In the Village

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Ever fancied a wander around Portmeirion, aka The Village from The Prisoner? In the past you’d have to travel to Gwynedd in North Wales in order to do so but since August 2010 it’s been possible to roam the place using Google’s street view. This is somewhat surprising on two counts: firstly, while Portmeirion masquerades as a shrunken Mediterranean town it’s actually an open-plan hotel which visitors have to pay to explore. More surprising is finding the street view camera leaving the roads to follow many of the paths around Clough Williams-Ellis’s trompe l’oeil architecture. I imagine Google has done this elsewhere but this is the first instance I’ve come across. In addition to exploring a woodland walk it’s possible to follow the paths down to the beach, past the stone boat and along the coast for views of the Dwyryd estuary. There aren’t any white balloons or Mini Mokes in evidence, of course. If you want those you can always watch the TV series where the place appears larger thanks to camera lenses and some canny editing.

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And speaking of lenses, ironies abound when you notice the surveillance cameras in the hotel car park, never mind the way the Google Panopticon has laid the place open to global eyes. In the Chimes of Big Ben episode of The Prisoner Number 6 asks whether Number 2 wants to see the whole world as the Village. “Yes,” says Number 2. Are we there yet?

The two maps here are from The Prisoner (1990), a book by Alain Carrazé & Hélène Oswald. Unfortunately the key to the map of Portmeirion wasn’t included. The following shots are my selection from the Google views starting at the toll booth and working down to the beach. Be seeing you.

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The Toll Booth.

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Battery Square.

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Jefferson Hayman Camera Works

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Named After Vermeer (2010); silver gelatin print.

Wessel + O’Connor Fine Art resumed business recently following a hiatus and a change of location. Their current exhibition is a presentation of prints by American photographer Jefferson Hayman whose use of silver gelatin and platinum processes returns photography to the diffuse atmospheres of its earliest days. Some of these works are barely distinguishable from their predecessors; in the case of the Flatiron view below (inevitably bringing to mind the famous picture by Edward Steichen) only the street light and traffic signals give any indication that it’s a recent photo. (Luther Gerlach has used an antique camera and old print processes to similar effect in Los Angeles.) Jefferson Hayman Camera Works runs to February 27th.

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The Flatiron (2003); platinum print.

Previously on { feuilleton }
The Flatiron Building
Luther Gerlach’s Los Angeles
Edward Steichen

Fechtbuch von 1467

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The men with swords theme exhausts itself pretty quickly unless you want to draw continual attention to martial statuary, or those softcore beefcake photos where—as we’ve seen on several occasions—the sword is a subterfuge for other concerns. Hans Thalhofer (or Talhoffer: c. 1420–c. 1490) was a German fencing master whose Fechtbuch von 1467 is worth looking at today not least for its variety of what to our eyes, used to orderly fencing matches, look like very unorthodox moves. Needless to say, when you’re fighting for your life matters of orthodoxy are the last thing on your mind, so why not kick or trip your opponent? One of the great things about books such as this is the window they give on life as it was actually lived, not the mediated (and often erroneous) impressions we receive via film and television.

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Wikimedia Commons has many more examples such as these while the Münchener Bibliothek has a scan of the entire book.

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Elsewhere on { feuilleton }
The men with swords archive

Yosemite in HD

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Having written about views of Yosemite National Park only a couple of weeks ago, linking to this gorgeous video seemed obligatory. Yosemite HD is a short film by Sheldon Neill and Colin Delehanty which captures the park in a series of stunning timelapse views during day and night. No CGI, just the natural world via Canon and Zeiss lenses. M83‘s Outro makes a suitably bombastic soundtrack. I could watch a lot more of this.

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Previously on { feuilleton }
Albert Bierstadt in Yosemite
Carleton Watkins in Yosemite

Kafkaesque

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Another book design of mine (interiors only) which I completed last September for Tachyon and about which I had this to say at the time:

Kafkaesque [is] edited by John Kessel and James Patrick Kelly. It’s a collection of short stories either inspired by Franz Kafka, or with a Kafka-like atmosphere, and features a high calibre of contributions from writers including JG Ballard, Jorge Luis Borges, Carol Emshwiller, Jeffrey Ford, Jonathan Lethem and Philip Roth, and also the comic strip adaptation of The Hunger Artist by Robert Crumb.

The book gained a positive review at SF Site recently, reminding me that I hadn’t written anything about the design. As with some of my other Tachyon work the interiors take their cue from a pre-determined cover by another designer, in this case Josh Beatman. I followed Josh’s type choices (Senator for the titles and headings) and also extended his use of an insect as a recurrent motif. Before I saw the contents I was fairly determined to avoid any further insect imagery but it became apparent that Kafka’s Metamorphosis is a repeated reference in many of the stories.

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As for the recurrent “K”, that seemed inevitable given Kafka’s own use of the letter as well as its presence not only in Kafka’s own name but in the names of the editors. The frames were an idea borrowed from (and referring to) Steven Berkoff’s stage adaptation of The Trial in which portable frames serve on the stage as doorways, windows, corridors, picture frames and so on. I was hoping to do more with this idea but (as is often the case) ran out of time to develop it further.

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And while we’re on the subject of Tachyon designs, I don’t seem to have mentioned my interiors for a Joe R Lansdale collection, Crucified Dreams, which also appeared last year. This is a hard-boiled anthology of Lansdale’s favourite stories for which I supplied suitably rough-and-tough graphics comprising scanned scalpel blades and lettering assembled from torn newspaper pages. I’m due to start on some new work for Tachyon this week. More about that at a later date.

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