When I saw the Century Project (a man took nude photos of women from ages 0-100), my first thought was to wonder whether anybody was making a similar collection of naked men. I think there is more of a lack of images of naked men overall. So I collected this one a few months ago, and that’s as far as I got.
‘John Gambell suggests the typefaces we as a society choose in which to set our messages are meant to stand in for the speaker of the words themselves’. I do think God would be represented as speaking in bold, generally. I’d be curious to see what would happen with something like Godhandscript Extra Light Distressed. Casual whispering God.
To go with the armpit-appreciation photo I posted before… I seem to be collecting these a little bit.
“olive says: there’s too much heed paid to the law of thirds.”
At first I was just looking for a few photos of people’s scars, having been reminded by Erin’s copy of the Learning to Love You More book. But, in typical internetto fashion, now I am intrigued by the patterns that show up when you look at a mass of public scar photos. There are some popular subjects— self-harm exhibitionism and processing, scars from pregnancy and cesarians (not so much finding episiotomy scar pics), voyeurism with optional processing (especially around major burn scars, and ritualized scarification by some African cultures), manifestos and statements about beauty and beautiful scars, and more general scar pride and storytelling. I find this last one the least complicated, the easiest to post photos without major accompanying comments. (In this one I’m only spotting basics, about how it’s easier to be proud of pretty much anything when you are cute and posing, but I still like how that calculator watch makes her look tough.)
This is how I picture the army talking anyway. “Army strong! Army hungry! Join Army!”
“Finer” foods is a nice touch.
Casey phoned the other day to ask about my top photos of undressed women, as a response to seeing one of those lame “babe of the day” widgets on somebody’s Facebook profile. (I think he wanted to build an arsenal, in case he had the opportunity to unleash it on somebody.) I am pleased that somebody thinks I am a potential resource for images of people who are sexy in the body hair and bellies kind of way, but I don’t have a stash of that stuff at all.
For a start, I thought of Rose and Olive, photographers I found awhile ago, I think on Warren Ellis’ blog. Their photos are often quite posed, and they seem caught up in starving artist glamour and that artier version of girls gone wild that hipsters like (wet shirts, polaroids, poetry…), and they have a blog at Nerve.com which is a creepy place to have a blog… and the photo above is one of only two black models in their entire archive as well as one of a very few models who look older than nineteen and aren’t showcasing skinny bony shoulders… but also, they seem to know that wide thighs and forehead wrinkles and messes are beautiful, and they seem sincere, so I pick and choose from their photos.
I appreciate the love of armpits, textures and complicated facial expressions going on in this photo, and the way the model is kinda subverting a classic pin-up pose. It makes me want to be on that roof, in that light, touching skin with somebody. So this might go in my babe of the day stash, if I had one.
i wonder if the heart symbol is a joke. i’m also having a lot of cognitive dissonance concerning those substitute/symbolic Os and the idea that letters are things, not pictures of things, while words are not things, but pictures of things. this leaves the graffiti approximately nowhere, but i still like the colours.
When I wore mary janes a lot, I used to be into the toes turned in thing. This photo is suddenly making me uncomfortable about it, presented like that with no irony at all regarding women in fancy shoes standing like little girls. I’m hoping my general hairiness was enough to contrast and balance the baby toes.
I had never related the toes to the shoes until last week. I noticed that when I wear my boots I tend to stand like Captain America, feet planted especially wide. Design affordance, I guess. Superhero boots afford superhero stances.
I noticed, while making the backgrounds for this website, that although I am very partial to red-and-blue, it feels even more satisfying to see red and blue and green. Then I became suspicious that I’m just addicted to RGB screens.
I’ve had this bookmarked for months. I really like to look at it.
Goth orca and a grainy orca family. I think I like these. It is hard to tell, after the years of local orca art overload.
This is to celebrate the big monster face and the bright colours I made. Hello! I’m ready to stop hiding for awhile!
Last night at a screening of short films, I was being introduced to a new guy who kept claiming bad hearing and getting everyone’s name wrong.
(1) This would be a good gimmick for business men who obsess about remembering everyone’s name. You’d have an excuse to repeat the names a lot, plus you could “jokingly” get them wrong and everyone would find you charming. (2) This guy’s misheard names were way better than our normal names (Sarah = Sierra. Jessica = Destiny. Galen = Hayden. We are instantly teen idols or brands of vodka!).
I think he should go into business in some way. Maybe you could call him up and tell him your ideas for naming your pets or the characters in your new novel, and he could just repeat them back to you through his auditory filter of awesomeness. Maybe he could deliver some sort of televised oral history newscast.
Two nights ago, I was talking about web design rates with my friend Michael, who is making a site for a private detective. His ladyfriend Erin suggested he just trade services, and then we were all sort of hoping to be the subject of Michael’s bartered private investigation, just so we could get some weird surveillance photos of ourselves. And now I think that should be a business of its own: just the surveillance photos.
Real detectives probably don’t take big, black and white glossies anymore (nope), but my non-investigative, non-incriminating surveillance photography service sure would. And we’d make a special effort to get shots of the subject holding up her collar against the wind while stepping into a taxi, laughing in a restaurant with an unseen dinner companion, or generally looking over his shoulder all the time. If surveillance is going to be biased and weird, it might as well be biased towards glamour and intrigue.
I can’t stop thinking about what a great (weird, confusing) birthday present that would be for an unsuspecting friend. “It’s… is this a threat?”
I get the Baby Fever off and on, and I usually try to remember that babies don’t stay babies, and that if I want to spawn I’ll have to learn to love a teenager. The hormonal creepiness, the narcissism, the volume levels. I’ve actually been practising this, more because I like new skills than because I am laying away emotional supplies for a baby event. I am like a bird-watcher, for teenagers, except I don’t follow them to their nests or anything.
My favourite teenager thing right now is watching little groups of 14 year old girls out on their own. Physically, they are hilarious— even in groups of eight or nine kids, you only get one of each kind. Small and skinny, big and moosey, tall and gangly, eerily voluptuous: nobody has caught up to anybody else by 14, and nobody understands her own hair. I call these groups Variety Packs.
I’ve come to realize that an easy way to love teenagers is to basically laugh about how ridiculous they are. It’s about camp: “Oh, they’re so terrible— I love them!” I’m working on finding a less condescending way to appreciate pupating humans, but for now, the I’m so bershon Flickr pool is feeding my addiction.
More photos from forgotten file directories. This is me, looking cute and androgynous in a bunny hat I knitted, in December 2002. I was 23. I look a lot younger— the soft (aka crap) focus probably helps. Everybody has baby skin in blurry photos.
I like this one, where I’m making a rabbit face.
And this one, where I’m making a… stern rabbit face
I taught myself to knit by inventing that hat, during a 40 hour bus ride to Winnipeg. I double-knit the ears on two straight needles, including the cables on the front and back. For any non-knitters reading this, that’s fucked up, that’s self-torture. When I think about how I learn, this is the project I think of: I don’t so much go for baby steps.
These photos are very funny to me— they might as well have been taken to document the dawn of the current era of me. I was about to be self-employed, living in the first apartment after deciding I only wanted to live in corner suites in Fairfield, addicted to knitting, and cultivating a potted jungle in my apartment. I stand by all those decisions! Way to go, stern bunny, for laying solid foundations.
