{photography} – Page 150

The recurrent pose 17

The Flandrin pose again, this time in a photograph by George Platt Lynes (1907–1955). This is from a Flickr set of Lynes’ work which was a nice find since many of the web collections are small and tend to repeat the same material.

The picture above isn’t from the Flickr set, it’s a scan from Philip Core’s essential Camp: The Lie that Tells the Truth (1984), and a photograph that long fascinated me for completely unwholesome and inartistic reasons. Core credits it only as depicting dancers from Balanchine’s Icarus but I’d suspected for some time it was a Lynes picture, Lynes having photographed Balanchine’s dancers on several occasions, notably in some nude stagings of Orpheus. The Flickr picture below confirms the Lynes origin although it adds a new layer of mystery by crediting it to Balanchine’s Die Fledermaus. Given the very Classical look of the dancers’ costumes I suspect Core has the correct attribution but the confusion is also an excuse to keep searching.

Elsewhere on { feuilleton }
• The recurrent pose archive

Previously on { feuilleton }
• Philip Core and George Quaintance
• George Platt Lynes

The CD cover meme

Okay, here’s a web meme I can really get behind…. I’ve never been tempted to try one of those long list affairs filled with questions such as “what was your favourite breakfast cereal when you were a child?” The CD cover meme is more my kind of thing and it goes like this:

1. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Random
The first article title on the page is the name of your band.

2. www.quotationspage.com/random.php3
The last four words of the very last quote is the title of your album.

3. www.flickr.com/explore/interesting/7days/
The third picture, no matter what it is, will be your album cover.

4: Combine all three elements in your photo editing software.

5: Share

Et voila! Without further ado I give Someone or Something Else by Tolnaftate, that well-known Berlin Techno outfit.

Someone or Something Else by Tolnaftate, Feuilleton Records, 2008.

For the record (as it were), Tolnaftate is “a synthetic over-the-counter anti-fungal agent. It may come as a cream, powder, spray, or liquid aerosol, and is used to treat jock itch, athlete’s foot and ringworm”, and the quote, I’m pleased to say, was from HL Mencken, “All successful newspapers are ceaselessly querulous and bellicose. They never defend anyone or anything if they can help it; if the job is forced on them, they tackle it by denouncing someone or something else.” The pylons were unwittingly supplied by this Flickr user. Flickr has a pool devoted to this meme and they encourage you to add your own creations.

Via Sleevage which features some choice examples.

Elsewhere on { feuilleton }
• The album covers archive

The ruins of Detroit

Michigan Central Station.

Photos from Yves Marchand & Romain Meffre (above) and Forgotten Detroit (below), the latter being an extensive catalogue of urban dereliction.

The station waiting room.

Update: Environmental Graffiti today has a post speculating which American cities might be the lost cities of the future. Detroit is number three; go here to see which others they choose.

Previously on { feuilleton }
• Ephemeral architecture
• The temples of Angkor
• St Pancras in Spheroview
• Adolph Sutro’s Gingerbread Palace
• Hungarian water towers

Vintage/Vantage

left: In The Belly of Nature (self-portrait) by Rudolph Koppitz (1923).
right: Ritti with Rod, North Sea, Germany by Herbert List (1933).

Vintage/Vantage is an exhibition of classic homoerotic photography of the 19th and 20th century at Wessel + O’Connor Fine Art, NYC. Examples range from Muybridge’s human locomotion experiments, through von Gloeden‘s Mediterranean boys to Herbert List, George Hoyningen-Huene and co. The exhibition runs to May 3, 2008.

Endangered insects postage stamps

Adonis Blue Butterfly.

Beautiful stamps for the second in a Royal Mail series intended to bring attention to endangered species. These will be issued on Tuesday and are designed by Andrew Ross using photography from the Natural History Museum. The Independent notes the irony of the Royal Mail printing these even as they’re building a new distribution depot at West Thurrock which will destroy natural habitats. Invertebrate Conservation Trust Buglife had tried and failed to prevent the development.

top: Silver-spotted Skipper, Red Barbed Ant, Stag Beetle.
centre: Noble Chafer Beetle, Barberry Carpet Moth, Purbeck Mason Wasp.
bottom: Southern Damselfly, Field Cricket, Hazel Pot Beetle.

Previously on { feuilleton }
• Robert Lang’s origami insects
• James Bond postage stamps
• Lalique’s dragonflies
• Lucien Gaillard
• Wesley Fleming’s glass insects
• Please Mr. Postman
• Insect Lab