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The Quiet Moments

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Though life has been hectic, crazy and overwhelming like usual I am finding the quiet moments in life extremely rewarding. Sometimes I find them to be frustrating and getting so riled up that I want to jump out of my skin but lately it's been quite the opposite. Like when I wake up in the morning and the light is illuminating the fake flowers next to my bed in this ethereal way that makes the day seem like anything is possible. Or when I peak out my window after spending hours editing and re-editing to find the sky lite up like a ball of fire after a stormy day; a violent eruption of afternoon heat and evening breeze. Even that first sip of so black it makes you want to cringe your teeth coffee in the morning or chilled $3 cheap Merlot at night after a long day. All of these seemingly insignificant moments that don't really affect my life head on are the moments I find myself enjoying and appreciating the most.


 I'm writing a lot in my journal these days as well. Quotes, musings, initial reactions to amazing and horrid experiences, sketches and doodles. 
I've always written but it's been a long time that I've written to the extent that I find myself doing now in these quiescent moments. 



I find writing to be an extremely necessary activity in order for me to fully understand my reaction and understanding of things. Many of the worlds greatest artists were famous not only for their work but for their essays and musings on their perception of the world. Salvador Dali, Alfred Steiglitz, Man Ray and Duchamp were all constantly writing all the time. This was their only way of being able to conceptualize exactly what their art movements were truly about on a social, philosophical and technical level. I am currently reading essays on the topic of photography by all of these artists and have been so inspired by their understanding and interpretations of it as an art. More will be said on this topic on a later date but for now I wish for you all the take a moment out of your day to really appreciate those quiet moments. 



Too Soon To Talk Basel?

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Maybe for the rest of the world Basel is still a lifetime away but here in Miami, the hosting city of Art Basel, everyone is already talking non stop about what, when and how they are going to exhibit their work during one of the biggest events to come through during the year. Last week I spent a good amount of my time working as a model to shoot with the good willed, good humored and extremely talented photographer Ben Coppelman and stylist Mila Gonzalez for his showcase during Basel in December and I can not express how excited I am to see what the final results are going to be. Since it is still a bit too soon to start sharing the final edits of what are extremely well crafted fine art meets high fashion photos I wanted to give you all a little behind the scenes sneak peak. We shot half of it in studio and the other half at the Surf Club before they deconstruct the inside. Consider this your reminder that Basel is on it's way and we can't fucking wait. 


Makeup artist and graphic designer Arlene Delgado on bottom left. 

FIU Style Sightings

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Alex Spacagna and Barbara Lamothe
Grace Frawley, "Orson Welles served as the inspiration for my outfit today."
Hanna Hussein "I just like to style up my religious cover. I got this scarf from Egypt where I'm from."
Yasmin Alli "I just grabbed this dress and went from there."

Are Hipsters the New Dadaists?

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According to the PBS Idea Channel a hipster in today's modern practice of it is characterized as a person who takes bits and pieces from cultures and subcultures not of their own and wear it out of context or ironically. For example, people that wear suspenders that aren't actually wearing pants that require suspenders to be held up or something that we see even more commonly today, people who wear combat boots that are embellished with spikes and prints and patterns and frilly-ness to a point that they lose their original sole utilitarian purpose and are just as ridiculous as a $5,000 Chanel bag. 



Now why would I compare a hipster, someone that has gotten such a bad rep in today's society as a person who is purely invested in surface value and lives life ironically to a group of some of the most revolutionary artists of the 20th century? Let's go back and talk about exactly who the Dada's were. 

After WWI the entire world was shaken. Life was never going to be the same again and people were pissed, confused and scared. A group of artists living in Paris, some American's but mostly Europeans, were fed up with the Salon and the way the galleries constituted what was and was not art. So they cut things up and rearranged them back together to make disturbing and fractured photo collages that expressed a social conscious. They created performance art by going on stage in small coffee shops dressed in outrageous costumes and screaming curse words until enraged audiences forced them off stage. To most of the world the Dadaists were seen as a ridiculous and bizarre group of fringe artists but to modern artists they were revolutionary in their ideas of taking things out of context and forcing us to question what their purpose, place and meaning is in the world today.



Though the Dadaists were also affluent writers explaining and justifying their reasons and goals by taking things out of context I think that it could be argued that today's hipsters are the modern Dada-ists.


In the original use of the word a hipster is a person characterized by a particularly strong sense of alienation from most established social activities and relationships while today a hipster is a person engulfing themselves in social activities and relationships that they don't actually belong too. So in that case it can seen that partaking in hipster-ism is a retaliation to the massive amounts of consumerism and instant world wide visual communication. By taking pieces from cultures and subcultures and re-appropriating them into a completely different context that is purely visualy based with no philosophical or actual lifestyle reasoning behind it other than "it just looks cool" is like a tongue-in-cheek fuck you too the overwhelming visual culture that we are living today.



This is where it gets tricky. The reason that the Dadaists were considered a group of great artists rather than just a bunch of ludicrous werido's is because of their writings. They were intellectuals fully aware of how everything they were doing reinforced their philosophy of what modern art could and should be. It was meant to make the viewer confused and uncomfortable. By doing performances and creating art that made the upper echelons of society outraged they got their attention. Hipsters have definitely gotten the attention of people by outraging us with their seemingly blind but perhaps completely genius re-appropriation but does that make them practicing artists? That is a question I will leave you with to ponder on today but just for one more interesting fact, don't you find it funny that hipsters have taken on handle bar mustaches as their go to facial hair style and almost a hundred years ago Duchamp mocked classical art by drawing a handle bar mustache on the Mona Lisa? Maybe hipsters are smarter than we think.



