brunomaric.com
Headline: Victoria's Secret Says Goodbye To Angels
For years, I have engaged with models in conversation about the industry. Relatively few at any given time seemed to be fully awake to its agendas and, in turn, its trajectory. It would have been nice to see more of them reconsider partaking in virtue-signaling because it ultimately seems to be proving detrimental to them in terms of work and social standing.
Getting woke and going broke are the new black in 2021.
“A person who [has been] demoralized is unable to assess true information. The facts tell [him nothing]. Even if [he is showered] with information – authentic proof with documents, with pictures – he will refuse to believe it until he [receives] a kick in his fat bottom.”
– Yuri Bezmenov, 1984
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There was a time when I thought, naively, that becoming an artist would benefit me in terms of my emotional and mental wellbeing. This theory was rooted in what I considered to be my understanding of the human condition years ago. I figured I would stay true to myself and explore the things that made me feel whole.
Enter a new decade: a world flipped upside down, completely backwards. Seemingly every person working (or aspiring to work) in any creative industry like my own has been indoctrinated, manipulated, conditioned and pressured into having the same exact opinion on every single topic. Everyone is – to paraphrase from Chuck Palahniuk's Fight Club – “a copy of a copy of a copy.”
When I was growing up, there was a sense of rebellion among kids. It really wasn't all that long ago. People, in general, lived life with healthy amounts of skepticism; they questioned authority and they didn't bend over backwards at each and every demand of the state.
What do we have today? The state says, “jump” and the plebs ask, “how high?” This, ironically, as they smoke their government approved pot and waste away.
I saw a meme the other day that directly mocked a band that I am embarrassed to admit I used to listen to. “You're not punk unless your social and political views align perfectly with those of every major corporation.” Thankfully, what's even more embarrassing than what used to be on my MP3 player in high school is that countless lost souls consider themselves to be a part of a modern day counterculture. No such thing exists in reality.
Being an artist in this day and age is next to impossible for those who embrace individualism with no regard for popular opinion. Most artistic genres and mediums might as well be nonexistent. If you are a second-rate version of someone else, your work, in turn, can only ever be a second-rate version of theirs. Think about it.
“We don't read and write poetry because it's cute. We read and write poetry because we are members of the human race. And the human race is filled with passion. Medicine, law, business, engineering: these are noble pursuits, necessary to sustain life. But poetry, beauty, romance, love: these are what we stay alive for.”
– Robin Williams as John Keating, Dead Poets Society, 1989
Happy 14th day week month to flatten the curve. We're well into our second year of a mass psychosis afflicting once-humans worldwide. Here's to two more, I guess. Is that what everyone wants? Sure as shit seems that way at this point.
This circus continues to be perpetuated because most people don't have time to take a deuce let alone do some research to try to figure out the world they're existing in. If you had such an excuse in the beginning, fine, that's easy enough to forgive. But if that's your excuse today, almost halfway through 2021 and given the predicament we find ourselves in, you're deliberately oblivious and you're taking the world to hell with you.
Turn off the lying, terrorizing, propagandizing television and read a book.
Fuck the new abnormal.
Flickr – before it went to hell on the Political Correctness Express – was a truly unique platform for film photography. Up until about the early 2010s, the website was swarming with brilliant work from relative unknowns. Their pictures made you feel, think about or long for something; they had substance which made them worthy of admiration and even archiving.
I used to stay up into the night, spend hours at a time on the photo-sharing website. Fast forward a decade and the feed featuring new work from the few people I subscribe to may keep my attention for half a minute.
If beauty was purely subjective (it's not), anyone anywhere could have an endless stream of inspiration to create. Not nearly everyone does. To preach indiscriminately that “it's not what you look at, it's what you see” is not always insightful or advantageous.
Looking through old photos, I came across this. Not exactly a scene worth capturing on Natura 1600 but whatever.