Given the chance, I'd stay in this chorus forever

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Thumbnail: Pint glass
Thumbnail: salad
Thumbnail: Steak
Thumbnail: Jeff
Thumbnail: Withdrawal

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Believing In Her Beauty

The torso of my beautiful muse

I tell her she’s beau­ti­ful. Over and over again. As often as I can.

But she shakes her head, and says I only think so because I love her.

The front of my beautiful muse

It’s true. But would I love her any less if she didn’t have those soft, inno­cent eyes? If she didn’t wear her hair up, or down, or curly, or straight, or dif­fer­ent every time I saw her? If her body didn’t curve so dis­tract­ingly when she lets her­self fall into me?

The body of my beautiful muse

It makes me won­der if any­one sees the same thing that I do.

How much of it is her beauty, and how much of it is the beauty I see in her?

To me, her beauty is obvi­ous, not sub­tle in any way.

The legs of my beautiful muse

So I tell her, over and over again.

Sometimes I think she’ll start to believe me if I say it enough.

She Is The Water, I Am The Waves

Her waves

She is the light, I am the prism.

She is the words, I am the voice.

She is the viola string, I am the vibration.

She is the bud, I am the bloom.

She is the life, I am the living.

She is the heart, I am the pulse.

She is the medium, I am the message.

She is the water, I am the waves.

I Found Her

The woman I’ve been look­ing for my entire life.

Her name was Christine. She was thin lipped. Frail limbed. Not the least bit cam­era shy, as she pulled her shirt up to expose a breast, like she had fallen on the grass this way and the folds in her clothes rearranged them­selves on her body.

Here she is on a horse in the night. Here she is, grim-faced, cradling her son. There was a scar on her neck from a sui­cide attempt years ear­lier, and through a series of pho­tographs, you could see the scar heal.

For seven years she was mar­ried, before she suc­cess­fully jumped to her death from the 9th floor of an apart­ment in East Berlin.

A blink in my eye, a snap of some­one else’s shut­ter. A muse of flesh and blood. The Jane Birkin to Serge Gainsbourg. The Olga Ivinskaya to Boris Pasternak.

This is some­one who under­stood his art, his mor­bid­ity, his need to cap­ture her sui­cide in a frame, then pub­lish the image of her body on the pave­ment, look­ing down from the 9th floor, along with insou­ciant pic­tures of a teacup, a play­ground, a tank, three plants.

And as soon as I had found her, she’s gone.

Should I be happy that she existed? Should I be sad that she’s gone? Should I be pun­ished for com­par­ing the women I’ve had to her?

Is this painful, or beau­ti­ful, or both?

The Dress

Playing with food

Thumbnail: Back and hands
Thumbnail: Dress stripes
Thumbnail: Back and shoulder
Thumbnail: Curves on a waist
Thumbnail: Ring and fingers

I love this dress.

I love the colours. I love the palette. I love the stripes. I love how they go from thick to thin.

I love how she wears it. I love how it hugs her body. I love how it leads the eye along her curves.

I love how I love this dress.

Paige

Glamourous Paige

Thumbnail: Innocent Paige
Thumbnail: Paige's smirk
Thumbnail: Hopeful Paige
Thumbnail: Mischievous Paige
Thumbnail: Model Paige's
Thumbnail: Paige's purse
Thumbnail: Muted Paige
Thumbnail: Stoic Paige
Thumbnail: Paige's eyes
Thumbnail: Three quarters Paige

Usually I don’t post this many pic­tures of one shoot of a sin­gle per­son because there’s often a lot of redun­dancy, but Paige has a thou­sand expres­sions that must be cap­tured and shown to the world.

There’s a com­plex­ity in her face that betrays the lay­ers and lay­ers of her char­ac­ter. By turns ebul­lient, hope­ful, play­ful, and uncer­tain — every frame is dif­fer­ent. I feel like I could write an essay on her look alone.

Best viewed on large and on black, of course, so click the pic­tures. Commentary at full size.

