Thursday, June 17, 2010

Ursula Thiess, German artist and actress (Bengal Brigade)has died she was 86

Ursula Thiess was a German film actress who had a brief Hollywood career in the 1950's

(May 15, 1924 – June 19, 2010)

Thiess began her career on the stage in her native Germany and by dubbing female voices in American films as Ursula Schmidt. After she married Georg Otto Thiess, she became Ursula Thiess and was featured in many German magazines, including several cover photos, as well as the cover of Life magazine, 1954, as an upcoming model, and she was dubbed the "most beautiful woman in the world." She left postwar Germany at the urging of Howard Hughes and signed up with RKO. She co-starred with Robert Stack in The Iron Glove (1952), Rock Hudson in Bengal Brigade (1954), Glenn Ford in The Americano (1955), and Robert Mitchum in Bandido (1956).


Ursula was born in 1924 to Wilhelmine Lange and Hans Schmitd. At age 17, for refusing to join the Hitler Youth, she was drafted into service working as farm labor. After that, she returned to do acting on stage, where she met and married her first husband, German film producer Georg Otto Thiess. They had two children, Manuela and Michael. That marriage dissolved in 1947, and in 1948, she began a modeling career in Berlin. Her unusual beauty, caught the eye of howard Hughes, who made her a contract offer to join RKO Studios.

She met and eventually married Robert Taylor in 1954 and virtually abandoned her film career to become a mother and housewife. The Taylors had two children Terry and Tessa. They moved with Ursula's two children from her previous marriage, to their 114 acre ranch in Brentwood, California, in 1956, and lived there until Taylor'sl death from cancer in 1969. Ursula's two children, Manuela and Michael, had many adjustment problems adapting to their new life, and were often in trouble with the police, causing the family to suffer bad publicity as a result. Her son, Michael , who had served a year in a German prison for attempting to poison his natural father, died shortly before Robert Taylor's death, in 1969 of drug overdose. Ursula discovered him dead when she stopped by his motel to drop him off some medication.

After Taylor's death, she was obliged to sell their ranch. She moved to Bel Air, and in 1975, she married film distributor Marshal Schacker, and they stayed married until his death from cancer in 1987.

Ursula was known to be an excellent home decorator, gourmet cook, shadow box maker, and UCLA Children's Hospital volunteer. As the wife to Robert Taylor, she gave up her acting career to become a full-time mother and homemaker, though she generally accompanied her husband on film locations, often with her two younger children by Taylor. She was also known to go hunting a fishing with Taylor, who was a passionate sportsman.


Ursula Thiess wrote her autobiography, ...But I Have Promises to Keep: My Life Before, With and After Robert Taylor.

Thiess passed away of natural causes in an assisted living care facility in Burbank on June 19, 2010, at the age of 86. She was survived by three of her four children, Manuela, Terry, and Tessa.


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Trent Acid, American professional wrestler has died he was , 29

Michael Verdi was an American professional wrestler best known by his ring name Trent Acid. Verdi had worked as a tag team wrestler for most of his career, primarily as part of The Backseat Boyz with Johnny Kashmere, in several independent promotions in America, including Combat Zone Wrestling, Pro Wrestling Unplugged, and Ring of Honor. However, Acid had also worked a singles career with several promotions, including Juggalo Championship Wrestling.

(November 12, 1980 – June 18, 2010)

Acid debuted in Combat Zone Wrestling (CZW) in 1999 and competed mostly in singles matches. At the first Cage of Death, he teamed with White Lotus to face the Kashmerinoes (Johnny Kashmere and Robbie Mireno). Acid wrestled many matches against Kashmere before teaming up with him to form The Backseat Boyz. The Backseat Boyz won the CZW Tag Team Championship. While part of this team, Acid still wrestled in the singles division and won the CZW World Junior Heavyweight Championship three times, competing against the likes of Ruckus and Justice Pain for the title. He also became the second Best of the Best winner by defeating Jody Fleisch in the final match at Best of the Best 2. In September 2003, Acid won the vacant CZW Iron Man Championship by defeating Nick Gage and Jimmy Rave in a three way match.