Banksy

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For the past month in New York a revolution has been occurring by none other than the graffiti artist Banksy. His latest project, Better Out Than In, has him traveling all over the city unveiling one graffiti art piece a day. The response has been massive. According to Banksy's website police in New York have already stopped one of his art pieces being displayed and the New York Times refused to print an article he wrote criticizing the new One World Trade Center being built on Ground Zero. 


If you don't know anything about Banksy let me give you a brief background check. His identity is unknown other than he is a British born artist that made his name on the streets of Bristol with his signature satirical graffiti art with heavy social and political commentary starting in the 1980's. Other than that there is no photo confirming exactly who Banksy is and where he came from. It is rumored that he was born in 1974 and only one reporter has been allowed to meet him face to face but the description following about Banksy's identity is questionable. In 2010 Banksy released his first film, Exit Through The Gift Shop, and by January of 2011 it was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Film Documentary. 


Over the years Banksy has grown to be one of the most popular and highest priced artists in the art world and let's just say he is not too happy about it. Being an artist that made his name on the streets he is not very happy to see how bidders and gallery owners are literally cutting his pieces out of the wall to sell for the prestige of owning a Banksy original. Bringing us up to date with his newest project in New York that you can follow on his website or instagram. A few weeks ago Banksy opened a pop-up stall in Central Park selling original Banksy stencil works for only $60 a piece, a 10,000% discount. It was a one day thing and so few people actually believe that it was original Banksy that he ended up only selling 8 pieces to 3 people. These 3 lucky people are now the owners of Banksy's that are worth approximately $200,00 a piece. 


"Art’s market value, like that of fashion, is derived from name more than any material properties. The Chinese factory workers sewing Chanel handbags can make the same bags, after hours, but they’ll be low-rent knockoffs without the interlocking “C”s. The same goes for an assistant who painted, without the master’s imprimatur, Damien Hirst’s dots. The Brand does transubstantiation. It turns crackers into the flesh of Christ. But Banksy accomplished something else when he sold his canvases in Central Park. Like graffiti artists, artists who sell on the street have an antagonistic relationship with the law.... 

At a time when 1970's subway taggers are flown to Paris to mark up Louis Vuitton stores, Banksy is criticized for making money. 'When you go to an art gallery, you are simply a tourist looking at the trophy cabinet of a few millionaires,' he wrote. And he’s right. In the world of galleries, artistic success means prices that rise until an artist’s audience is just bankers and oligarchs. Art’s radical social ambitions chafe against its economic realities. A gallery artist is a Fabergé egg maker pretending to be a revolutionaryBanksy is a massively successful gallery artist. But, of all gallery artists, he’s one of the most skeptical. What some criticize as “spectacle” is really just refusing the model that ties exclusivity to success. Banksy might be selling rebellion. Still, with the profits, he’s able to rebel on a larger and more lacerating scale. Banksy takes the art world’s money, but he won’t buy its line."
 - Molly Crabapple for The Creative Time Reports on October 15, 2013

A fibreglass replica of Ronald McDonald having his shoes shined by a real live boy. The sculpture will visit the sidewalk outside a different McDonalds every lunchtime for the next week.
The Sirens of the Lambs. A slaughterhouse delivery truck touring the meatpacking district and then citywide for the next two weeks.

As a practicing artist that has many issues with the institute of the gallery already I am ecstatic to see Banksy out and about and making a statement. Yes, you could argue that he is a sell out that is still making millions of dollars off of his art (he is estimated to be worth $20 million dollars) but at the same time it could be argued that he would never have been able to get the attention that he is now unless he had done that. It's a case of do the ends justify the means? In this case I would say yes. He has created the tongue-in-cheek organization Pest Control to be the representing force behind authenticating his art and by doing so he refuses to authenticate any of his art, leaving buyers with no way to prove that they own original Banksys'. That is only one of the many statements he is making about the state of fine art today. By putting him the gallery he has been put on a pedistool that he never asked to be put on and now he is using his fame to say fuck you to the art world and start a real revolution. 


There's one story that I read about how in LA Banksy graffitied a caption of "This looks like an elephant" on the side of what he thought was an abandoned water tank. Within days two media monguls bought up the water tank and were going to sell it off to the highest bidders. It turned out that there had been a homeless man living in the water tank for 7 years and suddenly just lost his home because Banksy decided to spray paint on it. When Banksy heard about the homeless man he immediately bought the man an apartment and gave him enough money to live off of for a year. If that isn't enough he refused to authenticate that he was the one who spray painted on the water tank and now instead of it being profited for millions of dollars it is sitting in a metal scrap lot. That story and so many others along with this pro-active Better Out Than It project has lite a fire inside of me that has given me so much hope for the future of the art world. I am a very firm believer that art should be democratized and accessible to everyone, thus my extreme attraction to art of the body through clothing. We shouldn't look to the gallery, critics and labels to tell us what to like and how to feel and Banksy clearly feels the same way and is streaming it online for all the world to hear. 

