Images of a Weekend

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For all the horror that winter brings in Manhattan, she certainly makes up for it in June. The city is happy, the energy is good, and behind every turn awaits an explosions of flowers, artists, farmers market harvests, and the sparkling sunlight. The Hudson glitters like a canary diamond and, for once, even the garbage trucks seem to hum quietly to themselves while lovers quarrels are called to a truce in place of strolls through the park in all the quiet pleasures of life.

I went to the farmers market, I walked Riverside Park, I explored Gotham Market and learned that rice crispy treat ice cream is a thing and it’s amazing. I started watching the 2nd season of Chef’s Table (one of my all time favorite food shows) and enjoyed my new Diptyque candle that smells of home cooked Madeleines. This I photographed {above} with my Monica Rich Kosann locket and a memento from one of the sweetest moments of the weekend — when I stumbled upon a poet writing poems for donation which he bases on any theme you told him. I asked him to make me a poem on Provence and this is what he wrote…

The image need not be imagine

it’s beautiful as it is

The people need not be questioned

they’ve an honest way to live

Give to the land and in return

the land gives back to you

It’s funny how we go so far

to learn the truth

-Lynn Gentry

“Provence”

Riverside Park

June 11th, 2016

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From Germany with Love

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My father and I did a lot of talking about his dad, Henry V. Beck, while we were in Berlin. We wanted to see where he was at this extraordinary time of his life as an army man stationed overseas. I have some of these old photographs – we always love to compare how much my brother looks like him – and a very real and moving poem he wrote while so very far from the ones he loved. These artifacts sat for decades in an old army trunk in his closet and are now some of my most beloved possessions of this thoughtful and very elegant family man.

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Love Letters

LoveLetters_615Madame,

I understand from my sister that your present intention is to travel; to return to England. I have decided, after long consideration, to write to you. We have travelled together, and I hope we have become friends sufficiently to – my dear Lady Anna, let me dispense with attempts to be clever or discreet. I am in love with you. There. It is said. For many, many years I have believed it was my fate never to say these words. A long time ago I had hoped, as all young men hope – no, I had mor ethan hoped, I had confidently expected to be overtaken by those feelings I had read so much about. It never happened. And now it has. 

Ahdaf Soueif, “The Map of Love

We have been talking about these old-fashioned artifacts at the studio recently when our assistant brought in a four page, monogrammed love letter she had received (which inevitably ended up on a shoot!). Do people still write love letters? I got to thinking about it and when you open your mind to the written word of love you begin to see it everywhere. In Santiago I found Pablo Neruda’s Love Poems; in the book “Map of Love” Sharif al-Baroudi’s love letter to Lady Anna brought tears to my eyes, and in the film HER, our main character makes a living writing beautiful handwritten letters. What is so special about ink on paper that when we receive one – even if the feeling is not reciprocated – we can’t throw it away? Will one day, people feel sentimental about emails in the same vein or will all our digital maps of love disappear like the flash of a Snapchat?…

Typewriters // Embossers // Monogrammed Stationery // Poetic Love // Dramatic Love

“Photograph” a poem by Allan Andre

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One of the most amazing things about living in New York is the world of unknown possibility  that awaits outside your doorstep. You never know what you may find on a walk to a cafe, or what adventure awaits by taking a different commute home. You never know who you’re going to run into on Houston and Elizabeth st or what new thing you’ll discover by just being out in the world of Manhattan. I was running errands, walking through Union Square from Fishs Eddy to The Strand when I saw a darling man alone with his typewriter, very lost in thought. He asked me for a word, something with meaning, so I said “Photograph“, and this is what he wrote for me on that crisp fall day…

 

 a favorite photograph, 

                            to be shared again and again.

the light,   the texture,

                     give it strength.

  where is the eye?

             the shattered remnant of a

        perfect seeing, 

                                the ghost of a life well lived.

 the angles, the framing,

         give it context.

                 where is the absence?

  who has witnessed

               such a heart-rending deficit,

                                  such a need,

            an urgency to possess?

                               where is the photograph?

does anyone imagine

                               they are less than sacred?

           touch it up, then;

                                 show what you can.

 

 

 

– allan andre

    9/20/13