Sophie Ward

[serenade]

Knew it, she is so much taller than any other model in fashion shows. She's so lucky.

[Bellechloe]

Originally Posted by *Bianca*

same source

IM SORRY!.....WHOS THE BLOND GIRL?

[*Bianca*]

the blonde in the 1st pic Sonya Kukainis
the blonde in the 2nd pic is Zosia Prominska

[violet_echoes*~]

Originally Posted by acester

awwww..sophie

look possibly a repost..hope not.

[taniakelley]

That's an incredibly beautiful photo. I admire her photogenicness here - it's incredibly hard to look good in a position like that!!

[PetitLapinVegan]

She looks a bit like Alice Gibb here, no?

[vogueness]

she is SO tall and long limbed

[melbguy]

this is from a series of blogs on news.com.au featuring Perth Models

I went to school, then went to Uni and graduated with a major in Philosophy, Literature & Film.

I immersed myself in the Arts, rode the wave of modelling, went overseas, shot Italian Vogue, had adventures, met amazing people, inspired myself, wrote til my fingers ached.

I was published at 19, discovered by the fashion industry at 16. Went to the usual modelling classes that all young Perthians go to, and learnt how to walk the catwalk in between excavating happy meal boxes. I shot up at 17, grew to new heights (six foot one and a half inch) and kept growing internally too. I don't know if i'll ever stop - I'm still growing - evolving at an exponential rate.
This year I learnt how to DJ, how to costume film and music videos, how to production design and dress sets. Next I'm teaching myself the discipline of ending novels, and saving money instead of blowing it on outlandish outfits like antique Centurion helmets, Navajo headdresses, tuxedos and Gucci bandage dresses.

Next year I'll go to New York, publish again, wing myself onto some ground-breaking film sets and keep shooting films and making art with my siblings...

And of course, naturally (like I breathe in and out...) I will write it all down in detail.

Xx Soph

This was the caption under the pic "On the bus driving to a hotel in Melb for David Jones, playing DJ with my laptop and the bus mike..."

[qnelise]

I am so glad to find this thread!
Sophie's pics are rare to be seen.
It's really "um" result shows "Gemma Ward" whenever I search "Sophie Ward."
Love Shophie!!! ^^

[loveroffashion]

sorry if this is a repost http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-GFJ-...eature=related

[Romy B]

I don't remember seeing the video before.

[PetitLapinVegan]

a short story by sophie:

'QUABILA'
'We are all in the one pot, but it is not the same pot for all.'
Henry Miller
I.
Some scent ascends from the earth here, it washes off the ocean we swam in and still hangs around long enough
for you to catch your breath on it. People lie on their backs, in the dark, on the salt-washed stone jetties, intoxicated
by the night when the star is out. The water is warm and soft; a slippery gem against sun-stung skin. I was most
fascinated by your face. I wish all I need wear are those memories, my imagination, your hat.
The days roll along. I keep hearing your voice in mine as I find my way through this world. I notice the sun fall
red in the west near your house, though I didnʼt know it was there then: I spent most of my time in the east, where
the sun rose like mercury because I preferred silver over gold to begin with. I'd take odd slanted steps along the
slope of a tilted shore and watch waves unfold upturned palms towards me. I saw surfers harden and relax
amongst the whipped whiteness of those silvery morning oceans and felt like everything was something I hadnʼt
seen before. It seemed I too was being jettisoned upon the surface of a sea that sucked me down and flung me out
with its physics. I liked this sharp hard contact with whatever it was; something grand and unfathomable, just
beginning. I liked the softness of what came to flow in-between; like the blood in the veins of an elbow in mine.
II.
I watched a boy peel a wetsuit from his body and stop with it stuck at his ankles. It lay inside out; sprawled before
him like a Peter Pan shadow. I caught his eye and knew he wasnʼt too mad with this new strange accomplice, like a
lost boy might have been. He simply stopped in the sun against the oily air of the pines while silver began its'
disappearance from the enveloping air of the day. I smiled at his patience. Not many people would do that. Different
characters began to flow out from the cracks of the morning. I wandered past many Iʼd seen here before. I hadnʼt
been back since the previous summer but knew their routines well enough. One man lived in a shack up the road,
and rode his bike nearly naked to this shore everyday with his dog. He had an umbrella, a deck chair, a belly and a
tan and this was his life, the part I knew anyway, until heʼd leave with the sunset to an obscure world I might never
find out about. I liked to think he grew aloe vera in a rock garden and read books about astronomy, because I
thought that would be interesting, and maybe sometime I could talk to him about that.
The man kept reappearing. Today he reached the beach I was heading to, leaning back into his chair as a dozen
Lilliputian surfers flooded out from behind a surf school's beaten van. They ripped up the beach front in spirals, like
so many tiny neoprene spiders, deluded by the beauty of the surf and its lid of clouds. I could see where the old
man fit like a puzzle through the sand they kicked up: their electric feet scattered haywire across the shore as they
ran. I want a backwards clock so I can rewind my life to that time. Iʼd watch all the things Iʼve ever done in reverse
while I sped towards the languor of youth at the end. I'd watch myself undoing things: like laughing backwards, or
sliding upwards, and unlicking the bowl. I be dancing in rapid silence with sure and certain lunacy. The dancing
would look erratic without the rewind though, but thatʼs the preciousness of it.
I shivered dropping my towel near the sea. The spiders beat out against the surf as I tied my hair back with some
seaweed, an old habit. I scanned the horizon for continents while lashes began dampening thickly with the air
pressed vaguely against them. I'd always hoped to see some other country from the shore. As a child I thought it
would be a comfort to know there were other people so different and displaced, and yet sharing the same sea.
Waves ran toward me, and the water was cold, but my intentions had become a morning ritual. Even though I had
to check my sanity before plunging into its depths, I still came here each day, to dive in and out of frightening
shared ocean. The sun waited low on the horizon, rising, as two birds began to gurgle their wakeup. In the distance
I heard their deep, throaty, vibrating verbs. I wanted to get inside her throat; sharp hard beak and soft blooded
chords, tensing and tensing again; shaded from the morning glare... Feeling the salt start to breeze in under the
hairs on my body I thought about how warm I might be if I wasnʼt so mad.
I plunged into the sea despite myself and dripped out of it, wading heavily back up the sand. I felt my heart race
high in my chest and icicles of ocean ran down my sides. I got to my things, fished a lemon out of my bag as I
picked up the towel. Bound in cotton I contemplated the sun rising to meet me and sucked its juice. I took to pulling
tendons from the lemon. After a while I lay down, fell asleep. I dreamt about sailing toward a desert country where
everybody talked and everybody listened too. Someone's head turned into a rose, and then the moon went
missing. I woke up with my cheeks burnt, and a woman swimming out before me, talking loudly to the waves.
As I surfaced from the swell I dove into, I frowned my eyes from the mosaic flares of light on the waves. I blew
water in spasm and burst with my breath, keeping a respectful distance and an eye on her. She wore an old navy
swimming cap and seemed unusually interested in what the space next to her had to say. I couldnʼt tell whether she
was talking to an old friend or a new one. Nevertheless, her friend was invisible, and I think she thought she was
too. I left the water several minutes after she did and noticed she went to the umbrella propped up over the man I
had noticed earlier. I gathered they must be old friends. She slipped a sheet-like dress on as I bent and stood out of
the water.
The more I watched, the more I awoke. They were incredibly beautiful. I hadnʼt seen anything with more joie de
vivre until this, and I was magnetised through my shyness; completely intrigued by their customs. I had to make a
conscious decision to turn back less often, to try not to watch them. I thought, some days I donʼt like being looked
at, so why should they feel any different now? But then I realised I am just like you, and yet I think youʼre crazy and
amazing. I smiled thinking you probably thought the same of me. We are all just as mad.
Squatting there under the dome of sea air I felt doubly removed from myself; as if I could get inside you and you
watched me with curious intent. I felt like all the nerves of my body jangled with the possibility of actually existing in
the world. Sometimes I am surprised people stop for me in their cars, as if I am not really sure I am actually here. I
did know I was different. Most of the time I made sure of that. But there was a reason we were made unable to see
our own faces. Naturally I wanted to watch you, and it didnʼt surprise me that I let my guard down swiftly, and
opened up the possibility of you watching me for a while. The thing is, I want to be like you and be able to see me. I
want to know what we are really like.

continued below...

[PetitLapinVegan]

III.