Completely Ridiculous

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"I think Halloween gives people the permission to be who they really want to be."
- Lessons from American Horror Story last night

This year for Halloween I've decided to be exactly who I really want to be, completely ridiculous. You can't take yourself so seriously all the time. 
Happy Halloween! 

Rust & Stardust

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You may remember a few weeks ago when I teased all of you with a behind the scenes preview of a very surreal collaboration I did with the incredibly talented Kayla Carcone, if not you can check it out here. Well the time has finally come where I can debut the photos and the extraordinary news that this beauty story has been featured in Quiescent Magazines Neon Issue (page 34 if you were wondering)! This is my first editorial to ever be published in a print magazine and I must say that I am quite fucking ecstatic, especially considering the amount of time and energy Kayla and I both put into this rather spontaneous and ethereal story. Not all of the photos were featured in Quiescent so below you will find some of the outtakes that didn't make the cut. And a special thank you again to Kayla for being so patient, responsive and so talented that it really blows my mind that she isn't jet setting around the world yet, I could never have done this without you. 


FIU Style Sightings

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David Johnson "I just wanted to be spontaneous."
Jerica Coachman "All of this was already out and I just put it together."

E.J. McGorgy "I work on a farm and so I was wearing really trashy clothes and wanted to go in the polar opposite."
Marquez Monroe "I had a project to do so I'm not usually this fresh."

Rachel Stevens "I'm gonna do yoga today."
Halloween Feature:

Jason Howard
Joyce Ruiz and Laura Prez-Arias 
Kassandra Leniv "Hipster re-couth for Final Fantasy XII"
The Gallery Girls
Bianca Garcia "This is my original design: a Victorian inspired demon."
Joshua Apiseorf "The Phantom of The Opera is my favorite play."

Is Fashion Deep?

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Sometime's I find it depressingly difficult to have a serious conversation with someone about clothing or fashion without it revolving around superficiality. I understand that not everyone is into fashion to the extent that I may be, or better yet clothing, but it always surprises me when I approach people about the subject beyond the actual material used to make it and they seem shocked and confused. I guess what I'm really trying to say is that I feel like not enough people are embracing the art of dress because they don't think of it as an art but rather a way to stay "up to date" and nothing more. I try to use this space as a way to embrace the depth in fashion but sometimes I feel like I am constantly trying to break down this barrier where people can't see beyond the exterior. But I also get frustrated at people that look down on fashion movements because they only have their exterior and then stand up on their pedistool's and say that this is frivolous and there couldn't possibly be anything deeper going on when in fact the materialistic movement could be the subconscious act of making a statement, which I guess is what my shit is really all about, making a statement through clothing. The collage below was made in response to all of these thoughts and from my most recent approach to getting dressed. 


The idea of Dada-ist's and fashion first popped in my mind a few weeks ago when I began to notice how the way that I was choosing clothing was similar to the way that I collage (which always brings me back to the Dada's). I would pick random pieces that at first glance wouldn't be put together and then I would try to create an elegant poem or aggressive fracturing with them depending on the day and mood. The moment that I started to approach layering clothes with collage-ing my interest peaked and since then my outfits are geared towards mixing patterns, clashing jewelry, strange shapes; an organized chaos one might say. I love the idea of mixing things that don't belong together and creating a new message with it. Like jogging suits and stilettos with excessive jewelry (think J-Lo early 2000). The clash can be exciting and strange and make you stop too think twice, something that I have personally always attributed to the Dada-ist's collage's. I take things from different era's, different cultures and pair them in ways that are used to express my interests and create my identity (i.e. the new message) but essentially they are all worn ironically because I come from neither the era nor the culture. 

As I have laid claim many a times my outfits are my means of expression and thus my art so when it was brought up that my discussion of modern hipsters was being purely superficial I completely agree. It was purely superficial because 1) they have no doctrine or social platform that they stand on so there is no way to analyze them through that context and 2) if I am posting on here daily stating that the way that we dress may be superficial but has deeper meaning to it than isn't it my job to be trying to find the deeper meaning in these superficial groups? Can fashion be deep or is it really all just face value and vacant underneath? Since I am looking at this argument subjectively I'm going to have to say that there is more to it than face value. There is psychology, the expression of the subconscious, sociology, history, religion, socio-economics, racial divides, fetishism's, rebellion and the list only goes on. Sometimes I wonder though and when I have to argue my case and only have my own relationship and understanding of clothing to prove my point I am forced to dig deep and re-analyze the situation and damn, sometimes it's really hard to not be subjective. 

I'm Not From Around Here

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If you follow me on instagram you are already well aware that I recently got together with Alaska from Jacked Fashion and ended up collaborating on a very interesting photo shoot together that involved lots of day drinking from jugs of wine, 90's throw back music and of course polaroids. There was no plan, no organizing, just pure and genuine fun. This was my first time actually getting to hang out with Alaska in a non pre-planned work situation and I could not be more grateful for her welcoming me into her home and filling my life with so much joy and inspiration. I was already inspired by this girl as you may know after my interview with her but after this experience there are no words for my feelings towards her. Instead of being the photographer as I usually am I let Alaska take the rings as I got to play dress up in her overflowing closet and dance the day away. This series is very different than anything else I've ever done before and I really like it for those exact reasons. It's not posh, it's not high production and perfect skin or even perfect lighting. It's just really fucking honest and personal, both qualities that are at the core of Jacked Fashion. With all that said I present a very psychedelic and completely Jacked editorial, Im noT frOm ARouNd hEre

What Is Our Youth's Subculture?

