Amanda and her cousin Amy Valdese by Mary Ellen Mark
North Carolina, USA, 1990
In 1990, Peter Howe at Life magazine sent me to North Carolina to photograph a special school for children with problems. The school was a very strange place because all of the twenty or so children were in the same classroom and their problems ranged from mild behavior instability to severe schizophrenia.
Nine-year-old Amanda was the most interesting child in the class. She was my favorite child. Amanda was very intelligent and very naughty. One day I followed her home on the school bus. When the bus stopped at her house, she dashed ahead of me and ran into a nearby wooded area. I continued to follow her into the woods and eventually found her sitting in an old stuffed chair having a cigarette. She thought that I would reprimand her since I was an adult. But I said nothing.
The following Sunday, I spent the day at home with Amanda and her mother. Amanda totally controlled her mother. She constantly gave her orders and proceeded to put on her mother’s nail polish and makeup. Amanda smoked openly in front of her. Her 8-year-old cousin Amy was coming over, and she was very excited. All day long, Amanda and her cousin played like children. Every forty-five minutes or so, Amanda would take a break to have a cigarette. Her mother could say nothing; Amanda was the boss.
Just before I left, I looked for Amanda to say good-bye. I found her and Amy in the backyard. They were in a children’s inflatable pool. Amanda was taking her regular cigarette break.
Remember that episode of Johnny Bravo when he meets a girl on the internet and she turns out to be an antelope
THIS GUY. I didn’t care about Card Captor Sakura, but I loved Kero because he was almost a Pokemon. Cuter than the majority of them, anyway.
This 1998 music video seems really quaint now, but when I saw it as a kid I was like
The smell of that red marker is what I think of when I hear the Rolling Stones lyric, “We decided that we would have a soda / My favorite flavor, cherry red.”
This is my brother’s girlfriend Kelsey on her first day of school (circa 1996 or 1997, I’m guessing). I absolutely love this photo.
I thought An Awfully Big Adventure (1995) was going to be a nice coming-of-age movie (adorable redhead harbors crushes on hipster Hugh Grant and young Alan Rickman!) but it was actually a dark and disturbing tragicomedy. It’s the kind of film that makes you feel uncomfortable for liking it.
Guilty pleasure of the day: 1997’s Excess Baggage, a Stockholm Syndrome teen romance starring post-Clueless Alicia Silverstone and pre-impregnating-Rod-Stewart’s-daughter Benicio del Toro. His slow blinking was the best part of the movie.
HOW ARE THEY GOING TO GET OUT?!
