{photography} – Page 107

Art Institute, Stockholm, 1897

More eccentric exposition architecture. This edifice towered briefly over the Stockholm skyline for the General Art and Industrial Exposition of 1897, an event for which there seems to be very little information online. The exposition doesn’t receive an entry at ExpoMuseum and this is the only photo at the Library of Congress’s wonderful Photocrom archive. The Swedish Pavilion at the Paris Exposition three years later was the most eccentric structure on display and received favourable reviews as a result, many people finding it a lot more interesting than the staid architecture of other nations.

Previously on { feuilleton }
• The Columbus Monument
• The Palais du Trocadéro
• The Evanescent City
• Ephemeral architecture

Weekend links 39

The Divine Punishment (1986) by Diamanda Galás. Design by Paul White/Me Company.

What the Catholic League and certain members of the House presumably wish to remove from their consciousness is thirty years of death sentences handed down to their parishioners and citizenry, who were told not to wear condoms, and the mistreatment of those stigmatized as miscreants and sinners by their viral status and/or homosexuality and/or status as drug addicts.

• Diamanda Galás responds in her usual forthright manner to the censoring of David Wojnarowicz’s film (and her music which accompanied it) by the Catholic League and members of the House of Representatives earlier this week. Related: Demonstrators gather to protest removal of Wojnarowicz art from NPG | Is the censored David Wojnarowicz video really ‘anti-Christian’? | Vengeance is hers: a conversation with Diamanda Galás.

• Update: Hide/Seek: Too shocking for America. One of the exhibition curators speaks out against the censorship.

“Their attitude is: ‘Next time you think of writing about sex, don’t,'” said Susie Bright, who was the editor of the Best American Erotica anthology series for 15 years. “I can’t think of any other fundamental human experience that writers would be encouraged to keep to themselves.” Melissa Katsoulis, a literary reviewer for the Times of London, certainly seemed to conform to Bright’s impression when asked to comment on the award by the BBC: “Sex is a subject best avoided altogether,” she said. “If I was writing a novel, I wouldn’t attempt to write it except in the most Victorian and prim way, because it’s awful. It’s a cliché, but the moments of genuine frisson in books are when hardly anything happens.” Speak for yourself, missy.

• Laura Miller dissing the Literary Review‘s annual Bad Sex Award. Good to find more voices being raised against this drivel and the admission of failure which it implies.

• The latest offbeat experiment from filmmaker David Lynch: pop singles. He gets crazy with the vocoder here. Related: David Lynch talks new music projects.

Scena Illustrata (1914). Cover by Ezio Anichini (?). Via this set of magazine covers from 1880–1920.

• Tumblrs of the week: Heart Killer and Pretty Pictures from the Paleo-Future Blog.

• The Big Picture’s 2010 Hubble Space Telescope Advent Calendar.

• National Geographic‘s Best Underwater Views of 2010.

• A seasonal gift from a famous Northampton resident.

• Paris versus New York: A Tally of Two Cities.

• This is your browser on drugs.

• Double-Barrel Prayer (1988) by Diamanda Galás, with a video directed by the late Peter Christopherson.

Outcrops

Hvítserkur, Vestur-Hunavatnssysla, Iceland. By Flickr user jónr.

I hadn’t come across this feature of north-west Iceland before until a view turned up in Flickr’s Explore. The place is a tourist site so there are many more such views.

Ailsa Craig by Flickr user atomicjeep.

Hvítserkur reminded me of Aisla Craig, a volcanic island a few miles from Girvan on the west coast of Scotland. I’ve seen Aisla Craig from the shore and can testify to its imposing presence, and also the way its appearance changes depending on the weather and time of day.

Both these pale into insignificance next to Ball’s Pyramid, a volcanic stack in the Tasman Sea which is 562 meters in height and looks like it might be Cthulhu’s second home. Flickr has further views of this spectacular eruption but not as many as you might hope.

Weekend links 38

Arriving in the post this week was Lovecraft Black & White, an Italian book whose contents are spelled out in the title, black-and-white illustrations based on the work of the Providence master. Among the featured works is my 1999 rendering of Azathoth. There’s more about the book here and here.

Also on the work front, one of the books I designed interiors for a couple of months back was The Search for Philip K. Dick, a sombre biography and memoir by Anne R. Dick, the author’s third wife. Ms Dick discussed the book with the NYT a few days ago. The design was mostly straightforward layout but I did make a quick ASCII portrait of PKD from one of Anne Dick’s photos.

• Farewell, the documentary film about Lady Grace Drummond-Hay’s flight around the world in the Graf Zeppelin, can be viewed here.

• “I personally think that the pages look better on the iPad than they do in real life.” Artist Tom Phillips again on the Humument iPad app.

• The Birds Are Flying Elsewhere: singer/songwriter Linda Perhacs. Related: Parallelograms – A Short Film About Linda Perhacs.

• St Eia, guitar improvisations by Zali Krishna, “Keywords: jazzgazing; entropy circus; st ives; cornwall; psychogeography”.

• Moon Wiring Club and DD Denham: music for children, by children. Related: Moon Wiring Club’s Jayston Mix.

The 1970s was another country, they did things differently there. One of a number of illustrations for science textbooks by Phil Kirkland at A Journey Round My Skull.

• “Fellatio has become a recurrent theme in your work hasn’t it, I say.” Alan Bennett sheds some inhibitions.

• Talking To The Sci-Fi Lord: Regenerations & Ruminations With Michael Moorcock.

• Time and the Gods (1906) by Lord Dunsany, illustrated by Sidney Sime.

• City of Silence, a calendar for 2011 by Thom Ayres.

• Scientists glimpse universe before the Big Bang.

• Photography by Josef Sudek (1896–1976).

• Aurora photo gallery, November 2010.

• The Last Tuesday Society.

• Parallelograms (1970) by Linda Perhacs | Six AM (1979) by Thomas Leer & Robert Rental | Rockin’ Back Inside My Heart (1989) by Julee Cruise.

The recurrent pose 39

Here we go again, this example of the Flandrin pose being from 1924. The photograph is by Karel Egermeier and features in Paysage des Olympiques, a book devoted to studies of athletic youths with text by Henry de Montherlant. The author’s Uranian interests are well-documented so for once we can abandon any pretense that the publication had an entirely chaste intent. Thanks to Bibliothèque Gay for the tip, a great site for posts about French gay history and culture.

Elsewhere on { feuilleton }
• The recurrent pose archive