Birds

"You can take a picture of me, but you can't take a picture of my brain."- Madeleine Vionnet

Madeleine Vionnet. Brilliant artist and dress designer, 

not to mention one of the first business owners 

to provide on-site healthcare and daycare for her employees

 -- and that in the 1930's. You can find out more about her here.

Vionnet designing clothes on her mannequin.

She never sketched her designs, believing that working in 3D was 

the only way  to explore how fabric drapes on a woman's body.

I'm very interested in the idea of taking a picture of one's brain, not in the sense of a PET scan image, but something more personally expressive that reveals the simultaneous realities we are creating and experiencing at any given moment. 


With respect to the photo above-- Vionnet and her mannequin-- I like to think about how each of her designs was influenced not only by her knowledge of tailoring, fabrics, and history of dress design, but also by the weather that day, if she'd passed a bakery and smelled fresh-baked bread on the way to work (or conversely an open sewer),  what sounds she could hear in her studio while she was working, or what she had dreamed the night before. 


I'm thinking of a fingerprint of the brain-- a fluid, multi-dimensional and constantly evolving imprint or map that describes the ongoing morphosis of  individual identity.

Image credit: Futurity

My fingerprints