We love this photograph taken by a little-known photographer—Jim Gagnon—of someone doing what they really want to do. What we love even more is Sebastian Smee’s take on the image in the Washington Post:

I immediately noticed the picture’s slight tilt — as if the people in it were all at risk of sliding toward the object of their attention. The well-dressed patrons on the right seem intent on resisting this slide. But where they stand back, upright and correct, clutching their winter coats, loath to break convention, the woman, in her pearls, her pumps, her gorgeous Grace Kelly hair, has broken from the pack and now bends at the waist to get a closer look…

 

But the more I look at Gagnon’s picture, the more this woman strikes me as a role model for how to be in the world. I want to show her to my kids, to say, “Be like this! Be like her! Get up close. Be gauche. Break from the pack. Don’t fret over what anyone thinks of you. Let your body find the forms that fit your interests. Don’t stand apart like the others — stiff, sterile and repressed.”