Channel Mixer

One of the photographer’s great­est assets is the nude model. Without cloth­ing, there’s no chance for some­one to out­wardly project their per­son­al­ity. Only a human stripped to the bare essen­tials, naked to the world as the day they were born, pure and with­out bias.

This was an exer­cise in mix­ing mono­chro­matic colour chan­nels to bring out details such as cuts, scars, stub­ble, and goose­bumps. Also, some good prac­tice in com­po­si­tion and fram­ing. Best viewed large and on black (so click the pic­tures1).

Torso

Shoulder

oblique

Pectoral

Derrier

backside

And, of course, it doesn’t hurt if he looks like he’s been carved out of marble.

  1. Feed read­ers may have to visit the perma­link to take advan­tage of the black Lightbox script. []

Hanging Party

I feel utterly intoxicated.

Reading poems around the piano

With a ham­mer and a lad­der, we hung my pic­tures tonight, care­fully decid­ing where to place each one to bal­ance the colours, the ori­en­ta­tions, the shapes, and the concepts.

Amongst the wine and the wood, the kids and the colours, we stopped to admire the art in the house. Adrienne dropped by to share her lat­est graphic poems with us, along with her alco­holic find­ings. “From The Desk Of” Penelope was writ­ten that day, dense and deep, full of details taken for granted. The words must write them­selves, I thought.

Thumbnail: Poem reading
Thumbnail: My fruit and body series wall
Thumbnail: Old fashioned side-table
Thumbnail: Akio
Thumbnail: A hammer and a poem
Thumbnail: Old style heater
Thumbnail: Frederic and Akio
Thumbnail: Nicole Beaumont artwork
Thumbnail: Akio on the ladder
Thumbnail: Wine, ice, and salad

Misun and I seem to share a kin­ship through our appre­ci­a­tion of expres­sion, some­thing I’ve never had with my friends. Not that there’s any­thing wrong with them, but I’ve always felt like they can’t relate to me when it comes to emo­tions or cre­ativ­ity. As I seem to be the cre­ative brother she’s always wanted, and she seems to be the sup­port­ive sis­ter I’ve always needed, we agreed to be adopted siblings.

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In a recent inter­view, Frédéric said, in his ebul­lient Parisian accent, that one of the rea­sons he wanted to open the Salon is to pro­mote dia­logue and inter­ac­tion. Perhaps it’s this hunger for dia­logue that con­nects us. He also men­tioned to me he was stressed out about being inter­viewed; being put on the spot made him freeze up. I told him I had the same prob­lem with pretty girls. “You’re affected by beauty”, he said, some­thing I knew, but not some­thing that every­one understands.

I left, feel­ing like I was a part of some­thing won­der­ful, some­thing greater than myself.

Wow.

A reader sent me this let­ter (posted with her per­mis­sion, of course):

Almost a year after I had man­aged to leave the island behind, the room, the floor, the sheets, the rape — I acci­dently ended up on your blog entry called “The begin­ning to the end” and it changed my world. It awoke feel­ings inside of me that I had for a years time tried to sup­press and scare off so that I never again would open up to any­one, never trust any­one and there­for never end up in the same sit­u­a­tion again. At that time, all men were a poten­tial threath to me.

Reading and watch­ing that very blo­gen­try have had such a great impact on my life and will to become ‘myself’ again, to reclaim my body and to dare to move towards feel­ing and being ‘beau­ti­ful’ again. Your video granted me the sen­sa­tion of how sin­cere, pure and giv­ing love and affec­tion truly are when it’s shared and not forced. It made me remem­ber blocked out feel­ings and sit­u­a­tions and it made me start to long for some­thing that I had com­pletely shut out for over a year.

I have been want­ing to write you this email for quite some time, but I havent been sure of myself or if the “new” me (which is the old in fact) would sur­vive and I didnt want to make this into a sun­shine story if it really wasnt — but after many down­hills, tri­als and tribu­la­tions, the­r­a­phy and social inter­ac­tion, I am there, I am back and I am stand­ing strong again. Nothing will ever be the same, but at least I made the right choice, for me. I have always been lifelov­ing in over­load and even if I am only halfway there yet, it is still enough to keep me going.

