The Replacement Girl, 4/90 Amstutz, Gerry. Zurich, 2012.“Oh … my … GOD!&
The Replacement Girl, 4/90 Amstutz, Gerry. Zurich, 2012.“Oh … my … GOD!” Barbara groaned when she saw this picture, and flipped the page over. “What the hell do I look like?” She rolled her eyes and tutted, half-laughing, pulling her skin back to sit taut against her cheekbones. But after a few seconds she stopped and turned the page back, skimming her hands across the paper. “But, no. Actually … you know what, it’s right to have this picture in here — for people to see all of it, the whole thing.” The ‘whole thing’ was a catalogue I’d put together for Mullen’s 90th birthday, drawn from the thousands of pictures she’d had taken across her life. There was little from her early life — just a scattering of faded childhood photos with forgotten cousins and complaisant dogs, and a couple of endearingly gawky teenage portraits. And then, from late 1947, a flood that carried on unabated for the best part of twenty years, before dwindling away back into nothing. After the early Sixties, the intervals between pictures began to stretch longer, from days to years to decades; trips abroad with friends, family reunions, the occasional portrait for local newspapers and magazines. And then there was the picture The Observer had used in the first piece I’d published about Mullen, in the summer of 2013. It had been taken a year earlier by Swiss photographer Gerry Amstutz, in the leafy garden of Mullen’s Zurich home, six decades after she’d walked away from a life lived in the camera’s cross-hairs; six decades during which she’d had plenty of time to rehearse the role of ‘former top model’ — and to slip back into model mode, on request, twisting her face and arching her eyebrows to fix the lens with amusement and defiance; ‘This is it.’ #BarbaraMullen #TheReplacementGirl #GerryAmstutz #TheObserver #2012 -- source link