Miss Anya wrote:
But Lolita is Lolita because she is seductive with her innocence, not her "sexy look".

Miss Anya,

you are the only one that answered that correct. It's the seductive innocent that many men are attracted to and not sexy look. You can get a sexy look from a grown woman without the youthful innocent look.

I saw a little bit of the movie on ShowTime. The movie pretty much displayed what you have defined and what is going on out here often in the world. MetArt is a example of this too. A European website with photographer's displaying lolita images.

Folks you better be careful, in this country stuff like this gets attention in more ways than one. This isn't the old days, where you lived in the deep south and were allowed to marry 13 year girls nor can Mrs. Robinson rob the cradle anymore. Just ask the women who are now in the same boat that men are in on the Megan's List.

Madcitychel wrote:
There is no letter "H" in Russian, I didn't know what would be the correct spelling of his name in English, but I am glad you understood who I was talking about.
)

Well, Lolita was written by Nabokov in English, not in Russian. (and published in France first.)

alexwh wrote:
And here is one of Bert Stern's masterpieces. I have this photograph in my head whenever I shoot for magazines. What can I take out from a photograph that is not essential? (I think to myself). In this photo of Gary Cooper (during the success of his western, High Noon), Bert Stern had to photograph him for a big magazine. Most of us (or at least this photographer) would have asked him to come dressed as a cowboy. Cooper in a suit, no hat, a perfect white background and one gun make this the perfect cowboy.
Alexwh

Gary Cooper by Bert Stern

Very interesting!
Thanks )

Miss Anya wrote:
That's a great idea though.  I wish I had thought of it 6 months ago.  My body has been changing greatly, so I don't look like a little girl as much anymore.

Anya, but remember the longer you wait the farther you'll be from that look. 
You should do it. For sure.

If there is something you think you should have done in the past - do it now.

Lucshe pozdno chem nikogda
(Later is better then never)

Experimental Photoworks wrote:
I saw lolita at a girl who had a womens body and was just trying to learn what to do with it.

She had had sex with the camp counsler yes, but she was still learning how to be a woman.

She still had much of a childs mind.

Humbert was still in love/lust with a ghost of his childhood.

I recall the first time a man called me "baby" and not the way my dad used the term for me, it was the way he used it for my mom. I was about 13/14 and literaly ran home & told my mom. I was sooo not ready for that yet.

It's interesting how one keeps coming across this "lolita" concept, in different aspects; whether it's being one or watching one.

oldguysrule wrote:
Humbert Humbert
(rather than Gumbert)

swimsuit? aww c'mon you can do better than that. so obvious. such an 'if a 13 year old was in Maxim' kinda thing. the other obvious approach to be avoided is the beauty pagent mini-babe, I think.

The key to capturing Lolita IMHO is not fact of Lolita but the obsession of Humbert! From that fragile and distorted place, view Lolita again without forcing her to overtly mimic an older woman.

That's why I like Nabokov!

Thank you for saying it. 

There is this concept I use; a concept of rainbow.
Each color stands for a different group of people.  If the audience is more then one color, if there is a diversity in it - that means the job is well done.  And that means that within the same book he was able to show at least two angles of one spectrum.

Bulgacov was another master of building up themes withough deminishing the quality of each.

What is wrong with the swimsuit? When Humbert moved in it was the time before school started, it was warm and she was playing by the pool.  It doesn't have to be revieling or anything.  Like the one my niece has (not that you know what suit my niece has of course )

oldguysrule wrote:
Why are young girls just becoming aware of their sexuality potentially so compelling? The answer is your starting point.

This is a whole other "issue"

I though about this:
Women's sexuality is always very compelling.  Enough to change the world's history.

Young girls...
Well speaking for myself (that was not THAT long ago - to forget)! he he
It was just interesting to realize there is another 6th sense sort-of... Something that you JUST KNOW from "out of the blue" and that is always right.