I still watch that video every now and then, to remind myself that any­thing is pos­si­ble and that you can recieve “help” from the most unex­pected sources. It used to make me cry, now it makes me smile instead, isnt that beau­ti­ful? I know per­fectly well that you never meant to post that entry for me, but it helped me in one of the most dif­fi­cult times in my life and for that I will be for­ever grate­ful. Thank you.

Yours sin­cerly,
Emma

I’m at a loss for words.

Portraits of Tiana

Tiana smiles

If you gave me the hypo­thet­i­cal option of pho­tograph­ing any­one I wanted, I’d ask if it could be some­one who had already passed away. If so, I’d choose a Byronic hero like Mikhail Lermontov, or another one of the 19th cen­tury Russian Romantics, or even Lord Byron himself.

If I could choose some­one liv­ing though, I’d choose Tiana.

Read the rest of this entry »

She Doesn't Know How Beautiful

The art of longing’s over, and it’s never com­ing back.

—Leonard Cohen, Death of a Ladies’ Man

They ask me why I’m cry­ing. I tell them the song is too good, not to cry.

They ask me why there’s a bounce in my step. I tell them I’m in love, and I don’t care.

They ask me if she’s taken. I tell them she is.

They ask me if she knows. I tell them it doesn’t mat­ter as long as I feel this way, and I’m never let­ting go.

They ask me, “Why her?”.

I tell them she makes me happy with­out try­ing.

Letters From A Prisoner

I’m not going to deny it any­more. It’s always been you. But I under­stand, you don’t need to explain, I get it. Work, our lives, we’re busy. You’re about to go off on a grand adven­ture. And I can see why you think that a rela­tion­ship with me and that adven­ture are mutu­ally exclu­sive but I just want to say my piece. Getting lost with each other could be the great­est adven­ture we’ve yet to embark on and I just want to say that if you want to get lost with me I’ll always be here per­pet­u­ally lost with­out you.

I read his let­ters, some dated, some titled with expres­sions of for­lorn hope. Familiar words that cut me to the bone.

They’re beau­ti­ful. I never knew he was capa­ble of such poignancy, such emo­tion. It fills me with envy.

Sometimes I just want to be noticed. Not often, but some­times late at night when I’m think­ing about the “what-ifs” of the day. Being too obvi­ous would be dan­ger­ous though and so I slink away, back to my cave to think, rather than do. Such a cow­ard, I loathe myself. You’d say no, every ratio­nal sce­nario I’ve played out ends with that.

He’s trapped, per­pet­u­ally lost in the thought of another. This time, I’m on the out­side, look­ing in. It’s all new for him, and I can hear in his voice how much he detests it.

His angst is unbe­com­ing. He’s not a writer, but he writes these let­ters, hop­ing the cathar­sis will save him. I’ve been here enough times to know that it’ll be alright, but that there’s also noth­ing I can do to help, so I resign myself to helplessness.

And now I’ll be pre-occupied and jeal­ous for the rest of the week­end. Me, jeal­ous and not trust­ing myself to speak, me. Not me, any­more. This love is like lep­rosy, pieces of myself are falling away. It’s ablative.

Yet his tone is so unfa­mil­iar, so unlike him. Me, he writes, Not me, any­more. He doesn’t even believe it him­self. The san­guine friend, reduced to an enfee­bled state he wants des­per­ately to cast aside. Even with the wis­dom I’ve gained, it still sur­prises me how attrac­tion, infat­u­a­tion, love can make one so irrational.

In these let­ters he shares his feel­ings, wholly, as if to say, “Here is my heart. Please hold it gen­tly”. The words would strip him bare if he spoke them to her, so he writes them where no one but me will read.

A pris­oner, he lives in this cage, caught between the will and the risk of express­ing to her how he feels.