Sparklers

Happy Thanksgiving! I forgot to mention the fact that I'd be going out of town for Thanksgiving. I'm visiting my grandparents in Oregon. Not exactly glamorous--my grandfather lives in a trailer which is currently flea-infested and I'm starting to feel a little itchy. The things we do for family... On the plus side, the trailer park is surrounded by open fields, so I'll post some pictures from my little exploration there soon.

On a slightly more glamorous note, I'm totally serious about being a bit obsessed with sequined things right now. I think I became enamoured with them after seeing these pictures by Marcio Simnch (first 2) and Wai Lin Tse (last 3). It's the way they bounce light around that appeals to me and that seems to have attracted a lot of other photographers...

PS I posted a couple of new pictures to my flickr, if you're curious. I might not get around to posting them here.

More Questions Than Answers

The conclusion that I've come to lately is that I really have no qualms about altering the truth. Isn't it possible that sometimes changing things around, leaving out and including details selectively is more authentic than telling a story exactly as it happened? If something meant a lot to me and I know that it will be meaningless to you if I tell the supposed "absolute truth" of the story, is it wrong for me to edit it? This is something that I've been wrestling with lately--absolute truths versus personal truths. Why do "the facts" even matter that much? If I can evoke a feeling or emotion that I felt more authentically by telling my personal truth--the story as it is important to me--I think that's more important than telling "the truth." Because a personal truth isn't even a lie--it's just a question of whether you value authenticity or straight factuality. I value authenticity and I guess that's why I'm pursuing art rather than the sciences, because the same thing goes for photographs, too. I (and anyone who looks through the lens of a camera) edit the world to a single frame and create "truths" about it through photographs, but I don't think I want those truths to be straight journalistic facts. I want to create things that are authentic to me. I still don't think of myself as an "artist," but I think this is the moment where I have become self-aware regarding my own artistic intentions.

I guess this is also a disclaimer for my blog. I have never (as far as I can remember...) lied on this blog, but I have always, always given my own personal truth, whatever that entails. And I think that's true of all personal bloggers, regardless of their intentions. What do you think?





Sweater- Target, shirt- JC Penney, skirt- thrifted, tights- Nordstrom, shoes- thrifted.

PS My blog posts have been getting so deep lately. I'm probably going to have to start mixing it up with more pictures of shiny things, because my eye has honestly been really attracted to anything shiny for the past month or so, which has resulted in some interesting purchases...

You Make My Dreams

My dreams have never been the pastel, out-of-focus wonderland that so many people term "dreamy." Quite the opposite, really. My dreams have always been filled with brash, oversaturated colors, the sort of garish aesthetic that, if I were watching them in a movie theater, I would probably walk out. And rather than having that "dreamy" soft focus where outlines are fuzzy and things start to blend together, my dreams are over-sharpened, achieving a sharpness that my eyes have never been able to see in real life. Thus, my dreams are not so much surreal as hyperreal--more real than reality. So much so that sometimes it seems like a dream is what really happened and that my life is the dream. But not very often, thank goodness.

Lately, though, my dreams have lost those garish colors in favor of simple black and white. I can only speculate as to why. Perhaps hours and hours of reading plain black and white text for my classes, perhaps the fact that leaves have all fallen now and are just black silhouetted against a grey sky, perhaps all the time that I just spent poring over the exclusively black and white images of photographer Eugene Atget for a month as I wrote a research paper on him, or perhaps all the hours spent in the darkroom developing these images for my photography project...






I cannot even guess at the number of hours that I spent on this project. These were taken with a large format 4x5 camera that is very tricky to focus and expose properly. It took me about an hour to compose and take each shot and then I developed the film and enlarged and printed over and over again each negative until I got exactly what I wanted. Believe me--these scans do not to the prints justice.

Sorry, these don't have much to do with the style aspect of my blog, but I think they have a lot to do with what I've been thinking about with dreams lately. What are your dreams like?

