Poses

Fashion, although inspiring and seductive, can also be downright ridiculous. The avant-garde clothing. The obsession with youth. Now one artist is drawing attention to fashion's love for impractical mannequin-like stances.

"'Poses' is a direct criticism of the absurd and artificial world of glamour and of fashion that magazines present. Specifically, the highly-distorted image of women that they transmit through models that do not represent real women and that avoid all those who are not within their restricted parameters.

Using these impossible stances of the fashion publishing houses as a symbol of how grotesque and unreal this industry is, a group of real women transfer these poses to daily scenes: the queue of a museum, the supermarket or the bus stop, sparking off the reaction of the spectators (on the other hand, regular consumers of these images).

The aim: to make it clear how ridiculous, and at times harmful, it can be to follow these models that the world of glamour impose on us."

1920s Jazz Age Lawn Party Style

Pictures from the 2011 Jazz Age Lawn Party on Governors Island in New York. Here are a few of my favorite shots, more can be found at the above link.

Birthday Poem

You do not have to be good.
You do not have to walk on your knees
for a hundred miles through the desert, repenting.
You have only to let the soft animal of your body
love what it loves.
Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.
Meanwhile the world goes on.
Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of rain
are moving across the landscapes,
over the prairies and the deep trees,
the mountains and the rivers.
Meanwhile, the wild geese, high in the clean blue air,
are heading home again.
Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,
the world offers itself to your imagination,
calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting --
over and over announcing your place
in the family of things.

– Mary Oliver, Wild Geese