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Frances Bean Cobain

August 16, 2011 by · Comments Off on Frances Bean Cobain 

Frances Bean CobainFrances Bean Cobain, Frances Bean Cobain, who turns 19 next August 18, starred in a photo shoot for Hedi Slimane, Dior photographer.

The daughter of Kurt Cobain and Courtney Love physically resembles his mother, with whom he remains just an idyllic relationship. However, those eyes and her pose godless nihilists and serene remember (much) to the parent that spawned it.

In the gallery, an exhibition of the collection of black and white portraits, you can see full on the website of the photographer Slimane.

Frances Bean Cobain

August 10, 2011 by · Comments Off on Frances Bean Cobain 

Frances Bean CobainFrances Bean Cobain, Each generation has a defining moment, something so powerful to look back, we find our place in the cultural narrative with the question “Where were you when…?” To our parents, the question was “Where were you when JFK was assassinated?”

For my generation, the question is, “Where were you when you heard Kurt Cobain was dead?” I skipped school that day, was the spring of my senior year and had already checked that mentally. What I remember is my doorbell seconds later I heard the news, and opening the door open to find my best friend standing there with the same look of astonishment on her face that was mine.

The next thing I remember is looking at TV images of angelic Kurt’s daughter, Frances Bean Cobain, and wonder, what will happen to that poor girl?

Frances turns 19 this month. And now I know what happened … if the photos of her recent photo shoot with Hedi Slimane are any indication, he became her father.

And do not think it’s wrong.

Frances is exquisitely beautiful in these photos, and a force to be reckoned in its own right. However, the similarity between Frances and Kurt is awesome. For those of us who followed Nirvana because they were younger than Frances is now looking at the face is not unlike watching a ghost. Exciting and sad, and fear in the sense that at any moment, the spirit can suddenly disappear.

I keep coming back to a paragraph in the suicide note of Kurt, one that struck me viscerally when I first heard it, Courtney Love is read aloud. He wrote:

He … a daughter who reminds me of what used to be full of love and joy, kissing every person you know because everyone is good and will do no harm. And that terrifies me to the point that just might work. I cannot bear the thought of Frances becoming the miserable, self-destructive death rocker that I’ve become.

I know there are those who see the pictures of Frances in tattoos and smoking and pale skin and black lace, and say, “Well, there you have it, her death is a self-destructive rock star.”

However, for those who borrow a phrase from her father and says: “Self-appointed judges judge / More than they have sold.”

In other words, why not spare this child’s trial and criticism that led to her father’s grave and appreciate your making it? (Another quote says Kurt. “I’d rather be hated for who I am than loved for who I am”) Darkness is the birthright of Frances Bean. There is no position in adolescence. His tattoos can also be birthmarks.

Frances, like her father, is proof that darkness can be beautiful. I hope, as I expected since I was a baby, which is pretty good, solid people around to give you the strength to continue that legacy. (I guess it’s too late for Dave Grohl to adoption, as always secretly wanted, but maybe stuffed like a class guy.)

Kurt did not want to be an icon, but he was an icon. Probably never wanted to be a good guardian angel, and (as I suppose is the case with most Nirvana fans) the concept of a heavenly guardian dog requires a certain suspension of disbelief on my part too, but I think it is clear that Kurt is to ensure his daughter. With pride.

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