At the silky tones of my rich and comfortable aunt

"I think I knew first what side I was on when I was about five years old, at which time nobody was safe from buffaloes. It was in a brownstone house in New York, and there was a blizzard, and my rich aunt - a horrible woman then and now - had come to visit. I remember going to the window and seeing the street with the men shoveling snow; their hands were purple on their shovels, and their feet were wrapped with burlap. And my aunt, looking over her shoulder, said, "Now isn't this nice that there's this blizzard. Now all those men have work." And I knew that it was not nice that men could work for their lives only in desperate weather, that there was no work for them in fair. That was when I became anti-fascist, at the silky tones of my rich and comfortable aunt."
Dorothy Parker

photograph of Dorothy Parker by Richard Avedon (1958) via

"Segregation Now, Segregation Tomorrow, Segregation Forever." George Wallace's Conversion.

George Corley Wallace, Jr. (1919-1998) was Governor of Alabama and a U.S. presidential candidate for four elections (via). And, Wallace was an ardent segregationist.



In 1958, Wallace ran in the Democratic primary for governor, so did his opponent John Malcolm Patterson. Patterson was supported by the Ku Klux Klan, Wallace had spoken against them and was endorsed by the NAACP. Patterson won, Wallace lost. In order to boost his career, Wallace became racist:

"Seymore, you know why I lost that governor's race? ... I was outniggered by John Patterson. And I'll tell you here and now, I will never be outniggered again."
"You know, I tried to talk about good roads and good schools and all these things that have been part of my career, and nobody listened. And then I began talking about niggers, and they stomped the floor."

In his Inaugural Address on 14 January 1963, he declared: "In the name of the greatest people that have ever trod this earth, I draw the line in the dust and toss the gauntlet before the feet of tyranny, and I say segregation now, segregation tomorrow, segregation forever." With "tyranny", Wallace referred to attempts of desegregation. His speechwriter, by the way, was Asa Earl Carter (1925-1979), founder of a military Ku Klux Klan splinter group - a group that attacked Nat King Cole on stage, that abducted and castrated Judge Edward Aaron and poured turpentine on his wounds before leaving him abandoned, people who were sentenced to twenty years but given parole under governor Wallace. The same Carter quit this Klan group after shooting two members ... shortly before becoming a speechwriter for the governor who he never personally met. In 1970 - Wallace had become more "liberal" in the meantime - Carter ran against him for governor of Alabama and after losing demonstrated with signs reading "Wallace is a bigot" and "Free our white children" (via and via).
Proponents of civil rights, such as John Lewis and Martin Luther King, highly criticised the Inaugural Address. The same year, in his "I Have a Dream" speech in front of the Lincoln Memorial, King referred to Wallace by saying:

"I have a dream that one day, down in Alabama, with its vicious racists, with its governor having his lips dripping with the words 'interposition' and 'nullification' - one day right there in Alabama little black boys and black girls will be able to join hands with little white boys and white girls as sisters and brothers." (via)

In the mid/late 1960s, Wallace changed his views on segregation; he called his inaugural speech the "biggest mistake" he had made:

"I didn't write those words about segregation now, tomorrow and forever. I saw them in the speech written for me and planned to skip over them. But the wind-chill factor was 5 below zero when I gave that speech. I started reading just to get it over and read those words without thinking. I have regretted it all my life." (via)

In 1972, Wallace was shot five times while campaigning which left him paralysed (via). A few years later, he apologised to black civil rights leaders for his actions and explained that he had then sought power and glory instead of love and forgiveness which he realised he needed most. In 1979, he said: "I was wrong. those days are over, and they ought to be over." During his last term as governor (1983-1987), he made "a record number of black appointments to state positions" (via)

"I have learned what suffering means. In a way that was impossible, I think I can understand something of the pain black people have come to endure. I know I contributed to that pain, and I can only ask your forgiveness."
George Wallace, Address to the Montgomery Dexter Avenue Baptist Church (where King pastored in the 1950s), 1979

Wallace expressed his conversion more than once and in 1987, he reconciled with civil rights activist Jesse Jackson and prayed with him (via).

