View allAll Photos Tagged Essential
During the Pandemic, Workers Were Told They Were Heroes — and Given Little to Show for It.
"essential worker" right back to "unskilled worker"
Once more to become the facless work force - lowest paid - and pushed back into the shadows again..
We will be forever thankfull for those people..
~
photo manipulation.
"An object never performs the same function as its name or image."
René Magritte,
This is not a pipe (1935)
Ceci n'est pas une pomme (1964)
singular essentials
View whole series or the slideshow.
A camera toss series. I hadn't done any of these in a long time and thought it good to revisit the bare essentials considering it was a camera I had not used for the technique yet. A single white LED provides the light source, exposures vary from .7sec to 2sec. What is produced is essentially an inverted physiogram (inverted in that it illustrates camera motion rather than subject motion) and can tell you alot about the movement possible with a given model of camera.
I also had been meaning to do this simplistic series for a while, because I feel achieving something aesthetically wonderful does not require an overly complicate light source, the beauty is ultimately due to the motion.
All images in this series are directly from my Kodak Easyshare 3.1mp camera, no hotoshop, no cropping or manipulation other than image rotation.
See Also:
my site kineticphotography.net
my flickr group Camera Toss
the Camera Toss Blog
February 2020 Fog Delaware River
Image Capture:
Nikon F100 35mm SLR w/50mm f/1.4 AFD lens
Kodak Portra400
Exposure 1/640sec f/11 ISO 400
Developed and digitized by Indie Photo Lab.
Please don't use this image on websites, blogs or other media without my explicit permission. © All rights reserved
Além do Tejo is a wonderful Portugese region which means "beyond the river Tagus". Alentejo, still so human, still so true...
Looking to the northeast from the top visitor deck at Petrin Tower, the St Vitus Cathedral and the surrounds show just a hint of shade on this otherwise fine-weather day.
Lyric Opera of Chicago
October 11, 14, 17, 20, 23 and 26, 2025
🎭 Cherubini’s Medea – Synopsis
Composer: Luigi Cherubini
Libretto: François-Benoît Hoffman, based on Euripides’ Medea, Pierre Corneille’s Médée, and other classical sources.
Premiere: 1797, Théâtre Feydeau, Paris (Médée in French); commonly performed in the 20th century in Italian translation (especially the Lachner version)
Setting:
Ancient Corinth, in the aftermath of Medea and Jason’s adventures in Colchis and the quest for the Golden Fleece.
Act I – The Wedding Day
The opera opens on the day of Jason’s wedding—not to Medea, his former wife, but to Glauce (also called Creusa), daughter of King Creon of Corinth. Jason has abandoned Medea and their two children in pursuit of social status and security.
Glauce is nervous—haunted by Medea’s reputation as a powerful and vengeful sorceress from a foreign land. Creon is firm: Medea must leave Corinth at once to prevent disruption to the royal wedding. Jason, torn but resolute, justifies his betrayal as necessary for the children’s future.
Medea arrives uninvited, distraught and humiliated. She pleads with Jason, only to be met with coldness. When Creon orders her exile, she manipulates him into granting her a one-day reprieve. The act ends with Medea vowing revenge.
Act II – The Veil of Vengeance
Medea wrestles with despair and rage, invoking the gods and her own powers. She hatches a deadly plan: she will send her children to Glauce bearing gifts—a robe and a diadem laced with poison.
Jason, still deluded by self-justification, allows the children to deliver the gifts, thinking it will bring peace between the two women. Medea hides her fury behind a mask of reconciliation.
Act III – Fire and Blood
Word soon comes that Glauce is dead—her body consumed by fire when she dons the cursed robe. Creon, trying to save her, dies as well.
Medea's triumph turns to horror as she prepares for her final act. She resolves to kill her own children to fully punish Jason—denying him both legacy and love. As Corinth burns and the people cry out in terror, Medea murders the boys and appears before Jason one last time, bloodied but defiant.
She vanishes into the night, leaving Jason to face the ruins of his ambition.
Themes and Musical Style
Cherubini’s Medea is a powerful blend of classical tragedy and early Romantic opera. Though written in the 1790s, it anticipates the dramatic intensity of later composers like Beethoven and Berlioz. The title role is one of the most demanding in the repertoire—vocally fierce, emotionally volcanic, and psychologically layered. Medea is no mere villain; she is a wronged woman driven to the outer edge of human experience, her grandeur and monstrosity bound together.
The opera explores:
Betrayal and abandonment.
The foreign woman as both outsider and threat.
The limits of power, reason, and vengeance.
The devastating consequences of pride and revenge.
