Reborn

The front and back of a photograph that ran in The New York Times on Oct. 16, 1970, accompanying a story about a mannequin warehouse sale. The annotated print has lived in The Times's physical photography archive for over 40 years. It was brought back to life on The Lively Morgue on February 27, 2012.

Photographs are timecapsules, are beauty on paper, are storytellers. The fact that people do not generally print them and hold them dear as tangible objects anymore keeps me up at night. How is it that my grandchildren will never know the distinct pleasure of sitting next to me on a couch with a photo album between us, peeling back a thin plastic layer from a thick cardstock page, unsticking a rectangle of glossy paper, and holding it in close view to laugh at what I was wearing and how my hair was longer on one side than the other back then? How will that never happen? I fully embrace the unbridled innovation of my digital present, but no photos? Perhaps this all bothers me more than others because I am an aspiring archivist, but if you are also phobic of a photo-less world, The New York Times has just begun a project that I suspect will help stave off the full-blown panic you may be experiencing. With an aptly named Tumblr The Times is opening up their physical photo archive to a world wide audience. The Lively Morgue is a simple and beautiful project that mines the unfathomable, unknowably large collection of printed photographs and photographic media that by best estimation includes

“five million to six million prints and contact sheets (each sheet, of course, representing many discrete images) and 300,000 sacks of negatives…at least 10 million frames in all…[and] 13,500 DVDs, each storing about 4.7 gigabytes worth of imagery.”

Just how vast is that collection? If the Tumblr feed featured 10 photos every weekday, just from the printed portion of that collection alone, it wouldn’t have the whole thing online until the year 3935! The thing that is stunning is that this is not unique (although admittedly The Times holds a comparatively large collection), there are untold numbers of rooms filled with boxes of photographs and negatives and slides. So much treasure remaining unseen.

The emergence of the paper dress trend! Originally published March 4, 1968.

Enough with the sad news, let's get back to the happy Morgue project. The site will feature a few photographs a week; a selection of timely or just simply breathtaking subject matter. The lovely and amazing part of the project is that the editors have had the foresight to satisfy at least some aspect of the photophile's desire to see a physical object: they have scanned the back of the photographs, presenting each image recto and verso. Thus they retain all of the little handwritten and hand-stamped details that tell the photo's life story. They have even included an annotated key to help you decipher the information scrawled, stamped, or pasted onto the photograph. It is a beautiful moment of analog and digital hybridization. And, as with any photo archive anywhere in existence, it includes fantastic fashion information, from high fashion subject matter to documents of popular dress.

A dress form hollowed out and refilled with liquor bottles at a speakeasy posing as a tailor shop. The photograph originally ran on January 9, 1930.

The Lively Morgue (so named after the nickname bestowed on the storage room itself) is a new project, having just begun two days ago. Bookmark/RSS/Feed it now and watch it come alive.

It's A Pretty Fierce Way To Go.

What does one wear to witness the end of the world as we know it? Alexander McQueen says grab a soda can, some Saran Wrap, a tube of red lipstick, and an effing phenomenal gown and look glam while waiting for the darkness to come.

I mean it is obvious that there is something ending, right? We are in flux, in change so utterly impending that we can't do much of anything other than take stock of what we have and hope for the best. I think Alexander McQueen's genius bit of fashion theater in Paris this week was less an ode to the obvious recycling of the old, than it was a hint that you better brush off the stuff you've got and make it new. With shopping slowing it may be a long time before we each see new again. Not buying? Well, you know those pants you loved last season? Undo a seam and flip them 'round for a new dress. The gown your Grams rocked in the Dior days? Tar and feather it, make it different and more or less what you've always wanted. Start using what you have. If you're McQueen that means the invaluable, innate overabundant creativity you were blessed with. His skills are deity-like. His craft never takes a backseat to his ideas, it is always, always the other way around. And, when your ideas are as loaded and layered and brilliant as McQueen's are, craft that speaks louder than it all is something to behold. It is risky of McQueen to show a collection celebrating the re-hash. Or rather it could be risky, but McQueen holds the cards. He's got the skill to make an undone/redone dress look spectacular. This isn't the crafty recycling you can DIY.

The inflatable doll-like lips, confining corsetry, and constricting ensembles in the collection had some of the show's audience crying misogyny. I say put down the inflammatory responses, people. Women are tied and bound and shoved and pushed into even the easiest looking fashions. We are tucked, sucked, tweezed, plucked, shaved, and done-up regularly without comment. It happens all the time. Tale as old as time. McQueen is not the aggressor here, he's the re-hasher, the commentator. Don't you see his reuse of the old? He's quoting. He's making a point of it. He doesn't really want to torture you. He wants to make you his brand of pretty. It might hurt a little, but what doesn't? At least you'll be well dressed for the end of the world party he's throwing. When the lights go out, you won't feel a thing anyway. Fin de siecle. End of story. If anyone can die a pretty death, it's McQueen. And he'll figure out how to rise again out of the ashes of his past. Prettily.

Photos from Style.com.

TV Guide

A few weeks ago I went to see a showing of the movie The Wrestler (Rourke was robbed!) in my hometown of Parsippany, NJ. It's a suburb: There are mini-vans and malls and soccer moms and lawns of manicured grass. In the bathroom at the movie theater I discovered that there are also transvestites in the suburbs. Something about just coming out of The Wrestler, with it's gut-wrenching scenes of a done-up, down-and-out, aged man reaching for his ideal of reality in a world that just won't quite cooperate, made the site of a wo/man in a wig, powdering his nose and touching up his lipstick, completely captivating. All of the sudden it sunk in how brave that was, how possibly dangerous, how rebellious, how complex. And when the wo/man at the mirror caught my eye and smiled a sweet smile, I also realized how joyful it could be, how freeing to just step out in the world as who you are.

Maybe this sounds strange. I've wanted to write this post for so long now and have really struggled to find a way to express exactly what I want to say. The bottom line is that I suddenly have so much admiration for these transvestites, they brave public opinion to be happy. And, I'm not talking about the show queens, the spectacle of camp womanhood on men in drag bars (although that's deliciously fun), I'm talking about the men who are dressed to meet their boyfriends at the Panera in the strip mall, the men who are running errands at Target with a handbag and fresh lipgloss, who are getting out of a taxi with their dresses in dry cleaning bags. The ones who hope you see them and see the woman who lives down the street or up the block.

I found pools on Flickr of transvestites (TV's) dedicated to those who go out in the real world as real girls. A lot of the comments on the photos are words of inspiration to those who are still too scared to go out in public dressed how they really want. There are wo/men who leave messages under the photos saying they wish they could be so brave as the ones in the pictures. There are compliments aplenty on outfit choices and makeup applications. There are tips swapped about matters of beauty. Many use the photos to get ideas of how to dress, of how to get made up, how to pass effectively. It's an amazing play of femininity. There are groups who meet through the Flickr pools and then gather up to go out together--strength in numbers.

The whole matter is such a clear example of what fascinates me about the act of getting dressed; how we put on clothing and accessories that say things about us, that tell stories and create identities. How interesting is it? I give the courageous community of TV's out in the world as real women a nice big nod of admiration. You go girls!