A few days after Wallace passed away, civil rights leader John Lewis wrote:

(...) A showdown was inevitable. Much of the bloodshed in Alabama occurred on Governor Wallace's watch. Although he never pulled a trigger or threw a bomb, he created the climate of fear and intimidation in which those acts were deemed acceptable.
Although we had long been adversaries, I did not meet Governor Wallace until 1979. During that meeting, I could tell that he was a changed man; he was engaged in a campaign to seek forgiveness from the same African-Americans he had oppressed. He acknowledged his bigotry and assumed responsibility for the harm he had caused. He wanted to be forgiven. (...)
When I met George Wallace, I had to forgive him, because to do otherwise -- to hate him -- would only perpetuate the evil system we sought to destroy.
George Wallace should be remembered for his capacity to change. And we are better as a nation because of our capacity to forgive and to acknowledge that our political leaders are human and largely a reflection of the social currents in the river of history. (...) (via)

"Forgiveness does not mean ignoring what has been done or putting a false label on an evil act. It means, rather, that the evil act no longer remains as a barrier to the relationship. . . . While abhorring segregation, we shall love the segregationist. This is the only way to create the beloved community."
Martin Luther King, Jr.

Photograph: George Wallace and Jimmy Dallas, Montgomery, Alabama, 31 July 1993

Excerpts from the 1963 inaugural speech (via):

"Let us send this message back to Washington by our representative who are with us today...that from this day we are standing up, and the heel of tyranny does not fit the neck of an upright man...that we intend to take the offensive and carry our fight for freedom across this nation, wielding the balance of poer we know we possess in the Southland....that WE, not the insipid bloc voters of some sections..will determine in the next election who shall sit in the White House of these United States....that from this day...from this hour...from this minute...we give the word of a race of honor that we will tolerate their boot in our face no longer....and let those certain judges put that in their opium pipes of power and smoke it for what it is worth. (...)
What I have said about segregation goes double this day...and what I have said to or about some federal judges goes TRIPLE this day. (...)
It (government) is a system that is the very opposite of Christ for it feeds and encourages everything degenerate and base in our people as it assumes the responsibilities that we ourselves should assume. Its pseudo-liberal spokesmen and some Harvard advocates have never examined the logic of its substitution of what it calls "human rights" for individual rights, for its propaganda play upon words has appeal for the unthinking. Its logic is totally material and irresponsible as it runs the full gamut of human desires...including the theory that everyone has voting rights without the spiritual responsibility of preserving freedom. Our founding fathers recognized those rights...but only within the frameworks of those spiritual responsibilities. But the strong, simple faith and sane reasoning of our founding fathers has long since been forgotten as the so-called "progressives" tell us that our Constitution was written for "horse and buggy" days...so were the Ten Commandments.
Not so long ago men stood in marvel and awe at the cities, the building, the schools, the autobahns that the government of Hitler's Germany had built...just as centuries before they stood in wonder at Rome's building...but it could not stand...for the system that built it had rotted the souls of the builders...and in turn...rotted the foundation of what God meant that men should be. Today that same system on an international scale is sweeping the world. It is the "changing world" of which we are told...it is called "new" and "liberal". It is as old as the oldest dictator. It is degenerate and decadent. As the national racism of Hitler's Germany persecuted a national minority to the whim of a natiomal majority...so the international racism of the liberals seek to persecute the international white minority to the whim of the international colored majority...so that we are footballed about according to the favor of the Afro-Asian bloc. But the Belgian survivors of the Congo cannot present their case to a war crimes commission...nor the Portuguese of Angola...nor the survivors of Castro...nor the citizens of Oxford, Mississippi. (...)
This nation was never meant to be a unit of one...but a united of the many (...). In united effort we were meant to live under this government...whether Baptist, Methodist, Presbyterian, Church of Christ, or whatever one's denomination or religious belief...each respecting the others rights to a separate denomination...each, by working to develop his own, enriching the total of all our lives through united effort. And so it was meant in our political lives...whether Republican, Democrat, Prohibition, or whatever political party...each striving frim his separate political station...respecting the rights of others to be separate and work from within their political framework...and each separate political station making its contribution toour lives...
And so it was meant in our racial lives...each race, within its own framework has the freedom to teach..to instruct..to develop..to ask for and receive deserved help from others of separate racial stations. This is the great freedom of our American founding fathers...but if we amalgamate into the one unit as advocated by the communist philosophers..then the enrichment of our lives...the freedom for our development...is gone forever. We become, therefore, a mongrel unit of one under a single all powerful government...and we stand for everything...and for nothing.
The true brotherhood of America, of respecting the separateness of others.and uniting in effort..has been so twisted and distorted from its original concept that there is small wonder that communism is winning the world.
We invite the negro citizens of Alabama to work with us from his separate racial station..as we will work with him..to develop, to grow in individual freedom and enrichment. We want jobs and a good future for BOTH our races. We want to help the physically and mentally sich of BOTH races..the tubercular and the infirm. This is the basic heritage of my religion, of which I make full practice....for we are all the handiwork of God. (...)
And my prayer is that the Father who reigns above us will bless all the people of this great sovereign State and nation, both white and black.
I thank you.



