Airbrushed?

David LaChapelle took this one all the way back in '86. I'm not sure how much he airbrushed. Hopefully just the dress? I dunno. I cut that part out of the picture. I don't even remember what magazine it was in. I do remember that he liked to make the edges of his pictures fuzzy back then, and I had some beautiful prints he gave me that some ex-boyfriend is holding hostage in a storage space in New York. What an asshole. The ex, not David. David got me started. I would not have had a portfolio if he hadn't taken an interest in me. I would have had a much harder time getting signed, not that I gave a shit. Modeling came to me, not the other way around, and as obnoxious as that sounds, it's true. I moved to New York in January of 1985 because I fell in love with it two months before. I had no aspirations of fame or fortune. I just wanted to get the hell out of Akron, Ohio. You would too. Trust me.

P.S. If you're young and you are reading this, take lots of pictures of yourself. Be creative, have fun. Get your friends in on it. My old friend recently showed me some photos another friend took of us in college, ones where we were trying to be all arty and shit. They were AWESOME. Trust me, when you are my age, you will relish those memories. You will love giggling over your first forays into creative visual expression. As a matter of fact, do it whether you are 18 or 48. Who cares? You'll still always be looking back, you know?