The NYT's cutline, verbatim: "Colleen Cruze, outfitted for work at the Cruze Dairy Farm in Tennessee. Her father has long championed real buttermilk."
One of the most frustrating things about blogging from outside the MSM is that I no longer have access to relevant, real-time news photography. There are free services out there, but they don’t have real news photos. And my one effort to inquire about regaining some sort of access to AP photos told me that it was, as I suspected, cost-prohibitive.
But occasionally, I go ahead and use a proprietary photo, and the only excuse I have to offer to the rights holders is that I am using the art to call attention to their content, and to ask my readers to go there. Which has to be to that entity’s advantage, right?
Well, here’s my favorite photo that I saw today and wished I had legitimate access to. It goes with this story over at the NYT site, a feature about some of the few dairies that specialize in producing real, sure-enough buttermilk.
The thing that grabbed me about this picture wasn’t the topic. Buttermilk, like all dairy products, is poison to me. Still, the photo radiates wholesomeness, and I don’t think that’s because of all the milk industry propaganda.
The first thing that grabbed me was that the young woman in the picture reminded me of the actress (Claire van der Boom) who appeared as Robert Leckie’s Greek-Australian love interest in “The Pacific.” And then I realized why that was — the picture was just so timeless. It could have been taken in the 1940s, or 70 years either way, for that matter. And it could have been taken in any of a thousand places on this globe. It seemed utterly divorced from space or time. This is probably a deliberate effect adopted by Colleen Cruze (the woman in the picture) to project the timelessness of the dairy’s product. I don’t know.
I just thought it was a cool picture. Go read the story, if you agree, or even if you don’t. And if The New York Times tells me to take it down, I will. But hey, I’m trying to help, not hurt…
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“Her father has long championed real buttermilk”
Yes he has.
So you’ve experienced Cruze buttermilk?
Me, I just love the picture. Pulls me right in. Further proof that I was really supposed to live in the 1940s, because that’s what it feels most like. I said it was timeless, but when I showed it to my wife last night, she said right away, “Looks like the 1940s.” True. My era.
Hey, maybe I DID live then…
She’s like Rosie the Riveter, just before she left the farm to go work in the aircraft plant. Only cuter.
because most women who work on a farm back then wore not only a red bandanna, but red lipstick when out with the cows, and every hour was a golden hour–you know this because unless it’s a war/Holocaust film, all films and photographs from or about the 1940s have that Instagram warmth….
not so sure about the red cowboy boots…
Professional photographers know that you increase the appeal of any photo considerably if you shoot it just after dawn or just before sunset. That warm, slanting light is magical.
And, if I remember correctly from my previous life, all the milkmaids did indeed wear the bandanna and the red lipstick. The cowboy boots are this one’s individual flourish.
OK, so you’re being sarcastic, but I’ll bet plenty of women working on farms back then DID ties their hair up like that. And if they were posing for a picture, they might have made themselves up just like this one.
I like the WAY she’s standing there, with one leg crossed in front of the other, the hand stretched out casually to the cow, the acknowledgment of us, the viewers, with a just slightly more-than-Mona-Lisa smile…
I can hear the photog, with his Graflex Speed Graphic, saying, “Let’s get one of you with the cows, hon,” and this is the first pose she strikes…