Model: Deborah
October 2010
Taken at Maxoperandi’s excellent studio in Rushden (thanks Ian!)

Somtimes I see something so beautiful and with such a fragile, delicate transience, poignantly precarious, that I just don’t know what to do about it…

This picture is a glimpse into an ongoing project of mine that exists alongside my mainstream fashion portraiture and art nude. With (coincidental) similarities to the works and ethos of Sally Mann and Jock Sturges, a large subset of this work is unpublishable due to child and pubescent nudity; interestingly, this situation itself is an echo (a ‘leaden echo’, if you like) of the transience of this kind of beauty. You can’t keep it from vanishing away, and neither can you show it off while it happens. It’s not for anyone. Wild flowers grow and bloom and die, and have been doing so for millions of years before us, all without witness. Because of the technology we have it’s easy to think that the only way to affirm the beauty we notice is to record it and circulate it widely. But it can be liberating to realise that just noticing the beauty in the first place is an end in itself, and something which I reckon Nietzsche would call life-affirming and in keeping with his claim that ‘art is the proper task of life’.

“…
Come then, your ways and airs and looks, locks, maiden gear, gallantry and gaiety and grace,
Winning ways, airs innocent, maiden manners, sweet looks, loose locks, long locks, lovelocks, gaygear, going gallant, girlgrace—
Resign them, sign them, seal them, send them, motion them with breath,
And with sighs soaring, soaring síghs deliver
Them; beauty-in-the-ghost, deliver it, early now, long before death
Give beauty back, beauty, beauty, beauty, back to God, beauty’s self and beauty’s giver…” – Gerard Manley Hopkins

This work was featured in
- The Silky Touch
- Studio Lighting
- The Love of Eerie and Enchanting Artwork
- BEAUTIFUL GRUNGE ART
- !Dark Cabaret!
- Beautiful Melancholy
- Vintage Art Storybook
- Touched By Fire
- About Face: Portrait Masters
- LAYERED WITH TEXTURE
- Spirit of the Native American

Top 10 in Group Avatar – The Love of Eerie and Enchanting Artwork

Winner of Fascinating Faces challenge in LAYERED WITH TEXTURE

Top 10 in Your favorite B&W, Sepia or Muted work with 10+ features – January – 10+ Features

Top 10 in Whimsical creations – Dark artists, dark art

08/02/11 – 79 favouritings

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