Women are very manipulative by nature, plus when you discover that there is another way to manipulate - it's exciting ... in a good way. lol

Ya know... I think mother-nature gave us this ability to manipulate man because we lack in physical strength. poor men.yes.

Fotticelli wrote:

He sucks. The book sucked.

I couldn't finish it. I was on vacation in a tent on a small island, I was stranded for three days. It was either reading his book or going outside, sitting in the rain and watching the grass grow.

So how fast the grass grows?

You better have googles when I see you

HurtMeSo wrote:

Well, Lolita was written by Nabokov in English, not in Russian. (and published in France first.)

But that still doesn't create a letter H in Russian alphabet.

Madcitychel wrote:
What is wrong with the swimsuit? When Humbert moved in it was the time before school started, it was warm and she was playing by the pool.  It doesn't have to be revieling or anything.  Like the one my niece has (not that you know what suit my niece has of course )

only cause its so easy to do 'wrong'... get it right and i would applaud. it's not as easy as it sounds mostly cause we are so screwed up culturally, but nonetheless.

anyway posted something for you to consider in the post above this one.

cheers!

Black Ricco wrote:
Bert Stern... now there was a photographer. I think of guys like him when I see  people bowing and scraping at the feet of folks like Avedon. Little Ritchie had one stroke of genius with his Beatles photographs and rode it like $20 hooker for decades.

Read this exact statement elsewhere here on MM...

Are you just cutting and pasting your responses over and over and over and over and over again?

What's your beef with Avedon?  Jeleousy?

Madcitychel wrote:
So how fast the grass grows?

You better have googles when I see you

Hello again child pornographers!

I wear "googles" all the time. Bring it on you literature connoisseur.

I hope you can poke better than you can spell.

Naomiwynn wrote:
I just posted this same ad in the "ads that offend me" thread, but I thought that it was appropriate here as well:

i would adore an explanation of why you think this image is relevant to Lolita.

Madcitychel wrote:

But that still doesn't create a letter H in Russian alphabet.

Ummm...Lolita was the first book Nabakov wrote using the English language, while he was living in America, I believe, so when he wrote the book he used the English letter "H" when writing the name Humbert Humbert. He did not write Gumbert Gumbert.

dgold wrote:
Lolita
AKA Living Doll:

http://img4.modelmayhem.com/060901/21/44f8ec3d545c0.jpg

...hope this image in not rated 18+

It is.

oldguysrule wrote:
is there some reason most of these posted images are more pornographer than seductress? Before Lolita was lolita (figure it out!), she was a character in a novel. Read it.

Absolutely agree!  Lolita is not a photo of an adult woman wearing pigtails and a catholic schoolgirl uniform sitting with her legs spread and her blouse half undone.

Neither is Lolita a piece of child porn of a preteen girl (Lolita was 12) in a slutty pose.

Kassandra has came closest to evoking Lolita with some of her images than anything else I've seen on here.

oldguysrule wrote:

i would adore an explanation of why you think this image is relevant to Lolita.

You would, huh? Well then how could I deny you?

Perhaps the girl is a couple years older than Lolita and the man a few years younger than Humbert - but in my opinion, this is a photograph of a very young teenager laying mostly naked on a 28-30 yr old man. She's got a hint of that innocent look (but remember, Lolita was not completely innocent, and it's not just to do with the fact that she had sex at summer camp. She uses sex to manipulate Humbert) - clinging to him in an extremely childlike way (almost infantile, in fact)
If I could change the photograph in any way to support my position further, I would change the expression on the man's face to one of shame or fear, or even just lust, looking right at her. But that's it.


How's that?

oldguysrule wrote:
only cause its so easy to do 'wrong'... get it right and i would applaud. it's not as easy as it sounds mostly cause we are so screwed up culturally, but nonetheless.

anyway posted something for you to consider in the post above this one.

cheers!

