I’ve been collecting beautiful things since I was fifteen, back when collecting meant a stack of magazines and a pair of scissors. Turns out that was never a hobby. It was training.
Read on to reveal:
The wall of torn-out magazine pages that trained my eye at fifteen
Why a pro clicks at 1, never at 3 (and the trick I use to get there)
Ninety-five degrees, one Owala, and a table of cakes under pressure to perform
The ten-second shelf fix that finally gave my Cindy Sherman the spotlight
Bougie objects that haunt me like perfect, gorgeous ghosts
Sante D'Orazio, A Private View, and the wall that trained my eye
My W and Harper’s Bazaar magazines were piled up in a very Type B fashion in my room. When a new, freshly bound volume arrived each month (the thicker the better, yay September, boo January), I would find a quiet, untouched moment to take it in, start to finish, emphasis on the profiles of ingenues and the models in the editorials.
There were others. Vogue, untouchable. Interview, the coolest in the room until V showed up. Vanity Fair, which invented spilling the tea. My allegiance shifted all through the nineties and the oughts, each one dethroning the last as my taste caught up to it.
And I’d try to guess which famous photographer shot each ad. Patrick Demarchelier, Mario Sorrenti, Michael Thompson, Herb Ritts, Inez + Vinoodh or Steven Klein? Had to be one of those. (Ads don’t come with bylines. I guessed anyway, and reader, I was usually right.)
When I found one that made my heart stop, I would rip it out and put it on my wall. I wasn’t decorating, I was training.
Sante D’Orazio spent the nineties deciding what cool looked like. Cindy, Linda, Kate, Christy, Naomi. Prince, Keith Richards, and Axl Rose for seasoning.
I recently found this interview with Sante, and he says something like: if you're going to count 1, 2, 3, click...better click it at 1, because by 3 the moment is long gone. I couldn’t agree more.
It’s always the in-between moments, the just-about-to moments, the fractured little bits of time that have the most honesty to show the camera. We can’t help but present with artifice; we’re humans.
So, to get a subject to drop it, I often dictate a string of pointless or invented body movements, like: “and then skip, like actual skipping, the second half of the way…” just to give myself time to click at 1 instead of 3. If I ask you to jump, I’m catching the smile you can’t help but flash me just after you come back down.
Cut to 2004, and the teenager with the shrine got to stand in the room. My first job after moving to NYC was working as a receptionist, and later a booking agent, at Pier 59 Studios, also known as “the biggest fashion photo studio in the WORLD!” as the owner used to boast. Various magazines and advertising agencies would book our spaces for the day, and you never knew who the talent would be, buzzing the door to be let in, and not always patient about it.
What a wild six years I had while working there, seeing all the photographers I idolized in real life. Walking past Karl Lagerfeld and Naomi Campbell each morning before I’d had my coffee, coming in for the 6:30 am shift.
This post contains affiliate links via ShopMy and Amazon — if you buy through them, it costs you nothing and occasionally buys me a latte!
Today my tear sheets don’t get taped to my wall. But I do still have Sante’s book, the one I’ve been carting from apartment to house since 1996, “A Private View.” It’s scrapbook-y and maximalist in a way that’s suddenly very 2026.
His latest book, a memoir called A Shot in the Dark: A Memoir, is in my cart.
Work I Shot This Week: Goldbelly's United Cakes
The Goldbelly United Cakes Extravaganza! It was 95 degrees when I arrived, and despite a full Owala with ice in it, I had my work cut out for me. I was better off, however, than the homemade masterpiece cakes, who also had to stand tall and not buckle under the pressure to perform! If they could do it, so could I.
A photographer walks into the internet, clicks around
Collecting the things that make daily life happier is my whole personality, and honestly, my job description.
Everything below is me still doing what I did at fifteen: collecting the things that teach my eye what it loves. It’s essentially the Gasp Test!
I haven't bought (and may never buy) everything below. But as it was in 1996, my wishlist is a curriculum.
Home: VEGETAL, a Japanese woodblock print, and a +COOP pedestal bowl
AKA bougie home decorative objects that haunt me like perfect, gorgeous ghosts.
