There s a scene in Torrey Peters new novel,
Detransition, Baby, where two trans women argue over the enduring legacy of Candy Darling, one of the most memorable stars in Andy Warhol s orbit in late- 60s and early- 70s New York. One character asserts that she was little more than a muse, a blank canvas onto which men like Warhol and Lou Reed (who wrote about her in Candy Says and Walk on the Wild Side ) could project their fantasies: just some helpless languid blonde waiting around for a man to save her and make her famous. In response, the other character lifts her skirt to reveal an enormous, photorealistic portrait of Darling s face tattooed across her thigh. A person s image, when separated from the person, can be tectonic in its meaning or appear as a cheap facsimile: It depends on how many times it s been replicated, the conditions of that replication, and, mostly, whom you ask.
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