. Others have already called Roth the "Ari Gold of the art world," and claimed "the Hollywoodification of the art world has begun."

Talking to Roth makes the project sound less dramatic, though. Over the phone, he told me about UTA's goals in the art world, and how it could function as a symbiotic resource for artists, gallerists, and whoever else needs to be involved with bringing a project to fruition. If this results in more James Franco installations, so be it.

An untitled photo by Larry Clark that will be exhibited at UTA's Artist Space

VICE: Would you say part of your goal with UTA's fine arts division is to straddle both the art world and the entertainment industry seamlessly?
Josh Roth: Well, I hope it's seamless. We're trying our hardest. We've got a lot of cool stuff planned. Anytime you try to take an existing model that's been around for a really long time and make changes to it, variations to it, and introduce new elements, you get a lot of interesting, weird, good, and bad feedback. The interesting part of the challenge is navigating through that to start to bring these disparate pieces together that I think we all think, and most of the people I've talked to think, belong together.

I'm curious about how UTA's fine artist division is different from how Hollywood has worked with fine artists in the past.
Well, I think it just builds on it. I think people are having a little bit of pause because when you typically enter a gallery, there's this very classical sense that you're seeing a work of art that's been created by an individual artist in his or her studio. I think that the way that fine artists, visual artists, are telling stories now is not as static as that anymore. Of course the classical sense still exists and these artists are painting and making sculptures in traditional ways, but a lot of them are also thinking about these big social issues, and how they can tell stories that extend beyond the status quo of art.

I think if you look at of artists such as Larry Clark or Ai Wei Wei—both who we're working with—they're very similar. Ai Wei Wei's done countless museum shows and gallery shows. He's made incredibly profound objects. But he has within him this desire to tell stories that really provoke us to have these social conversations, and, for him, I think it's a very natural extension to be making a documentary about the immigration crisis that's taking place in the world today. The long story short is people like Ai Wei Wei, people like Larry Clark, they've always been making objects, but for them they branch out past that because their desire to connect with people and spark conversations and show them their points of view can't exist in just one place. We really want to help that and facilitate that .

I think there's a need for someone to help fine artists work within that gray area that doesn't quite fit commercial entertainment or the white-cube gallery world.
Totally. For example, I've been asked about why Pierre Bismuth would need an agency. We worked with him on a movie he directed called Where Is Rocky II? So, A) We can go out and help tell his story to our network of people and relationships in the entertainment business. His film is different in many ways because it deals with an art world subject—an artwork that was made my Ed Ruscha. It's important for us to know what that means, and to be able to go out and tell the story in a correct and engaging way, because as you sit down with people they're like, Well, who is Ed Ruscha? What is Rocky II? I come from a world where I know artists and I know what they do, and so for me to be able to translate their vision and put it into the context of why it should be a film or whatever context is very helpful. I think agents can do that in probably the most effective way. Where we add the value is that we sit down with the film community, the art community, these disparate communities, and we try to corral everybody together, put the right people together, so that the project can end up happening.

An installation shot of UTA's 4,500-square-foot Artist Space

Do you imagine the UTA possibly changing the conversation about how fine art and fine artists could reach a broader audience?
Yeah, but if you think about what an agent is and what the concept of agency means, it's the representation of the individual and how can you fulfill different career directions that they want to pursue. The way to even address this question is does an artist have the desire to have that conversation be changed, or furthered, or altered? You really have to have a client that's got a set of goals that then we sit down and figure out together how we further those goals. So someone who's big in the art world may not even be interested in changing that conversation. He or she may be solely interested in making films that exist within the art world.

What type of artist is the right fit then? Is it someone who, again, straddles multiple worlds?
Well, you know, it's interesting because I think you can't even profile it because you never know what ideas are within somebody and what they want to do to make that happen. I think there are two things that are really important. One is that the art world and the entertainment and media business are powered by good ideas, and I think good ideas can come from anywhere. Good ideas rule the day. But beyond that, I think it's also this commitment that the artists will make within themselves to any given project. Representation of a creative person is a two-way street. I think we view ourselves to be a collaborative agency and that is the only reason that we can be successful for these different people.

