20090518

nu shooz

Photobucket
i've always harbored a bit of good-natured jealousy towards those people who achieve great success at a young age. for someone like myself, who's considered maybe twenty different careers in the past three years alone, it's fascinating to imagine being completely confident about what i want to do with my life before puberty even hits.

gerrit starczewski, a twenty-two year old photographer based in a "small town between cologne and amsterdam," is one of these rare cases. the sight of socially diverse and disparate soccer fans rejoicing over the home team's win inspired starczewski to seek out "the cohesion and the equality of the people" - and he was just six years old the time. the next time he attended a game, he brought along his father's trusty minolta x-300 to capture the magic of the moment. the young entrepreneur soon began to write fiction to accompany his growing collection of images, and created a self-produced zine, which he sold out of his trench coat on the playground.

Photobucket
lykke li.
now that the photography wunderkind is legal, he's been working the concert circuit, compiling his latest series, entitled "dancing shoes". in search of "the perfect shoe of pop music," starczewski has captured the shoes of artists ranging from pharrell williams ("see these ice cubes? see these ice creams?") to the scissor sisters ("you'd think that i could muster up a little soft-shoe gentle sway").

Photobucket
michael stipe.
i love how the shoes all seem to perfectly encapsulate the personality of each artist, truly illuminating a detail that most concertgoers overlook. even as fashion-oriented as i am, my poor eyesight, venue seat location, and/or level of excitement at shows inevitably keeps me from paying attention to the headliner's foot fashion. starczewski's eagle-eye vantage point is the perfect simultaneous fix for the fashion and music lover in me.

Photobucket
roisin murphy.

Photobucket
scissor sisters.

Photobucket
the dandy warhols.

Photobucket
alison mossheart.
i bet you can guess the theme of today's playlist, yeah? if you can pick up the less obvious references to shoes in these songs, we should probably be best friends.
walking in memphis::marc cohn ; let's dance::david bowie ; footloose::kenny loggins ; it's still rock and roll to me::billy joel ; the show [featuring slick rick]::doug e. fresh ; bennie and the jets::elton john ; scenes from an italian restaurant::billy joel ; boots of spanish leather::bob dylan ; american pie::don mclean ; fuck me pumps::amy winehouse

[image credit: gerrit starczewski (1, 2)]

8 comments:

Hemaly said...

I agree with so much what you have said. Shoes are a discreet way to show off your personality.
& the Marc Jacobs heels still shock me.

jessica said...

this is so cool .
and i too am intensely jealous of young superstars .
it makes me feel sort of unaccomplished, like an oldtimer failure .
and im only sixteen !
gah .

anywaysanyways, this kid is a cool one .
sort of reminds me of salvatore ferragamo, as he opened up his first shop at the age of 13 .
imagine that !

Cas Ruffin said...

I totally posted this like a couple weeks ago. Seriously though, it's a good collection.

paanie said...

hm, what an interesting character. i've never heard of him. i definitely feel your 20's crunch. so you don't have to go through it alone!

Elizabeth Victoria Clark said...

these photos are like the underground jak and jill haha. i love lykke li's shoes so much

La Chauve-Souris said...

cool selection of shoes the marc jacobs one must be real fun

June said...

i loooove the 2nd ones.

Anonymous said...

last one is my favorite, i like his work

very much like this post and the blog x