time magazine: class pictures

i am mesmerized and moved by this collection of formal photographs of american teens by photographer dawoud bey, which are part of his new book, class pictures (featured on the time magazine website). bey shot and interviewed the diverse group of high schoolers over the course of 15 years, spending approximately three weeks at each school. the honest, heartfelt words of the teens are the perfect accompaniment to his stunning portraiture...the whole project has a feeling of realness and the results are incredibly poignant: some of the children have faced fatal illnesses, discrimination, and the tragic death of loved ones, and have come out the other side with a deep sense of wisdom. many exhibit more than their fair share of intelligence.

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upon pondering bey's photos in some depth, it occurred to me why i love this direct style of portraiture more than any other: i am most moved by a photograph of a person when a subject faces the camera directly, unwaveringly.
it is the very same thing i love about some strains of street fashion photography (in the style of fruits, fashioni.st, hel-looks, and a few others).
sometimes, i just want to see something for what it truly is. i like the idea of a photograph being a simple, direct document of the thing or the person. i don't always need the frills of posing or an overabundance of affectations and drama.

beautiful stranger TV

fly recently posted about beautiful stranger TV: it's a street fashion video site where the creators hit the streets of NYC to hunt down and interview it's stylish denizens, asking them what they are wearing and doing, basically what their into on a myriad of levels. what makes the site special? alongside each video featured on the site is a clickable listing of websites that the beautiful stranger mentioned in his/her interview so you can "procure the beloved items these style setters can't live without". the whole kit and kaboodle was a brainchild of several people who were/are in the beauty/fashion/media/lifestyle industries.

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genius, i say, especially that last bit. it's sort of like the listing of products one sees under many a wardrobe_remix (which i purposely included/instituted from the get-go) and coupled with some street fashion photos on certain smart sites and magazines of that sort (i'm thinking hel-looks, and in many japanese (street) fashion magazines, like the maverick in this genre, fruits), except it takes said listings to the next level and hyperlinks them, making it easier for people to surf over and grab it for themselves.
AI fantasy thought that would take that very idea to the next level:
it would be great if the technology inherent in the ever-burgeoning semantic web could help with this sort of thing, making semi-automatic linking of things people list without the individual having to do a lot of work to make the actual links. such a thing might not be far off.

wardrobe_remix on current.tv

in july of 2007 i posted that bits and bobbins and wardrobe_remix had been mentioned on current, a hip, up-and-coming cable/sattelite channel that features, amongst other things, user-created content.

here's the clip (it's no longer available on the current.tv site), in case you're interested.

again, thanks, current!

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