How important is star power in terms of the artists you want to collaborate with?
It helps when you do projects with famous people because it's always easy to start a conversation when you say, "Hey, Johnny Depp wants to do x, y, or z." But, you know, we represent people all across the board. Whether it's Lucien Smith, or Ai Wei Wei, or Johnny Depp, or one of our young show runners or show creators... again, when we sit down with a good idea and we think we have an idea that translates, then it's all about going out and trying to find the right buyers for that material. So yes, it helps to have a famous individual. But if you have a great idea, we can find the right people to have a conversation with and see if there's something there. One note on that point, though. I really want to stress to people that an agency being part of the art world is not an either/or proposition. I think it's really a "both" proposition. I think there are incredible galleries in the world that have nurtured careers from the very beginning until now. I mean, if you look at Barbara Gladstone or Marian Goodman—

Jeanne Greenberg's my favorite example.
Yes, Jeanne Greenberg, who we share a client with. We both work with Judy Chicago, and that's a perfect example of a "both" . Jeanne is a brilliant art dealer, she's a brilliant career manager for people in the art world, and I think we all agree between Jeanne, Judy, and UTA, that together we are much better than any one of us would be alone.

'Knoxville' by Larry Clark, which will be on view at UTA's Artist Space

For the upcoming Larry Clark exhibition, are you guys outsourcing a gallerist or bringing in a curator to work on the project?
No, we didn't. The genesis of the show is super straightforward and really personally satisfying for me. So basically how this came about was we found an incredible art space that I think was everything that we ever could have asked for in terms of a venue to present work, and have events, and create these dynamic conversations. Then, I went to Luhring Augustine, Clark's gallery in New York, and I explained exactly what I said to you and they facilitated a conversation. He had a great idea for a show, and now it's happening. But it comes from the artist's idea. I can't supplant my judgments to that of a creative person. I think we're just here to facilitate creative people executing their ideas.

And so when we think about the artist space that we have...it's really this venue to bring creative people together. There will be art on the walls. There will be sculptures in the space. But what else can we bring in for future projects? Can we bring in our playwrights to do a one-act play? Can we bring in authors that we work with to do book readings? Can we bring in our musicians to do showcases within the space? How can we curate this dynamic conversation so that people will think and experience creativity in a nuanced way?

Larry Clark's new exhibition opened at the UTA Artist Space on September 17. The venue is located at 670 South Anderson Street in Los Angeles.

British people can't handle the heat. We know that. The other day we went as far as asking people who've lived in hot countries how Britain as a nation could better suck it up and deal with it when the sun comes out for these four days a year.

But that was this before. Last week was 32 degrees and we hadn't put out our handy guide yet, so people had no idea what to do. They were lost and hot and red and sweaty. To see exactly how Brits were dealing with the heatwave, we asked photographer Jake Lewis to have a walk around the City of London with his camera.

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Photos of Greek People Dealing with Their Heatwave

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This article originally appeared on VICE Serbia

This Sunday, Belgrade Pride celebrated its third birthday counting the first openly gay Serbian MP, Ana Brnabić, – as well as 5,000 policemen – among its attendees. Sadly, as in previous years, the Serbian gay community represented the day's lowest demographic turnout, with most of the participants being journalists, foreign activists, diplomats, politicians and straight allies.

Of course, the reason behind all that isn't that the community is lazy but because most people are afraid for their safety, and know they cannot rely on the State to provide their basic rights. The general feeling among Serbian LGBT groups is that while Pride is a good tradition to have, it does not pragmatically improve their quality of life. To this day, a Serbian can get beaten up on the street just because they "look gay".

This year, people were discouraged from attending due to counter demonstrations by religious, anti-gay groups but also a vendetta that flared up recently between two local LGBT activist organisations. When it comes to gay rights in Serbia, the future looks gloomy and vague – at least for now.

Dalston Lane, Hackney. London 2014

It all started with a hand-drawn map. Photographer Carlos Alba, now 31, had just moved to east London from Madrid in March of 2013 and his landlady handed him a rough sketch of the neighbourhood, to help him get around. "On it, she'd marked the usual places – bus and Tube stops, shops, the bank, a gym – so I used it to go out and get to know the area," he says. "During these walks I found a lot of objects on the street such as photographs, love letters, sketches. I started to collect them, at first randomly, then more methodically. When I had a good amount of interesting objects I researched the meaning of them and their owners. They were like a signal to follow for taking pictures."