I agree with you that it's easy to "do" wrong, because it easy to start pretending to be someone else, that you are not - and then it screwed up. Badly.

I believe, that one of the things about acting/photography is that trying hard to play the role isn't enough.  Only if you commit enough to live the "part" - only then it works.  Fakeness kills the purpose of a play/shoot.


Thanks much for this image!  I think this image fits "my view of Lolita" - a fashionable Lolita. )

Thanks for all of the images posted on the thread, it helps me to see the "rights" and "wrongs" that I will try to follow according to my own vision.

PS: I will share the result, whether I like it or not.

Eric Tragedy wrote:
Well, I never tried to recreate the character Lolita, but people often comment that this image that I did reminds them of her:

https://www.modelmayhem.com/pic.php?pid=74362

I haven never read the book, so I don't really know, but I'd love if you or someone who has read the book let me know what you think. I'd like to know why they say that (without having to read the book - I'll get around to it someday).

I think it is definetly the lolita image, but not quite Lolita's.

Fotticelli wrote:
Hello again child pornographers!

I wear "googles" all the time. Bring it on you literature connoisseur.

I hope you can poke better than you can spell.

I hope that you can see how I poke, maybe it would be the last thing that you actually can see...


Just kid'n

Maynard Southern wrote:

Ummm...Lolita was the first book Nabakov wrote using the English language, while he was living in America, I believe, so when he wrote the book he used the English letter "H" when writing the name Humbert Humbert. He did not write Gumbert Gumbert.

That nither creates a letter H in Russian alphabet.

I am also glad that you are aware of the fact that the book was written in English, then trasleted to Russian, which was the language I've read the book in.

Jim Ball wrote:
Absolutely agree!  Lolita is not a photo of an adult woman wearing pigtails and a catholic schoolgirl uniform sitting with her legs spread and her blouse half undone.

Neither is Lolita a piece of child porn of a preteen girl (Lolita was 12) in a slutty pose.

Kassandra has came closest to evoking Lolita with some of her images than anything else I've seen on here.

Wait a minute... Kassandra's photo is a photo of an adult woman wearing pigtails and a catholic schoolgirl uniform sitting with her legs spread and her blouse half undone.

Maynard Southern wrote:
And it is Humbert Humbert, not "Gumbert" (weird images of Gumby molesting preteens running through my head).

Madcitychel wrote:
There is no letter "H" in Russian, I didn't know what would be the correct spelling of his name in English, but I am glad you understood who I was talking about.
)

So we should call you Madcitycgel? 

SLE Photography wrote:

Maynard Southern wrote:
And it is Humbert Humbert, not "Gumbert" (weird images of Gumby molesting preteens running through my head).

So we should call you Madcitycgel? 

Why?
Does my name written on a different alphabet, with other sounds then there are in English?

Black Ricco wrote:
The  picture in the enclosed poster was taken by no other than Bert Stern.

Bert Stern... now there was a photographer. I think of guys like him when I see  people bowing and scraping at the feet of folks like Avedon. Little Ritchie had one stroke of genius with his Beatles photographs and rode it like $20 hooker for decades.

Your lack of a grasp of facts or history is as pathetic as it is saddening.
From a bio of Avedon:
1944, he began working as an advertising photographer for a department store, but was quickly discovered by Alexey Brodovitch, the art director for the fashion magazine Harper's Bazaar. In 1946, Avedon had set up his own studio and began providing images for magazines including Vogue and Life. He soon became the chief photographer for Harper's Bazaar. Avedon did not conform to the standard technique of taking fashion photographs, where models stood emotionless and seemingly indifferent to the camera. Instead, Avedon showed models full of emotion, smiling, laughing, and, many times, in action.

In 1966, Avedon left Harper's Bazaar to work as a staff photographer for Vogue magazine. In addition to his continuing fashion work, Avedon began to branch out and photographed patients of mental hospitals, the Civil Rights Movement in 1963, protesters of the Vietnam War, and the fall of the Berlin Wall.