Around this time, Acid along with Johnny Kashmere joined the Hi-V stable and feuded with Zandig and his ultraviolent team. This feud came to an end at Cage of Death V in the Cage of Death match. However, before competing in the Cage of Death match, Acid first had to defend his Iron Man Championship against Jimmy Rave. The match went to a time limit draw with each man scoring one fall, but the match was ordered to restart and Rave won the title. Acid went on to the Cage of Death but was eliminated and his team eventually lost. The Hi-V broke up after this and The Backseat Boyz soon left CZW. Acid returned to CZW later in 2004 and feuded with Teddy Hart and Messiah. He left again shortly after.

On June 14, 2008, Acid made his return to CZW when he faced World Champion Nick Gage in a non-title match. At 'An Eye for an Eye' on April 11, 2009, Acid made his full time return to CZW. It was the main event of the evening as Sami Callihan and Jon Moxley took on Brain Damage and Drake Younger.

Acid joined Ring of Honor (ROH) in 2002, when he and Johnny Kashmere defeated Homicide and Steve Corino in an interpromotional match between ROH and CZW at the first Glory By Honor. The Backseat Boyz would go on to work for ROH permanently. They continued wrestling together and competed in many scramble matches against the likes of The SAT, The Carnage Crew and Special K. However, Acid is perhaps best known from ROH for his feud with Homicide. After this feud, The Backseat Boyz won the ROH Tag Team Championship by defeating Special K in the final round of a gauntlet match for the vacant title.[4] This made The Backseat Boyz the first team to win both the CZW and ROH Tag Team Championships. Acid and Kashmere lost the title to Special K at the next show.[4] Later, Kashmere left ROH and Acid would continue as a singles wrestler. At ROH's Reborn: Completion, Acid fought with Jimmy Rave but he lost after Rave hit the Rave Clash on him. At Testing The Limit, he challenged Samoa Joe for the ROH World Championship, but did not win. He was also part of the Scramble Cage Melee main event in the scramble cage. Acid had his last ROH match at Final Battle 2004 against Jimmy Jacobs. After losing this match, he quit ROH.

Acid joined Pro Wrestling Unplugged at its inception in 2004, eventually feuding with Homicide, 2 Cold Scorpio, and Devon Moore over the PWU World Heavyweight Title. In 2005, Trent feuded with his old friend and new rival, Hellter Skelter. The feud lasted a few months, starting with Hellter claiming that Trent turned his back on their friendship and made him the evil person he is today. After months of feuding, Acid defeated Skelter in a "Philadelphia Street Fight" match on August 20, 2005. The feud continued in 2007, with Hellter wanting a rematch, and recording disturbing promos on PWU Surge TV, calling out Acid and claiming he would "carve [Acid's] flesh". Finally on November 23, 2007, Acid accepted the rematch and lost to Skelter, who had outside help from Sunny.

Acid made his return to PWU, following knee surgery, on March 16, 2008, at the event Haunted, wrestling Television Champion ZBarr to a time-limit draw. Since the departure of Tod Gordon, and subsequent handoff of sole ownership to tag-team partner Johnny Kashmere, Acid has been named co-owner of the company.


Acid debuted in Juggalo Championship Wrestling (JCW) in 2007 under the gimmick of an arrogant priest.[3] Acid, the self-proclaimed "Savior of JCW", cut a promo against the Juggalo fanbase, the company, and Insane Clown Posse (real-life owners of JCW) in the first episode of SlamTV!.[3] He continued to badmouth the company in the following weeks while having confrontations with several heroes.[3] On the fourth episode, Acid won a 10 Man Battle Royal to become the number one contender for Corporal Robinson's JCW Heavyweight Championship.[3] In their first match, Acid temporarily blinded Robinson with holy water, causing the referee to end the match.[3] Two weeks later at West Side Wars, Acid pinned Robinson after using Robinson's championship belt as a weapon, becoming the new JCW Heavyweight Champion.[3] Corporal Robinson received his rematch at East Side Wars in a Steel Cage match and regained the championship.[5] At Bloodymania, Acid and The Young Alter Boys lost a Six Man Tag Team match against the team of Insane Clown Posse and Sabu.[5]

Acid returned to JCW at Bloodymania III, where he teamed with the Alter Boys (Tim, Tom, Terry, and Todd).[6] The group lost to the Juggalo World Order (Corporal Robinson, Scott Hall, Shaggy 2 Dope, Violent J, and Sid Vicious) in the main event.[6]