And so he did, picking up his camera and documenting not only the found objects but the residents of the area to whose contours he was still tracing in his mind. In September, the project Carlos has called The Observation of Trifles started in earnest, and has since turned into a photo book out this autumn. It's been quite the journey from working as a fashion and magazine photographer in Spain to starting afresh in a city Carlos deems "one of the most competitive in the world" but open-minded and multicultural.

As you'd expect, approaching strangers in the street required a bit of tact. "I used to bring the objects and a notebook with sketches and photographs with me," Carlos says. "They helped me to explain my project to the locals. I'd spend around 15 to 30 minutes talking with the people and if I found a particular person interesting, I'd finish the conversation by asking: 'Can I take your picture?' If so, I pulled the camera out from my backpack and I shot the photograph."

Three years later, there are still chats and objects that stick out in his mind. He remembers speaking to local man Robert Adams (pictured below), who was born "within earshot of the bells of St Mary-le-Bow Church, and worked as a switchboard operator connecting callers to Spanish-speaking countries. His interest in Spain began after his grandfather fought in the Spanish Civil War as part of the International Brigades." Most importantly, for Carlos, Robert said he was "very proud to be in a poetic photo book of his neighbourhood. For me, that's the best review that I've received about this photographic work."

He won't soon forget the strip of negative film he found lying on the pavement – possibly his funniest little treasure – "in which you can see a naked dwarf", or the note that just reads "Please don't leave extra milk. We have too much stock. They all going out of date. Thank you." With everything from playing cards to single personal photos that may have slipped out of a jacket pocket or been intentionally cast aside, Carlos built a picture of his own understanding of the Hackney and Tower Hamlets areas.

Ultimately, the whole project came down to chance – there wasn't a master plan at any stage. "I researched about east London's local history, art galleries the kind of people living there, and I found it interesting and appealing. Also, it was the cheapest area in Zone 2."

@tnm___ / @carlosalbaphoto

The Observation of Trifles is available now, via The Photographers' Gallery and La Fábrica. See more photos from the book below.

(Illustration: Sam Taylor, via)

This is the VICE Interview. Each week we ask a different famous and/or interesting person the same set of questions in a bid to peek deep into their psyche.

Speaking to John Lydon as a former teenage punk is quite a daunting prospect. I mean, I have one of his lyrics permanently engraved on my skin, so I'm trying my best to be confident while dialling his US number.

Fuelled with a disposition to question everything from an early age and always ever so theatrical, Lydon basically invented the sneer when fronting the Sex Pistols, got a record discussed in Parliament and continued to revolutionise music as the frontman of Public Image Limited, a creative process he describes as "exploring landscapes, scenery and tapestries of the mind", rather than just stringing words together.

PiL's 'Metal Box' and 'Album' will be re-released with extras on the 28th of October, but now he talks about ghosts, Trump's possible new drug patent (The "trump bump") and Wuthering Heights.

How many people have been in love with you?
I have no idea. I hope they don't tell me, because I wouldn't know what to do with that. I was raised on insults, so I'd prefer that to continue, since at least there'd be some truth to it. My only great love is my wife, Nora, and that's it, cause I know that's real. A fanbase is not real love, it's a fantasy, and therefore very dangerous, so I keep away from that.

What would your parents prefer you to have chosen as a career?
I don't suppose they'd had too much hope of a career path of any kind for me, because such was the position of the British working class. The country was riddled with the class system, much more so than now, even though it's still around. If you're born on the wrong side of the tracks, that's where you stay. Those at the top aren't going to make any room for you, they're all chumming it up with their fellow grammar school friends. So you're naturally ostracised from some great possibility. Few can make it through. I managed to break through with music, so you know, the message is: Don't let politicians or religious leaders or spoiled public school boys tell you what to do. I mean, by all means, leave space for them to shout whatever it is that they're going on about, but never ever let them make you feel like they can turn you into their cannon fodder.

