Difficult Beauty

<p><em>Difficult Beauty: Rambles Rants and Intimate Conversations</em> by fine artist and writer Lauren Crux pairs 66 full-color images from Lauren's long standing photography practice with her frank musings that initially started as a mail art project. A book that offers the reader bits of daily life in which little things go vast. A visual and contemplative balm to the spirit: for who in these times cannot use a bit of comfort intelligence and good humor? The rambles balance intimacy with openness artistry with colloquial thought and speech. Crux's gaze is simultaneous vast and minute (which I am coming I think to understand is the way of the soul of Lauren Crux). Just when we think we've come on a silly throw away line or a cliché or a normal point of view she turns the phrase and raise the stakes on us. But she's not showing off. She's just talking to us. -Camille Dungy author of <em>Soil: the Story of a Black Mother's Garden</em> and <em>Guidebook to Relative Strangers</em></p><p><em><span>?</span></em></p>