Mixing Grace

There is this picture of Grace Jones taken by Jean-Paul Goude:

Except that it is not a picture, but a composite image — lots of shots molded into one in order to produce this almost impossible pose.

It became popular. It went around the world.

I didn’t know much about the photographer though and, when I looked him up, one of the first things to read about him was that he was such a mix himself: the offspring of an American ballet dancer and a French elevator repair man.
Or, as a friend put it:

“What a funny pair of parents. Somehow, I just imagine that he must have been conceived against the wall of a broken elevator, a gauzy pink tutu smashed against greasy beige coveralls, with a red toolbox and tools scattered around. Kind of a Degas meets Norman Rockwell.” (ŋ)

Ha!