Vampire chic

In a good photo there is a special something, an invisible "eye" guiding the viewer to a realization. I recently recognized it in the sweetness and kindness with which Bill Cunningham captures candids of fashionable New Yorkers. This ephemeral gaze can be brought to any subject, regardless of skin color, weight, age or handicap.

Skinny models on high-fashion runways are an easy target. They are easy to loathe and disregard as emaciated mannequins strutting for paparazzi. Only recently have I grown to appreciate the art and work behind modeling, clothing design, and fashion photography.

There is a fierce, cold quality which is alluring and unnatural. Why it is beautiful I cannot say, but it is beautiful nonetheless. It is this ephemeral, invisible quality that cannot be grasped but only recognized.

I've been stumbling around this idea for awhile now. There are two directions in which this gaze could turn. It could become universal, shedding beauty and attention on all subjects. There could be a kind attention, seeking out the beauty in every individual. He who seeks beauty will find it.

Or we could fall back on the easy looks of young, vapid children posing. I'm afraid when Smeyer wrote her books and gushed about the unnatural beauty of her vampire children, she was seeing with a closed gaze, the common gaze.

I'd like to play with this duality. I'd like the vampires, creatures who have been around for centuries, to have an open gaze. They are raised around their own "beauty" and bored by it. Instead they seek out the Realness of people. They see beyond their own hipbones and pale skin.

However their prey, the humans, are captivated by these unnaturally formed idols. The humans see blank faces, pouting lips, and uniform skin as perfection. It is a small and narrow sort of pretty, one which leaves the humans vulnerable and blinded. 

I don't want to hate the skinny or the pretty faces in the media, that is the wrong reaction. I will recognize that they are pretty, but I wish to emphasize that were it not for the demands of their prey the vampires could have kept their human form. A Smeyer vampire is a sad thing, two-dimensional and removed from complexity. At first the humans will celebrate and gawk, but in time a wider gaze will be demanded.