Acid also worked for the new promotion Pro Wrestling Syndicate where he has had matches with Alex Shelley, Human Tornado, Danny Doring, Justin Credible and Sabu. On May 29, 2009, Acid won a four-way match to win the PWS Heavyweight Championship.[2]

On April 2, 2010 Verdi was arrested for possession of heroin. This charge combined with other previous charges, which included possession of drug paraphernalia and public intoxication. On May 12 he was sentenced to a maximum of 23 months of confinement, in addition to court mandated rehab, after reaching a plea deal. He had another trial set for July 13.[7][8]

On June 18, 2010 at approximately 9:00 AM, Verdi was found dead aged 29 at his home by his mother.[9][8] Verdi's first championship tag team partner Billy Reil posted a tribute to Verdi on the Declaration of Independents later that week.[8] At an ROH show in Buffalo, New York that night, ROH held a ten-bell salute to honor Verdi.[10] At CZW Tournament of Death show on June 26 in Townsend, Delaware, CZW honored him with a ten bell salute before the show. On June 28, it was announced that a tribute show, Acid-Fest: A Tribute to Trent Acid will be taking place at The Arena in Philadelphia on July 10. The show will feature several of Verdi's friends within professional wrestling along with some of his students from PWU, with the proceeds going to the Trent Acid Memorial Fund to help his family with his funeral costs.[11]

In wrestling

Championships and accomplishments



  • Hardway Wrestling
    • HW Tag Team Championship (3 times) – with Johnny Kashmere[citation needed]
  • National Championship Wrestling
    • NCW Tag Team Championship (1 time) – with Johnny Kashmere[18]
  • New Midwest Wrestling
  • Phoenix Championship Wrestling
    • PCW Tag Team Championship (1 time) – with Johnny Kashmere
  • Pro Wrestling Syndicate
    • PWS Heavyweight Championship (1 time)[2]
  • Pro Wrestling Unplugged
    • PWU Heavyweight Championship (1 time)[2]
  • United States Xtreme Wrestling
    • UXW Heavyweight Championship (1 time)[19]
    • UXW Xtreme Championship (1 time)[20]
    • UXW United States Championship (1 time)[21]
    • UXW Tag Team Championship (1 time) – with Mike Tobin[22]
  • Urban Wrestling Alliance
    • UWA Light Heavyweight Championship (2 times)
    • UWA Tag Team Championship (1 time) – with Billy Reil
  • Other titles
    • GWA Lightweight Championship (1 time)

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Allen Hoey, American poet, Pulitzer Prize nominee, has died of a heart attack he was , 57

Allen Hoey was an American poet, novelist, and literary critic who received numerous honors during his lifetime, including a Pulitzer Prize nomination for his 2008 collection of poems Country Music. [1]
(October 21, 1952 – June 16, 2010)

Allen Hoey was born in Kingston, New York, and raised in the mid-Hudson River Valley. He moved to northern New York to do his undergraduate work, then relocated to Syracuse, New York to complete his graduate work at Syracuse University where he studied with Hayden Carruth. He received both a Masters (1980) and a Doctor of Arts (1984) in English (Creative Writing). In 1985 he took a teaching position at Ithaca College and moved to Ithaca, New York in 1986. In 1990 he took a teaching position at Bucks County Community College where he taught writing, literature, and Buddhism.[1] In 1994 he received the precepts and formalized his commitment to Rinzai Zen Buddhist practice. Hoey has two sons by his first marriage, Owen (1980) and Stephen (1984). He died on June 16, 2010. He was a resident of Solebury, Pennsylvania[1] just outside of New Hope, Pennsylvania.[2]

Hoey has written five full-length collections of poetry and three novels. His first collection, A Fire in the Cold House of Being, was selected by Galway Kinnell as winner of the 1985 Camden Poetry Award. This book was published in 1987 and was followed by What Persists in 1992 and two collections in 2005, Provençal Light and The Precincts of Paradise. In 2006 he published a novel, Chasing the Dragon. He received a Pennsylvania Council of the Arts literature fellowship, placing his poetry and criticism in many prominent literary journals, including The American Poetry Review, The Hudson Review, Poetry, and The Southern Review. His poem "A Thousand Prostrations" was included in Essential Zen, and another poem, "Essay on Snow," was included in The Best American Spiritual Writing of 2004. Hoey's second novel, Voices Beyond the Dead, a more politically oriented book, was released in the summer of 2007, and his fifth collection of poems, Country Music, was published in spring 2008.[3]

