In the Details

Look at this.  It seems a simple portrait, right?  

MODEL: LULU TENNEY. PHOTOGRAPHER: HANNA TVEITE CAPDEVIELLE. STYLIST: ANDERS SOLVSTEN THOMSEN. HAIR STYLIST: TOMOHIRO OHASHI. MAKEUP ARTIST: WILLIAM BARTEL. SET DESIGNER: CHLOE BARRIERE

That is how many people it took to make the photograph.  I'd like to work that way just once.  Maybe more than once.  

What is missing from this list is a lighting person, but since they used window light, I guess they were spared that expense.  

I have always been on my own with a "model" who did her own hair, makeup, and styling.  We would decide together.  I did the set, lighting and camera.  

"Action!"

It wasn't my thing.  I just ran across this old Polaroid while searching through some digital files and was surprised.  "Did I take that?"  I don't remember doing it.  I have ten zillion images, but I am only rarely surprised.  

I came across a fine article in the N.Y. Times this morning (link).  It is the only story I read beyond the headlines today.  I was sucked in by the illustrations.

I'm a sucker for such things.  In the past, I have bought just about anything illustrated by watercolors.  Cookbooks, for instance.  The old Banana Republic and later the J. Peterman catalogs.  The books of Peter Mayle.  

The story that accompanied the illustrations was good, too.  Simple, evocative, it promoted desire.  I could have done without the last part, though.  Still. . . it made me yearn. 

I've been watching the Stanley Tucci in Italy series.  Now, in truth, I can hardly stand Tucci's presence, but I like the rest of it.  Tucci is an irritant that must be endured much as Bourdain could often be.  But what is an armchair traveler going to do?

Why does watercolor clothing always look so good?  I have been fooled into buying clothing from watercolor catalogs over and over again.  I'm a romantic fool.  

Oh. . . and I would recommend Sara Midda's South of France: A Sketchbook (link).  I bought this in an Anthropologie store long ago.  They used to have the most wonderful books strewn about among the clothing and knickknacks, things I never saw in actual bookstores.  J. Crew stores also surprisingly had some wonderful books decorating their shelves as well.  I hardly ever bought the clothing, but I have bought many of the books.

I have been struggling with something for days now, a general low-grade illness of some sort.  Body, gut, and nose.  I don't look so good as I used to, either.  I think the large, long doses of antibiotics aged me.  That and being bed and chair ridden for a month.  I'm struggling to come back, but as Dylan sang, "You can always come back, but you can't come back all the way."  Now that I have typed that out, I am wondering, did he mean physically or was he singing about love?  

Both, I'm sure.  

Life is in the details they say.  I've been missing some things lately that can't be helped.  Thursday I'll miss drinking with the old factory crowd.  Can't be helped.  That's the way it seems, anyway.  I've always been good at the broad strokes, but man, I've always been sloppy with the details.