3 Reasons Why I Was Not Called Upon To Cover Fashion Week This Year (Santa Marta and The Cupids)

...because i'm always drawn to faces that i could look at for years, and not tire of...

*irrelevant question that possibly touches on what i'm getting at:* would you rather be lyle lovett married to julia roberts or julia roberts married to lyle lovett? obviously that is neither here nor there, just sayin'...

in regards to the two frames i have of this threesome: note that both twins have their heads cocked to the right and are looking at the camera. in the other frame, both girls are completely rigid, heads straight...gazing elsewhere.

The Pose: She Knows It

Grammercy district schoolgirl. Has read and studied many magazines. Me too but I never thought I was that cute. The squiggly lines on the print are due to "reticulation..." i.e., the assistant who helped me in the darkroom plunged my fresh roll of film into 101 degree water, as opposed to 68 degrees...so imagine you're in a hot tub in tahoe, maybe there are some honeys around, maybe you're feeling steamy...then maybe one of them dares you to jump into the snow 'for fun' or something...and you do...the shock of the freezing snow would reticulate you, too...

Dientes: LOSAIDA

...en una puertica por el barrio LES aka Losaida. I'm feeling groovy about this black and white thing. After a few weeks of school, and sensing that my "digital workflow" must and will be up to par (we are grateful/optimistic about this, too) I found the revisiting of la tierra blanco y negro a necessary trip. Grain, that beautiful, innocent foil to the dog(ma) of digital, is a glorious thing. If I had the time to produce work in b/w, develop, scan negatives, and print work-prints for my classes, I might choose to do just that... And it's not even like my digital jpgs are all perfect, and free of scratch, by the way, not even close...ironically, from what I've seen throughout this orientation-week project, the assistant teachers/graduates, prefer imperfect/blur/fuzz/hip-shots over crisp, clear, well-composed, well-lit images...i wonder about the happy medium.

Una Muñeca para Katie Woode Goode

PRECIOSA...This young girl's hands are held in a way that many children unknowingly hold them...slightly awkward, moving, and open, as if she were right-handed, but had to brush her teeth or comb her hair with her left...i don't know...like the body's equivalent to the tongue-out during intense moments of concentration (drawing, writing, test-taking). This young one was with her sister and her father, and was scared of heights. There is everything to love about her stance, expression, hair, etc...Her doll-like intensity seems common in children staring at cameras, but also very innocent, and vulnerable...I suppose that's a given...

The Natural

I have never taken a foto of anyone less aware of the camera. She is relaxed, thinking about lo que sea, comfortably posed as people swirl past her. Mmmmmm... Either that, or she is a fantastic actress...a natural, really.

GOSSIP Queens, 16th Street

I have no idea what they were talking about, but they were kind enough to let me take their foto. It felt like they went back to AT LEAST Jr. High...the way they cozied up to each other and finished each others' sentences, glances, gestures, etc...The one in the middle was Prom Queen her junior year of high school, and the two on either end are cousins...transplants from Jersey. That's all I was able to glean from the conversation...I don't understand heavily Dominican accented Spanish.

Pájaro / Ájaro

On a Sunday morning a few months ago I set out on one of my usual solo-missions. On the corner above the laundromat, I passed the birds, calmly perching and chirping (that is what they do, right?) along the clothes line that make up the electrical decor of 25th Street.

I was moved to look up the instant in which a set of powerful hands from above grabbed the cloud off the wires and shook it free of birds. The sound of a hundred or so wings dispersing at once without song is unlike any you could make with just the air as instrument...

Legend has it this was my first word.

yeow