When in your life have you been truly overcome with fear?
Before I was rushed to hospital, diagnosed with meningitis and slipped into a coma, I was imagining dragons at the end of the bed, trying to eat me. I knew they weren't there, but my brain was telling me they were, so that was a lot for a seven-year-old to handle. But handle it I had to. I can still see them in my mind's eye and know they aren't there. It's kind of like looking at a thing from two different points of view, which years later now I find incredibly useful.

Do you think drugs can make you happy?
I think they're very nice. There's all manner of them isn't there? Some of these new modern chemical cocktails I wouldn't be recommending, though. They're poor substitutes for the more naturally-bound creations. If indeed any chemical can be natural. I mean is bread natural? It is not. I don't see a bread tree, not anywhere. Also, with drugs should come education, just like sex education should be an essential part of the curriculum for all children from an early age. Because if you're obsessed with keeping the truth away from your child, that child isn't going to love you any when it grows up to find something different. Can they make you happy? Maybe Donald Trump could sell drugs that would make people happy. Call it the 'Trump Bump' – "This will destroy your inner thoughts and make you paranoid forever and ever" – going cheap.

If you had to give up sex or kissing, which would it be?
Kissing. That depends what you're kissing, actually. I think that's a double-barrel shotgun there, you can't have one without the other. I said kissing instantaneously and then bitterly resented myself for it. I'd keep both.

What's the closest you've come to having a stalker?
I had quite a few over the years. They turn very dangerous very quick when they don't get what they expect from you. I don't have any stories really, because I don't want to name no names... It was dealt with privately and all sides left happily. One particular case in LA took a few years to sort out, but then she got a job in a TV station and her life turned around, so the obsession dropped. I suppose that with responsibility goes a lack of obsession.

Do you believe in any conspiracy theories?
I suppose they might be a nice fantasy to waste away an afternoon, but I've got no time for it. Most of them are nonsense because you realise through experience that most corporations and institutions are just headless chickens. They're not nearly as smart as the conspiracy theorists think they are. It's just legalese and attorneys and accountants that they'd need to watch out for, and to not try to pin it all on one personality. All the corporations have are machinations, they just grind on leaderless until they hit a bend in the road. Be that bend.

Complete this sentence: The problem with young people today is...
They don't realise that education is possibly the best free gift you've ever been given in your entire life. Apart from the sun and the moon. And oxygen. Education can help you get out of all manner of problems in your adulthood, so you should read a lot and let books have a positive influence on you. I did. Helped me. There'd be no particular book, but it did help when Muriel Spark came out with The Public Image. Fantastic little book. Not particularly well-written or anything of the kind, but just the concept of superstardom and the damage it can create to those around her. At the time I was forming PiL, I'd just walked away from the Pistols so I was giving up all of that superstardom... I wanted to start as an equal band member, so it wouldn't be The Johnny Rotten Roadshow. I mean in half the tracks I'd bury my voice because I wanted more bass. The trappings of pop stardom were never going to work with someone like me, I wouldn't really be comfortable taking in money if I didn't believe in what I was doing.

Is university worth it?
I mean, if the careers are out there after the education, then yeah. But don't be schooling yourself in business if all the businesses are going to collapse, give yourself some other alternatives. That's just common sense, really. Look at what we've got in Britain right now... the current Prime Minister Ms. May, yapping on about bringing back grammar schools. This is the wrong time to be separating the classes again. Then you've got the totally left-wing Corbyn who is completely mad into his socialism without looking left or right. It's very much like Britain was before it joined the EU. They're quickly running back into these old traditional formats that were ruining the country before. That's so foolish!

What have you done in your life that you most regret?
Plenty. Mostly things that I would've wanted to say to both my mother and my father before they died. That would be a major one. And of course friends along the way that died. Anyone that died really, even if it was someone that I'd only vaguely known. It's odd, we don't use the time we have and then we have all the time in the world to not be able to do what we should have. That's why I really can't accept death. It's unacceptable for me, mentally. Maybe that's why I still feel that my mum and dad talk to me inside my head, I feel them there. Not in terms of ghosts or anything, I've seen enough of those to be able to know. I've been in houses that have DEFINITE eerie atmospheres. You see things visually and you know that it's not the same as imagining dragons when you were seven. There's a different clarity to it.