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After briefly mentioning the feedback that I got on my comparison of hipsters to the Dada-ist's post last week I wanted to dig into the topic a big deeper today. My comparison was called superficial and in no way am I denying that it wasn't. As I tried to make clear in my original post there is no way that I can ever compare hipsters and dada's on a non-superficial level because hipsters aren't an embraced subculture. It is something that people mock and consider an insult yet hasn't stopped the "movement" any less.  Hipsters in today's notion of the word are people that are purely superficial and have no social platform that they stand on and in my discussion of them I was attempting to forge a hypothetical social platform for them that was biased and purely based off of my own observations. My goal in trying to compare the two groups was simply to spark a conversation and consider what is going on with the subcultures in our generation which got me thinking even more so about what exactly isgoing on with the subcultures in our generation?



Every generation for the past hundred years has had their distinct subcultures that were based off of socioeconomic, political, social, and/or racial divides. They started with platforms that sparked rebellion and resulted in drastic styles or even uniforms that people of these groups would wear to make it clear to everyone what they stood for. Today it is hard to say what our youth's subculture would be. There are of course the remnants of subcultures of generations past and then there are hipsters whether you would like to admit it or not. We also have scene kids or now more like raver/PLUR children and sea punk.



I've made my claim for what I think hypothetically hipsters could be standing for even though they don't even know it themselves. Blind art one might say. Then we have sea punk, a subgenre of music, fashion and design that was started by Coral Records as a way to promote a new genre of techno and hip-hop and quickly was taken over by a group of social media enthusiasts and has spread through the internet. Images featuring neon flashing colors and rotating geometric shapes floating above oceans of brilliant blue or green water flood Tumblr pages as they are tagged with a #seapunk hashtag. In the fashion world seapunk has influenced rap artist Azealia Banks with her neon colored hair, iridescent clothing, aggressive attitude and Tumblr inspired music videos. To say the least seapunk has made a name for itself superficially as a subculture but their social platforms seem to be hazy if at all existent. Literally they are a nautical themed punk that creates itself and spreads through the internet almost as a response to massive globalization. 

Azaelia Banks 'Atlantais' music video screen shot

Does this mean that our youth is missing a subculture that actually stands for anything beyond superficial values? Are we so caught up with consumerism, looks and frivolous lifestyles that we have forgotten to stop and ask ourselves what does this all mean? Am I doing something I'm really going to be proud of 10 years from now? And if we realize that there may not be anything deeper happening with our generations subculture on paper is it so wrong to try and analyze their superficial values and give it weight and meaning?


Nu Goth

It could be argued that it is only by analyzing the superficial language of dress that one may arrive at certain conclusions regarding both singular and group identities. Ignoring the surface would leave us with no hints as to the cultural and psychological significance of a sign system which is by definition superficial and whose depth lies precisely on the surface.


That may be hard to accept when we see groups wearing clothing ironically without any second thought to the relationship between their identity and their dress but I am a firm believer that clothing can speak beyond it's material existence and that what we wear can say much more about us than many people care to consider as a serious observation. Though it upsets me greatly to feel like our generation is missing a subculture that has platforms beyond visual aesthetic perhaps it is our fault to chastise them for being ignorant and shallow and not trying to see the deeper significance they may be expressing about what is going on in our generation.

FIU Style Sightings

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Anthony Mediavilla "Usually for me the way I decide by picking an item and working from there. Today was the denim jacket."
Laura Ruiz "Inspired by Little Red Riding Hood."
Terrika Faison "It was the first thing I saw."
Eve Desorme "Honestly I haven't worn a dress in a long time and today I felt like wearing a hat and wanted to make it a little girly."

Destryoing the Audience

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"The audience destroys the artist until the artist destroys the audience." 
- The Stranger




I hate that I care what other people think and I hate that there is a fear inside of me and all I want to do is burn it until all that I am left with is nothing but conviction and fearlessness. If I could have it my way every day I would wear bright red lipstick only in the center of my lips. My hair would be styled in alien buns and it would be totally acceptable to have sequins be mandatory on all jogging pants or at least highly recommended. But sadly I don't always get to have it my way and as much as I like to believe I can get away with anything if I just have enough confidence I don't feel that way a lot of the time. I have taken on a lot of anxiety over the years being judged on my art work, on my work as a model, and just walking around in my normal attire. 



I came across the quote above a few months ago and have used it as a sort of mantra, chanting it over and over again in my head whenever I feel a lack of confidence, especially with my art work. This weekend was the graduating BFA gallery show with all of my thesis peers and it was such an incredible and relieving experience. I decided to let it all loose that day and dress in the way that I do when I play dress-up in my room: an over-sized gold sequin dress, tuxedo tail jacket, Lolita heels, a heart on my lips and baby's breath wrapped around alien buns. I finally truly felt the meaning of that quote and am able to breath easy realizing that even though I may always care what people think I can never let it stop me from doing what I really want. People will destroy me until I decide to stand up, stop giving a shit and just do it.  