Hoey's subjects include nature, his children, love, jazz, and spirituality. Regardless of the subject, his poems come from what Hoey has described as an "erotics of loss," exploring the evanescent and fleeting quality of life.[3]

Of his first collection, A Fire in the Cold House of Being, Hayden Carruth noted: "The directness of Allen Hoey’s poems amounts at times almost to a kind of existential obduracy, the smack of a fist in the palm that means no more bravery, the job is being. Being in the world. When you put this together with Hoey’s marvelous vocabulary and his exacting rhythmic and tonal demands on our language, you get what no academic poetry can ever attain, real pertinence. Nowadays, all of us are reading for our lives, I think. These poems are what we need." Similar praise came from Robert McDowell in a review published in The Hudson Review: "Allen Hoey’s first full-length collection...contains more compassion, diversity, and skill than the fifth book or the tenth book by most older poets. Ranging from free verse to formal structures but never straying far from an anchoring pentameter or tetrameter line, Hoey’s subtle lyricism sounds most like the speech of the straightforward, wry upstate New York and New England folks he prefers to write about…. Hoey seems to know that at the core of the storyteller’s gift is the ability to subordinate one’s ego for the sake of hearing the stories of others. Not an easy thing to do, but the memorable story in poetry always begins there."

Poet David Dooley remarked about his second collection of poems, What Persists: "Allen Hoey's What Persists takes a leap beyond his own fine first book. Already in A Fire in the Cold House of Being Hoey demonstrated intelligence, skill with both meter and free verse, a sure sense of poetic shape, and a talent for natural description. Perhaps the two areas in which Hoey has grown the most are technical virtuosity and emotional depth. Not many poets can claim either attribute; fewer still can manage both, so that the technical skill serves as a tool for the exploration of emotion.... Poets who can adroitly handle the stanza form of Yeats' "The Wild Swans at Coole" (as in "Coole Park," the final poem in What Persists) usually please us by their finesse, not their power. What Persists offers both finesse and power. With this outstanding second book, Allen Hoey belongs on anyone's short list of the best American poets under the age of sixty."

During the 1980s, Hoey worked as publisher, editor, and printer for Tamarack Editions, a small press that specialized in fine, handset limited editions. Among the works published by Tamarack were Hayden Carruth's The Mythology of Dark and Light and Mother, as well as Kochan by Jack Gilbert.

Prior to his passing, Hoey was at work on a series of detective novels featuring the character Dan Flannigan and his friend Otis Beaudrieux. Hoey cites his primary influences as writers in the hard-boiled school, particularly Raymond Chandler and James Crumley. The novels are largely set in Bucks County, Pennsylvania, with some taking place in Central and Northern New York.[3] The first of these novels, On the Demon's Trail, was published in March, 2009.

Including Hayden Carruth and Jack Gilbert, among Hoey's other influences on his writing include Jim Harrison and Kenneth Rexroth.

Bibliography

Country Music
Poetry collections
  • A Fire in the Cold House of Being (1987)
  • What Persists (1992)
  • Provençal Light & Other Poems (2005)
  • The Precincts of Paradise (2005)
  • Country Music (2008) (nominated for the Pulitzer Prize)
  • Once Upon a Time at Blanche's (2009)
Novels
  • Chasing the Dragon: A Novel about Jazz (2006)
  • Voices Beyond the Dead (2007)
  • On the Demon's Trail (2009)

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Maureen Forrester, Canadian opera singer, has died from complications of Alzheimer's disease, she was , 79

Maureen Kathleen Stewart Forrester, CC, OQ was a Canadian operatic contralto.

(July 25, 1930 – June 16, 2010)

Born in Montreal, Quebec as one of four children to Thomas Forrester, a Scottish cabinetmaker and his Irish-born wife, the former May Arnold, Maureen Forrester grew up in a poor section of east Montreal. She sang in church and radio choirs. After she dropped out of school after Grade 9 because the Second World War had taken most of the teachers, was working at odd jobs. At age 13, she dropped out of school to help support the family, working as a secretary at Bell Telephone.[1]


When her brother came home from the war he persuaded her to take singing lessons. She paid for voice lessons with Sally Martin, Frank Rowe, and baritone Bernard Diamant. She gave her debut recital at the local YWCA in 1953. Her accompanist was John Newmark, and this was the start of a life-long collaboration. She made her concert debut in Beethoven's Ninth Symphony with the Montreal Symphony Orchestra under Otto Klemperer.