Speaking of gorgeous ghosts, see a dress I never saw!
This gorgeous chef-y coffee table book VEGETAL (2) that you can’t get in the States yet (via Maria Piessis)
This Japanese block-print (6), which is begging soft sunrise light to fall on it, is it not?! ahh
The dramatic curve of this Sinafu pedestal bowl from L.A. darling +COOP
Style: a Cahu tote, Buck Mason tee, and the barrel jean situation
I've tended to capsule dress ever since my first pregnancy. I love to wear all black or all white (or all butter yellow!?) so for a person in head-to-toe white this pink tote (5) is actually the perfect bag? It goes with everything, and it's on sale.
I first learned about the brand Cahu from effortless-cool mom Laurel Pantin (who I’ve also had the good fortune of photographing!), so it's vetted. (P.S. She just wrote a book! I pre-ordered it immediately.)
All white outfit solid gold: This tee, cropped and boxy but without swallowing you or showing your belly button, and these barrel but not too barrel-y jeans. Repeat. Class dismissed.
Wait, one more thing! With my all white, I’ll often throw this long-sleeve stripey number around my shoulders.
And to round out the capsule, I'm always in a statement shoe. Flip-flops with arch support, which say "I'm 40+ and my back has opinions." A classic pair of Sambas in every color, which say "I'm omw to work." And a couple of times a summer, platform heels, “Remember y’all, I used to leave the house!”.
I legitimately wear the flip-flops every day in the summer though, they're Havaiana-adjacent without wrecking my back.
Jewelry: Andrea Iyamah chandeliers and a tennis necklace I never take off
Earrings I may need, purely to communicate: I don't get out much, but I'm out, so here are my ears! And if you’re the chandelier-earring-type, you do too: Andrea Iyamah. (3)
I'd wear them with this pareo (1), tied like Jen Galante Han told me to. It's an elevated version of the busy, super-patterned pareos I can never chill out in. I'm a sad beige mom through and through, and this is color but, like, NOT THAT MUCH (via No Stress Club)
The Tennis Necklace: I wear it every day, including in the shower. The bezel setting is a nice twist on the classic, and the comments I get from nice noticers are day-making and reliable. I already felt good wearing it. The validation ices the cake.
Substacks I'm reading
“He’s never actually seen the moon.” -Vaughan’s Substack Becoming Mom, where she realizes her space-obsessed little boy has never once been awake late enough to actually see the moon. Sweet musings.
My Morning Muse: a German artist I stumbled across, whose abstract work is unguarded and extraordinary, built out of ordinary things she notices walking around. Her writing is direct and honest.
Speaking of Goldbelly (see above, in cake form): Joe and Vanessa Ariel, co-founders of Goldbelly and friends of mine, just launched The 250 Dishes That Made America. The writing is personal and warm. Start with the hot dog post, which I loved.
One small thing to make your house more aesthetic
Turn one beautiful book face-out on your shelf tonight. Out from under the clutter, into the light.
Museum rules: rotate monthly.
The Seventh Pic
Of the many memes I had in my IG Stories this week, this one got the most DMs.
I fear the water bottles have won. I have officially reached this point (see below). Reporting live from that point. Food-safe bags, add to cart!
Here’s my ask this week. Think of the friend whose taste you steal. The one who sends you the good links, who knew about the thing before it was the thing, whose apartment made you go home and rearrange your own.
Send her this. Tell her she’s been training your eye for years and never even knew. This is a cousin of buying something for someone with your eyes!
And if you made it this far, heart the heart. It helps the right people find me.
Now go rip something out and put it on your wall.
What's on your “wall” right now? Tell me in the comments. I want to see what trained your eye.
hugs!!
Ana
Does collecting peptides count? 🧐
I really enjoyed your idea that collecting beautiful images wasn’t just a hobby, it was training your eye. That really resonated with me as someone who has spent years in graphic design. The line about trusting your instinct and “clicking at one” instead of waiting was a great reminder that sometimes our experience sees the moment before we consciously recognize it. Thanks for sharing a glimpse into how your creative eye was shaped.💙