FIU Style Sightings: Interview

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In my year and half of photographing students on campus Anthropology major Keysel Pelaez has easily been my most photographed subject. I first met Keysel when I was saw him walking in front of the Green Library wearing a vintage Koolaid blue shirt and red plaid wool bell bottoms with leather Chukka boots. Even if I hadn’t of noticed his outfit his massive afro is impossible to miss, almost taking on a personality of its own.  Since then every time I run into him he has never not had on an almost fully thrifted outfit that always seems to take on a dandy 70s vibe. Recently I got the chance to actually sit down with the famous style star of the FIU campus and dig deeper into understanding his unique style and personality.


You are very well recognized on campus for your style. Do you get approached often about this or do you feel that people are afraid to talk to you?
I’m often approached about it and I really enjoy it because it really works as an ice-breaker. Even the people that approach me negatively, like I’ve been told I’m weird and I enjoy that too because it’s still an icebreaker and I like embracing the negative and the positive because that is how this world works.
The first thing someone see’s is what you present on the outside and that is why I’m so invested in my appearance. My value system values presentation.


I don’t think I’ve ever seen you around without at least one piece of thrifted clothing on. What got you interested in vintage clothing?
A sort of respect for the old. The fact that I’ve always been into history has a lot to do with it and that I think we can learn from our past and fashion is not different from that. We always build on ideas and fashion does the same thing.
I got really into it by reading. Author Evelyn Wha definitely has influenced me and he had this sort of Oxford England 1920s fashion thing going on that I love. Oh, and German literature, I’ve always enjoyed the Empirical fashion. There are things you can take from that, the feeling, the attitude. It’s the sense of looking good all the time, dandyism. They all had their presentation and I try to maintain good material in my clothing like cool pants, leather shoes. I don’t like mass produced cookie-cutter fashion, I don’t want to look mass produced. And that even goes into my car, a 1972 Beatle. Essentially I want to be simple, trying without trying.


Do you believe there is such a thing as good taste and bad taste?
I think everything has its place. How you go about it is a question of tact and I think there are things that can be tact-less.
Do you have a favorite art movement?
Art Nouveau because it’s about the natural touch of embellishment and extravagant movement that heightens Epicureanism, going ahead and redeeming it with natural qualities is really beautiful to me. Like humanity and nature can exist together and still have fun.


If you could live anywhere at any time where and when would it be?
The Himalayas because it has changed so little in the time that it’s been. I’ve always enjoyed the Buddhist value system and sometimes I need to get away from it all and I feel like the Himalayans are a place I could live forever.

What do you think the difference is between fashion and style?
Fashion would be more like the specific clothing that there is and style is how you put it together. I think everyone has style because it is just about where their values are placed.
Do you think style is an art?
Yes, definitely. Anything that is touched by human hands is an art.

FIU Style Sightings

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Christini Jenkins "I take outfit of the day pictures so I've seen a lot of denim on denim lately and @stylepantry particularly inspired this outfit."
Jose Villar "Today was just kind of breezy so I chose a kind of breezy outfit."
Ebony Dunstan "We had a theater project and I wasn't in it so I just wore all black."
Dyah Owens "I didn't want to do my hair so I grabbed the hat and worked from there."
Anastasia Forte "These were clean so I just pulled them out."
Lisbet Barrientos "I was in a play and had to pick something that would work so I could change fast."
Jonathan Solis "Nostalgia. I used to wear this a lot in Gainesville and I really like that academic look."

Photographing an Emotion {Conviction}

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Photographs can not show emotion. 

Emotions are invisible, they are a feeling. A photograph can only show the manifestation of what we imply is an emotion. Dress can show a manifestation of the unconscious but can not actually show the unconscious because it is also invisible. So to try and create a photo that displays an emotion that incorporates the manifestation of the unconscious through dress is that a paradox? Is there a possible truth in all of this disillusion and surreal-ness? 



As an artist I would say yes but it's really the viewer who determines the meaning or lack of meaning in things like a photo. There is no conclusive statement to this musing, just an open ended thought that I find myself pondering from time to time. I often describe my layered work as trying to photograph an emotion yet I wonder what that even means. You can't cook an emotion, you can't paint an emotion, you can't sculpt an emotion but you can do all of these things attempting to invoke in the viewer an emotion. 



I wanted to put myself to a test to see if I could capture a photo that expresses conviction, a word that I hold very close to my heart. Every time I'm on a photo shoot as a model or taking photos that really excite me or just going out and doing something that I feel is getting me closer to my dreams I find myself constantly repeating this word over and over again in my head. I don't know why, no one has ever used that word to describe me and I've never really found myself saying it in day-to-day conversation yet it has somehow found me and I feel like there must be something important about that. For me I always relate the word to the idea that through anguish, pain, struggle and a lot of fucking hard work you still stay strong and true to your beliefs and keep fighting every damn day. 


I have been feeling a lot of conviction these days as I am getting closer and closer to finally moving to New York and after I was recently approached by a fan that seemed to dearly love this blog and on top of all of that I was also selected last week for a juried gallery show at the Frost Art Museum by David Castillo, a very prominent curator in Miami and New York. To say the least conviction is something that I am feeling very strongly these days and, well, like I said I wanted to try and express that in these photos. Maybe photograph's can't show an emotion but they can certainly make you feel. 