The next day I was almost the only one out on the sand in the morning, except for a familiar head bobbing far out
near the sea horizon. I saw him when I held still, my toes absently combing the biting sand. His head was ghost-
like, a zinc plaster of sunscreen and salt, and it was only his head there that moved. To my left the sounds of
strangers, a couple of boys, arrived at my senses. They were playing war in the dunes, and their cries echoed from
farther up the bay. I saw one of them roll out from the dunes in soldier-like fashion, only to race back in again. I was
so tired. I noticed one umbrella, tucked into the nearest dune of the bay. I shaded my eyes to the sea and bit into
the flesh of a lemon, rubbing sand from my eyebrows as I watched the ocean lap several meters before me. Within
a few minutes I went down to test it. I crashed into a new wave which carried what looked like a small disc up onto
the shore amongst the shell grit. It was red and smooth. I picked it up and turned it over in my palm. The old man
began to float quietly on his back toward the shore.
Before the sea had dried from either of our bodies, I wandered over to where the woman sat under the umbrella.
She had a backgammon board on a trestle table beside her, and poured tea from a ceramic pot, mumbling or
humming as I walked closer, I couldnʼt work out which. I had no idea what on earth I was going to say, but had a
feeling this token was theirs and it wasnʼt a coincidence I had found it.
ʻWould you like to play with us?' she asked before I could speak. I smiled. ʻI found this by the shore. It came up out
of the ocean just nowʼ.
She set a glass down into the sand and said gently, ʻI saw you asleep that day...ʼ She paused looking up at me, and
added, ʻYou can share our shade if you like next timeʼ. Her eyes matched the liquidity of the tea in the sand.
ʻI see you like lemons!!ʼ came a sudden voice from the sun behind me. ʻGood thing you do... I have a tree and
believe you can never put too many lemons to good useʼ. I turned and smiled wider at the man who approached.
The zinc coating his skin was now fading roughly from his face with the salt, and he met me with a strong fistful
handshake. The disc dropped to the sand. ʻSo, you found it!ʼ, he said, as he noticed it between us. I picked it up
and gave it to him. ʻCome, Iʼll show you how the world looks, now that we have thisʼ he said, moving slowly toward
the table.
He hovered over his wooden board, unwary of how appealing I found their curious manner. His grey hair and brick
skin seemed more luminous in the shade. They didnʼt offer any explanation for their being there at first, nor did they
ask my name nor give theirs. Instead, the man motioned for me to sit down. The woman made more tea. I sat down
on a metal esky and hooked my leg up to my chest, placing my foot down upon it with steady and careful attention.
It was only after this that he asked if I would like to join them. I watched him gather things together as he whistled
for the dog which the two boys were now entertaining. I asked her if he knew them. The woman said no. I looked at
her carefully, and told her Iʼd love to share their shade, noticing the underside of the umbrella was glued with paper
clippings. I might have been getting madder, but it was something of the instability of all this that I liked, hidden
under the apparent banality of what should have been normal. The dog raced from the frontier as the woman
sipped her sandy glass and hummed. ʻShall we?ʼ he beamed.
That day he sat me down and showed me the rules of backgammon. Over time he explained to me that heʼd lived
in Oman by the Arabian sea and that the game was an important part of life there; that all of the world had some
relation to this board. I was infected with images of languid Arabian women dancing in the orchards. 'They eat
lemons the size of grapefruit', he said. I smiled. 'While the men play, anywhere', he added. When I asked why he
was here, he told me heʼd moved to retire. Apparently seven years ago he'd won the Nobel Economics prize for
using game theory to explain conflict resolution. The woman pointed to a clipping of his achievement near the mast
of the umbrella. He added humbly that he was skeptical of the busy worlds people find time to get lost in. 'There is
nothing else in the world but information and what you make of it'. He made tea. It made him feel younger.
The sun started setting as I told him about the clock I wanted. He peered from under his wiry eyebrows, and said
he might be able to find one for me. He looked serious, as he glanced down to move a checker about the board. I
noticed the sand between his knuckles.
The days disconnected themselves from time in waves. The heat did that.
I remember feeling like I was sailing in the boat in my dream. 'The aim here is to act in groups', he said. 'The
isolated are vulnerable'. ʻThe world is a familyʼ he'd say loudly, while the woman added, ʻthe same performance is
expected of everyone in the gameʼ, smoothing her leathery wrinkles with coconut oil. Another day they taught me
words in Arabic. He called our gathering quabila - the tribe, and we were shabab. I liked his words. Shabab was a
category of youth and included everyone between the age of six and sixty. Other days heʼd call me from the ocean
to give me weighty bags of lemons or boxes of tea his friend made. I sat with their words for hours, and weʼd talk
about things I never remember talking about. I left the beach every evening with my bones fast emitting heat
absorbed from the day, and the taste of salt and sour lemon on my tongue. I drank in the flood of their eccentricities
and was so interested in the pulse of their life, I never wanted to take my finger from it. I knew theyʼd always be
watching the horizon of the ocean and the land, waiting for me to return and watch them. Their world cracked open
mine and we saw eternity laid within it.
I came home one night and flipped through an old portrait book, wondering what their faces might have looked like
at my age, the intonations of cheek and brow and eye. Boys chests dove into the softness of grey photographic
water. A brick, some blood. Young babies too thin to have beating hearts still. The light began to dissipate into the
flowery night as I read, and tears ached from my eyes. Beyond my window the red disc of sun tagged the moon as
it went by on its opposite way. I swayed along the pages of a rotating globe deep into the night, toward places
rushing fast towards me. How beautiful it must be to see a man weep for his religion, a face washed with ink. A
mother dancing to the sound of her own drumming heart in the nighttime, while her languid children sleep like I did.

