Simon Hogeberg.

Faces of New York
By: Simon Hogsberg

"Once in a while I see a person on the street who immediately attracts my attention. I’m fascinated by the appearance of the person and feel a strong urge to walk over and say hi.
I spent one month, seven hours a day, walking the streets of New York in search for people who had this effect on me. I found ten, and asked each of them the same question: What do you think about your face?"



What do you think about your face?

I think that God has given me a beautiful face. I’m very grateful for my face. I think that a lot of things in my life has to do with my faith in God. With my faith in God I express beauty, it’s coming from within me, from the Holy Spirit. When I think of the Holy Spirit I feel like I’m projecting beauty. So therefore I have a beautiful face, praise the Lord.

It’s also about accepting the face I have. It has to do also with acceptance. I mean, I could go out and have plastic surgery. And then I would look like a different person, so why would I do that different person, so why would I do that? I’m not ashamed of the way I look, but that’s definitely a spiritual thing. It’s not a worldly thing, because the world says, Oh no, you go and you have this done and you have that done, and…

I don’t wear very much make-up, because I don’t think it’s attractive. I don’t want to show off the make-up I’m wearing, I want to show off my face because I am pleased with the way God made me.



What do you think about your face?

I think my face looks good. I think it looks mature, young - maybe a little rebellious. It looks like it’s a little eager for something. Like if I saw a picture of myself, and I didn’t know who the person on the picture was, I would think that this guy has really got a goal. And so probably I’d like to look a little bit like myself.

I’m an average person, but I don’t have an average look. Even black people around my age and size… I’ve never really seen anybody who looked anything like me. I’ve got that 21st anything like me. I’ve got that 21st century look to me. I’m only 23. At the same time I’ve got a loooong beard like an old man, but I keep it shaved – there isn’t any grey in my beard, and I’m not loosing any hair anywhere.

Normally when I have my hair out females go crazy for me. I can’t help it. God made me like that, I guess, and that’s another reason why I figure my attitude is not average. When a lot of the people that I feel are average get attention like that they turn a little arrogant. See me, I don’t get ahead of myself. Because I always know that it isn’t me who made me look like this. God made me look like this. myself. Because I always know that it isn’t me who made me look like this. God made me look like this.

What do you think about your face?

In my own face – particularly with my hair pulled back – I see the Van Eyck or Holbein portraits. When I go to Metropolitan Museum of Art a lot of times I feel I see myself there. Because I don’t see my look as so much contemporary as European from other times. I feel that other aspects of me that have lived in different periods come out through my face. That’s what I see, when I look at myself in the mirror, and my face seems otherworldly to me that way. What I’m inspired by is the French period before the revolution – the paintings of Boucher… that sort of thing. paintings of Boucher… that sort of thing. ‘The women in the garden’. That’s how I feel – without the slings and arrows of this lifetime. I don’t relate to the standards of today with the intentionally skinny, starved bodies – I find it very unfeminine. And what I really, really, really respond to is femininity on the purest level. I really respond to the goddess-essence that women are. So when they starve themselves, get breast-implants, don’t accept who they are… that – that rankles me, and I feel that’s very marketed – the idea of what it is to have a female body today. So I don’t relate to what I see coming out of Hollywood. I relate to what I see in Museums.