thought bubble: 2010

as one of the hardest years of my life is coming to a close, 

i’ve had a lot of my mind. i’ve spent the last couple of days beating myself over things. 

& being sick doesn’t help.

i’ve glossed over my year. scrutinized over my flaws. 

magnified my mistakes. as a photographer, as a friend, & as a person. 

when i came back from france, i made a promise to myself. 

that i was going to move on. live my life like who i was before.

& while i did manage that to a certain extent, 

i had to realize that who i was before doesn’t exist anymore. that retreating doesn’t work. 

i need to charge forth—into what, i’m not quite sure yet.

mistakes happen. it’s a part of life. 

& while i was too busy scrutinizing all the bad things,

 i had overlooked the good things. 

in the middle of all these trials & tribulations, i had found my calling. 

the funny thing about human beings, we’re extremely resilient. 

the body, it can heal. the spirit, it can bend without breaking. the mind, it can forget. 

but most importantly, the heart can forgive.

i won’t lie & tell you that it doesn’t haunt me. 

that that year & everything that has happened doesn’t haunt me. 

but as 2010 is coming to a close, i choose for it to be a memory. i choose to forgive. 

the past is a part of me. but it alone cannot define me. what is important are the actions i take today. 

goddammit tim walker!

a general theory of love.

underneath my clothes

“You’re a lot braver than me. I wish I could be so bold at times. 

Truth be told, I don’t think I have ever taken any picture of myself not fully clothed 

so I wouldn’t even know how to start.”

This was a message I received this morning on flickr.

I actually receive frequent messages (from men & women)

commending me on my “bravery” & questions

about how I manage to “work up the courage” to shed my clothes in front of the camera.

I don’t think anything makes a person particularly predisposed to shedding her clothes.

For me, self-portraiture is already an exceedingly intimate concoction.

“Naked” self-portraiture is even more so. It’s not meant to titillate.

It’s vulnerability. It’s me giving myself in the rawest form to the world.

The clothes we put on are our chosen social identities.

We are our occupations, our name brands, our social categories, etc.

But underneath it all, is just skin. We’re just human.

And when I think about it that way, it’s not about having the balls to “get naked.”

It’s about having the need to be yourself.

I understand the hesitation in showing the world what you might consider your “imperfections.”

My body’s not perfect. But it’s me.

Cue Shakira’s “Underneath Your Clothes.”

i don't want to part.

the way we met.

strangers in happenstance.

forever young.

unpacked and back in my room. 

it's senior year, baby!

tim walker is a photographic genius.

21 Candles

it's all downhill from here.

americans in paris

a lot can happen in five weeks.

you can leave everyone & everything you’ve ever known behind.

you can find yourself halfway around the world.

 you can live out a childhood dream. you can lose your faith and have it restored.

you can go to sleep in the city of light & wake up in the country of the world cup champions.

you can take the paris train & emerge in london rain.

you can consume copious amounts of alcohol and wake up in a hospital with very poor recollection of the previous night.

 you can meet the man of your dreams in a crowded airport and exchange nothing but a lingering look.

you can fall in love.

paris is an old friend, a faithful companion. as savage garden would say, “i knew i loved you before i met you.”

i grew up romanticizing and idolizing this city—praying constantly for an eventual rendezvous.

when the day came, i was so nervous. i wanted so badly to be perfect, for us to be perfect.

but it wasn’t and i was disappointed. but five weeks can change your mind.

i spent my weekends away; out of the country searching for what i thought would be something better.

 i was wrong. paris grew on me. i started to call it home.

 then one day, it struck me. i was in a love-hate relationship.

i hated the city for not giving me answers, only to realize i wasn’t asking the right questions.

i depart for california tomorrow morning. but i’ll always have paris & it’ll always have me.

because as ernest hemingway will tell you,

“if you are lucky enough to have lived in paris as a young [wo]man, 

then wherever you go for the rest of your life, it stays with you, 

for all of Paris is a moveable feast.”

waking up in paris.

best ice cream ever.

oh, and there is the seine.

© liz kim

it rains.

i brood.

no sleep tonight

8am flight.

night ended at 5am.

so liz & i sat around for 3 hours

(as opposed to sleeping)

and thus ends madrid

but not before seeing the russian ballet perform bien sûr 

madrid

this mojito was the size of my face.

thank you madrid.

btw, spain won the world cup!

#haveyouheard?

london calling

one night in paris

right now it is 3:49am in paris. 

i have to be up at 5am to catch my flight to london 

and since i got home at 2am, i just decided not to sleep.

so the girls & i went to the eiffel tonight with wine and cheese.

then we peaced out around 1am and LUCKY for us, we made the last metro. AMAZING.

© Liz Kim

tickets to london?

BOOKED.

paris!

je suis arrivee!

this is my apartment. photos courtesy of my roommate, LK.

nudity

quite often i’ve been asked, why i’m constantly naked in my self-portraits. on the contrary, i am only “naked” in eight out of sixty three photos.
but honestly, i consider the human form to be a beautiful thing. if i don’t have to get dress, i won’t. i sleep naked. i wander around my apartment naked (when my other roommates aren’t around). i hang out in my underwear in my room. i like the feel of bare skin.
when i started my project, i didn’t post some photos because i wasn’t quite sure how people would receive them. i knew the flickr community would be far more accommodating than the facebook community. but i’ve come to realize, that since they are self-portraits, being “naked” is a part of being me.
& quite honestly, i don’t understand why society doesn’t just get over this “naked” business. there is a fine line between your natural form & porn. we all came into this world without any clothes, but at some point society tells us it’s “wrong” to be walking about stark naked.
sometimes i think i should have been a nudist.

"Maybe I didn’t break him. Maybe the problem was, he couldn’t break me. Maybe some women aren’t meant to be tamed. Maybe they need to run free until they find someone just as wild to run with."

-- Carrie Bradshaw, Sex & the City

The university claims to not have any money…except yours."

-- Professor Lonidier, Vis 60

"To be a student and not a revolutionary is a contradiction."

-- Salvador Allende

"It has a girly edge, but in the end it’s nasty."

-- Miuccia Prada

mon amour

i have a friend. she is beautiful. not the kind of beautiful that makes your heart melt. the kind of beautiful that makes your soul hurt. we’ve been friends since the single digit days. a loner by choice, she chose me.

i was naive when we met. i’m naive now. she always seemed worlds beyond me even when she was right next to me. smart, she was. pretentious, she’s been called. elitist, she admits. hypocrite, she was not. convention, she spurned.

we’ve been down the street. we’ve been hours apart. we’ve had oceans between us. yet her fingerprints remain all over my heart. she understands without me speaking. silence is a currency we trade.

for every painting i’ve plundered through; she could dabble masterpieces in seconds. for every word i had to choose carefully, she could challenge ginsberg on a napkin. for all the times i’ve been weak, she’s been strong. the only one to know everything humanly possible to know about me.

admiration, i suppose that’s what you call it. in constant awe & yet it’s far too odd to say these things aloud, so i leave them on this page.

nothing to do on a saturday morning, so i jumped out of a plane.

"Why do women complain that men have everything? When what women have is men." 

-- Coco Chanel