Random dose of Newton

Helmut Newton, Kiss from “The Bordighera Details”, 1982

Anna Dello Russo by Helmut Newton, 1996

Love how much a departure this is from both their styles.

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Daily Inspiration: The Thin White Duke

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Helmut Newton, Monte Carlo, 1994

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The Generation Game

Family resemblances are uncanny things. It’s magical seeing a friend’s nose or gestural tic mirrored in their mother or sister. My mother and I always laugh about this, because while, taken feature by feature, we bear absolutely NO resemblance to each other, people always insist that there’s no doubt that we are related. Apparently, we give the same sort of impression? Yeah. Doesn’t make sense to me either.

Anyway, me me me aside, photographer Frauke Theilking has taken this idea and exploded it, finding mother-daughter and father-son pairs and photographing them stripped of any encumbrances in the form of garments or the like. The results are fascinating, highlighting the strange echoes and gaps that you find between the generations.

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Milan turns into a ghost town at the holidays, with all of its residents fleeing to the countryside or to the mountains or someplace warm. Right now, the city seems to be populated by me, a couple shell-shocked tourists, and a bevy of old ladies, taking advantage of this time when everyone else is away to air out their best furs and go striding around town, reveling in their dominion over the streets.

Old Milanese ladies are a wonderful study in doing things “just so,” as captured perfectly by this old photo I stumbled across on the Sartorialist. Nobody wears furs and sensible skirts the way they do. And I particularly love this one’s cane and daring pop of yellow at the neckline. They’re also masters of looking perfectly dignified and aloof, managing to pour just the right amount of disdain into their glance– when they condescend to look your way– to communicate to you that you are an inferior species and have lots to learn from them. I hope to grow up to be like a little old Italian lady someday. Compact, bitchy and fabulously dressed. That’s the way to do it.

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Fireflies

I’m floored by the beauty of these time-lapse photographs of golden butterflies in Japan. Their neon trails against the backgrounds creates images that look almost as if they were done with brushstrokes. I’m so inspired.

It looks dizzying and psychedelic. I love it.

Also, happy New Year’s, everyone! I’ve decided to stop being a bad blogger this year. What are your thoughts on 2012?

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Slouching Towards Bethlehem

I saw this portrait of Joan Didion by Annie Leibovitz on the Vanity Fair website and instantly fell in love. It’s truly remarkable how this image manages to conjure up the same emotions that I’ve always felt when reading her work, a mixture of dreaminess and serenity, interwoven with a strong, unshakeable sense of dread. I first saw it a few hours ago, and it’s stuck with me, her strange, alien gaze creeping into the back of my mind at the oddest of moments. I don’t think I could expect anything less of her.

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Dia de los Muertos

Much as I utterly love Halloween, I’ve always just been the teeniest bit more intrigued by the Dia de los Muertos, with all the sugar skulls and other trappings. There seems to be a spirit to the holiday that I’d love to experience properly. I love the idea of celebrating one’s ancestors in a fun, humourous way, rather than it being the vaguely morbid affair that the All Souls’ Day celebrations tend to be in other countries.

I also really enjoy the fact that all the scariness is taken out of skulls and skeletons,  and that they’re made into something fun and cartoon-y instead. I’m sure there could still be sinister doings afoot during a Dia de los Muertos celebration (in fact I fervently hope there have been, because that would be awesome) but at the same time the way the decorations are done enures that the atmosphere is festive rather than creepy.

Non-sequiteur point being, I’m a big fan of these photos by  John Rees.  I think the styling of the models is great, and the story of the shoot makes me oh so happy.

I love this one… it’s rather terrifying until you look at it closely and realise what she is. Such a contrast to the warmth of some of the other ones.

Happy Dia de los Muertos!

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‘Morning!

Sometimes I really wish I had pink hair again… just for a little bit. Maybe I need some wigs in my life. Definitely some red converse.

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