What was your worse phase?
I am capable of seeing that if I'm going down a wrong path, so I can alter it. But my root core values and principles are the same because they are based in what I had to endure in my childhood and onwards, so they're founded on solid rock. I don't step in other people's faces and I don't tell anybody else what to do with their lives, because it's not my job. I don't expect them to tell me what to do either. I'll do it my way.

What film or TV show makes you cry?
There are films that move me. I can't bear any film where children are being tormented, I can't stand that. Wuthering Heights is fantastic, the original one. There's such great moodiness on it and such great pathos and tragedy, sadness. That kind of film I love. Because I can analyse the characters and see where they're going wrong and bring it back into my own life. Films that have incredible dialogues too, like The Lion in Winter which is Peter O'Toole and Katharine Hepburn, seeing the families' inner workings from a working-class point of view. Obviously I never had the literary phrases but the emotions were there, the same. It's the turmoil of compact living.

What memory from school stands out to you stronger than any other?
Being caned. You don't forget that, because it hurts like hell. And back in them days you'd be caned mostly on the hand, and that really hurt. Being left-handed they'd always say "hold out your left hand" and I'd say "but I write with my left". Wouldn't be a good enough answer for them, though. The nuns tried to make me right-handed in primary school, but in secondary school I had many problems with myself from the meningitis that I had when I was younger, so I'd fall asleep without meaning to. I couldn't control it, but I'd wake up and they'd be holding my hand out caning away merrily. That was the answer to everything then. I mean did it make me any worse as a person? No. It probably made me better because it infused my hatred for these people, so I turned it into a positive energy.

@bijubelinky

More from The VICE Interview:

Sadie Frost

Deryck Whibley

Louis Theroux

Photo by Highlyann Krasnow and Mel Stones

This story appeared in the 2016 photo issue of VICE magazine.

There's no such thing as an impatient photographer. Photography requires more than DMV-style endurance. It's brutal, physical work: stiff knees, bruised shins, and tendonitis come before the perfect shot, and only after that comes—hopefully—success.

I note all this because this year's photo issue doesn't have an overarching theme—at least we didn't have one in mind when arranging it. But now that it's done, and I take a step back, it strikes me as a celebration of the patient eye. The eye that finds the just-so mise-en-scène that discovers a moment of grace between people in horrible circumstances. The eye that tells a new truth.

It also happens that, this year, all those eyes belong to women.

Before that fact gets turned into "Sisters Are Doin' It for Themselves" clickbait, I'll explain how we got here. Women have been fundamental to the art of photography since, well, there were photographs. They've been schlepping equipment, huffing darkroom fumes, and sharp-elbowing for scarce gallery space since before they could vote, become astronauts, or run marathons without people thinking their uteruses would fall out (doctors actually used to think this would happen, "thus defeating a woman's true purpose in life").

In other words, their way of seeing the world isn't new—we're just new to seeing the world through their eyes. So if patience is a photographer's virtue, then the particular patience of the female photographer—long neglected but represented ably by those featured in this issue—is a story worth telling in full.

In these pages, you'll find work by 38 photographers, including veterans and relative rookies. Now 21*, Izumi Miyazaki continues her wry exploration of stereotypes, building on the notoriety she received when she launched her career at age 15. Endia Beal uses her project "Am I What You're Looking For?" to capture college-age minority women cautiously bridging the gap between their identities and society's expectations. The prolific and award-winning Jill Freedman, who said she "always liked playing with boys," shows us why she still likes them, adding to her five-decade-long photography career in New York.

The contributors to this issue prove that patience in photography is about more than sitting still. It's a state of heightened awareness, of careful assessment, of sorting through the irrelevant to find the sublime. And in an era where people often measure content by volume rather than quality, we like to think that this issue proves that good things still come to those who wait. —Elizabeth Renstrom, VICE Photo Editor

*Correction 8/16: An earlier version of this article said 18.*

Stockings: Wolford

This story appeared in the 2016 photo issue of VICE magazine.

Normally, she'd be photographing lanky, twig-like models. And retouching. But not this time. For this project, Petra Kleis has just tweaked the contrast a bit. And this time, the twiggy models have been replaced by Maja Malou Lyse, a feminist and artist, curvy and hairy – and now, a model. Other than that, the set-up is the same. A location has been found, there's a fashion photographer, a stylist, a make-up artist and an assistant. There are expensive designer clothes and jewelry. The difference is that Maja is Maja, she is – in Kleis's words – "natural, she has hair where she has hair, she is the original design," and she's completely comfortable with it. And that's refreshing in a time where we're expected to feel ashamed of our bodies, or at least strive towards a better, slimmer version of ourselves. In a time where hair is removed – and the lack of hair removal is perceived as a statement.

