Unguarded

Darren Ankerman photographed Sylvia Elizabeth for Purple Magazine, and I couldn’t look away. I don’t know who she is—some artist in Brooklyn, someone building something. But the photos feel direct in a way most photography isn’t anymore. No affectation. No trying to be cool. Just a person, specific and present.

New York used to be a place where that was possible—where you could be weird and make things and the city would hold space for it. That’s mostly over now. The city’s expensive and safe and everything gets absorbed into image, product, content. Most people who had real taste either left or learned to perform having taste instead. It’s been like that for years.

Sylvia’s still there anyway. On her Tumblr and Instagram, you see her actual world—the books she keeps, the music she listens to, the colors and friends and shapes she’s chosen. It’s specific enough that it couldn’t come from anywhere but inside her own head. That’s harder now than it should be. Everyone’s taste is starting to look like everyone else’s.

In Ankerman’s photos, she’s not defended. No persona, no calculation. Just present. That’s the thing that stays with you—that kind of unguarded directness. It’s rarer every year.

I don’t know if what she’s making matters. Maybe it will, maybe it won’t. But I recognize the look of someone still trying, in a city that’s mostly stopped rewarding that. That’s worth something to me. That’s worth paying attention to.