Instantaneous Photography

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For the past few weeks I have been stressing the fuck over having to write a 20 page art history thesis paper and then give a 15 minute presentation on it in my most intimidating class, Methodology. As a result I have put the blog on the back burner and have felt terribly guilty about it but simply am clearly not able to balance coming up with interesting topics for the blog and give the focus I need to give to doing research for this paper. I finally gave my presentation earlier this week and killed it turning a 15 minute presentation into a 25 minute one (you might say I was overcompensating for having waited until the week before to actually put in the work). My point is to apologize to any readers that have felt my lack of presence here lately and to lead into the topic of today and also the topic of my research paper and title of this post since that is all I can really think about until I turn in the official thesis after Thanksgiving. 

Henri Cartier-Bresson

What is instantaneous photography?

There are no manifestos or journals devoted to it, just an unorganized group of people who had no unifying political or social agenda, were not featured in exhibitions as a group or even had a catchy name. The instantaneous photography movement was founded and orchestrated by a loosely affiliated community of like-minded people. It might be described as a vernacular movement – a grassroots upheaval, organized around a singular wish: to freeze motion in time.

With many people writing and pondering on what exactly represented instantaneous photography the precise meaning of the term remained ambiguous throughout the 19th century. Did it mean merely spontaneity and freshness in appearance, a naturalism that conveyed a genuine impression of subjects captured in real time? Or did it mean pushing the very boundaries of human vision, recording information the eye could not see without assistance and as a result changing the way that we saw the world?

Henri Cartier-Bresson

In modern eyes instantaneous photos from the 19th century look modest and this is due to the enormous improvements in technology since then. In the 21st century photographs of action are common and expectations about what can be successfully depicted have changed accordingly. In the 19th century instantaneity was not always identified with activities that are obvious or occur very quickly. Instead it was used to mean that the nuances of a scene had been captured without looking blurry or stilted. It wasn't until the launch of the Kodak camera in 1888 that the term implied spontaneous execution, capturing things as they actually looked at a particular moment in time.

In the book Burning with Desire, the photo-historian Geoffrey Batchen notes that the act of making a photograph is inherently temporal in nature. Though painting and sketching can attempt to capture the temporary photography offers an experience unlike any other media. In a painting the surface itself, composed of an elaborate structure of marks and brush strokes, reminds the viewer of the time needed to make it. In other words, the painting is an artifact of an artist’s efforts to convey meaning. By contrast Batchen argues photographs direct attention to the temporal qualities of the subject. They represent a set of objects in fixed spatial relations at a given moment in real time. Accordingly, a photograph may be thought of as an artifact not of the act of creating a picture, but of time passing in the scene depicted. From painting to photography there is a shift in meaning and suggests that ephemerality, transience, and flux were among the subjects of photography’. In this belief Eadweard Muybridge (below) becomes a very important figure as his successful photographs of actions that could not be seen with the naked eye mark a climactic parting of the ways between photography and the traditional arts.

Eadweard Muybridge's sequential action photograph's

After Muybridge published his sequential photographs in the 1870s eventually the new standard of photographic evidence was accepted as correct. A new visual language formed based not on what was customary and agreed upon, but on what photography showed to be true.

In William de Wiselevile’s book Instantaneous Photography he asserted that the peculiarities of this photography could form the basis for a new type of beauty. “It must not be considered for a moment that an instan photograph gives of necessity the idea of motion. As a matter of fact, it is often grotesque, and conveys the idea that figures are posed in attitudes in which they are never seen, and it is their very grotesqueness that often makes them the most interesting….” Henri de la Blanchere takes this argument further pointing out “Photographs taken instantaneously…posses certain advantages peculiarly to themselves. By such picture the crowded streets and other busy haunts of men are brought home to our minds with a force which enables us to realize the original in a way we could not otherwise do.”

 One must remember that there wasn't yet in photography a trend corresponding to the dynamic iconography that would eventually develop around the dry-plate process. Engraved illustrations reproduced in journals, plays, or novels had for a long time presented a repertoire of people who ran or dove, speeding trains or horses at a gallop…all at a time when the universe described by photography still appeared as a calm and meaningless world.  According to Gunthert, it was Muybridges images of movement, paraded before the public as scientific documents, that started the revolution. 

Jacques Henri Lartigue

Jacques Henri Lartigue began photographing when he was 6 years old but he would complain that he could not take action pictures of the games he played with his brothers and friend. The next Christmas he got a Block-Notes camera and he quickly began to photograph the activities and antics of his family and friends. In 1908 when airplanes began to appear in an array of designs Lartigue would go to the airfield and photograph the first aircraft with the most vivid and accurate record in existence of the birth of flight. Photography to him was entirely personal, done simply for his own satisfaction and delight and it wasn’t until 1963 that his photos were exhibited and published and hailed as prophetic of the vision of a Brassai or a Cartier-Bresson.