In other words he was famous & well know for his photos 20 YEARS before his Beatles shot & stayed relevant in many ways well after it.

Fotticelli wrote:
He sucks. The book sucked.

I couldn't finish it. I was on vacation in a tent on a small island, I was stranded for three days. It was either reading his book or going outside, sitting in the rain and watching the grass grow.

Reading Nabakov is like reading Joyce.  They're not really novelists, they're poets.
Trying to read novel-length poetry without an understanding and appreciation for it is tough and if you don't see the lyricism you'll think it sucks.
I think it's like color blindness, some see it & some don't.

Jim Ball wrote:
Absolutely agree!  Lolita is not a photo of an adult woman wearing pigtails and a catholic schoolgirl uniform sitting with her legs spread and her blouse half undone.

Neither is Lolita a piece of child porn of a preteen girl (Lolita was 12) in a slutty pose.

Kassandra has came closest to evoking Lolita with some of her images than anything else I've seen on here.

That's why they call the style Kassandra often does "Gothic Lolita"
Which the Japanese & all the 16-20 yr old American girls who want to be Japanese are just enthralled with for some reason

Madcitychel wrote:
Wait a minute... Kassandra's photo is a photo of an adult woman wearing pigtails and a catholic schoolgirl uniform sitting with her legs spread and her blouse half undone.

No, Kassandra's was the photo of the girl in glasses in the little girl style dress 

SLE Photography wrote:

Reading Nabakov is like reading Joyce.  They're not really novelists, they're poets.
Trying to read novel-length poetry without an understanding and appreciation for it is tough and if you don't see the lyricism you'll think it sucks.
I think it's like color blindness, some see it & some don't.

I can't belive Nabakov used this wierd name - Gumbert, how did he come up with it anyway?

SLE Photography wrote:

So we should call you Madcitycgel? 

Madcitychel wrote:
Why?
Does my name written on a different alphabet, with other sounds then there are in English?

It was a gentle attempt at humor, is all 

Madcitychel wrote:
I can't belive Nabakov used this wierd name - Gumbert, how did he come up with it anyway?

Nabokov once said of the name: "The double rumble is, I think, very nasty, very suggestive. It is a hateful name for a hateful person." The name evokes the Spanish hombre, "man," and the French ombre, "shadow" — much as the name of John Shade, a central character in Nabokov's later novel Pale Fire. It also suggests a portmanteau of the English words humbug and pervert. Furthermore, the double name hints at the novel's doppelgänger motif.

SLE Photography wrote:

Nabokov once said of the name: "The double rumble is, I think, very nasty, very suggestive. It is a hateful name for a hateful person." The name evokes the Spanish hombre, "man," and the French ombre, "shadow" — much as the name of John Shade, a central character in Nabokov's later novel Pale Fire. It also suggests a portmanteau of the English words humbug and pervert. Furthermore, the double name hints at the novel's doppelgänger motif.

He was a real master of the strongest weapon, of the word, that Nabokov Nabokov.

oldguysrule wrote:
I generally approach her more like this

Wasn't she on one of those Sally Struthers ads?  Give the girl a sandwich for goodness sake!

Madcitychel wrote:

Wait a minute... Kassandra's photo is a photo of an adult woman wearing pigtails and a catholic schoolgirl uniform sitting with her legs spread and her blouse half undone.

This is one of the photos I was referring to:



That's not a Catholic schoolgirl uniform and the blouse is not unbuttoned.  Her legs are apart, but it is not a vulgar "spread shot"  by any means.  What evokes Lolita is her facial expression - Innocence of youth yet sensual.  Kassandra keeps her portfolio updated regularly and the other photos I remember I do not see there now.

Naomiwynn wrote:
I just posted this same ad in the "ads that offend me" thread, but I thought that it was appropriate here as well:

Why does this ad offend you?