Bloggers or lifestyle artists?

 *via Pandora

I've been recently fascinated by these bloggers who create worlds and use themselves to make art.

I tend to find  fashion blogging (not just randomly posting about fashion, but posting photos of yourself in your own outfits on a regular basis) to be a mixture of beauty, fantasy, voyeurism, creativity, and pretentiousness.  Sometimes I wonder what our world has come to - that people, seriously, spend vast amounts of time documenting the permutations of their wardrobe - but they document it because they love it and because others (including me) love to watch it - even if it's only on rare occasions. I mean why do I look?  To get inspiration!  Real-life, real-people inspiration that just doesn't compare to the pages of a fashion magazine.

*via The Cherry Blossom Girl

But fashion blogging is evolving - it's no longer standing stock still for a photo and describing your outfit.  Oh no, now there are settings like woods and snow and beaches and parks - each one a full-fledged photoshoot with multiple poses and shots and set dressing.

Some people have taken fashion blogging to a whole new level - far beyond fashion- and into the realm of art.  There is a group that no longer deserve to be called bloggers and should perhaps be called visual artists or life artists instead. Maybe we should invent a word like blogartist?

I think my very favorite blogs are blogartists.  They have this quality of capturing a very specific real person with a specific point of view in the world.  Some bloggers do it in words, but these bloggers use images.

*via Making Magique

They are not documenting the world as it is, but creating a new world of fantasy that centers around themselves. These are beautiful women, who use themselves as a canvas and conjure settings and moods.  They are fashion stylists and photo stylists and models and actresses all in one. 

Seeing the imagery they create can be inspiring.  It whisks you away into a fantasy - imagining you are a pretty girl in Paris wearing outrageous clothing, spending the afternoon at a tea shop, sketching in your artist's notebook.

 *via Sea of Shoes

It's a strange art, perhaps - coming off as a little narcissistic and sometimes too intimate, like peeping into someone's boudoir. And there are questions to be sure.  How healthy is fantasy?  How much is too much? And those who take life very seriously would say it's a sign of affluence that we have the luxury to even visit, much less create these blogs.  And isn't there more to beauty than outward appearance?  Isn't life more than illusory moments captured on film?

But on the flip side... Isn't art a source of beauty and inspiration and imagination?  Doesn't art take a single image or symbol and use it to say so much more? What's the difference between an amazing painter or poet and one of these women who creates worlds with their photographs and their eyes?  And don't images sometimes lead us somewhere deeper without words?

I must say I'm conflicted in opinion.  After all, I'm still watching, aren't I? I can't help but be utterly fascinated and curious as I wonder...
Who takes their photos?  Do they take their own or do they have a boyfriend or a friend who does it all?
How many hours a week do they spend doing this?
Why do they do it?  Obviously for some, it's become a source of income, so the answer might seem obvious.  But why did they start?
What are their aspirations?  Where might they go with all this?
Where do they put all their clothes? And how do they get all their clothes?  And for those in couture - how do they afford all their clothes?
Where do they get their ego? (And how can I get some?) It must take an awful lot of self-confidence to make yourself the very center of attention and it's not something that comes naturally to me - and sometimes I wish it did.

p.s. The other day I found myself running out to the mailbox wearing an outfit that was so very hilariously terrible (a royal blue tee with a clashing avocado wool sweater worn just for warmth, capri yoga pants, and knee-high turquoise and yellow argyle socks with a pair of flats) - a casualty of working at home - that I wanted to take a picture of it and post it for humor.  But my picture didn't even turn out well, so I leave it to your imagination.