View allAll Photos Tagged Introspective
A perfect 10 days away in Son Bou on Menorca. Top weather, company and memories to take away.
I tried to step back a little with the camera as I didn't want it taking over and grabbed shots when I could.
I even managed an hours light painting at Torre d'en Galmes which was an epic location.
mixed media on canvas
I've finally put the finishing touches on a new folk-art inspired piece, entitled 'a simple Life'. I've always loved folk art because it's so simplified & plain. I secretly yearn / hope for a simpler, happier world for all of us :>
Prints of 'a simple Life' are now available in my Zazzle shop - yay!
Also, I've been very introspective lately & not as supportive as I've wanted to be - please forgive me - you are all in my thoughts and I wish you all much creativity!!! I also want to (belatedly) thank everyone....
full post here:
All Saints, Alburgh, Norfolk
Coming down Norfolk by a different road, I came out into a landscape that I knew. It was early spring, and five years before I had explored the Suffolk side of the Waveney valley at the same time of year. Here in Norfolk were the same rolling, secretive meadows, the copses that seeped and spread between the fields, the quiet, scattered parishes with mere hints of village centres. Introspective hamlets, not talking to each other, the narrow lanes that connected them veering and dipping as if trying to shake them off.
At a crossroads, an old Methodist chapel sulked under the indignity of conversion; and there were wide pig farms and ancient silage heaps and faded bottle banks outside the village hall. No commuters here, no holiday cottages or weekend homes. Everyone except me was here because they had to be. This was where they lived, where they worked; they were the modern equivalents of the blacksmith, the carter, the wheelwright. The Waveney valley is the heart of rural East Anglia, perhaps the last truly insular place in the south-east of England. I was glad to be here.
Alburgh is not a place I have ever thought of often. But now, in the crisp air, I stood in the graveyard and looked across the country at the scattered village and its setting. Beyond the houses was the ancient field pattern, the beech trees on the ridge and the rooks wheeling above them. I thought of a song of the early eighties, Pete Wylie's Story of the Blues, and his declaiming, towards the end, the words of Kerouac's Sal Paradise: the city intellectuals of the world are divorced from the folk-body blood of the land, and are just rootless fools. I had been born in a place like this, tiny and remote in the Cambridgeshire fens, a world away from now in the 1960s. But we moved to Cambridge when I was two, and I had lived in urban areas ever since. I was a city intellectual, and I stood now and looked around at the land, a rootless fool.
I first heard of Alburgh more than twenty years ago. I was living unhappily in Brighton at the time, learning to teach, finding out how little I actually knew about anything. I would cycle out to the University through the stinking traffic on the Lewes road, and often arrive cold, wet and battered by the wind from the downs.
I knew nobody, and spent most evenings in an attic room listening to the Smiths and New Order and feeling sorry for myself. I read all of Hardy, and at weekends I would cycle around the downs, searching for old churches, repopulating the hamlets and lanes of East Sussex with his Wessex scenes. I hardly went into town at all.
Everybody seems to love Brighton, and they can't understand it when I say that I don't, but I was too miserable there. I don't mind if I never go back. Brighton, for me, will be forever associated with debt, and with the transience of being a student. There has never been a time in my life, before or since, when I have been so poor. And then, extraordinarily, a brief, doomed relationship, a love affair, became the one vivid thing, a brief, sweet memory of my year in that brash town.
She came from Alburgh, and at first I thought she meant Aldburgh in Suffolk, and she said it again, Ar-brer, and showed me on a map. And she loved me more than I could possibly have loved her, for I had already met the woman who would become my wife. And so it was messy, and then it ended. But Alburgh still existed, of course, and so coming here I remembered.
If that had been all there was, then I wouldn't have thought it worth mentioning, but there was also the Kerouac quote, and I had recently gone back to the village where I was born. It was a tiny hamlet, off of the Cambridge to Ely road. My mother had been born there, my parents married in the Church there. I was baptised there, and so were my brothers.
At one time there had been three farms, a shop, a railway halt, a pub, a school, a church and a chapel. I'm not looking this up in some mid-19th century White's Directory, I remember them from the 1960s and 1970s. Now, they were nearly all gone. The farms had been built over, the pub, shop and chapel converted to houses. To stand beside the railway line, you'd need a vivid imagination to guess that the halt had even existed, as the expresses screamed through at over a hundred miles an hour.
The church and the school survived, but only because this was now a commuter village. Every morning, hundreds and hundreds of white-collar workers left their identical modern houses and piled up the A10 to Cambridge. I knew nobody there anymore - my grandmother was dead, and all my relatives had left, or were lying under the frozen turf of the little cemetery. It made me sad. I thought that perhaps this was what growing old was, seeing change and resenting it. I was entering my mid-forties, which seemed like some kind of rubicon, although of course none of us can ever go back. And so I liked Alburgh because it appeased my sense of loss, as if something might survive after all.