photographs of George Wallace taken by Richard Avedon who thought his pictures were "lousy" and that he had turned Wallace into a caricature (via)  via and via and via and via

Quoting Groucho Marx

"Getting older is no problem. you just have to live long enough."
Groucho Marx

"I must confess, I was born at a very early age."
Groucho Marx



photograph of Julius Henry "Groucho" Marx (1890-1977) by Richard Avedon via

Narrative images: Mothers of Civil Rights Workers

The photograph was taken by Richard Avedon in New York on 15 July 1975. It shows Anne Schwerner, Fannie Lee Chaney and Carolyn Goodman, mothers of slain civil rights workers. Their sons Michael Schwerner, James Chaney and Andrew Goodman were murdered on 21st of June 1964, known as the "Mississippi Burning murders". 41 years after the murders, one perpetrator was charged (via).



"The social paroxysms of the '60s changed, and darkened, Avedon's work. To a man so finely tuned to the Zeitgeist, how could they not? Photographing both civil-rights workers and segregationists in the South and, later, the antiwar movement, he ventured for the first time into political waters. At both Bazaar and Vogue, to which he moved in 1966, his editorial fashion work took on a brittle, sometimes critical edge: a shoot in Sicily is inspired by Antonioni's classic of ennui, "L'Avventura" and sends up the emptiness of high society. Three models in identical dresses fling themselves into the air in fits of manic laughter, an image of gleeful desperation. The Elizabeth Taylor/Richard Burton scandals are satirized in a witty mock-paparazzi scenario using Mike Nichols and Suzy Parker to play the press-hounded lovers." (via)

- - - - - - -
photograph via

Narrative images: William Casby, born in slavery

"I think again of the portrait of William Casby, "born a slave", photographed by Avedon. The noeme here is intense: for the man I see here has been a slave; he certifies that slavery has existed, not so far from us; and he certifies this not by historical testimony but by a new, somehow experiential order of proof, although it is the past which is in question - a proof no longer merely induced: the proof-according-to-St.-Thomas-seeking-to-touch-the-resurrected-Christ. I remember keeping for a long time a photograph I had cut out of a magazine - lost subsequently, like everything too carefully put away- which showed a slave market: the slavemaster, in a hat, standing; the slaves in loincloths, sitting. I repeat: a photograph, not a drawing or engraving; or my horror and my fascination as a child came from this: that there was a certainty that such a thing had existed: not a question of exactitude, but of reality: the historian was no longer the mediator, slavery was given without mediation, the fact was established without method."
Barthes, cited in Wexler, 2012



