“He refuses to be alone. He is the man of the crowd. It will be in vain to follow, for I shall learn no more of him, nor of his deeds.”
Many litterateurs throughout history have been fascinated by the concept of the crowd. Of man’s ability to be both alone or lonely yet surrounded by others; of our conflicting need to belong and yet the gnawing desire to stand out.
It’s almost paradoxical. Without the crowd we’d have nothing to stand out against, and thus to stand out we still have to be part of it. So the choice is in how to stand out. It’s a cookie-cutter world where anyone can melt into the masses and become anonymous, much like Poe’s Man of the Crowd in the quote above; but in such a world it also doesn’t take much to be the one to whom everyone’s eyes are drawn.
In Francesco Carrozzini’s shoot of Eniko Mihalik she’s the lonesome face in a crowd that stands out against the cookie-cutter jeans-and-tshirt-clad people. It’s true of life that you don’t have to be over the top or excessive, and you don’t have to go the way of spectacle. Dress to who you are and who you want to be – as Poe’s story concludes “there are some secrets which do not permit themselves to be told”. You can choose whether your appearance permits its secrets and stories to be told to the crowd.
With Western styling by Enrica Ponzellini, Eniko Mihalik‘s shoot appears in the December 2011 issue of Vogue Italia.
You can view it all – through the crowd – at the gallery above.