The effect of speed in the photograph above by Lartigue, Grand Prix of the Automobile Club of France in 1912, is heightened by the imaging of the wheel as eliptical, rather than circular, and the apparent leaning of the specators as if blown off balance by the air surge of the rushing automotible. The wheel is eliptical because Lartigue’s camera was fitted with a focal plane shutter. This resembled a spring-operated roller window shade. Lartigue panned the camera as the car passed by to keep it in focus and everything else blurred. The subject matter of this photo: speed, motion, dynamism, sports and spectators are things that were gradually becoming modern iconography of the 19th century.

Serious amateurs like Lartigue, supplied with dry plates by the 1890s, nurtured the seeds of an iconographic revolution through the widespread production of instantaneous photographs; by opening up photography to a broad range of animated subjects, they created a new visual code. And as modernity, speed, and technology became increasingly recognized as flash points for a distinct aesthetic iconography, the impulse to discover modernity through the accidental was consciously pursued. Gunthert concludes: ‘Much more than a representation of movement—a task strictly impossible for the still image—the instantaneous photograph established a repertoire of surprise and accident, which lasted through to the debut of the twentieth century, and on into photojournalism and New Vision photography as well.”

Jacques Henri Lartigue
Martin Munkacsi

The image above taken in 1929 and published in 1931 in the magazine Photographies Martin Munkacsi summed up his philosophy in the following words “To see in a thousandth of a second what indifferent people come close to without noticing—that is the principle of photographic reportage. And in the thousandth of a second that follows, to take the photo of what one has seen—that is the practical side of reportage.”The image has a sense of composition in the interplay between the figures, the masses of sand, the lines formed by the foam, and the movement, youth, energy and speed of the boys. It was life.

This image inspired Henri Cartier-Bresson, one of the most famous photographers of all time, more than any other image and lead him into a career in photography. He expressed his debt to this image as such “I suddenly understood that photography can fix eternity in a moment. It is the only photo that influenced me. There is such intensity in this image, such spontaneity, such joie de vivre, such miraculousness, that even today it still bowls me over. The perfection of form, the sense of life, a thrill you can’t match…I said to myself: Good Lord, one can do that with a  camera…I felt it like a kick up the backside: go on have a go!”

He was a true representative of modernism. Movement and diagonals—the vibrant rhythm of modern big-city life, the hectic hustle and bustles of a technology obsessed machine age, impart themselves directly to his photographs and sparking enthusiasm in the viewer. The diagonal was his tried-and-tested means of creating that quasi-flimic impression that can only be evoked in the imagination of the viewer because it gives the static image access to the moment of passing time. But it is also an expression of fracture and change. Munkacsi’s photos are overflowing with tension and vitality.

Martin Munkacsi for Harper's Bazaar on the left, Diana Vreeland on the right

I have already done a post dedicated to Martin Munkacsi and the image above on the left before that you can read here, but if you didn't catch it here is a brief over-view: In this image by Munkasci taken for Harper’s Bazaar captured the essence of the sporty, open-minded American girl whom a generation of young women, influenced by the strong minded movie stars like Katharine Hepburn and Jean Harlow, felt connected to. This image conveyed an electrifying surge of impulsiveness and informality uncommon in fashion photography at the time. It's as though at any moment the girl might run out of the picture and into the reality of our own lives. Until this photo was published fashion had been a staged affair, using mannequin-like models in a musty studio. Here, on the models face, her chin stretched resolutely forward, was a genuine, breathless grin, matched in ebullience by the triumphant billowing of the cape behind her. 

What was so radically new was the remarkable impression of a movement in progress, the electrifying flow of spontaneity and informality created by the casually running model, underscoring the dynamic elements. You can still see the effect this photo had on fashion photography today. People want to see models out in real locations, in action, living their lives to the fullest and designers want to see the people wearing their clothes living their life. It is a win-win situation. It's no wonder bloggers have become such major game players in the industry recently dedicating their entire aesthetic to living life in beautiful clothing. Below is a collage I made from a collection of brand campaigns and editorials that show the still continuing effects of instantaneous photography and the modern iconography it created: motion, dynamism, speed and spontaneity. Sorry if this has been a bit over-winded but now you all know where my mind is at these days.


A Moment of Appreciation

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Instead of doing the usual FIU Style Sightings post today I thought instead I would give a moment of appreciation to street style from places other than the FIU campus (it had absolutely nothing to do with the fact that I was lazy and took no photos this week). From my favorite street style blogs: The Sartorialist, Le 21-eme, Jak & Jil and Style Bubble I picked out some of my favorite looks and broke them down for you if you care to read and if not then enjoy the photos and happy Friday!


First of all any girl that is willing to go through the process of getting their hair dyed that vibrant color of blue is cool in my book, you really don't understand the trials and tribulations one sometimes has to go through to get to that point. Not to mention she has it cut in the most beautiful of pixie cuts and has an overall dope-ness of blue going on. And these shoes! Their clunky-ness reminds me of a modified Dutch wooden clog which I don't usually like but she is making me change my mind. Overall she is beautiful and I need her in my life to coordinate my blue's as well as she did. 

Below we have yet another girl I need in my life so she can also feed me in the street and hopefully share that coffee with me. Also where can I get an artist cape like that for myself?  Or maybe I can just make one; DIY would probably be suggested by an artist or to steal a hospital gown from an unsuspecting victim. Just kidding, don't steal hospital gowns unless you have a ridiculously good opportunity to do so. 


