May 2006 – Page 2 – { feuilleton }

Gray Scott

From war to fashion photography. Oh well… If there isn’t room in the world for art and beauty then what are we living for? Gray Scott‘s photographs use subtle Photoshop processing to make his models appear like showroom dummies. He’s also good with colour adjustment and blurring as well, creating some very effective pastiches of photographic styles from earlier decades. Loretta Lux takes a similar approach with her portraits.

(Safari users should be warned that the menus on Gray Scott’s site don’t work properly; I had to use Firefox.)

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The Disasters of War

7 ¶ And when he had opened the fourth seal, I heard the voice of the fourth beast say, Come and see.
8 And I looked, and behold a pale horse: and his name that sat on him was Death, and Hell followed with him. And power was given unto them over the fourth part of the earth, to kill with sword, and with hunger, and with death, and with the beasts of the earth.
Revelations 6

There are horror films, there are films about the horror of war, and then there is Elem Klimov’s Come and See (Idi i Smotri). Klimov made the film in 1985 from a screenplay by Ales Adamovich based on that writer’s experiences as a young Russian partisan fighting the Nazis during the Second World War. This biographical quality may be what gives the film its incredible immediacy and authority (Klimov also suffered as a child during the war) even though its power is obviously a product of Klimov’s skills as a director.

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Haunter news

The pages for my Haunter of the Dark book now have a news section where relevant announcements and updates will be posted. Any important news will also be mirrored here.

The art of Ernst Fuchs

Ernst Fuchs, one of the founders of the Vienna School of Fantastic Realism in 1946, and a big influence on a later generation of artists such as HR Giger and Robert Venosa.

Elsewhere on { feuilleton }
• The fantastic art archive

The Essex Street Water Gate, London WC2

He crossed the road and went into the darkness towards the little steps under the archway leading into Essex Street, and I let him go. And that was the last I ever saw of him.

The Diamond Maker (1894) by HG Wells

Old and New London – Its History, Its People and Its Places (1878).

London’s water gates date from the time before the building of the embankment and the road on the north side of the river, when the tidal wash reached a lot closer to the buildings (and former palaces) that follow The Strand and Fleet Street. The gate in Essex Street dates back to t0 1676, and was used for a time as an emblem by Methuen publishers when they had their premises here.