Leslie, a Design Mom reader, sent me a link to this series of self-portraits and it made me grin. Nina Katchadourian takes photos of herself in the lavatory mirror when she’s on a flight. She uses toilet paper and seat covers as costumes. And the images are awesome!
Nina says, “While in the lavatory on a domestic flight in March 2010, I spontaneously put a tissue paper toilet cover seat cover over my head and took a picture in the mirror using my cellphone. The image evoked 15th-century Flemish portraiture. I decided to add more images made in this mode and planned to take advantage of a long-haul flight from San Francisco to Auckland, guessing that there were likely to be long periods of time when no one was using the lavatory on the 14-hour flight. I made several forays to the bathroom from my aisle seat, and by the time we landed I had a large group of new photographs entitled Lavatory Self-Portraits in the Flemish Style.”
I think I’ll show this series to my kids before we take our flight back to France — maybe it will spark some ideas for keeping entertained on the flight!
P.S. — In case you’re curious, our flight to the U.S. was smooth and easy. Thank you for the well wishes! We only had a short stop in Iceland and we couldn’t explore, but we had enough time to buy a bunch of Icelandic candy. : ) Happily, we have a 24-hour layover in Iceland on the way home, so we’ll try and book a mini tour…
{ 16 comments… read them below or add one }
That’s one of the more entertaining time wasters I’ve seen! I want to know how she got the backgrounds…
Those are hysterical!
I LOVED this, absolutely loved it, keep it up Nina…
The whole spontaneously putting a tissue paper toilet cover seat cover over her head cracked me up. It’s never occurred to me to do that!
Who knew so much could be going on in those little lavatories? ;-)
This is disturbing.
Ditto, I find it odd.
This may be one of the funniest and most creative things I have ever seen as far as spontaneous art goes. I laughed out loud. :)
This is totally fabulous!
A dear friend of mine recently said that she feels she isn’t inviting enough laughter into her life – this will be sent to her later today in an e-mail!
SO funny!
OMG 24-hour stopover in Iceland? I’ve just come back from there and it is AMAZING. You should do the Golden Circle Tour (best ones are in the evenings – you can have majestic waterfalls all to yourself) or take your kids whale and puffin watching or go to a geothermal pool (rather than the very expensive Blue Lagoon)! Have a snack of skyr, a sort of Icelandic yogurt which comes in all flavours and as a drink as well.
I loved it, it’s beautiful, there’s loads of space, amazing scenery and it is very children-friendly. Long plane journeys suck, but say yes to stopovers in Iceland! :)
That is seriously the funniest thing I’ve seen in sometime. Random! And totally brilliant!! I want to sit next to this woman on my next flight.
Amazing – I applaud her freedom to do something out of the ordinary!
xo
cortnie
Genius! :)
I just laughed out loud- I’ve just had a miscarriage and this was just amazing and fanastic and it put such a smile on my face!
yes, definitely take advantage of your layover in iceland! even just spending a day exploring reykjavik would be fun, the buildings are gorgeous and its so close to the airport. seeing a glacier and/or hot spring would be totally accessible too. also, the blue lagoon is still fun even if it might seem a little touristy.
Oh my word. Some people are born creative and funny. I was not.
Also – this just goes to prove that you never really know WHAT is really going on around you :)