Time Flies

Makeup and beauty shoots use products, and focus on creating looks, it’s basically that simple. But, the resulting images, ah, the images take on a separate life and tell stories. When I, as a writer, first see them it is exciting how narratives appear that the team might not be aware of, or which through their creativity and talent communicates beyond their original intentions.

I see in these images the Ophelia of Millais from 1851/52, I see Baba photographed by her twenty-year-old brother Cecil Beaton in 1924, and I see a healthy outdoor girl splashing her face in 1930’s Germany. The time traveller of beauty excites me to write, how faces appear and disappear in centuries, the face of a portrait across time can find a twin today. Ancient Rome wall painting to an Ingres portrait, early Victorian photograph or Hockney sketch, we see reflections of beauty through time.

In these images plunging into water, freshly burnt by the sun, smiling at us, we see the artifice of makeup concealed rather than exposed, we imagine these are real and candid images un manipulated by a team of professionals, we simply see beauty. As changeable as the reflections on the water, her moods are both reflective and joyous as she relishes the fruit, breathes in the country air, and yet also pauses for thought or simply floats, outside time.