identity Tag

[caption id="attachment_1555" align="alignleft" width="493" caption="Angela Vorsteg Norris Miss Subways March 1950"][/caption] If you're not from around here, you may not know that Meet Miss Subways is more than a Ferlinghetti poem. And, as such, you may not know that "Miss Subways was a title accorded to individual New York City women between 1941 and 1976. The woman who was "Miss Subways" at any one time appeared on posters placed on New York City Subway trains, along with a brief description of her. The program was run by the ad agency "New York Subways Advertising". To be eligible, a woman had to be a New York City resident and herself use the subway. Winners were usually chosen by telephone-based voting, from among a group of contenders whose photos were all placed on the subways; the nominees were chosen by John Robert Powers, a modelling agent." {thank you, Wikipedia!} I'm a sucker for New York memorabilia, and photographic projects examining identity, place, and culture, so when I happened upon Fiona Gardner's series -- in which she documents, via striking, technicolor-esque present day portraits and tells the stories of former "Miss Subways," alongside the now-dated newspaper clippings introducing these "girls" to an adoring city -- I immediately rang her (um, or, since it's not 1960, I messaged her on facebook, where I found her through our mutual friend, painter and herbalist Michael Viola).

Etel Adnan was born in 1925 in Beirut, Lebanon. Her father was a Syrian Muslim and her mother was a Greek Christian. She was raised speaking French, English, and her father taught her written Arabic. Adnan studied philosophy at the Sorbonne, Paris, University of California, Berkeley, and Harvard. She has many books of poetry and fiction published, including Paris When It's NakedOf Cities and Women, and Sitt Marie Rose, which has been translated into over ten languages and is considered a classic of Middle Eastern literature. She also creates oils, ceramics and tapestry. A life spent writing has taught me to be wary of words. Those that seem clearest are often the most treacherous.” So begins Amin Malouf's In the Name of Identity: Violence and the Need to Belong.  [Ed: free e-book/pdf at link]  As words are navigated into the public sphere, to be watchful requires an interrogation of language, conscious of its make up and observant of mutations as it travels across borders and time.

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