Love love love this picture: the fairy lights, the avenging-angel look . . . everything.
Photo of comedian Laura Solon by Jake Walters for The Guardian
I was inspired by this and by a feature in this month's Digital SLR Photography magazine to do my own. Some of them just plain freak me out. These are self-portraits so I've technically just scared myself silly... Click on the image collage to view.
Aargh, I've really been neglecting this blog. I thought I'd make it an homage of all things purty but there are plenty of blogs out there doing that very thing and so much better than I could ever do it so... I'm going back to my roots (!) and posting my own photos on here ever so often. I have a backlog from the last three months including some more seaside-y pictures, but I've also been creating this website and holding a family photoshoot to raise some money for charity and for more equipment, and also to build up ye olde portfolio.
There aren't enough hours in the day for everything I'd like to do but I'm working on that.
...with my eyelashes all in curls I float as the clouds on air do I enjoy being a girl!
A little thought on "beauty". I know that even in the c90 years post-suffrage we're still flagging somewhat in embracing a more eclectic spectrum of beauty. Magazines (the ones with less integrity) are constantly citing female celebrities as 'hot', 'gorgeous' and beautiful -- and I sometimes wonder who set the standards these women have attained. This song from 1933, Keep Young and Beautiful, covered by Annie Lennox in 1992 (when you'd think we'd be more progressive, though let's hope it was covered with tongue firmly lodged in cheek) embodies all that is wrong about the perception of beauty: that only those deemed to be beautiful will ever be loved. And beauty by traditional standards does not embrace imperfections.
But every once in a while, no matter how we feel 80% of the time (and recently "dog-rough" has summed me up), the moment we invest a little me-time and embrace ourselves, we too can feel beautiful. Remember this Gap advert featuring Sarah Jessica Parker, from a few years ago?
I dunno about you but I think, much respect to SJP. This advert featuring the song 'I Enjoy Being a Girl' from The Flower Drum Song is fabulous; and she projects the kind of self belief that actually we could all do with every once in a while. (If you listen to the whole song you get the feeling it's all just a little bit sexist -- it was written in the 1950s -- but still quite sweet really!)
So in short: today I got my hair cut back into a bob. Admittedly a lot of the credit lies with my hairstylist but -- it looks cute, it really does. It's tidy, I have the fringe I wanted; and to celebrate I invested in some new makeup; just some mascara (Maybelline Falsies mascara) and lipgloss (can't remember the brand!) and some new jeans (Emporio de New Look) and feel, though temporarily, fabulous. So am now singing the verse above in my head just to pep myself up. :-)
Because even quirkesses with distinct noses deserve to feel gorgeous every so often.
(Of course I'm possibly one of the least photogenic folk I know so pictures of said hairdo on self are being vetted as we speak. Vain, moi? Non...)
Hmm, OK, I think maybe when I said I'd post about all the pretty things I'd come across, I should have added the words "darn kitsch" after "pretty". Having stumbled upon some truly beautiful blogs since I've been in the blogosphere, I know that what catches my eye is not necessarily pretty but sometimes a little weird and, yep, kitsch! Like this Official Souvenir Programme for... XANADU! Pretty darn kitsch indeed.
Not sure how I came by this but I suspect I picked it up at a film collectors' fair somewhere, back in the 1990s (when I still thought that Grease was the pinnacle of all possible films, and nobody could tell me otherwise). I watched Xanadu again the other day and was struck by how absolutely bad it is (to the point of being good, of course); how much of a vehicle it was for ONJ and how Gene Kelly, you know, Gene Kelly of On the Town and, yuhuh, Singin' in the Rain, got involved in this project! (One final ponderance -- Michael Beck? Where'd he go after he and his implausibly short shorts skated off into the sunset? ...Ah. "Diagnosis: Murder" and "Nash Bridges", according to my beloved oracle IMDB.)
I admit, I do love the film and I love the 'Whenever You're Away From Me' dance sequence in Danny's huge old house... Oh and the 1940s/80s fusion 'Dancin''.
And I'm now old enough to appreciate just how darn kitsch the whole thing really is!
. . . In the spirit of change, Amateur Eye will be shape-shifting in due course, and my photos will be migrating to a new blog until my photo website is ready to go live! Thanks for following, and big hugs and wishes for health and happiness in 2010!
Amateur Eye will become the home of links to pretty things I've seen in transit - photos, crafty bits, clothes, inspirations, that sort of thing!
