shit's outta control

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Photo by: Maxime Poiblanc

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We back.  Just tinkering.  Recalibrating.  Taking some fresh looks and figuring some things out.

Photo by: Dan Tobin Smith

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well kids, it's been fun.  i don't wanna make a big deal of it, but we're gonna be taking a little break from this routine.  occasionally, i'm sure i'll throw something special up here, like this rebecca miller delight, but for now...for now...omg i'm so choked up.  

jk jk.  i'm sure i'll be back.  but in the meantime, you can check out MY work at www.mollycranna.com

I KNOW I KNOW I FINALLY PLUGGED MY OWN PHOTOS INSTEAD OF OTHER PEOPLES'

whatevs.  had to.  xoxoxoxoxo.

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i'm sorry i'm sorry i'm sorry but i just HAD TO.  i've been waiting for the perfect moment to post this and then i realized there's NO PERFECT MOMENT FOR SOMETHING OF THIS CALIBER.  you just gotta do it.  saliva and everything.  

also, one time i was arrested (misdemeanor, wiped from record, no biggie) and they used zip ties on me instead of hand cuffs and it was so fucking painful and i can't even imagine having them all over my head.  HELLISH.

photo by: christian anwander

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i know i just did a still life post, but EVERYONE AND THEIR MOTHER is talking about maurizio di iorio right now and i wanna get in on it.  

speaking of everyone and their mother, everyone and their mother is shooting still lifes right now with the HARDEST SHADOWS you've ever seen.  like viagra hard.  and maurizio is too, but his shit just stands out more.  maybe because everything has this special shine to it?  like its lunchtime in the summer and the sun is SO HOT and steel benches will burn any set of exposed thighs and everything reflective is practically lethal and you have to squint just to save your life.  it's like that, but less terrible.  

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i can't not return to jamie chung's site every few months and rediscover his still life work.  seriously, i rediscover him each time and it's SO SPECIAL.  i mean, just take a good, hard look at the shadows on the champagne bubbles and the highlights on the macaron and the MEAT RING.  

LOOK AT THE MEAT RING.

thank you, jamie, for being a constant in my life.

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so, i know this is a really heated comment coming from someone in LA, but i'm really ready for summer and these photos from the puma x solange collection are really exacerbating that feeling.

they're so dope.  and i'm so excited about athletic wear.

photo credit: alan ferguson

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if you think this is redundant, i'm not gonna say you're wrong, but i'll just say you're embarrassingly far from right.  and aside from the obvious perfection of this image, can we talk about how PERFECT men's cuticles always are??  women pay the nail industry $768 million EVERY YEAR and yet, when i'm photographing girls, they almost always ask me not to show their fingernails up close because they're "omg no, embarrassing".  meanwhile men are just like "yea sure get ALL UP IN THERE i don't even know what cuticle oil is but i've heard you can get a decent back massage during a pedicure, no?"

you can, if you're into barcaloungers with a million prodding hands.  personally, i prefer to use my teeth as cuticle trimmers.  granted, things get bloody, but at least i'm not out a few grand, AMIRITE.

photo credit: matthew pandolfe

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i mean, duh.  cara, sunglasses, symmetry, etc etc etc.

there was no way not posting this was an option because not only is it an obvious choice for me, but i'd also kind of like to mull over some ideas.  so i'm gonna step out on a limb right now and ask you all to be patient while i hypothesize that there are three types of female idolization and idealization: glorification of female femininity, glorification of female masculinity, and anti-glorification of women overall.  seems simple enough, no?  is it totally obvious?  maybe i'm out of my league.  

but i'll try.

there's the obsession over uber feminine fashion, pinterest boards flooded with recipes, mommy bloggers, etsy artists, indie florists, and beautiful shit everywhere.

then there's the pedestal-placing of girls who don't give a fuck, girls who only hang out with guys, girls who take on characteristics of men but make it sexy (see image above).

and then there's the phenomenal paradox that is female anti-glorification.  it's the obsession and infatuation laced with hatred and disgust that only us LADIES really know how to fully achieve.  it's the guilty pleasures: the girls you only follow on instagram because you love to hate them and yet they have 105K followers, which probably means that 50% of those followers are anti-infatuates and the other 50% are gratuitous obsessors.  and neither are better than the other.

terms on terms on terms, amirite?  at the end of the day, though, it's safe to say that women just spend way too much time getting off on hating each other.  that being said, though, here I AM trying to sum it all up, acting like i'm above it all, shitting on women for being worse at life than me.  

ugh.  i don't have any answers. 

photo credit: therese and joel

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today i want to present these VERY NICE photos by maciek pozoga from the kenzo x new era fw 2012 lookbook.

and i'd really like to go into a discussion of fashion judgment and choices based on labels, but my brain is all jumbly right now and i think it's best to save it for another morning.  that cool?  love you all.