"It's really weird that armpit hair can make us go: Wow! We've become so alienated from our own, natural bodies, and it's really nice to meet someone who is comfortable in the body she's ended up in," says Kleis. "We'd like to portray the hair under the arms as something beautiful. It's a close-up in red light where she's got beautiful, dark red lips and an armpit right next to her face. And the armpit is as just as much a part of the portrait as her eyes and lips."

The photo series was conceived in collaboration between Kleis and the stylist Mia Holdgaard, who spotted Maja Malou Lyse and got her involved in the project. Both stylist and photographer loved the 23-year-old feminist artist's style. And she is indisputably a feminist. A young, well-adorned one, someone they can relate to, someone they think is cool. "That's what's cool about Maja, who is part of a new generation of feminists that are allowed to be well-dressed, think it's awesome to have new, cool shoes, and don't have to walk around in some hideous purple top without a bra," Kleis says.

Seeing as both her and Holdgaard work in the fashion industry, there was little debate that a photo series with Maja would be shot as a fashion shoot. A provocative, cheeky, and in-your-face fashion shoot with a curvy, opinionated woman that stands by both her curves and her opinions – but still with everything else a fashion shoot entails. A fashion shoot in the sense that it should be able to be showcased in the kinds of magazines that they normally create galleries for. "We have plucked out the ordinary, thin model and replaced her with another model, who in my opinion is far more interesting. The series could easily be showcased in a fashion mag, just not with Maja as the model – unless there was a magazine that had the balls to run it," says Kleis, who – even though she felt a bit uneasy about abstaining from it at first – in no way felt the urge to retouch, "because Maja looks exactly how she should look," she says. "Maja is more brave as a 23-year-old than I'll ever be. It's naked and very honest."


Naked honesty is also a style that she sees herself and other fashion photographers in general taking more and more to heart. "Ten years ago, the raw file was something completely different from what ended up in the magazine – Photoshop was the name of the game," Kleis says. She has since seen the lack of retouching work afterwards become more and more of a criteria for success in photography. "But it is a bit scary when you're used to fiddling with people's skin, eyes, teeth, everything – no one actually looks like they do in the magazines."

Model/artist/feminist: Maja Malou Lyse
Photography/art direction: Petra Kleis
Styling/art direction: Mia Holdgaard
Make-up: Mevlút Yilmaz
Styling assistant: Maria Bluhme
Location: The Handvärk Apartment

T-shirt: Maikel Tawadros, Jewelry: Vibe Harsløf

Jacket: Nicholas Nybro, Earrings: Monies

Necklace: Pilgrim

This story appeared in the 2016 photo issue of VICE magazine.

Before a bunch of yuppie goons took over the streets of Manhattan, they belonged to kids. It was the 90s. They were a bunch of broke teenagers from different boroughs who united in the East Village. High lived on St. Marks Place. Her mom was chill. Their apartment was the main base for the crew to crash, to eat. They smoked pot, drank 40s out of brown-paper bags, partied on rooftops, and skated through Washington Square Park. That's where Leo Fitzpatrick, Justin Pierce, and Harmony Korine met Larry Clark. Later, their world was shared with an audience of millions. They became famous after starring in Clark's 1995 cult-classic film Kids, which stares unwaveringly into a fictionalized version of their lives.

The city changed in the 90s after Giuliani cleaned up New York. Before that happened, High, her friend Mel, and their crew lived wildly there. "At 14, it was as easy then to get beer at the bodega as it was liquor at the liquor store as it was to get weed, coke, or dope on my block. Clubs let us in, and trains were sketchy as shit," Mel writes in That's a Crazy One, a forthcoming book of photos curated by her and High. Neither she nor High was in Kids, but their friends were, and it was their culture and community Clark sought. The film looked the city's youth culture right in the eye, depicting an alternative lifestyle of explicit sex, drug use, and violence. Though Kids captured something that felt important because it felt real, High and Mel don't think it was real at all. In fact, they feel it was exploitative, that Clark capitalized on the brilliance of the crew while failing to capture the true beauty of their world. They weren't as sex-crazed as the film portrays them, for one. More important, in Kids, it seems all the boys want is to fuck the girls, but in real life, the girls weren't sexual conquests. The boys and girls ran neck and neck and were best friends.

