Sometimes the world looks tired, cheap and ugly to me, other times it’s stunningly beautiful. Same world, same day, maybe same 5 minutes. It’s a matter of how I choose to look at it. Personally, I can’t live in an ugly world for more than a few minutes without becoming horribly depressed, so turning that perception around is an important exercise.
Today brought an excellent example: Midday traffic on Hollywood Blvd, I’m pinned behind a Russian beer delivery truck with nothing more to do than ponder the cheaply produced beer advert; The model’s thin, limp hair with that flat, orangey bleach job, her shaved eyebrows have been penciled in a bit wonky and the makeup artist has never heard of blending.
Only as I shot these pics with my phone did I suddenly see something more…She looks like a Tamara de Lempicka painting!
Those limp curls become chunky waves, the unblended colors and shading on her face is perfectly in keeping with Lempicka’s “soft cubism”, her direct gaze and simple, defined areas of color. The photo’s still cheap, the styling still clumsy but now I’ve found the beauty in it and the world looks brighter.
The only thing that has changed is my mind.
