Yearly Archives: 2010
i’m out here a thousand miles from my home
I’m having a Bob day. There’s really no better kind. It’s utterly miserable out there but Bob’s resounding off my walls, so it’s OKAY.
Hey, hey Woody Guthrie, I wrote you a song
About a funny old world that’s a’comin’ along.
Seems sick and it’s hungry, it’s tired and it’s torn,
It looks like it’s dying and it’s hardly been born.
that sugar coated iceberg tastes so sweet
Curious, isn’t it, how the sunshine can change your day? It’s the little things, like the fact that walking from shop to shop isn’t so daunting. I really hope the weather keeps itself up; cider in Somerset tastes much better when served with a dash of sunshine. Here’s hoping.
My thoughts at the moment are entirely preoccupied with Glastonbury. You know, which shorts to wear on which day and which drinks to drink in which order on which days. And that’s without the music. But now that it’s on my mind so constantly, I fear that the next 3 weeks will be the slowest yet. I’m just glad that the football will start soon and distract me, if only for a few minutes at a time. Speaking of which, how very exciting is the prospect of watching England on the Pyramid Stage….!
Here’s a picture I took in 2007. It pretty much sums up why I want to be there right now.
the romantic tough school of writing
tom is as bold as the knights of old
What’s that? Two posts in one day, you say? Yeah, well, this is too good to wait for.
i am not afraid of the dark
i don’t pretend to know what you want
got a tv set and a radio for seven shillings a week, shangri-la
Sunday. My favourite. Woke up slightly groggy, but a bacon buttie sorted me right out. Gonna head out soon to get the paper and other essential supplies, then come home and set up camp for the afternoon. Lahvely.
But first, as promised, I’m going to give you a sneaky look into another of my bookshelf gems. And in the spirit of continuity it’s going to be another Vogue one. This time it’s called ‘Vogue Fashion’ and is basically just a chronological look at all the designers who’ve been significant in Vogue since the 1900s. It’s a rather brilliant book, the passing of time it chronicles is endlessly fascinating (plus I can’t believe how 90s the the 90s look, if you know what I mean). It’s bit of a bible really. Enjoy!
when the morning comes and the battle is won
I have decided it’s about bloody time I shared some of my bookshelf with you. Mostly because I’ve stopped being lazy and have actually set up the scanner on the desk (as opposed to sitting idly on the shelf under a pile of unopened letters – I dont like to move it for fear of unearthing the gathering dust) but also just because it’s packed with some of my favourite images and photographers and fashions. I’m sorry it’s taken so long to get this hard-copy onto my blog, but here it is – the first instalment for your viewing pleasure.
I shall start with ‘Unseen Vogue’, a little treat that found its way into my Christmas stocking this year (thanks to my boy!). It’s an insight into Vogue’s unpublished archives; the photographs that didn’t quite make it for one reason or another, but, as you will see, could quite easily have made it and could feasibly make up the catalogue of iconic images we refer to all the time in our blogs. They are, after all, Vogue shoots and Vogue photographers, Vogue stylists and Vogue models, and in that respect deserve our attention. Some of the images are nostalgic and poignant, catching models when they weren’t doing what they were supposed to – you know, yawning or with their arm in a funny position or just speaking or not looking as picture-perfect as the pages of Vogue dictate.
Alexandra Shulman says in the foreword: Unseen Vogue is a pictorial history of the magazine, bound together by many of these untold tales. The images it includes are not simply images from Vogue shoots, but pictures that testify to the labyrinth of labour that must be negotiated from conception to publication. In every contact sheet there are 100 decisions; in every crop there is concerned debate……. The question that returns again and again is, what would I have done had I been faced with those pictures on my desk? In this collection there are some images that I fervently hope I would have had the foresight to publish – even though at the time they would have seem unsettlingly avant-garde. There are, too, variations of a published image that I’m not sure I would have published at all.
Like Shulman, I have to say I do wish some of these images had made it (and you will see why) but I’m glad that this book has enabled me to see them, despite their original fate.
Barbara Goalen by John Deakin, 1951
Coat by Dior from the Paris collections, attributed to Henry Clarke, 1950
‘The contemporary look’ by Anthony Denney, 1955
Jean Shrimpton by David Bailey, 1962
‘Shophound’ by Michael Cooper, 1965
Jean Shrimpton by David Bailey, 1965
Ursula Andress by Brian Duffy, 1966
Twiggy (an unpublished cover shot) by Just Jaeckin, 1967
I’m getting a bit scan-happy here, aren’t I. I’m going to stop now. I’m sure that’s enough of a taster, although I’d love to share the whole book with you for each page carries its own merit. I really love it because it teaches you to constantly look behind an image; I can’t read Vogue these days without wishing I could see the hundreds of beautiful mistakes.
I promise to share something else from my bookshelf with you very soon. Ta-ta for now.