I stumbled over these beautiful Black and White portraits collected by the The Impossible Cool. The site just jots the surnames underneath each portrait. Cash. Presley. Dylan. Dean. Cole. Baker. Dylan. Kubrick. Shrimpton. Obama. Penn. Connery. Mahal. An ironic poke reminding us how embellished these characters are in our cultural memory.

As a side note, I’m stuck with this internal debate. Are the photographs beautiful because of the immediately recognizable faces, or because they are in fact just beautifully framed moments? If we replaced the celebrities with people who weren’t famous, or perhaps people we currently disliked, e.g. Mugabe, would the photographs still hold so much gravity? There is also a wider debate. Does a photographer become a celebrity by association just because they take photographs of celebrities. A case much debated with photographer Annie Liebovitz.