On 24th of March 1963, fashion photographer Richard Avedon (1923-2004) took one of his most powerful photographs in Algiers, Louisiana - a photograph of William Casby, a former slave, a photograph that has often been analysed, e.g. by Barthes (see first paragraph of this posting). Barthes's analysis of the photograph is often quoted but also criticised for taking place within a "Eurocentric analytical framework" (Burnett, 1995). Wexler joins this criticism and states that for Barthes, Casby still seems to be a slave, or rather, slavery seems to be Casby's "absolutely pure" meaning. Casby's eyes, however, reveal a tiny reflection of both Avedon and his cameras making "the photographic apparatus into part of Casby's own body. Casby aims his doubled lenses directly at the spectator, shooting back the objectifiying gaze." By doing so, Avedon reconceptualises the power relations (Wexler, 2012). Nevertheless, a certain limitation to power relations can be assumed when asking the hypothetical question whether William Casby could have requested a new photograph from Richard Avedon (Burnett, 1995).
Not much is known about William Casby - only that he was born into slavery in Algiers, Louisiana, and that his photograph was sold for € 56.200,-/$ 76.981,- at Christie's (via).

- - - - - - - - - - -
- Burnett, R. (1995) Cultures of Vision. Images, media & the Imaginary. Indiana University Press
- Wexler, L. (2012) "A More Perfect Likeness" Frederick Douglass and the Image of the Nation. In: Wallace, M. O. & Smith, S. M. (eds.) Pictures and Progress. Early Photography and the Making of African American Identity, 41-82. Duke University Press
- photograph via

Paris has a good idea

"Paris is always a good idea."
Audrey Hepburn



Paris does not just seem to be a good idea but to have a good idea. The city recently announced a plan to stop housing displacement in central neighbourhoods and the creation of "ghettos for the rich". The Council of Paris published a list of 257 addresses, i.e. over 8.000 flats, that the city would have the "right of first-refusal" to buy. These flats are located in areas that are gentrified and the city aims to increase subsidised rental options and to ensure that at least some remain affordable to middle-income Parisians, the "great forgotten ones".



"Choosing diversity and solidarity, against exclusion, social determinism and the centrifugal logic of the market. It also aims to reduce inequalities between the east and the west of Paris in particular, developing social supply where it is insufficient."
Ian Brossat, mayor's aide



In other words, when a flat on the list comes of for sale it must first be offered to the city at the market price; the price is decided by the city. If the landlord or landlady does not wish to accept the offer, they can appeal to an independent judge in order to have it repriced. The plan is certainly not cheap but worth it as it "is essentially to give Paris the ability to act as a social-mix monitor, steeping in to prevent social segregation in the public interest if they feel it is under threat." No matter if it is going to be a success, it "deserves credit for really trying." (via)



photographs: of Christian Bérard and Rénee (suit by Dior, Le Marais, Paris in August 1947) by Richard Avedon via, of Audrey Hepburn, Mel Ferrer and Richard Avedon for Harper's Bazaar (by Henry Wolf, 1959) via and via, of Richard Avedon and Audrey Hepburn via, of Audrey Hepburn with William Holden (set of "Paris When it Sizzles", 1964) via and via, of Dovima dressed in Dior by Richard Avedon (1955) via

Dieting Women

"A culture fixated on female thinness is not an obsession about female beauty, but an obsession about female obedience. Dieting is the most potent poltical sedative in women's history; a quietly mad population is a tractable one."
Naomi Wolf



Vogue's recent slideshow "The Best Lingerie Comes in All Sizes" shows so-called "plus-sized" models. Also recently, Calvin Klein's " US size 10" or "UK size 14" model Myla Dalbesio, so far "the biggest girl Calvin Klein has ever worked with" (via) became famous. She regards herself as an "inbetween" because she is neither anorexic nor plus-sized: "I love that by opening this discussion, I can also (hopefully) open some doors for other models, friends of mine, that have always straddled the line between straight size and plus. True body diversity doesn't mean only sizes 0's and 2's then jumping to size 16 and up. There is a middle ground." (via)
About twenty years ago, average models weighed 8% less than average women. Today, they weigh 23% less (via). From 1959 to 1978, Playboy's playmates' weights decreased significantly. So did Miss America Pageants with an average yearly decline of 0.17 kg (0.37 lb.) within the decades examined (Garner & Garfinkel, 1980). It can be assumed that these trends accelerated in the past years.



- Garner, D. M. & Garfinkel, P. E. (1980) Cultural Expectations of Thinness in Women. Psychological Reports, 47, 483-491
- photographs by Richard Avedon (1923-2004) via and via