Good Reputation Sleeping

Jill

Babeth’s Feast - New York Times.

The French fashion editor Elisabeth Djian, who goes by the more wholesome-sounding Babeth, can often be found sitting, arms crossed, in the front row. She has the intimidating look of a French madam, heightened by stiletto booties, a wink of a black bra and a laugh as free as salt. There’s a knowing quality about her without an eagerness to reveal herself. I once asked Djian what her life was like in the 1980’s when, as the fashion director of the influential little magazine Jill, she captured, and created, the ultrafeminine look of that era. Her answer sailed as cleanly as an arrow over my bow. “Lovers,” she said." - Cathy Horyn, NYT

Anyone who has been to my house or gone with me on vacation knows that magazines are a MAJOR part of my life. Its no accident that my two most favorite jobs were as a photographer for the Boston Globe Sunday Magazine in the late '80's and as Photography Editor of The Washington Post Magazine from 1999 till 2005.

Growing up on Long Island, magazines were my escape; my dad brought home a bunch, including several photography mags, and National Geographic was always around. When I decided to make the switch from law to photography, magazines and photo books paved the way.

Jill was one of those magazines that helped me make sense of what it was to be a photographer. It presented challenging fashion and portrait images in a tactile format; you could get personal with this mag, it was never stuffy or elitist. You felt like you held art in your hands, and for a very reasonable import price of $4.95, you did.

Helmut Newton Would Be Proud!

The New York Times Magazine: The Court-esans.

Russian tennis never looked so good!
Vera Zvonareva, Current Rank: 78; Photograph by Matthias Vriens

Gordon Parks, At Rest

'Life' Photographer And 'Shaft' Director Broke Color Barriers.

Gordon Parks, a photographer, filmmaker and poet whose pioneering chronicles of the black experience in America made him a revered elder and a cultural icon, died yesterday at his home in New York. He was 93.

His nephew, Charles Parks of Lawrence, Kan., said Parks had cancer and had been in failing health since 1993.

Parks, the son of a dirt farmer, rose from meager beginnings and above recurrent discrimination to walk through doors previously closed to African Americans. He was the first black person to work at Life magazine and Vogue, and the first to write, direct and score a Hollywood film, "The Learning Tree" (1969), which was based on a 1963 novel he wrote about his life as a farm boy in Kansas. He also was the director of the 1971 hit movie "Shaft," which opened the way for a host of other black-oriented films.

Elegant and aristocratic with a trademark mustache, his work traversed a vast landscape from poverty and crime to luxury and high fashion. He was a high school dropout turned award-winning photographer who traveled the world, using his camera with deftness and defiance.

"I didn't set out to do all that I did," Parks told an interviewer. "I think there was always fear -- fear of not being educated. All the things I did were done because of the fear of failure." - Yvonne Shinhoster Lamb, TWP; Photograph by Suzanne Plunkett, A.P.

Sunday Guilty Pleasure - Scarlett Johansson

Scarlett - New York Times.

"Johansson, who is small and curvy, was wearing faded jeans, black Converse All Stars, a low-cut tank top in dark plum and a matching V-neck cardigan. Her blond hair was pulled back in a tight ponytail, and she had a ring pierced between her nostrils. When I met her at the SoHo Grand Hotel, she was curled up in an armchair reading "In Cold Blood," and she looked less like a movie star and more like a college student home for the holidays." - Lynn Hirschberg, The New York Times

Weekend Guilty Pleasure - Salsa Fresca!

Actress Eva Mendes does fashion with photographer Peggy Sirota in "T".