10 September 2012

An Afternoon with Alice at The Carlyle


















All photos by Alice Olive (click to enlarge)

Friday afternoon just before 6PM. A second floor ballroom in the Carlyle Hotel with an iced G&T and Alice Olive. We look around. Costume jewelery designer, Lisa Salzer of Lulu Frost is footing the bill and the room as she grips and grins the crowd under a beautiful short shock of white hair that takes me back to Sydney in 1987.

I tell Alice the pictures I want. Only a certain cool blonde and a Islay single malt redhead. I recall a favorite bumper sticker in London, "Warning! I Brake for Blondes but Back Up for Redheads." I stand alone by an unused kitchen entrance and watch Alice shoot the room with a memory card clenched between her teeth and an extra lens in the crook of an arm.

No one sees like Alice Olive. In a world of self professed photographers, whose only pictures are ripped off cliches of Steve McQueen, Paul Newman & James Dean pasted on Tumblers with hackneyed Gore Vidal quotes (What is with these guys?) -- Miss Olive is the real deal.

After the show, we step off an elevator and into the lobby. A woman in a hat, in front of an 18th Century painting, stops me cold. I ask if Alice can take her picture. She agrees. I tell Alice what I want. Alice shoots it the way she wants which... if you see like Alice -- is the way it should be. But I crop it anyway...

7 comments:

Brohammas said...

texture, mood, style, and there she is.

gentleman mac said...

My favorite is the one with the light on the hands near the waist.

Oyster Guy said...

Wow! .... just wow! ...

tintin said...

Bro- Yeah, she nails it. I just realized I didn't write bupkis about the jewelery.

Oyster Guy- I thought you'd like this.

Anonymous said...

Gorgeous work.

She gives a certain street photographer a run for his money. I actually think hers is better. There's a certain honesty to her work that I find pleasing.

--Matthew

Anonymous said...

Fantastic photos by Alice Olive! That's the way to display jewelry, and that's the way to shoot it. The B&Ws of the woman with the Carlotta Valdez-inspired twirl (from the movie "Vertigo") are breathtaking. Love the last shot, too. Reminiscent of William Klein's street work.

-DB

Patsy said...

I love the shadows of the eyelashes and the woman with the beak hat. Gorgeous work.