Posts tagged with "beauty"

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.

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.