Dana Lauren

COACD has just introduced me to a wonderful person, well i didn’t really meet this person but he threw up some of her photos and a link to her blog which i followed, and was amazed. I was immediately drawn to her work and her style, the best word i can think of to describe it is candid, but then there's still much more then that. Her work is so live to me, and while scamming through her months of blog posts i couldn't help but place my self in the photos with these people, it just looked like they were living for the moment and having a trippy blast. The photos portray a sense of self in their subject(models/people... real people) a confidence and love of their own skin.

Its not only her work that has got me hooked, its her person. As i reed her artist statement on her site, i began to see thoughts i have had throughout my life being put into writing.

“I’m captivated with the idea of an ideal world were everyone cares. Where everyone is genuine and honest and people are free to do as they please without fear of discrimination and malicious nature based on shallow, petty, and materialistic reasons. [This is unrealistic.] Where no one is ashamed of whom they are and diversity is celebrated. My work defies a society that says we shouldn’t love ourselves [and those around us] according to the media, according to our standard of beauty, according to the American dream.”

That is just a small quote from her statement, you must read the entire thing.

Her work has made me think, a side effect of good work. It made me think of 10th grade English class our teacher Mr.Wagner(i just remembered his name) had us read a poem, i don’t remember who wrote it and nor can i recite any of it. But i do remember it being about a prisoner in an concentration camp during WW2, that would not allow his surrounding affect him. I mean although people were being beaten, starving, and murder around him he did not let it affect him. And this is just mind blowing to me, how can somebody go through life with out letting their surrounding rub off on them, or make them, them?

How dose someone truly be them self or have a “like” without their surroundings (media, friends, family, peers) playing a part in helping them make that decision? Dose that make sense?