Blame it on Shutterclog Niek: I just spent an hour I didn’t have absorbed in the photographs of Ari Versluis. Versluis works with stylist Ellie Uyttenbroek exploring the “dress codes” of wildly differing groups.
At first glance, the images look like proofsheets–12 shots of a recognizably “goth” young girl, for example. A closer look reveals 12 quite different young girls, each in her own unique version of a very goth dress.
Men in jackets and ties. Teenage boys in jackets and ties. Women with headscarves carrying babies. Cute guys in tiny Euro bathing suits. (See the site contact page for an animated display of those cute guys.)
The images don’t leave you snickering at their subjects–they leave you with a deepened awareness about the ways those people are just like you, and not just like one another.
We long to be seen, we long to be understood–and no clothing on earth could do the many jobs we want our clothing to do for us. We want to say “I’m unique”, and we also want to say “I’m this kind of person.”
Okay, I’m off to express my individuality by putting on one of my all-black “I’m a writer who lives in a big city” outfits.