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Here's a little nugget Fauxhawk sent me from his very own inbox - a jobseeker named Joey who sent this cover letter in response to a marketing position at the Hawk's company.
Clever and eye-catching and maybe acceptable coming from someone in a creative industry.
But -10,000,000 points for being an adult who calls himself "Joey."
I collect images that are (to me, at least) beautiful and transporting and soul-filling. I pin them to my cork board for uplift, I carry them with me when I need inspiration. Every once in a while I come across someone whose work is not only beautiful and transporting and soul-filling, but makes me wish I were an artist.
The undercover photographer JR is an example of such an artist. I featured his work in Cambodia last year and continue to be amazed by his vision and humanity. I found out from SwissMiss that he just won the 2011 TedPrize and I can't think of anyone more deserving - his work is not only visually arresting, but firmly planted at the intersection of art and activism in a way I find incredibly inspiring.
JR got his start as a photographer after finding a camera on the Paris metro. His interest in vulnerable populations - women, victims of war, the disenfranchised - led him to affix large-scale portraits of the faceless to building facades, walls, rooftops, buses and trains in some of the most impoverished parts of the world. He works uninvited, creating illegal photo exhibitions that engage the community and encourage discussion.
For the project Face 2 Face, JR mounted enormous portraits of Israelis and Palestinians facing each other in the opposing territories, forcing unavoidable daily contact between laborers engaged in the same line of work. He plans to return to the fraught region with a project called "Hand in Hand."
In 2008, he focused on women as targets of conflict in his Women Are Heroes project, traveling to Sierra Leone, Kenya, Sudan, Liberia and the slums of Brazil, where violence and repression are a part of daily life.
JR's film for the Women are Heroes project received a standing ovation at Cannes - check out this evocative trailer:
TRAILER " WOMEN ARE HEROES"
Uploaded by JR. - Watch original web videos.
...that it doesn't matter how delicious Amarena Fabbri wild cherries are - because their packaging is gloriously beautiful.
That said, Stephanie, to whom I owe this new obsession, says she adds one of these dark little cherries to a Manhattan, thereby taking the classic cocktail to eleven.
I'd reserve half the liquid and replace it with brandy, let the cherries soak for a few days, and serve them over ice cream or pound cake. ReDIClis!
OK, I'm really going now. No more procrastination. Yell at me if I come back here today.