II.
The pavement tripped me up as I walked down it to town the next morning. I passed the street market, a woman's
eye, and found a slightly worn camera in amidst the effluvia of her discarded life. She sold it to me, adding sheʼd
bought it before going to Egypt, the pyramids, the river Nile. My old friend at the beach had once said he'd never
had a camera in Oman... Since I had recently decided I wanted to give something back to them, not only the disc
they had lost, I knew I wanted to give them with some new contraptions, mysteries. I remembered the man saying
something about the soul and that memory was the strongest way to take photos of it, nevertheless the only way
they'd known how.
I found an old bolt of fabric which I wrapped the camera up in, and began to walk my track to the beach. Maybe
there was still film in the camera. I couldnʼt see their umbrella yet. My mind raced, blossoming with the idea that
there could be photos of Oman on the film, if the photographer had wandered far enough from her track. I arrived
to cloud smitten sand and looked up and down the beach, but they werenʼt here today. That was odd. They always
waved me off each time we parted with the promise of returning the next day. Heʼd call out 'tal umrak! May your life
be prolonged!' as I walked away every time. She would have told me if they werenʼt going to be here, even if he had
forgotten to. I tilted my head aslant, squinting at the sky simmering thinly above me. My fingers picked harder at the
camera and a thousand maybes ran through my mind. I could only think that most plausibly, they were just late and
leaving the lemon tree shack now with the dog. So, that day, for the first time, I began to walk to the west.
I.
I wandered all over the town that day. Soon I realised that I would not find you. You were never destined for a
photograph. I smiled at your ingenuity. I couldn't find the lemon tree, or hear the dog bark or see a lone drift of
coconut oil on the watery setting sun. And yet as I wandered alone I felt suddenly and tacitly freed, as a fish might
feel, released from its bowl into the river or the sea. I remembered you telling me that after the Big Bang and
because of it, 'everything is entropic and wanders away from what it was'. The universe keeps expanding. And
because things are changing, if not incrementally all the time, it became as if there is nothing ever definite in the
world: Not even the sun, or Oman or the woman or any man. I realised this was the very nature Iʼd been born with,
and it grabbed me right now, the guttural quaver of your lingering sentence. Life was infinite and non-definite. Youʼd
spun this all over in my mind and it was frightening and exciting all at once, as though I could write my life how I
wanted to and walk in my own shoes, with my own soles and shoelaces now.
I knew youʼd begun your words elsewhere. Iʼd become a different version of the same soul with every step along
that shore and knowing this sent the pressures of gravity bubbling upwards through my veins and synapse.
Wherever you were, you did that. I was one part of the immediate universe and connected and distinct all at once.
A boy dove into the grey softness of the ocean beneath me. My eyes went to meet his. Perhaps Iʼd talk with you
again someday about how the water rippled fast toward us at the shore, like a bed being made. I knew there was
something that called me, and still does today, against the direction of that water. I think you felt it too. A pull away
toward other places, and other people who shared this sea we all lay on. I went down to the water as hymn-like
words came to step with me. Boats drift to deserts, and words toward mouths, shadows peel off, and the salt
washes on. What you did then was to tell me your story. What Iʼll do now is begin to tell mine.
S.C.W.

source: http://papercastlepress.com/

[saturnine]

How did you find out that was Sophie's story?

It's credited only as S.C.W.

[PetitLapinVegan]

well, from Sophie to be perfectly honest

[PetitLapinVegan]

Originally Posted by saturnine

It's credited only as S.C.W.

a bit o' proof, I suppose:
http://www.suite101.com/profile.cfm/raquelrazorwhip