Category: {photography}

Photography

Weekend links 20

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Transfiguration (1952) by Sulamith Wülfing.

• Observatory posted photos of its Lovecraft art exhibition; see if you can spot my pics. Related: Write Club has more photos. Also, A Word From Our Sponsor.

• Taking the broooooaaaaad view of things: A Conversation with James Grauerholz on William S. Burroughs and Magick. Related: Beat Memories—The Photographs of Allen Ginsberg.

• Adam Curtis on BP and the Axis of Evil; how the the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company became British Petroleum and helped give Iran over to the Ayatollahs.

• The Quietus interviews Peter Christopherson (TG, Coil, etc) and Dr John.

• The Strange World of Adolf Hoffmeister at A Journey Round My Skull.

• An Artists’ Dialogue On CocoRosie’s Grey Oceans at Stereogum.

• Werner Herzog and David Lynch combine their talents.

• Jon Savage on The Residents versus The Beatles.

• BUTT magazine interviews James Bidgood.

• The Daily Drop Cap.

• The Gay Rub.

• Can on German TV in 1971.

Edinburgh, 1929

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2A Arthur Street.

Samples from a collection of photographs by Alfred Henry Rushbrook at the National Library of Scotland’s Flickr pages showing the St Leonards area of Edinburgh. These were taken in 1929 but the age of the buildings and the curiously fogged appearance of the prints makes them seem a lot older. The City of Edinburgh Improvement Trust commissioned Rushbrook to record views of the area before slum clearances took place. In that respect his photos are like a Scots equivalent of the famous views of Paris taken by Atget before Hausmann’s demolition teams set to work.

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2–4 Lothian Street and 3–5–7 Potterow.

Previously on { feuilleton }
• Old Bunker Hill
• Inondations 1910
• Berenice Abbott
• Jessie M King’s Grey City of the North
• Eugene de Salignac
• Luther Gerlach’s Los Angeles
• The temples of Angkor
• The Bradbury Building: Looking Backward from the Future
• Edward Steichen
• Karel Plicka’s views of Prague
• Atget’s Paris
• Downtown LA by Ansel Adams

The recurrent pose 36

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Another antique example of the Flandrin pose. Are you bored yet? Gaetano D’Agata (1883–1949) was one of the photographers who continued a tradition begun by Wilhelm von Gloeden for capturing the youth of Taormina, Sicily, in order to create tasteful prints for those who preferred their erotica to arrive with the vague excuse of Classical allusion. I’ve noted before that von Gloeden was possibly the first photographer to copy Flandrin’s painting, and his example led later photographers to copy him in turn, even borrowing his title, Cain, which reads into the painter’s work a Biblical meaning that seems misplaced. This picture comes from a Flickr selection which includes a similar rendering in postcard form, and also this rather cramped variation.

Elsewhere on { feuilleton }
• The recurrent pose archive

Stonehenge panorama

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I would have posted this for the Solstice yesterday had it not been for the Chronophage. The panorama is at a BBC page since the corporation is one of the few organisations with the weight to gain permission to photograph the stones up close. Unless you’re an archaeologist or an English Heritage official your view is restricted to the path which surrounds the monument, something you can experience via Google Maps. There did used to be exceptions to this. I was fortunate to be at the Stonehenge Festival in 1982 which took place for a few days over Midsummer in one of the fields a short distance away. On Solstice Day the people from English Heritage let everyone—festival-goers and bemused tourists alike—wander inside the circle where a couple of pagan weddings took place. A couple of years later further festivals were prevented with heavy police action so I feel privileged to have been there on that day.

There was more Stonehenge recently at Bldg Blog with a post about Harold Egerton’s stunning photograph of the stones at night. And while we’re on the subject, let’s not forget Woodhenge, Seahenge , Timisoara’s Stonehedge, and the Ballardesque Carhenge.

Elsewhere on { feuilleton }
• The panoramas archive

Serpentine pulchritude

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One of a great series by photographer Jean-François Carly showing male and female models adorned with snakes and little else. Makes a change from the usual state of affairs where men are more commonly depicted wrestling with serpents rather than wearing them.

Previously on { feuilleton }
• Angelo Colarossi and son
• Men with snakes