October 13th, today, is National M&M’s Day — a day for a candy so familiar it’s easy to overlook how extraordinary it is. This short video captures them on a slow, 360-degree rotation against black. The colors drift in and out of focus as they turn, catching light in flashes of red, blue, yellow, green, orange, and brown. It’s unexpectedly mesmerizing — a swirl of shape and reflection that transforms something ordinary into pure visual rhythm.
M&M’s began in 1941, created by Forrest Mars, Sr. and Bruce Murrie, whose initials gave the candy its name. Designed originally for soldiers in World War II, the hard sugar shell kept the chocolate from melting in warm conditions. Compact, durable, and neatly contained, it became an ideal field ration — chocolate that could survive travel, heat, and handling.
After the war, production turned to the public market. The small candies were soon marked with a printed “m” to distinguish them from imitators, first in black and later in white. The familiar slogan arrived in the 1950s: “Melts in your mouth, not in your hand.”
Color has always been part of their identity. Early batches included violet, which was later replaced by tan. Red disappeared for several years in the 1970s due to public concern over food dyes and then returned to fanfare in the 1980s. Over time, new varieties appeared — peanut, almond, crispy, pretzel, dark chocolate, caramel — each with its own texture and tone.
Eighty-plus years later, M&M’s are instantly recognizable, yet endlessly variable. Watching them rotate under light, the candies shift between clarity and blur, pattern and chaos. It’s candy as abstraction — still melting in your mouth, not in your hand, and now, briefly, in motion on screen.
See more in Food From Bag to Background on my website at https://www.secondfocus.com/index/G0000wQ3fbeEezF0/I0000nUG8tfk8Gdc
Sévérine – No Bra Day
She’s wearing latex, a veil, and nothing underneath. It isn’t about seduction—it’s about my photograph. And timing: October 13, National No Bra Day.
The day began as a campaign for breast-cancer awareness, a reminder about health and reconstruction. Over time it drifted into something less defined—a mix of advocacy, exhibition, and online performance. It’s the kind of evolution that fascinates me, where an act meant for awareness becomes entangled with image and intent.
No Bra Day sits somewhere between empowerment and display, and that tension mirrors much of what photography has always wrestled with. When I shoot, I’m not documenting causes or slogans. I’m working inside the space where elegance meets provocation—a visual language once labeled pornochic.
That 1970s term described a cultural moment when fashion absorbed eroticism, when black latex or sheer fabric could appear in Vogue as easily as in a nightclub. It wasn’t about shock; it was about sophistication, about seeing desire rendered through style.
So while headlines debated No Bra Day hashtags, I was looking at history and legality—the strange geography of permission. In New York, women have had the right to be topless in public since 1992. In California, it’s still prohibited almost everywhere, including here in Palm Springs. The same act can be expression in one place and offense in another.
Sévérine’s photograph lives inside that contradiction. Latex, gloves, veil—the balance of concealment and revelation. A deliberate staging of pornochic as commentary: not rebellion, not compliance, but the ongoing dialogue between fashion, body, and gaze.
You can see more of my special selections in my Featured Photographs gallery at:
https://www.secondfocus.com/index/G0000zYSGtyvq3Sg
Posted by Ian L. Sitren | October 13, 2025 | Categories: Uncategorized | Tags: black background, contemporary portraiture, cultural commentary, Erotic Photography, fashion portrait, featured photographs, female form, Helmut Newton style, Ian L. Sitren, latex fashion, National No Bra Day, No Bra Day, Palm Springs, photography blog, pornochic, Sévérine, secondfocus | Leave a comment