She toured extensively in Canada and Europe with Jeunesses Musicales. She made her New York City debut in Town Hall in 1956. Bruno Walter invited her to sing for him; he was looking for the right contralto for a performance and recording of the Mahler Symphony No. 2 "Resurrection" This was the start of a warm relationship with great rapport. Walter had been a student of Mahler, and he trained Forrester in interpretation of his works. She performed at Walter's farewell performances with the New York Philharmonic in 1957.


In In 1957, she married the Toronto violinist and conductor Eugene Kash. The couple had five children. Maureen Forrester was known for her affinity for the music of Mahler and for her great stamina, often giving up to 120 performances a year while raising her five children.

She performed regularly in concert and opera. At the New York City Opera, she sang Cornelia in Handel's Giulio Cesare (1966), opposite Norman Treigle and Beverly Sills, which was recorded by RCA in 1967. She sang at the Metropolitan Opera in New York in 1975 in Das Rheingold, Siegfried, and Un ballo in maschera. Forrester also provided the voice of the Bianca Castafiore character in the television series The Adventures of Tintin.

She was a strong champion of Canadian composers, regularly scheduling their works in her programs, especially when she toured abroad. From 1983 to 1988 she served as Chair of the Canada Council.[2]

In 1986, she co-authored her autobiography, Out of Character (ISBN 0-7710-3228-5), with journalist Marci McDonald.

Death

Maureen Forrester died on June 16, 2010, aged 79, in Toronto, after a long battle with dementia.[3]

Honours

The star dedicated to Maureen Forrester,
from 2000, on the Canada's Walk of Fame,
in Toronto.

Personal life

Forrester had five children, including actors Linda Kash and Daniel Kash.


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Bill Dixon, American jazz musician.has died he was 84

Bill Dixon was an American musician, composer, visual artist, and educator, has died he was 84. He played the trumpet, flugelhorn, and piano, often using electronic delay and reverberation as part of his trumpet playing.[1]
(October 5, 1925 – June 16, 2010)


Biography

Dixon hailed from Nantucket, Massachusetts. His studies in music came relatively late in life, at the Hartnette Conservatory of Music (1946–1951). He studied painting at Boston University and the WPA Arts School and the Art Students League. During the early 1960s he had a job at the United Nations, and founded the UN Jazz Society.


In 1964, Dixon organized and produced the 'October Revolution in Jazz' in New York City and founded the Jazz Composers Guild. He was relatively little recorded during this period, though he co-led some releases with Archie Shepp and appeared on Cecil Taylor's Blue Note record Conquistador! in 1966.

He was Professor of Music at Bennington College, Vermont, from 1968 to 1995. From 1970 to 1976 he played "in total isolation from the market places of this music", as he puts it. Solo trumpet recordings from this period were later released by Cadence Jazz Records, and later collected on the self-released multi-CD set Odyssey along with other material.

He was one of four featured musicians in the Canadian documentary Imagine the Sound (along with Cecil Taylor, Archie Shepp, and Paul Bley), 1981.

In recent years he recorded with Cecil Taylor, Tony Oxley, William Parker, Rob Mazurek, and many others.

Discography

As leader

Soul Note Records
Other labels

As sideman

  • Conquistador! (Blue Note, 1966, Cecil Taylor)
  • Opium for Franz (Pipe, 1977, with Franz Koglman)
  • The Enchanted Messenger: Live from Berlin Jazz Festival (Soul Note, 1996)
  • Taylor/Dixon/Oxley (Victo, 2002, with Cecil Taylor and Tony Oxley)
  • Bill Dixon/Aaron Siegel/Ben Hall: Weight/Counterweight (Brokenresearch, 2009)

As producer or composer

  • The Marzette Watts Ensemble: The Marzette Watts Ensemble (Savoy, 1969) (producer and composer)
  • Marc Levin and his Free Unit: The Dragon Suite (BYG, 19??) (producer)
  • Jacques Coursil Unit: Way Ahead (BYG, 1969) (composer)

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Peter Brunette, American film critic (The Hollywood Reporter), has died of heart attack. he was , 66

Film historian, author and critic Peter Brunette died Wednesday of an apparent heart attack in Italy while attending the Taormina Film Festival on behalf of The Hollywood Reporter. He was 66.

