Prom

This morning, I was driving home from a quick getaway up the mountains with my best friend, whom I have known and loved since we were both 5.  Crazy I know, but absolutely true.

Anyway, my point is that this friend of mine also went through the most ridiculously confusing, self-depracating, pretty much all around terrible time called high school with me and we still love each other.  And that's really saying a lot.

Again, I digress.  The actual point here is that we got to talking on our drive home about high school and our probably-never-going-to-happen upcoming 10 year reunion and about "remember that time when...blankity blank blank blah?".  Needless to say, we both kind of moved on from that topic as quickly and as randomly as it had started, and just like high school feels looking back on it now, the whole conversation had disappeared as quickly as it had begun.  Thank god.

Then I got home and sat down to write this post and remembered coming across this review of an amazing new work of photography and film being shown at The Philadelphia Museum of Art, frankly entitled Prom.  Oh god, here comes the flood of memories again.  And by memories I mean, extremely blurry montages of light and color that I think might have been from prom but then again, I was rocking away on a boat that night with a bunch of wild children who were all, just like me, escaping from the reality of small town high school for the evening.  So, really who knows.

Anyway,  I'm so thankful that there was no one at my prom to document it like Mary Ellen Mark did for this extremely intriguing (and overwhelmingly gut-wrenching) exposition of polaroids and film that is currently on exhibition.  I can't get over how surreal these photographs seem.  And how I too was a girl going to prom once.  And how I really hope I didn't seem as hopeless as a lot of these kids.  Yikes.

This is the stuff of genius, folks.  If you live in the Philly area, please go see this exhibit and tell me all about it.  It looks absolutely amazing.

Christina Chang, Austin, TX, 2008. Mary Ellen Mark

Michael Glorioso and Eliza Wierzbinska, Staten Island, New York, 2006. Mary Ellen Mark

Toccarra Beguma and George Wilkinson, New York City, 2007. Mary Ellen Mark

Okay, enough reminiscing for me.  Must stop before I throw up from the memories of parrot bay and diet coke, stale cigarettes, and fast food.

XOXO
--MEL