Plumber's butt, transcended

I challenge you to un-see this.

I asked photographer Markus Mueller about these hilarious and semi-disturbing shots on his website:

We shot these in different locations in berlin. one day three motives, three locations, a nice and very funny crew and work. we took the portrait pictures from the girls separately some days before. that are original prints on the t-shirts .....nothing with photoshop!

It was a ad campaign for the german client "Das Handwerk" (it is a German union for handcraft companies)
Agency: scholz&friends Berlin
Art Direction: Michael Johne

Gut gemacht gentlemen!

Amy worked in the record business at Enigma, Elektra, Virgin and Sub Pop before she got sucked into the technology vortex. She co-founded the Backwards Beekeepers, a chemical-free urban beekeeping collective in Los Angeles. She runs digital marketing for the Los Angeles Philharmonic and The Hollywood Bowl.

MORE: advertising • art • photography • plumber's butt

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The Snowden Principle

http://twitter.com/HubrisSonic HubrisSonic

Crack kills.
- Antinous / Moderator
  
  Once you go crack, you never go back.
vrplumber

This photo was obviously staged. I mean, what could he possibly be fixing under a sink that would require a mini-sledge hammer?
- Antinous / Moderator
  
  How else do you loosen up a fitting that hasn’t been touched in 30 years? I had a faucet replaced and the parts of the old one looked like something from a 2,000 year-old shipwreck.
  - vrplumber
    
    Well the P-trap looks to be PVC, which would be best removed with a hacksaw or reciprocating saw(if it couldn’t be removed by unscrewing the trap itself), and the faucet appears to be piped in above the sink, which is a non-traditional installation to be sure.
    
    Also, old faucet parts are the nasty, but nothing compared to the inside of a well-used grease trap. That smell is worse than sewage, or so they tell me.
    - bcsizemo
      
      Actually I have seen a lot of commercial sinks setup with the faucet installed off the wall so to speak like that. Unusual for a home perhaps, but it also appears that it might be directly fed from a wall mounted hot water unit…(not something that you see in the US…at least not mounted where they are visible.)
      - http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100001549538209 Ronald Lammers
        
        Indeed wall mounted hot water unit. Very common in the northern parts of Europe (at least in houses built between 1945 and 1970). Usually the unit provides hot water for the bathroom as well.
      - chgoliz
        
        Yeah, it looks British to me.
- Rich Keller
  
  You didn’t see Maggie’s centipede post, did you?
- social_maladroit
  
  This photo was obviously staged.
  
  I wonder how much time they spent matching the male models’ skin tone to the female models’ skin tone.
  - Paul Renault
    
    Um, none?
    
    The skin looks ‘shopped to me.
- http://twitter.com/linde2001 Erwin van der Linde
  
  I’d say a rat?
  - vrplumber
    
    That’s what the banana was for. Just look at it. :)
- fuzzyfuzzyfungus
  
  Percussive maintenance is the closest thing to a cross-platform standard that we have in this broken, postlapsarian world…
- http://twitter.com/chrisbird616 Christopher Bird
  
  ‘a mini-sledge hammer’
  
  or, as people I know call it, a ‘hammer’…
  - vrplumber
    
    Well, the shape of the hammer head is similar to a full-sized sledge hammer, as opposed to a framing hammer, tack hammer, or ball peen hammer.
    
    +like for the effective zinger, though:)
- nate wharram
  
  Good on you for not bothering to read the 6 sentences that comprise the entirety of the written portion of the article. If you had you would have seen the part where the photographer talks about staging this shoot over 3 days.
  - vrplumber
    
    Good on me indeed for spotting the obvious staging error without needing to read the article, and then pointing out the flaw for comedic effect. Maybe I should have also pointed out that the sandwich was not OSHA-compliant, so that the joke was more apparent.
    
