Billy Crystal
One of the things Academy Award watchers look for is those incredible memorable moments and visuals. Even decades later, whenever the Oscar's are written about, someone mentions Robert Opel, the man who streaked behind David Niven at the 1974 awards. Also brought up is Sacheen Littlefeather, the woman actor Marlon Brando chose to publicly decline the best actor Oscar he received for The Godfather. Instead, he asked her to take the opportunity to call out Hollywood's mistreatment of Indigenous people
Even as recently as last year, the awards had a few memorable and viral moments. Emotional moments like actor Troy Kotsur's win for Coda, and more infamous moments like the slap heard round the world. When it comes to photography, the goal is very much the same, creating visuals and moments the viewers will not soon forget. That's exactly what happened last December when I featured photographer John Mar and his work with model Dawn Tang.
The piece, (Ornamental) began as a simple Christmas piece. I'd seen some holiday shots on John's Instagram page, and contacted him about featuring them on the site. When John sent on the images, I was so visually struck by the unique fashion and jewelry John utilized in the shoot. Sure, Dawn was draped in holiday glass balls, but also flowers, unique fashion and the most visually stunning pair of body chains.
I thought of those body chains often, and wanted to feature more of John's images with the erotically unique body accessory. When I was thinking about my Academy Award posts for this year, I kept going back to those images, and those body chains. Over the years, the Oscar's have become almost as much about fashion and jewelry, as they are about the awards themselves. I kept thinking of how stunning and glamourous those body chains were, and how incredible they look on the red carpet.
John liked the idea, but encouraged me to get in contact with photographer and designer Alex Arreola. It was Alex, under his brand Coco Arreola, who created and designed the pieces that Dawn had worn in John's images.
John had met Alex after both artists were invited to participate in a photography project. After working side by side for a couple of months, their creative working relationship developed into a friendship. John shared that Alex had many more photographs of his designs and thought he might be up for participating in the theme. Thankfully he was, and you check out some of my favorites shots in the post below.
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