April 29, 2007 at 2:36 am · Filed under 21 the body
all these itsy bits of bodies feel a bit disembodied and sort of creepy. … they’re my feminist pits (bits) and I lay in bed thinking about the title to this post and giggling under the doona. My inner seven year old thought it would be very funny to post a picture of underam hair on the internet. A little bit rude, even. Hee, hee.
I remembered that I have a tattoo story or two to share. In fact, in keeping with the spirit of taking photos from angles you don’t normally see, I remembered this tattoo that I rarely even remember I have. … I was 17, and I liked the quote, and Turk had a tattoo gun that he had made his very own self from a radio motor and just how cool is that! So we traced the line drawing out of the book, and then traced it onto my skin. And then he tattooed it, just like that, on his living room couch.
The challenge for May - is street photography - with YOU in it. Capture yourself somehow, somewhere on the street. With or without others around or others in the photo frame. You could ask someone else to press the shutter for you or carry around your tripod - whatever you do it has to have a ’street photography’ vibe to it. What is that you ask - well Amy Stein says that good street photography should be voyeuristic, immediate, and uncomfortably intimate. It is also often thought to need to be ironic and distanced from its subject matter, concentrating on a single human moment, caught at a decisive or poignant moment.
Street photography usually utilises landscape format wide angle lense - to allow more action in the picture, to capture more than one main story. It is a type of documentary photography but it is in public places and captures an immediacy and frankness that is thought to be very human.
Read more about street photography - what its all about and how to go about it here and here and here and on wikipedia.
April 20, 2007 at 5:09 am · Filed under 21 the body
This week I have a birthday. Another number, another year.
There’s a brilliant line in a book by Suzanne Spunner called “Running up a dress” which comments on looking in the mirror with your mother and realising that the young face has somehow aged, without you looking. This is a sentiment that I didn’t believe in when I first heard it (at the ripe old age where I knew everything, yes, that was 13) and always thought that I would notice my mother changing, I mean she’s right in front of me, I still see her everyday - how could I not notice?
And then one day I looked at her and realised that somehow she had changed. The once permed hair was leaner and there was less of it, her eyes were cloudier than they had been, her skin had more lines on it than before… How could I have missed these things?
The body ages in mysterious ways, it isn’t a straight line. It jumps and darts and some days you’re 21, others, well… we’ve all had those days. Yet, and I’m not being trite here - really, the most beautiful person of any age is who they are and how they wear it. Being confident in who you are and being proud of the person in your skin that is what makes a person beautiful.
And I’m beginning to believe that numbers, well they lie.
April 11, 2007 at 4:10 pm · Filed under 21 the body
Wow, some of you are really showing how brave you are this week. It was hard to narrow down my choices — so many of you are doing such amazing work. I think my faves are the ones where I can’t even tell what part of the body is in the picture until I read the text. Here are some pictures that caught my eye:
April 9, 2007 at 7:56 pm · Filed under 21 the body
Y’all are super talented and creative souls. I have been astounded by some of the beautiful photos you’ve taken over the week!
More ideas:
Showing us the bits you can’t see - Under your neck, Behind your knees, the back of your neck, the view from above, the soles of your feet, the back of your elbow, your back….
Shooting through fabric, through glass, in reflective surfaces…
Approximately 0.64% of the world’s population is employed as an artist, at any one time.
Artists are amazing people, I imagine that for many of us at SPC being employed as an artist would be almost equivalent to winning the lottery - being able to do something that you are passionate about and be paid for it!
There is another interesting group of people in the world and up to 20% of them are employed artists at some point in their lives. These people have an interest in aesthetics that could be viewed as different to most people, an ability to perhaps see the details around them a little clearer than most. These people also see themselves differently to the way people perceive them, they have a disorder called Body Dysmorphic Disorder.
Body Dysmorphic Disorder occurs when a person perceives themselves as having a flaw within themselves/not being whole and having a severe aggravation towards it which may lead to an obsession or point where they try to self correct their fault. For example having ears that are slightly larger than average may lead to a person obsessing about them or being unable to go into public for fear of retribution. To the average person, the ears are probably not all that large to start off with.
There’s a bit of a hubbub in the crazy (and I mean that in the nicest possible way) psychiatric professionals community about where the disorder comes from and why the members of this special group of people are so drawn to creative outlets. Some say that it is because they have a heightened awareness of the aesthetics of the world, others say they perceive them differently, others say that it is because they are artists they can find fault easier…. questions and answers - round and round.
I just say, good for you artists, you find a way to share your vision of the world and take my breath away. Every Single Day.
