DrayvensCrow
The Avian Avenger
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Registered: 09-2005
Location: Summerland Bound!
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 R.I.P Bettie Page
It is with sadness that I post about Ms. Page's passing Yesterday but I thought maybe some of us would like to remember her here and what she meant to them.
I can remember when I was just a young boy finding my dad's stash of men's magazines, old and yellowing out in the garage. As I carefully thumbed through them, both in hopes of not tearing them and not being caught, I came along a spread of some of Bettie's beach shots. I was mezzmerized by her smile and the joy in her eyes as well as her body. I continued going through them, hoping to find more pics of Bettie, but to my dissappointment, had to hurry up and put them back in their appointed hiding place as I could hear my folks making their way to the garage.
As the years rolled by, I'd get an occasional glimpse of the Raven-haired goddess I'd seen back in the family garage until one day in High School, my photography teacher brought in some of the old Irving Klaw photo club pics that he had collected over the years(very tame pics as not to offend anyone or cost him his job)and just who happened to be on the top of every stack? The beautiful Bettie Page herself. From that day forward, not only did I want to meet her but I wanted to recreate those very pics with a young lady that I thought closely resembled Bettie. A month and $200 dollars in advances on my allowance for print paper later, I turned in what was frustratingly my best attempt at renewing the spirit in those first pics of Bettie I had seen years ago. While the class and teacher were happy with my results, I couldn't bring myself to look at them without feeling dissapointed that I couldn't use the enlarger or some technique to convey what I saw in those pics of Bettie.
Two years later in college(I had decided to make Photography my major after that), I was your typical starving college student trying to go to school and put myself through college working 40 hrs. per week and spending every available dollar on supplies and model's fee trying to recreate Bettie's pics again. I can't even begin to tell you how tired I was getting between getting up at 4:30 am to try and get to the lab early to work on what you could safely call my obsession and going to bed sometime around 2:30 am after getting off my fulltime job. It wasn't until just about this time of year when my prof. pulled me out of the darkroom after another "failed" attempt and showed me all of the pics that I had thrown away, feeling that they were not to the quality of those in my memory. He took me through them one by one, pointing out little things here and there, but praising them overall. He then removed a stack of pics from his desk drawer and handed them to me. They looked exactly like the ones he had just shown me except for one thing. Turns out that he had been bitten by the "Bettie bug" as well when he was a young man and told me that no matter how hard either of us worked at them, that without Bettie, they just wouldn't be the same. Only then could I truly apprieciate Bettie and what she had done back then.
So here I am, older and wiser, and still loving Bettie for what she did for me and untold numbers of others. Thanks, Bettie. May The Lady and Lord keep you and bless you until the time comes for you to grace us again.
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"....And the scar will be the sign!"
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12/13/2008, 11:38 pm
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ArtemisHi
Goddess of the Hunt
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Registered: 02-2005
Location: San Diego, CA
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Re: R.I.P Bettie Page
Thanks for that perspective! My first exposure to Bettie Page was from reading some of her statements in interviews, saying she regretted being a pinup, and it always sort of tinged anything I saw of her early days. But she WAS a beautiful woman, and an icon.
--- "When I'm good, I'm good- when I'm bad, I'm better."
-Mae West
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12/14/2008, 1:54 am
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HollyG
High Priestess Of BroadSword
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Registered: 02-2005
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Re: R.I.P Bettie Page
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12/15/2008, 11:36 pm
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