Brunette had been reviewing films on assignment for THR for the past four years, in addition to his writing duties and work as a professor of film studies at Wake Forest University in North Carolina.

The news of his death sent ripples through Taormina and the Italian and U.S. film community. The festival canceled its early evening press cocktail reception, and fest artistic director Deborah Young said she would make an announcement and call for a moment of silence in honor of Brunette ahead of the evening's screening in the Teatro Antico.

"Peter was such a wonderful man, a dear friend and a wonderful colleague," said Young. "The whole festival is in absolute shock over Peter's passing.

"I saw him the night before at the bar briefly. He was so happy and having such a good time covering the festival."

Young, who, in addition to her role as Taormina's artistic director, is the chief international critic for THR, said Brunette had indicated for years that he wanted to attend the Taormina event. He did so for the first time this year.

"I'm glad that Peter finally had a chance to come to Taormina," Young said. "But that is a small condolence for the passing of a person as warm and as well liked as Peter."

Brunette had complained to several people the day before of being tired after a long car trip through France, Spain and Morocco after the Festival de Cannes, which he also helped cover for THR. Brunette was planning to spend the entire summer at various festivals on behalf of THR, culminating in Venice in September, where he would be reviewing movies and shepherding a film class.

"Peter's insights into moviemaking and his enthusiasm for films was infectious. We were honored to have him as a member of our reviewing family. He will be sorely missed," said THR editor Elizabeth Guider.

Kirk Honeycutt, THR's chief film critic, said, "Hanging out with Peter at festivals and, in more recent years, working closely with him as a colleague was one of my major joys in going to these events. Peter was such a warm and engaging person as well as a such a bon vivant, as we and others shared long dinners with generous amounts of wine, that I cannot imagine any of these festivals being the same without him."

Brunette, who lived for a while in France and spoke several European languages, was a fixture on the major fest circuit for 25 years. He reviewed films for several other publications prior to THR, including Screen International and indieWIRE.
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Kalmen Opperman, American clarinetist, has died of heart failure.he was ,90

Kalmen Opperman [1] was an American clarinetist. He was a noted performer, teacher, conductor, mouthpiece and barrel maker (which he makes only for his students), composer, and writer of numerous clarinet studies.

(December 8, 1919 – June 18, 2010)



A noted pedagogue, many of his students are currently working as soloists, recording artists, orchestral players and university teachers around the world.

For many years he was a performer in Broadway shows during what many call Broadway's "Golden Age".

He wrote over 10 highly acclaimed study books for the clarinet including his multi-volume Daily Studies and Velocity Studies.

He studied with noted clarinetists Ralph McLane and Simeon Bellison of the Philadelphia Orchestra and New York Philharmonic.

Most notably a private clarinet teacher in his studio in New York City, he has taught at such schools as Boston University, Hartt School of Music, and Indiana University.

He also lead the Kalmen Opperman Clarinet Choir. Kalmen Opperman passed away June 18th, 2010. He is survived by his wife Louise, daughter Roie, son Chuck and daughter-in-law, Judy.


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Tom Nicon, French model, has died from an apparent sucide he was 22

Tom Nicon, a 22-year-old French model who was known as a top runway walker, was found dead today in Milan, one day before the start of Milan’s Men’s Fashion Week. Nicon is said to have fallen from a window in his apartment. Nicon was a French fashion model who modeled for a number of clients including Louis Vuitton, GQ and Vogue,[1][2]. He took part in shows for Burberry Prorsum, John Varvatos, Moncler, Moschino, Z Zegna, Dries van Noten, Hugo Boss, Jean Paul Gaultier, Kenzo, Louis Vuitton, Tim Hamilton and Yves Saint Laurent. He was most famous for being the "face" for top UK fashion house Burberry[3]

(born in Toulouse, France 22 March 1988 – Milan, Italy on 18 June 2010)

Nicon's body was found in the courtyard of a building in central Milan on 23 June 2010 after falling four floors from a window of an apartment he was residing in and just hours before a scheduled show he was to appear in at Milan Fashion Week event.[4] He had been depressed following a split from his Italian girlfriend. He had attended a Versace fitting on the same morning. Police are treating Nicon's death as a suicide.[5] Police are investigating.[6][7]

Nicon’s death is the latest in a series of top models passing, including Ambrose Olsen and Lina Marulanda. Sports Illustrated model Noemie Lenoir attempted suicide just last month.