More than 20 years after Kids, High and Mel have curated a selection of photographs they took of their crew in the early 90s. "High and I had photographed our friends for most of our teens, creating this full portrait of what so many people had tried to capture from the outside," Mel writes, introducing the series. Their photos plainly documented their lives: a teenage boy on a windowsill in a hallway on E. 4th Street, the walls gouged and crumbling; High and Mel in torn jeans and torn tights on a St. Marks roof; a sleeping boy in baggy jeans on a Brooklyn-bound R train, sprawled over the seats as if in a bed.

Whether they're smoking cigarettes in an oversize sweater in bed, or embracing one another in their underwear, their collection is raw and vulnerable, an intimate series taken from within the group itself. They've been hesitant to show it before, because the photos are so personal, but they know they are significant. The picture of a kid in an extra-large flannel and combat boots, in torn pale-blue jeans with a skateboard under her arm, is an image of disillusion and teen anguish that belongs to all generations.

Their teen years were the end of times for a culture that never died in our minds. The city wasn't muzzled back then. It was raw and dangerous, and for High, Mel, and their crew, it was fun. While every act of teenage rebellion is instagrammed now, these kids didn't commodify themselves. The crew was a family. They spent their days together, holed up in diners, chain-smoking and drinking coffee to avoid going home. "We were where we were supposed to be," Joanna, another crewmember, writes. "We were who we were supposed to be."

Today the intersection of St. Marks and 1st Ave is culturally unrecognizable to them. But while the people, the stores, and the apartment values have changed, that corner has a kind of immortality. It will stand as long as the city exists, an eternal reminder of when their lives intersected just like those street corners. Those memories, while important, aren't always easy. "The reality is that some of us made it out, some of us drowned, and some are still in limbo," Mel writes.

They tell of "friends who never made it. Got caught in snares, things that would eventually take their lives." Some were swept too far out to sea by an undertow of addiction, poverty, even the pressures of Hollywood. Justin Pierce starred in Kids as Casper and continued making films for the next several years, but in 2000, he committed suicide in his Bellagio hotel room in Las Vegas. "I want people to know that beyond anything they saw on the screen, you were a fiercely loyal friend," Mel writes to him now. On the phone, she told me everything changed after Pierce died. He was the unifying force that kept the crew above water, and his death drove some of them to straighten out their lives, but it had the opposite effect on others.

You can go back to their adolescence through these photos, witness a doomed group of teens whose greatest possession is the knowledge of who they are. They would do anything to help one another, but sometimes they are unable to help themselves. It doesn't matter where or when it happens, coming of age is brutal. Those years feel like they'll last forever, but then one day they're gone, and your freedom is taken from you. The friends are still in one another's lives, though it takes effort. Lives go in different directions, charted on courses too large to reroute. When Mel and High came together with their crew, it was the most natural thing, so too when they spiraled apart.

All proceeds from the sale of That's A Crazy One will be donated to the NYC Public Schools Art & Photography Program.

On Sunday, Welcome Out's Pride parade marched through the streets of Uppsala. It was the first of its kind in Sweden. With a turnout of around 200 people – ranging from the newly born to the newly out – it was obvious that people had travelled from all over the country to welcome LGBTQ asylum seekers to Sweden.

"We believe in an open and peaceful society. We believe in building a peaceful society together," said Warren Kunce, one of the festival's organisers in his opening speech. "Change is a river we do not dam up. Change is a river, on which we will sail together. When our boats are filled, we build more boats. When our boats are broken, we build more boats."

Led by djembe drums and Kunce, the parade made its way through Uppsala, passing by the city's suburban homeowners, before wrapping up at the City Garden. I travelled there together with photographer Maximiliam Gernandt. Scroll down to see the result.

Previously: An Interview with the Organiser of Sweden's First Pride Festival for Asylum Seekers