    Also, thanks for assuming I can read. People like you are the reason the internet is an unfriendly environment for illiterates.
Halloween_Jack

You’d get a different effect entirely if either of these gentlemen had an ass half as hairy as mine.
RJ

Kinda makes the dropping-a-pencil-down-the-crack prank a little more perverted.
http://www.facebook.com/JeffreyKarter Jeffrey Karter

The Markus Mueller link is broken. Should be http://www.m-mueller.org, but instead it points to a relative url.

Also, I think the second “plumber” is female, which puts a meta-meta twist on this meta concept.
picaflor

These are not the plumber ass cracks I’ve been subjected to
Mister44

Seriously though – if this is an issue for you, Duluth Trading Co makes a really nice shirt that is 3″ longer than most t-shirt, keeping you covered up. They have a lot of DIY type clothing and gear. http://www.duluthtrading.com/store/mens/duluth-ingenuity/mens-longtail-t-shirts/mens-longtail-t-shirts.aspx?

disclaimer – not an ad, I just like their stuff.
- Antinous / Moderator
  
  Jeez, why don’t you link to a man-burqa vendor? Some of us like looking at ass cracks.
  - http://imcravingpresidency.tumblr.com/ SedanChair
    
    This is me judging you
  - Florian Bösch
    
    In other news, ass-crack-burqas now banned in France.
  - chgoliz
    
    But do you like looking at THESE ass cracks? Kind of messes up the scenery for you, doesn’t it?
Jan Bösenberg

There is currently a trent towards tongue-in-the-cheek heroification of home improvers and craftsmen in German advertisement, which I think is great. Watch these Hornbach (retailer of home improvement and construction products) commercials, they are awesome:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ouvf_y61kts
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DZLyUgQPLfg
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PNlVp8SWkic&feature=relmfu
- Jan Bösenberg
  
  Just found out that Markus Müller (the ass-crach photographer) actually made some photographs for Hornbach:
  
  http://www.blog.kaitietz.de/markus-mueller-fur-hornbach/
- chgoliz
  
  What is with the yippee-ki-yi-yay at the end of the commercials? Are U.S. cowboys the macho meme there too?
allybeag

Too slim, too smooth, too hairless, too clean. These are NOT real plumbers.
http://www.nathanhornby.com/ Nathan Hornby

Wait, no photoshop?

I guess they must have used Lightroom instead…
Boundegar

I wonder why hot German women look so cross? Hot American women usually smile for the camera. Is this a cultural thingamajig?
- http://www.facebook.com/people/Katrina-van-Malksvig/100000571611598 Katrina van Malksvig
  
  as a German woman, I can tell you that we mainly look cross when our face is stuck above a plumber’s buttcrack
- allybeag
  
  Would /you/ smile if you knew you were destined to gaze down a plumber’s buttcrack?
  
  Well, actually, yes, I probably would, but it’d be a sniggering smile, rather than a sexy one …
- retepslluerb
  
  Oh! Those contortions are supposed to be smiles? I always wondered why American models do their best to display three rows of teeths.
fuzzyfuzzyfungus

It’s really kind of funny, and a bit sad, that plumbers would need slick advertising.

You’d think that the “Listen up, ‘Civilization’, we are the thin copper(and/or PVC, copper ain’t getting any cheaper) line that stands between you and drinking the diluted shit of everybody in your vicinity.” message would really sell itself…
- blueelm
  
  Yes, but plumbers also want you to choose their services. That’s where advertising come in. Who had the funny and sexy plumbers? Ah… it was our good confederation of craftspeople. They’re good people. We like them.
  - Antinous / Moderator
    
    Funnily enough, the George Brazil guy never looks like the picture on the truck.
http://theganges.org/ theganges

and ’twas how men found themselves lusting after other men’s butts…
http://avarana.blogspot.com MarlboroTestMonkey7

Hairy bosomed women!
Deceptology

If you like these, there exists a somewhat deceptive book called “Cleavage” created by Bethany Jean Fancher. http://www.deceptology.com/2011/01/somewhat-deceptive-book-called-cleavage.html
http://aqfl.net Ant

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