Nicon had appeared in shows for Versace, Louis Vuitton, Gareth Pugh and Costume National, among others. Isaac Likes speculated about a tribute to Nicon at some of the first shows tomorrow, in which Nicon might have appeared.

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Joe Deal, a Landscape Photographer of Disquieting Images, Dies at 62

Joe Deal, a photographer who broke with the romantic tradition of Ansel Adams to document, with scientific detachment, a Western landscape reshaped by human hands, died Friday in Providence, R.I. He was 62.

The cause was bladder cancer, his daughter, Meredith Ivy Deal, said.

Mr. Deal emerged as a leading figure in the new wave of American photographers when 18 of his black and white photographs were included in the enormously influential exhibition “New Topographics: Photographs of a Man-Altered Landscape.” The exhibition, which William Jenkins organized at the George Eastman House in Rochester in 1975, is now regarded by historians as a turning point in American photography.

As director of exhibitions at Eastman House, Mr. Deal played an important role in formulating and designing the exhibition and in producing its catalog.

Like his fellow exhibitors Robert Adams, Lewis Baltz, Stephen Shore and Bernd and Hilla Becher, Mr. Deal rejected the sweeping romanticism of Adams and Edward Weston in favor of a jaundiced, dry-eyed inspection of the modern American landscape and its degradation at the hands of developers, corporations and suburban colonizers. It was an approach that Mr. Jenkins called “anthropological rather than critical, scientific rather than artistic.”

Instead of pristine vistas, viewers were presented with tract houses, industrial sites, motels, warehouses and highway projects. In a deadpan, uninflected style, Mr. Deal showed mundane, newly built homes in the arid landscape around Albuquerque and Boulder City, Nev.

“In making these photographs I attempted to make a series of images in which one image is equal in weight or appearance to another,” he wrote in an artist’s statement for the exhibition catalog. Believing that “the most extraordinary images might be the most prosaic,” he deliberately kept formal decisions to a minimum, preferring to manipulate the images as little as possible and eliminate, as far as possible, “personal intrusion.”

Joseph Maurice Deal was born on Aug. 12, 1947, in Topeka, Kan. After earning a bachelor’s degree in fine arts at the Kansas City Art Institute in 1970, he was granted conscientious-objector status and, fortuitously, sent to Eastman House to work as a guard and janitor instead of serving in the military.


By the early 1970s he was exhibiting at the Light Gallery in Manhattan. He received a master’s degree in photography from the University of New Mexico, Albuquerque, in 1974. After returning to Eastman House, he began teaching at the University of California, Riverside, while completing a thesis for his master of fine arts degree, granted in 1978, from the University of New Mexico.

At Riverside, he started the photography program and helped found the California Museum of Photography (now the University of California, Riverside/California Museum of Photography).In 1989 Mr. Deal was appointed dean of the school of art at Washington University in St. Louis. In 1999 he became the provost of the Rhode Island School of Design, where he also taught photography. He lived in Providence for the rest of his life.

His first two marriages ended in divorce. In addition to his daughter, Meredith, of Boston, he is survived by his father, Percy, of Albuquerque, and his wife, Betsy Ruppa.


After “New Topographics,” Mr. Deal turned his attention to the uneasy coexistence of man and nature along the San Andreas Fault in Southern California, producing a portfolio of images, “The Fault Zone,” that juxtaposed the hasty activity of human beings with the inexorable, drawn-out processes of geology.

Mr. Deal adopted a style of close-up inspection in “Subdividing the Inland Basin,” a record of suburban subdivisions east of Los Angeles, and “Beach Cities,” whose images of Southern California oceanfront communities became some of Mr. Deal’s best-known work.

n recent years he photographed in the Midwest. In his portfolio “West and West: Reimagining the Great Plains,” he used the camera to impose a gridlike square that alludes to the grids mapped out after the Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854. These photographs were organized for a traveling show now at the Center for Creative Photography at the University of Arizona, Tucson, until Aug. 1.

In 2009, the center, in collaboration with Eastman House, partly recreated “New Topographics” as a traveling exhibition, using more than 100 photographs from the 1975 show. It is scheduled to open at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art on July 17.


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