I was once sensible, but now I'm a silly romantic. Nevertheless I have a good head on my shoulders, a typewriter, all of New York City, black tea, words, solitude.
BEAN GILSDORF
“My practice mines the ideology of images. I appropriate pictures of historical and cultural moments to make collages, flags, installations, and videos. By reshaping images from mass-market books and popular films, I explore the legacy of an archived, public narrative. Using popular and accessible images that transmit a codified and stereotyped view of American values, my work relies on recognition of the original form but establishes an unorthodox version. Translation of the source material from one medium to another creates a new and often re-gendered narrative, one that is modified by my own views and which supplies an account beyond the existing record.”
(Source: jesuisperdu)
Just 45 years ago, 16 states deemed marriages between two people of different races illegal.
But in 1967, the U.S. Supreme Court considered the case of Richard Perry Loving, who was white, and his wife, Mildred Loving, of African American and Native American descent.
The case changed history - and was captured on film by LIFE photographer Grey Villet, whose black-and-white photographs are now set to go on display at the International Center of Photography.
Twenty images show the tenderness and family support enjoyed by Mildred and Richard and their three children, Peggy, Sidney and Donald.
The children, unaware of the struggles their parents face, are captured by Villet as blissfully happy as they play in the fields near their Virginia home or share secrets with their parents on the couch.
Their parents, caught sharing a kiss on their front porch, appear more worry-stricken.
And it is no wonder - eight years prior, the pair had married in the District of Columbia to evade the Racial Integrity Act of 1924, which banned any white person marrying any non-white person.
But when they returned to Virginia, police stormed into their room in the middle of the night and they were arrested.
The pair were found guilty of miscegenation in 1959 and were each sentenced to one year in prison, suspended for 25 years if they left Virginia.
They moved back to the District of Columbia, where they began the long legal battle to erase their criminal records - and justify their relationship.
Following vocal support from the Presbyterian and Roman Catholic churches, the Lovings won the fight - with the Supreme Court branding Virginia’s anti-miscegenation law unconstitutional in 1967.
It wrote in its decision: ‘Marriage is one of the basic civil rights of man, fundamental to our very existence and survival.
‘To deny this fundamental freedom on so unsupportable a basis as the racial classifications embodied in these statutes, classifications so directly subversive of the principle of equality at the heart of the Fourteenth Amendment, is surely to deprive all the State’s citizens of liberty without due process of law.’ [Read more]
- Lauren Slater, Welcome to My Country (via psychotherapy)
Why It Is Really Hard To Be A Young Adult In 2011:
THESE ARE MY/OUR TROUBLES, PERFECTLY ARTICULATED IN ONE SENTENCE.
1. You HAVE to go to college
2. Which means you have to have a pretty solid idea of exactly what career you want (no matter what they tell you about still having “time”)
3. You are scared to death that god forbid you pick an artsy, not-very-profitable career because then you will struggle to support yourself in your adult life
4. You are scared to death that if you make a “smart career choice”, if you pick “doctor” or “lawyer” or anything ending with “technician, then a day will come when you realize you hate your life.
And basically, this is how I’ve always seen it:
Way back in the day, college was an option. But as time went on something happened that made an ace college degree a must… ugh, maybe it was the increasing rise in technology’s reign. (Maybe it’s true what they say in like, magazine articles and science journals- that as our generations progress, they must become smarter to keep up with all the new knowledge and information we are unearthing. To keep up with computers that “in the near future” will be able to do the same shit we can except better and faster. Nice.)
In the sixties, let’s say, you could score a job college degree or not, based on how good you were at it, how much potential you displayed, how personable you were, etc. Maybe not for positions as doctors or whatever, because I am sure one would need thorough training of course.
But these days, we have to get a college degree even in art, to get a job in our field?!
I was cursed with loving the arts and not brain surgery.
Our generation’s dilemma- my dilemma- is that college has become such a requirement in our lives, it has become so fucking expensive, that these factors are keeping us from pursuing the things we love. We are trapped by fear. We are trapped in a world of expensive FRUIT, and five dollar coffee, of rent so ridiculous that it can make you want to live with your parents again.
I was accepted to every art school I applied to. And I am positive that this isn’t something to be proud of, but instead I chose to go to community college because I simply. Could not. Afford it. Financial aid or not, it is tear-inducing to think about being thousands upon thousands of dollars in debt after you get your “ART DEGREE” and then not being able to get a fucking job anyway.
This is why I want to say to everyone right now who is taking a risk by going for a degree in the non-sciences, arts, etc.: I envy your courage. This has been a long post but I really don’t have an answer to the struggles of young people in this age. Because if I had one I would probably be a lot happier and secure with my choices than I am now.
(Source: christaexplainsitall, via iwantwhatismine)
