Pixnflixnwrites

Happy 77th, Edward Lachman.

Happy 82nd, Christopher Walken.

“Do what you have to do, to do what you want to do.”

Denzel Washington.

FRED ASTAIRE and GINGER ROGERS - Roberta (1935) dir. William A. Seiter

To be a surrealist means barring from your mind all remembrance of what you have seen, and being always on the lookout for what has never been. ~*René Magritte

Photo: Duane Michals, René Magritte with hat, 1965

In the United States we think we have at our disposal virtually everything—and I emphasize the word “think.” We have big houses and cars, good medical treatment, jets, trains and monorails; we have computers, good communications, many comforts and conveniences. But where have they gotten us? We have an abundance of material things, but a successful society produces happy people, and I think we produce more miserable people than almost anyplace on earth. I’ve traveled all over the world, and I’ve never seen people who are quite as unhappy as they are in the United States. We have plenty, but we have nothing, and we always want more. In the pursuit of material success as our culture measures it, we have given up everything. We have lost the capacity to produce people who are joyful. The pursuit of the material has become our reason for living, not enjoyment of living itself. ~*Marlon Brando

Photo: Edward Clark, Marlon Brando preparing for his film debut in The Men, 1949

I’m a real rebel with a cause. ~*Nina Simone

Nina Simone with her daughter, Lisa, Essence Magazine, December 1970

“Never be afraid to sit awhile and think.”

David Attie, Lorraine Hansberry, 1959

Richard Avedon, Mike Nichols and Elaine May

Irving Penn, The painters Jacob Lawrence and Gwendolyn Knight, New York, 1947

No longer am I waiting

For someone else

To take me out

of that dark place

The self of you is the prime mover

~*Louise Nevelson photographed by Cecil Beaton in 1978.

Vivian Maier, location and date unknown

Hiro, Jerry Hall, Saint Martin, French West Indies, 1975

Eric Swayne, Charlie Watts and Shirley, 1963

Vilmos Zsigmond

Gordon Parks

Sidney Poitier and Harry Belafonte at a party at Sardi’s restaurant in honor of Lorraine Hansberry’s Broadway play ‘A Raisin in the Sun’ in New York, March 1959.

A rent party in Greenwich Village, ca. 1956. A rent party was one in which the guests passed around the hat to help the host pay their rent.

Photo: Weegee via Int'l Center of Photography/All That's Interesting