Then we have my recent/not so recent overall/jumper obsession. The photo above has been haunting my mind for weeks, possibly months now. The jumper fits her so perfectly without actually fitting her it's incredible. And then her accessories are so on point. Pastel purse, thin Roman sandals and this gorgeous wild card scarf. I'm beyond obsessed. I sometimes actually think I already somewhere hidden in the depths of my closets and am disappointed every time I come out with just a red pair of overalls. Below some more dungaree examples for guys and girls that I find to be exquisitely under-rated. Maybe it's just the lighting but I'm pretty sure it's the dungarees. 


The most amazing overall-tennis shoe combination I've seen to date. Need I say more?


Of course I'm not going to leave out a good tattoo street style shot. Ever since the men's Haider Ackermann show where all the male models were covered in tattoo's I have been DYING to get my first tattoo. It's just a matter of time people, I'm tellin' ya. I really love how the tattoos can seem so delicate when paired with a demure sweater like the gray one the girl above is wearing yet she juxtaposes it with a harsh multi-colored fur purse. But when it comes to layering no one can beat my girl Susie Bubble. She will forever have my sartorial heart and soul, is it really any wonder when she looks so damn cute like below? Rhetorical question, she always looks cute and is awesome. Case closed, weekend begin.

I Hate The Word Artsy

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There is something about the word artsy that really pisses me off. It's like when I'm called artsy it's similar to calling someone who is just trying to dress uniquely and unconventionally a hipster. It's a fucking slap in the face and I'm tired of people using that word to describe anything that isn't stale and commercial. Don't get me wrong, there is plenty of beautiful artistic commercial work but a lot of the times it's bland, spoon fed, un-intersting and superficial. When people call me or my work artsy I'm not quite sure what they mean. If it is supposed to be a compliment or a veiled way of saying weird and strange. I feel like there are a lot of people out there who use the word to describe things they don't understand. Like God or energy or math. I also feel like there are people who use the word to give depth to something that doesn't have it. Like captioning a photo with "Oh I was feeling artsy today." What the fuck does that even mean? Were you feeling creative, inspired, in tune with the world around you, idiosyncratic and individualistic? Or were you just wearing a lot of colors like a peacock or maybe just all black like the Existentialist movement? Perhaps it's just a case of I know it when I see it but to me artsy is like making a "type" of artists. There are so many different and varying kinds of artists and art out there so to call something artsy in my opinion is diminishing what art is and the people who make it. Really I just wanted to vent about my feelings towards the word artsy. Does anyone else think there is something fucked up with the word artsy or am I all alone on this one?

Re-think Donating Clothes This Season

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Around this time of year most people (in America as I can't speak for any other country) usually start to gather the clothes that they haven't worn much of in the past year or so and put them in a pile that will find it's way to another pile for Goodwill, Salvation Army, church donations and other charitable organizations. This is a wonderful and gracious act as there are too many boys and girls out there that don't have the clothes that they need during the winter seasons and the act of donating clothes has become ridiculously easy over the years. I myself have donated many bags of clothes in my short lifetime and have surely brought in other people's donated clothes into my own home when I go thrift shopping. Any how my point today is not to pat ourselves on the back and talk about how great we are for donating clothes but about how this might actually be a bad thing. 

I recently read an article on the Business of Fashion entitled The Trouble with Second Hand Clotheswhere they go on to explain that contrary to its innocent image, the second-hand clothing industry is dominated by “hidden professionalism" where the majority of donated clothing is sold to second-hand clothing merchants, who sort garments, then bundle them in bales for resale, usually outside the country in which the clothing was originally donated.

"The second-hand clothing market has a negative impact in donor markets, as well. Consumers in the global North throw away vast quantities of clothing every year. In the UK, for example, people dump 1.4 million tonnes of clothing into landfills, annually. To combat dumping, charities and local governments have increasingly instituted clothing recycling programs. But, ultimately, recycling tackles the symptom not the cause — and gives consumers a false sense of security that the rate at which they are consuming and disposing of clothing is at all sustainable.

The truth is, “fast fashion” is a deeply unsustainable model. And by emphasizing recycling rather than tackling the root cause of why people continue to buy and dispose of larger and larger quantities of lighter, thinner and less well-made clothing, consumers are reassured that they can continue shopping as normal."
“There is now this notion that fashion is just a commodity, and that we are just consumers,” laments Dilys Williams, director of the Centre for Sustainable Fashion at the London College of Fashion. “It doesn’t do justice to us or to fashion. Fashion should be about cherishing clothes and creating an identity, [but today it's] based on constant adrenalin and the excitement of purchasing. There is no anticipation or dreaming. Nothing lasts or is looked after. We each have a mini-landfill in our closets.”

Strong words that are very much needed in today's society. Our shopping habits have gotten so out of whack and that is probably why it disturbs me a little when I follow fashion bloggers and all they have to talk about is what they bought recently and not about how that relates to creating their identity. It's not about how they are living life in these new clothes but about just the clothes and nothing more. Remember that saying "You wear the dress, don't let the dress wear you." Well we are all being worn by fashion and it's time to stop this ridiculous and destructive cycle. So think twice this year before you go and donate those 2 trash bags of clothes you no longer want or wear and then spend several hundred dollars on Black Friday and Cyber Monday sales because it's too cheap to pass up, right? There's a reason it's cheap, remember that. 
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