Solange Knowles (now Solange Ferguson!) set a new weddings and receptions standard when photos from her ceremony to Alan Ferguson were released online. Originally obtained by American VOGUE, what was presented was a beautifully avant-garde presentation of femininity, sisterhood, and arcadian power as Solange led a pack of similarly dressed women (in this matter, her family and friends) in white garb in the setting of a room with remnants of the Italian Renaissance or Southern charm of New Orleans’ Spanish Creole culture. Weddings are often times very regal in nature, but Solange gave us something we’ve never before seen, evoking fresher ideas of what a marriage can look like and the beauty of a wedding truly expressing the connection of a union. The photography was excelled by Rog Walker.

Online critics have celebrated Solange’s stunning pictures as how one really “breaks the Internet” as PAPER magazine had tried with their titillating photos and cover of reality star Kim Kardashian most recently. Solange broke the Internet by sparking the artistic observer in all that got to view such elegance and simplicity.

Solange’z wedding photos are inspired by the contemporary work of Italian artist Vanessa Beecroft. Currently California-based, Beecroft’s most revered pieces and demonstrations are what the Ferguson party did in tribute which was using the body as the ultimate language. The bodies featured in her work, skating on the dystopian with touches of classicism, are either militant, determined, defeated, scarcely clothed or nude, regularly resembling the powerful stalwart of the Terracotta Army from the Chinese dynasty of Qin Shi Huang. Her projects and performance art are initialed and numbered in chronological order (“vb35” “vb65”, “vb53”) and she was also the art director for Kanye West’s mini movie and video “Runaway”. Solange used Beecroft to pose in goodwill, yet her muse like all great artists has embattled some controversy, including her pieces described as thrilling to a younger generation, even called “dope” by Leonardo DiCaprio, while “disgusting” to older art aficionados who sometimes have found her “vapid” and nothing but “fashion fusion”.

What Solange did was take the third wave feminist imagery of Beecroft and adapted it to her purpose of promoting familial allegiance and even the dawn of her new chapter of Solange the individual, Solange the daughter, Solange the mother, and now the wife. She stands with not a newfound sense of all her roles, she already a majority of these responsibilities, also more of a re-affirmed declaration to the world that she has arrived as I am every woman.

Absolutely beautiful work.

JAM OF THE DAY: “Collide” by Justine Sky featuring Tyga