====================
🎭 Opera in Revolutionary Paris: From Collapse to Reinvention
🔥 The Crisis (1789–1794)
At the outset of the French Revolution in 1789, opera was seen by many revolutionaries as a corrupt and elitist art form associated with the ancien régime. The Académie Royale de Musique (Paris Opéra), long funded by the monarchy, symbolized aristocratic excess and state patronage. The fall of the monarchy in 1792 and the execution of Louis XVI in 1793 sent shockwaves through all institutions—including the arts.
During the Reign of Terror (1793–1794):
Many aristocratic patrons were executed or fled.
Censorship was intense and ideological.
Performances were suspended or redirected to serve revolutionary propaganda.
Operas of the ancien régime were banned or rewritten to reflect republican ideals.
Some theaters were shut down; others became stages for revolutionary pageantry and pièces à sauvetage (melodramas featuring heroic rescues and virtue).
Yet even amid the chaos, theater and opera never fully ceased. The revolutionary government understood their power for mass persuasion, and theaters were repurposed as tools for civic education.
Rebuilding and Redirection (1795–1797)
After Robespierre’s fall in 1794, the political climate began to thaw. The Directory (1795–1799) brought a more pragmatic and less ideologically rigid approach. Cultural life, especially in Paris, began to rebound, driven by:
A new bourgeois audience, eager for diversion and moral elevation.
A reorientation of content: works with themes of virtue, justice, and self-sacrifice were encouraged.
Relaxation of censorship allowed composers and librettists more freedom.
Theaters were reopened or rebranded; the Paris Opéra resumed activity under different auspices.
Foreign composers and émigré artists (like Cherubini, an Italian working in Paris) were welcomed, especially if they embraced revolutionary values—or at least avoided monarchist associations.
🎼 Cherubini’s Médée in Context
Luigi Cherubini had remained in Paris through the Revolution, adapting astutely to the shifting tides. He aligned himself with revolutionary ideals without becoming doctrinaire. His music struck a new, leaner tone—stripped of rococo ornament, full of dramatic clarity, moral gravity, and classical rigor—all qualities that appealed to post-revolutionary audiences.
Médée (1797) fit the moment perfectly:
Based on a classical subject, it resonated with revolutionary neoclassicism.
Medea, as a powerful outsider, embodied anxieties about vengeance, justice, and moral collapse.
The opera combined psychological realism with tragic grandeur, aligning with the Directory’s taste for high-minded drama over frivolous entertainment.
The setting and costumes could invoke antiquity without recalling Versailles.
Bigger Picture: Why Opera Survived
Opera endured because it could adapt:
Thematically, by shifting from gods and kings to heroes and martyrs.
Aesthetically, by adopting simpler, starker forms in tune with revolutionary neoclassicism.
Institutionally, by transforming royal theaters into national ones.
Politically, by serving as both mirror and mouthpiece of civic ideology.
And crucially: the public still wanted it. Even in the darkest days, Parisians flocked to theaters. In a society newly preoccupied with the people’s voice and emotions, opera—paradoxically—became more essential than ever.
This text is a collaboration with ChatGPT.
singular essentials
View whole series or the slideshow.
A camera toss series. I hadn't done any of these in a long time and thought it good to revisit the bare essentials considering it was a camera I had not used for the technique yet. A single white LED provides the light source, exposures vary from .7sec to 2sec. What is produced is essentially an inverted physiogram (inverted in that it illustrates camera motion rather than subject motion) and can tell you alot about the movement possible with a given model of camera.
I also had been meaning to do this simplistic series for a while, because I feel achieving something aesthetically wonderful does not require an overly complicate light source, the beauty is ultimately due to the motion.
All images in this series are directly from my Kodak Easyshare 3.1mp camera, no hotoshop, no cropping or manipulation other than image rotation.
See Also:
my site kineticphotography.net
my flickr group Camera Toss
the Camera Toss Blog
Curves, squiggles, and flowing lines interest the eye. Make a photograph dominated by a curvy shape of some sort today., post it then Tag it with #TP329
IMG_0256bf50mm
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While London and most of the south of the UK experience life in Tier 4 restrictions because of Covid (which is really lock down in all but name) one of the many messages we hear is only travel if it is essential. This prompted me to post yet another picture of me getting nowhere fast on one of Boris's bikes.
Sculptures by Alice Woodruff.
Represents the universal stories of women across cultures who have experienced social & political injustice. Please read the text and scan the code stamps to read the articals.
Engineers are seen working at Cardiff Central station, replacing the track through the Platform 2 line.
Now watch the video www.youtube.com/watch?v=JDR6_pbp4h4
On June 22nd, our county town of Dorchester will witness a spectacular historic event, as over one hundred military vehicles from World War II make their way through the streets! This military convoy is more than just a parade of vintage machines, but also a living tribute to the brave soldiers, men and women, who fought and sacrificed during the D-Day landings 80 years ago.