Miss World

Contessa Christina Paolozzi died by the time she was 49 – a short (but very privileged and eventful) life with plenty of impact. Imagine, this photo appeared in Harper’s Bazaar in 1962, a magazine available at supermarkets! Where has that vision gone? Why aren’t we bringing art to the masses anymore? Giving people far outside the cultural hubs a taste of sophistication – that initiative should not have faded out.

TIME (Jan. 26, 1962):

There was still much ado about the nothing worn (above the waist, anyhow) by frail Model Christina Paolozzi, 22, in a full-page Richard Avedon photograph published by Harper’s Bazaar in the January issue. The clothes-horsing magazine identified Manhattan-born Christina as a “Contessa” (she insists she is not), proudly admired “the classic spirit, abhorring the demure and falsely modest.” But the photo was agitating the female press corps to its foundations. Tartly advised Syndicated Columnist Inez Robb: “The excursion into overexposure has unwittingly proved that not diamonds but clothes are a girl’s best friend.”

Credit: Contessa Christina Paolozzi, Hair by Kenneth, New York. June 1961. Gelatin silver print, 6 3/16 x 4 3/16″ (15.7 x 10.6 cm). © 2011 The Richard Avedon Foundation

History Repeating

The moment I saw Erykah Badu’s new video for her song Window Seat, I decided this was indeed a piece of art. Mixing the historical element of Kennedy’s assassination site with cinematography based on the 1963  Zapruder film was an inspired choice. Sure, one could say her decision to assassinate herself at the end was in bad taste, but it was also prescient considering the uproar this film has caused. In many ways, Badu’s character is being assassinated this very moment for simply making an artistic statement that she believes in–it took a lot of guts to do this guerrilla style in Dallas, so much could’ve worked against her but in the end her message was delivered and the dialogue has begun.

Watch Me On Your Video Phone

Grace Jones, the icon.

Photo: Jean-Paul Goude, Island Life cover

You’re So Cool

College campus. Los Angeles. 1962.

Three words went through my mind endlessly, repeating themselves like a broken record: you’re so cool, you’re so cool, you’re so cool.

The Greatest Generation

The early 1940′s, a bunch of twenty-somethings have the time of their lives during a very uncertain era. Most of these pictures were taken by my grandfather (the guy sitting in the chair and in various other poses) during his time in service, he was an Iroquois Indian of the Oneida Nation who enlisted at seventeen years old. He died nearly twenty years before I was born in a freak accident, but lucky for me he was a bit of camera buff who enjoyed snapping pictures. He leaves behind many interesting observations and memories…

All images from the collection of Jeffrey Michael Smith

From Hell

One of my Christmas presents this year was a book of medical, daguerreotype photographs put out by The Mütter Museum of Philadelphia. Usually most photography from the period of 1860-1900 has a quality that is somewhat disturbing because the people often look a bit creepy. They almost look like they can jump out at you. This Victorian era, medical experimentation is fascinating because it was so barbaric and I’m fairly certain the children born with these deformities were treated like sub-humans who were not meant to be treated as anything more than frogs to be cut open and observed. This was still a time where if someone was born with a major deformity then they were often branded as a creation of the devil, after all we used to burn people at the stake for little more than personality issues.

In This Moment

The day after President Barack Obama’s inauguration, photographer Caroll Taveras set up a photo studio in downtown Brooklyn where she was offering portrait sessions for $5 a piece. After two months, Taveras had photographed over 250 faces that represented America, or at least the dream of America. A place that has always been–and probably always will be–an oasis for various cultures to come together and make a life, or start one over. In these faces, one sees a promise of the future, of course the direction of the future is always changing but I believe Taveras captured a moment in time that will never be duplicated. I used to think history always had a way of repeating itself, but after looking at this series, I now think it’s possible that an event can happen that is totally unique and I’m grateful I was alive to see it. Even if it was brief…

© Caroll Taveras

Sweet Sixteen

Flickr

Sweet sixteen in 1900 was very different from what it is today, there were no reality shows focused around some big party with heinous parents and the monsters of children they’ve created. The photo above should be vaguely familiar to you, if you’ve ever been inside a vintage ice cream shop or seen the “classic” cover of an old novel suddenly being mass-reproduced. Her name was Evelyn Nesbit, she was the first teen star worshipped across the nation, she started as a model then became a dancer, followed by actress and finally ending up as the wife to a psychotic multi-millionaire. She also turned sixteen at the turn of the 20th Century.

The Assassination

JFK Library

This past Sunday, AMC’s period drama, Mad Men depicted the events that would forever change 20th Century America on November 22, 1963. The image of recently deceased anchorman Walter Cronkite announcing President John F. Kennedy’s death was chilling to watch, as were the intense emotional reactions of the characters. Revisiting the assassination has never been more timely, Vanity Fair recently covered the drama surrounding the event as well. It will be forty-six years this November and even with other generation-defining moments that have taken place since then, we are all still as fascinated with the death of Camelot as people were at the birth.

I recommend going to Itunes and downloading this episode of Mad Men in HD, the show really outdid itself recreating all the madness surrounding the events as they unfolded in real time. There are many interesting facts that I had no idea about, like that Lee Harvey Oswald was shot on live television by an assassin. It would also be the first time that people were beginning to be riveted by television in general, which was still catching on as evidenced by the shoddy picture available to the characters on Mad Men. After seeing this episode, I believe the birth of 24-hour news started on that day in 1963 when no one could look away from their TV screen or turn off their radios.

And this is part of the reason I chose a banner photo featuring The Kennedy’s, they represented a new age of journalism, certainly a more visual age. They were the first occupants of The White House to be young and modern, so this naturally pushed the coverage in a more ravenous direction that has not let up in the years since JFK was first elected. This horrific event changed so much in the world of news reporting, one can only imagine how it would play out in 2009 with the rise of citizen journalists and camera phones.

Haunted

Copyright © Kevin Carter

My curiosity was peaked about this photo while reading an article for a mid-term assignment that centered around this image. The article focused on a journalist, Alysia Sofios, who decided to live with her sources and basically her whole decision was motivated by this photograph. The story goes that Sofios was in a media ethics class at university examining this photo during a discussion and was disturbed by the fact that none of her peers would’ve helped this child. So when an opportunity arose some years later to help some women who had been abused by a sadistic father figure, Sofios decided this was her moment to swoop in and rescue the child, so to speak.

Back to the photo: It was taken by photojournalist Kevin Carter in March of 1993 in Sudan and won the Pulitzer Prize for Feature Photography in 1994. The little girl in the photo would end up escaping death but her ultimate fate was unknown, and Carter would go on to take his own life a few months after winning the Pulitzer.

In his suicide note, Carter wrote, “I am haunted by the vivid memories of killings & corpses & anger & pain … of starving or wounded children, of trigger-happy madmen, often police, of killer executioners…”