At the Healing-in-Progress Café...

 

... you can talk about whatever you want. 

 

Yes! I was able to get out and do my sunrise run this morning. Photos taken at 7:23 and 7:25. Unfortunately, there was 100% cloud cover, but the temperature was a nicely warmed up to 20°. The next 2 days are going to be too cold again — 2 below tomorrow at sunrise and 1 below on Saturday — but then it looks like there will be a stretch of sunrise-runnable days — at least until next Thursday or Friday. By then, we'll be launched into February, and February won't be as cold as January... probably. Plus, it's short. I can already feel the spring approaching. Certainly, the darkest 20% of the year is over. We're entering the most balanced days, in terms of light and darkness, and I like that.

At the Backyard Fox Café...

 

... you can talk about whatever you want.

At the Snowfall Café...

... you can write about whatever you want. 

What is the controversy about this magazine cover at British Vogue?

Consider the question for yourself before reading the criticisms.

At Instagram, British Vogue says: "The nine models gracing the cover are representative of an ongoing seismic shift that became more pronounced on the SS22 runways; awash with dark-skinned models whose African heritage stretched from Senegal to Rwanda to South Sudan to Nigeria to Ethiopia. For an industry long criticized for its lack of diversity, as well as for perpetuating beauty standards seen through a Eurocentric lens, this change is momentous."

At CNN, a writer based in Nigeria says: 

Why are the models depicted in a dark and ominous tableau, the lighting so obscure to the point they are almost indistinguishable on a cover meant to celebrate their individuality? Why were they dressed all in black, giving a funereal air, and an almost ghoulish, otherworldly appearance?

Why were they sporting strangely-coiffed wigs? Many of these women wear their natural hair normally and it would have been great to see that reflected on a cover celebrating African beauty. Additionally, on the cover, the models' skin color appeared to be several shades darker than their normal skin tone.

The photographs were taken by Afro-Brazilian photographer Rafael Pavarotti, and the images -- published in numerous glossy magazines over the years -- are consistent with his visual style of presenting Black skin in an ultra-dark manner....

But the lighting, styling, and makeup, which purposefully exaggerated the models' already dark skin tones, reduced their distinguishing features and presented a homogenized look. Was this the best way to celebrate Black beauty?...

Should we ask what's the best way to celebrate black beauty or what's the vision of the artist/photographer? Pavarotti is black, so to push him back and say he's doing it wrong is to reject a black vision, to put him in a lower position than all the photographers whose vision is respected. And yet, the artist and model relationship has long been a matter of critique, and Pavorotti shouldn't get special immunity from criticism. 

Many online critics felt the images were fetishized and pandering to a White gaze, ironic, considering the editorial team behind them consisted almost entirely of people of African descent. 

Ghanaian writer Natasha Akua wrote in a private message on Instagram: "When I saw it I immediately was shocked ... I feel like I know what statement he was trying to make visually but turning these black models into this strange tableau straight out of a horror movie just felt instinctively wrong." 

"Why darken their skin beyond recognition?" she asked. "To make some statement about being unapologetically black? Unapologetically black means being who you are and does not require this manner of hyperbole." 

"I find the lighting and tones beautiful," Daniel Emuna wrote. "But my personal complaint is that publications and brands are constantly communicating that the deepest darkest hue in complexion represents the truest essence of Blackness or even Africanness. This is clearly a mark of the white gaze."

Sunrise — 7:24, 7:29.

Write about whatever you like in the comments.

Sunrise — 7:20.

It was too cold for a full-scale sunrise run this morning, but I bundled up for a short walk to a vantage point.

I liked the view out over the frost-coated cattails...

The extra steam from the University power plant did the diffusion work normally performed by clouds...

 

You can see all the clear sky...

 

Meade was waiting for me in the truck, and he took this shot as the sun broke through...

 

He assures me that I am in that picture. 

Here's how the breakthrough of the sun looked to me....

Sunrise — 7:23.

Talk about whatever you like in the comments. 

Bonus picture from yesterday, captured by Meade:

  

At the Sunrise Café...

... you can talk about whatever you like.

Sunrise panorama.

Time: 7:21.

Icy Lake Mendota in the morning and afternoon.

It finally warmed up enough to do the sunrise run...

... about 30° at 7:27 when I took that photograph. 

Later, we drove out to a place in Madison that I'd never even noticed before, Governor's Island:

 

This is land that had belonged to a governor in the 19th century, that became the Wisconsin Hospital for the Insane, later called Mendota Mental Health Institute. It's where Ed Gein lived out his last years. 

We enjoyed our sojourn around the beautifully scenic location. It was about 40° at 3:20, and we walked out onto the Lake Mendota ice... just a little way...

