{photography} – Page 123

Betty Blythe

Yesterday’s search for Betty Blythe pictures turned up this pair which I couldn’t resist posting, with Ms. Blythe posed against a peacock in the first and wearing a peacock-styled outfit in the second. As I’ve noted before, silent films are very often like Symbolist paintings come to life, and The Queen of Sheba (1921) would appear to be another of these which makes its loss all the more disappointing. The photo below is from a Flickr set whose user has her own Tumblr blog of silent movie stars.

Previously on { feuilleton }
• The Mask of Fu Manchu
• Salomé posters
• Ruth St Denis
• The Feminine Sphinx
• Lussuria, Invidia, Superbia
• Alla Nazimova’s Salomé

Dirigibles

This week’s picture research involves airships for some Steampunk-related illustration work. Lots of great Zeppelin photos abound, of course, and I’ve always liked seeing the more notable peacetime moments such as this flight of the US Los Angeles over Manhattan in 1930. Wikimedia Commons has another very striking picture of the same craft moored to a ship off Panama. The picture below, looking like something from one of the Indiana Jones films, shows the Graf Zeppelin drifting over the Pyramids in 1931. As always, the results of this Zeppelinology will be presented here in due course.

Previously on { feuilleton }
• La route d’Armilia by Schuiten & Peeters
• The Airship Destroyer
• Zeppelin vs. Pterodactyls

Corset boy

And why not? Photograph by Andrew Loxley for another great feature at Fantasticsmag.

The recurrent pose 30

The previous post in this series showed Flandrin’s Jeune Homme Assis au Bord de la Mer (1836) being used as a book cover illustration and here it is again, confirming once again how easily the painting fits the world of homoerotica whatever the original intention of the artist. I hadn’t come across this book before but it looks like it may be worth buying despite the mixed reviews.

And a recent posting from this Flickr user is another deliberate imitation of Flandrin’s pose.

Elsewhere on { feuilleton }
• The recurrent pose archive

Ecce homo

Saint Sebastian appears rather unconcerned by his wounds in this contemporary version by Yves De Brabander, part of his Ecce Homo series which reworks some recurrent themes from western art history.

Elsewhere on { feuilleton }
• The gay artists archive

Previously on { feuilleton }
• The art of Robert Sherer
• The art of Joan Sasgar
• Saint Sebastian in NYC
• Guido Reni’s Saint Sebastian
• The art of Takato Yamamoto
• Fred Holland Day