Halldóra Markúsdóttir

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She's got better things to do, so when I talk about art projects I can hear suspicion in her voice. She is cautious, and I always sound like something out of a circus, so we cannot quite connect. Unless the camera is actually on, and then there is instant yield and wield. She is a weapon, I keep thinking, except I have no time for games and should be onto the next project, the next dream unfolding. And, as I always say, she has much better things to do. These shots, though, ask for a life of their own: How can they keep living? In a character, obviously, perhaps a model about to make a killing. She chooses between her face and murder, profit or her heart. This woman, who grew up barefoot, chasing horses, has a face like a rocket but she is the only person who can light its fuse. I am just shouting.

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This particular set of shots are some of the oldest taken of Maya by Blue. December. She is ready for anything, but almost crippled with shyness and lack of confidence. All of these shots here are part of a search for angles in her face, and the beginning of the realization that she has many more looks than most people have in their faces.

"I took a shot of her and saw Laetitia Casta, and immediately thought Maya was going to have problems for a long time living with such potential," says Blue in the short movie being edited now. "Very very few people can be a model, for a bunch of silly reasons, that they are too short, or too old, or their fingers are not slender or their teeth straight, but a face is a face, and Maya's is like a library of people when that camera starts circling around it. Live, in person, she's a sweetheart college coed, no sweat. But in a lens, whew, the possibilities explode."

This is a two-page spread from the book "All My Young Kisses." It relates a little character about Maya to the Architect who has been watching her during her modeling sessions on the third floor at the Hringbraut. He finds her completely uninteresting, a bit empty, until he talks to her and becomes mesmerized by a culture he has completely forgotten. As he wants to know more about her youth and expectations and desperations, he finds that it is himself who gets emptier and she who seems more substantial. The book is available from Blurb.com on June 1. The movie treatment for The Architect will be posted here soon.