 

Watch out, if you go. There are, I hear, some "puddles." 

I liked the view from the bluff...

 

Notice how the ice piles up in frozen "waves" along the shore. 

We walked the entire loop of the small island, then drove home around to our side of the lake, where we got a glimpse of the sunset... 

... as we entered the car wash:

ADDED: One more photo. This one by Meade:

At the Black Ice Café... you can talk about whatever you want.

It finally warmed up enough that I could take an afternoon walk. I hadn't seen the lake in 7 days, and those very cold days had transformed the lake:

There's some beautiful glassy-clear ice on the lake. Look out there:

2 ice skaters with 2 dogs:

Higher up, the prairie and the sunset:

"Respect/Empower/Include."

Murals on the boarded up windows of State Street, photographed today, in Madison, Wisconsin.

Madisonians in shorts trudge past a mural of Barack and Michelle Obama that is painted on the boarded-up window of Which Wich Superior Sandwiches:



On the boarded-up window of the Madison Museum of Contemporary Art, a drooling troglodyte cop observes what might be a pile of burning doughnuts that give off smoke that reads — like a thought balloon — "Defund the Police":



A longer view of the side of the museum featuring an ironic "Right turn only" sign:



There's the notion that "being a revolutionary" has an element of being fun, loving, and beautiful:



There's the grievance that you can't play your music really loud without people calling the cops:



More Madisonians trudging along, this time past dripping letters that few will read, but I'm seeing "Tell the President/To prepare the bunker/When he flee/Because until we see/Justice you will/Never see peace!"



"Yes, we can!" the old President says, as a waiter sets up an outdoor café table.

In all my sunrise runs on this path, I'd never seen a deer before, and today, suddenly, up ahead, there were 2...

They kept disappearing then reappearing at a later point, and I kept getting my camera out, then putting it away, concluding that they were gone for good, and then, finally, I caught one...

5:22 a.m.

That's today, the 9th of the 10 days with the earliest sunrise time, 5:17.

I was there at 5:17, but the sun had not yet broken over the shoreline.



I don't have a view of the horizon. The first direct bit of sun became visible at 5:20:



You see why I picked 5:22 as the best. It wasn't because I was 5 minutes "late." I wasn't late! Were you?

At the Pre-Dawn Café...

... you can write about whatever you want.

The photo was taken at 5:10 a.m. today, the 8th of the 10 days when the sun rises at 5:17, the earliest sunrise time of the year.

And please remember to use the Althouse Portal when you need to do some Amazon shopping. I really appreciate your support for this blog.

"Scroll casually through your platform of choice and you’ll see kids. Kids protesting on Pinterest; kids posing on Instagram..."

"... kids socially distanced proms and graduations on Facebook. Kids of people you know I.R.L. and kids of people you don’t. Kids who most likely haven’t given their permission for you and me to see them or who have simply accepted this exposure as part of modern life. Every time we post a picture, we’re telling a story, crafting the myth of our own life. Images of our children become part of that mythology. A shot of kids frolicking on the beach or posing at Disney World tells a story about prosperity, happiness and ease. A photo of well-scrubbed kids on the first day of school says My children are thriving. I’m a good mom.... When my older daughter and blogs were both in their infancy, I posted pictures of my new baby and wrote about new motherhood. I found community and support from other new mothers. But as my daughter got older, as she went from a sleeping, pooping blob to an actual person, and as the world soured on so-called mommy blogging, the sharing got harder to justify. After all, my daughter had never consented to appearing on my blog. How would she feel when she got old enough to Google and discovered her entire life online?"

Writes Jennifer Weiner in "Should Any Parents Be Instagramming Their Kids?/Sure, those of us who do may not all be Myka Stauffers. But we’re all selling some kind of story about ourselves, and using our children to do so" (NYT).

I didn't think it would work...

... but you actually can point your iPhone camera directly at the sun.

To the eye, the sun looked perfectly orange and the sky was blue. The camera interpreted the sun as white, and that required the sky to be perfectly orange.

The Interactive Social Contract.

That's a photograph I took in Brooklyn in October 2007. Just ran across it as I was searching (unsuccessfully) for a post about something that happened to me around that time. That caught my eye. It was right next to this...



One of my New York photos. What is it? I can see what it's not. It's not a wave breaking on a beach.

Anyway, I thought perhaps the Interactive Social Contract from 2007 could speak to us in this famously screwed up year, 2020.

At the Sunrise Café...

... you can write until dawn.

That photo was taken at 5:20 this morning, the 7th of the 10 mornings with the earliest sunrise of the year — officially: 5:17.

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