Category: {photography}

Photography

Subterrania

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German Military Underground Hospital, Channel Islands (2004).

Photographs of undercrofts, catacombs and deserted passageways from Fiona Croft’s Subterrania series comprise a solo touring exhibition currently showing at the Newlyn Art Gallery, Cornwall until April 17, 2010.

Meanwhile, if you’re in London and you fancy braving the chills of the St Pancras Church Crypt in the Euston Road, the Warnings Project is staging a short season of MR James readings/performances about which they give away few details in order to preserve surprise. There’s slightly more information at their minimal website.

Weekend links 2

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A picture for embittered lovers.

Among other things this week I’ve been working on the design for another CD featuring photos by Liz Eve, a photographer whose pictures are always a pleasure to use. (Our earlier encounters can be seen here, here and here.) The latest set have this anti-Valentine for an eye-popping cover image. I’ll be posting the finished layouts once everything is approved by the label.

• Crash: JG Ballard’s artistic legacy. Iain Sinclair on Ballard and a new art exhibition inspired by the author’s fiction.

• More art: Clive Hicks-Jenkins’ Artlog is essential reading. Lots of insights into his beautiful work.

• Raw Power by Iggy and the Stooges will be released in an expanded edition on April 27th with outtakes, documentary, book and other extras.

• Sonic Youth dude and fellow Arthurian Thurston Moore has a blog.

• “That’s all it comes down to in the end, though, isn’t it? Put it in and jiggle it about a bit.” Alan Bennett & John Fortune discuss sex. A hoot.

• “I wanna walk through Sodom with a boy on my arm / Who’s so damn pretty I don’t know where I am…” A song from 1984 for Valentine’s Day: I, Bloodbrother Be (£4,000 Love Letter) by Shock Headed Peters.

Betty Blythe

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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.

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

Dirigibles

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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.

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