I Guess That's How the Future's Done

Today was a good day. I felt a sense of urgency that I haven't felt in a long time. Even at midnight the night before my research paper was due when I wasn't done yet and I still had a French test to study for, nothing felt very urgent. That's just how it's been lately. Everything has seemed like it could wait until later. I've felt very lethargic. But not today. Today I had ideas that I needed to get onto paper ASAP. When I got home from school, I ran the 6 blocks through the rain to our neighborhood bookstore to buy a notebook, because these aren't the sort of ideas that you can just type or scrawl on loose leaf paper. I spent at least 15 minutes choosing which notebook to buy. It's strange having all these blank books in front of you and imagining the potential of each of them. Each one seems like it could take you on a different route and you have to choose just the right one. So I bought a simple, plain, unassuming one. And then I wrote. I wrote everything that's been bottled up for the last few weeks--mostly about photography and art, but about life, too, because how could those things not intersect with life. And I wrote until I had nothing left to say. It was cathartic. And now I think I'm ready for my life to be normal again.

I haven't had much time for outfit pictures (and the weather hasn't cooperated much anyway), but here's one from awhile back. These are the first outfit pictures taken with my new camera. It feels kind of silly taking outfit pictures with a professional camera, but it makes such a difference :)






Shirt- Forever 21, skirt- Fire Finch boutique (Nashville), sheer tights- ?, shoes- UO, bracelets- American Eagle, Sacred Accessories and H&M.

Half-Awake

Sometimes I just want to play dress-up...






Photographed by Steven Meisel, Vogue UK 1994 (via Paranaiv)

PS I'm not really here (or at least I shouldn't be). I have a huge paper due in a couple days and I've been procrastinating on it all quarter. I like late nights, though. I like being up after everyone's asleep--it's like having the world all to myself. But I really need to start sleeping more...

Stay Inside 'Til Somebody Finds Us

The weather has been really schizophrenic lately, which makes it a bit challenging to work in time to take outfit pictures. One minute, it will be cloudy and maybe even raining, as in these pictures...



And the next minute, the sun will come out and with it that gorgeous golden light that always occurs shortly before sunset. That's my favorite time of day by far.




(^I finally found nice floral tights! My life is complete.)
Shirt- thrifted, skirt- H&M, tights- Hue, shoes- Gap.

PS I went shopping today and bought a lovely new dress and some sparkly shoes that I've had my eye on for ages. It's ridiculous how happy this makes me.

An Education

I first heard about the new film An Education on Sally Jane Vintage and the moment I saw the stills, I knew I absolutely had to see it. So a few days ago, I did go to see it and I definitely was not disappointed. It was an aesthetic masterpiece, every shot perfectly planned out to catch the tiny details that made the set seem so utterly authentic for 1960s Britain. This is the sort of film that is so beautiful right down to the smallest detail that, when you leave the theater, you almost hate to return to the real world that is necessarily full of utilitarian, practical things that ruin the aesthetic. Is it wrong that when I got home I almost cried over all the ugly things in my house that I use everyday, but that just don't fit with my aesthetic? (Clearly, aesthetics matter to me way too much.) The costumes, moreover, were just stunning. They all looked so perfectly 60s without ever seeming dated. I've never had a particular affinity towards the 60s, but all of a sudden I can't get enough of 60s clothes and culture.

Obviously, being obsessed with aesthetics as you know I am, I was blown away by that aspect of the film, but the premise and storyline definitely appealed to me, too. Being approximately the same age as Jenny, the main character, I felt like I understood her completely. She starts the film as an extremely bright teenage girl headed for Oxford, but as the film progresses and she is lured away by the fun, fast-moving lifestyle of David, an older man, she begins to question the point of education. When it is pointed out to her that no one does anything worth doing without a degree, she responds that no one does anything worth doing with a degree. If, as she says, studying is hard and boring, and you're just studying to get a hard and boring job, what's the point? Since today most people seem to take for granted that they're going to have to study something they dislike in order to get a job doing something they dislike to have enough money to live comfortably, this is a question worth considering. And it is something I've been considering lately, especially since I still have no idea what I want to do after I graduate. I need to know the answer to this question--I need to know what the point of my education is so that I have the motivation to finish it. By the end of the film, Jenny finds her own personal answer to this question and I think in asking this question, eventually I will find mine.

Anyway, this isn't really a very accurate summary of the movie, since I only focused in on the things that interested me, but the point is that this is definitely a movie worth seeing. If my words weren't enough to convince you, here are some of the stills (courtesy of imdb):