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there are so many things i would change about this photo so it's a good thing i didn't take it because it's perfect the way it is.  right?  YOU KNOW WHAT I MEAN?  i'm not tryina hate, but the "media center" in the background is the worst craigslisted furniture i've ever seen.  and the fan isn't industrial chic, which you would expect in this day and age, no?  also the octabank and softbox and wires and power strip and the wood laminate floor and, i mean, I JUST CAN'T.  

jk jk i can and will.  because aside from the (intentional? i'm so not of this world) jil sander phallice protruding center frame, i fucking love this image and everything about it.

honest.

photo by: david brandon geeting

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so i think it's pretty obvious that these photos are out of context for me to gravitate toward, but i'll be honest: i found them in my drafts folder and kinda just wanna go with it.  SEE WHERE THEY TAKE ME.  

so here we go.

i look at these photos by mark mahaney and all i can think about is high school in the winter in cambridge, massachusetts.  it was always so fucking freezing inside my school that we'd have to wear our winter coats all day long and even then i'd still be cold.  we'd leave after the bell rang and some days we'd go hang out at some playground and somehow it was warmer once we were outside, moving around.  

mostly what i remember, more than the fact that the trees were losing the last of their orange leaves and more than the fact that my coat was bright red and ENORMOUS and i had these awful white adidas tennis shoes, is how i always had a very serious crush on some unassuming boy.  and i say serious because crushes in high school were some of the most serious things we dealt with in that pubescent timeframe, am i wrong?  i don't know about you, but that unrequited love (ALWAYS UNREQUITED) kept me in constant physical pain, including, but not limited to perpetual heart palpitation and unwavering stomach twisting.  

not to mention, there were no digital methods with which to stalk a potential lover.  lusting-after was done strictly via memory, which meant anyone could be anything you imagined them as.  which generally meant that [insert name] was not only decent looking, but also emotionally available, intellectually curious, unbearably romantic, and probably really good at playing a (non-racket-based) sport or being in a band.

jesus christ.

you guys, sometimes i miss high school and sometimes i miss cambridge and sometimes i miss youth, but i never miss those feelings.  

not to mention, looking back, i really wish i had spent that energy on LEARNING THINGS.

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tjalf sparnaay, if i knew how to pronounce your name, i'd SHOUT IT FROM THE ROOFTOPS.  

guys, these eggs are PAINTINGS.  can you tell??? i couldn't, but, like, i know NOTHING about painting.  i also generally just don't like it, but, in the words of every basic bitch in a major coastal city, these eggs are EVERYTHING.

my only experience with painting was a few years ago when i bought a massive canvas and set out to replicate smpte color bars because for some reason i thought that would be aesthetically pleasurable??  it took forever to paint and the WORST PART was that the final result was too ugly to hang anywhere, but i had labored too long and hard to throw it away.  REAL LIFE PROBLEMS.

anyway, i know this blog is about photos (right? i can't remember if i laid out any rules), but sometimes you gotta just follow your heart.  and aside from the fact that the whites of these eggs look a little runny for my taste, i'd say these paintings are the most perfect thing i've seen all week.

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argument: philippe jarrigeon should have hired real models.

counter argument: fuck that.  

cause honestly, with the exception of cara delevigne, coco rocha, anais pouliot, and anyone in a lane bryant ad (can i get a free pass on this one??), most models look about as human as these mannequins.  but HEY - if philippe was looking to make a statement of the anti-personification of models in the fashion world, i'd like to opt out of the conversation.  humans as coat hangers is a topic for another time!

for now, we'll get simple.  decent colors, decent styling.  decent material to ponder.  let's remember to talk about it soon.

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sometimes it just feels so good to look at truly high quality photography.  and i'm not saying that the other work we've seen here has been crap; i'm simply saying that it's nice to focus on someone who's just doing it right.  i would call jan welters a back-to-basics kinda guy, but i don't think he ever strayed away from real, classic, solid fashion photography.  jan doesn't fuck around.  no "quirky" polaroids, no light flares, no vsco.  just good old fashioned making-people-beautiful.  every single time.

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i just emitted an audible sound, sort of like a yelp and a gasp, all tied into one.  MICHAEL GEORGE DO YOU KNOW WHAT YOU'VE DONE HERE?

i don't know about you, but this makes me wanna spend the next year of my life photographing people putting things through other things.  and i mean that 100% literally.

anyway, today, this photo will stand alone, not to be scathed by the touch of anything less heart-stopping.

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well, it's good to be awake.  i dreamt exclusively of natural disasters and terrorist attacks last night and i'm having a little trouble getting my heart rate back to a healthy rhythm.  not to mention, i checked my twitter feed when i woke up, hoping for some feel-good bullshit and all i got was a bunch of tragedy.  so i guess i'm just feeling pretty small and a very mortal.  which is FINE, cause i think we all need a good DOSE OF REALITY every once in a while, no?

that being sad, these idyllic landscapes by barbara ciurej and lindsay lochman had me feeling about as warm and fuzzy about this earth as i'm going to feel today.  though the cropping leaves a bit to be desired (my first encounter with shovel-crops, to put it objectively), i'm pretty taken by the depth and atmospheric lighting, especially in the second one from the top.  aesthetically these aren't all my cup of tea, but i'm smitten by how accurately babs and linds depicts such specific terrains.  

anyway, i feel better already.