All this then, gentle reader, was in my mind as I approached All Saints for the first time. This massive tower is matched by its non-identical twin half a mile across the valley at Denton. It is an imposing sight from there, although it was impossible to see a return view from here; simply, Alburgh's tower is bigger. The bulk of it is probably 14th century, but the bell stage with its enormous bell windows is later, a late medieval addition. It looks awkward because the new building technology no longer required the buttresses to continue up the bell stage. But the effect is unfortunate, I think, like the unnaturally small head of a fat man.
Denton is a big church, apart from the tower; but Alburgh is not, and I wondered again at that massive tower. I looked up at the buttressed pinnacles on the four corners, and it slowly began to dawn on me that this was actually a Victorian confection - I later discovered that the very top of the tower collapsed in 1895, and what we see at the top now dates from that time.
The west front must have been rather grand once, with massive niches flanking the window, but the canopies of the niches have gone, either vandalised by protestants or simply worn away by the passing of the centuries. The south porch seems bigger than it is, because the nave is not large; a 1463 bequest for the porch by the Wright family is recorded, but it now looks all of its Victorian restoration.
And so, I am afraid, does the inside of the church, a big 19th century barn with a lot of the anonymity you'd expect of this date. And yet, there are neat, local, rustic touches; surprisingly, the roof is old, and it spreads impressively across the wide, aisleless nave. A beautiful gilded rood screen dado is almost defiant in the face of all the restoration. There are pretty little gilded gesso Saints in niches on the buttresses along the front, but I think the colour is wholly modern.
Echoing it, perhaps inspired by it, insipid apostles flank the altar and its simple reredos, a William Morris-style hanging. Turning back, the tower arch lifts tall and dreamily, light from the west window flooding the reset font below, the space becoming an echo of the wide chancel arch at the other end of the great roof. There's a pleasing harmony to the whole piece, and I began to see what the Victorians were getting at.
And so, that was all, my visit to Alburgh. My first, and probably my last. Just another church; and yet, like all medieval parish churches, a place full of stories, and memories, hopes, fears, regrets, embarassments, delights, hungers, desires, agonies, beginnings and endings. Here, I sensed around me a building that was a touchstone down the long generations, and a beacon across miles and oceans. Just another church, but always and everywhere and forever. Think of the millions of people who can trace atoms of their being back to this place! Think of the lives touched by people who stepped out from this parish! And that's true of anywhere.
I thought that she had probably been married in this place, if she had ever married, and so I said a silent prayer for all the people I have ever known and lost touch with, wherever they may be in the world, whether or not they remember me, or think of me, or are even reading this now. And then I left.
For once, there was an unknown land, full of strange flowers and subtle perfumes; a land of which it is joy of all joys to dream; a land where all things are perfect and poisonous.
(barbee sim)
I don't know how you were diverted
You were perverted too.
I don't know how you were inverted
No one alerted you.
Charles Leplae, (Leuven, 1903 - Uccle, 1961), was a Belgian sculptor and draftsman. Experimented initially in an expressionist style, but evolved towards a more traditional view. He often sculpted female nudes, which he regularly imparted a reserved, thoughtful, introspective attitude. He was also a known medalist. Hoping to restore the true meaning and character of the art of medal making, he went back to ancient techniques by engraving the patterns directly into the metal of the matrix with a chisel.
Title of the work: Two pregnant woman
This work of art can be admired at the Middelheim open air museum at Antwerp: www.middelheimmuseum.be/en
Charles Leplae, (Leuven, 1903 - Ukkel , 1961), was een Belgische beeldhouwer en tekenaar. Experimenteerde aanvankelijk in een expressionistische stijl, maar evolueerde naar een meer traditionele opvatting. Hij beeldhouwde vaak vrouwelijke naakten, die hij regelmatig een gereserveerde, peinzende, introspectieve attitude toedeelde. Hij was ook een gekend medailleur. In de hoop de ware betekenis en het karakter te herstellen van de kunst van het maken van medailles, ging hij terug naar oude technieken door de patronen rechtstreeks met een beitel in het metaal van de matrix te graveren.
Meer over dit werk: search.middelheimmuseum.be/details/collect/148140
Dit werk kan bewonderd worden in het openlucht museum Middelheim in Antwerpen: www.middelheimmuseum.be/nl
Charles Leplae, (Louvain, 1903 - Uccle, 1961), était un sculpteur et dessinateur belge. Initialement il expérimentait dans un style expressionniste, mais plus tard évoluait vers une vision plus traditionnelle. Il sculptait souvent des nus féminins auxquels il assignait régulièrement une attitude réservée, réfléchie et introspective. Il était également un médailleur connu. Dans l'espoir de restaurer le vrai sens et le caractère de l'art de la médaille, il est revenu aux techniques anciennes en gravant les motifs directement dans le métal de la matrice avec un ciseau.
Titre de l'œuvre: Deux femmes enceintes
Cette œuvre peut être admirée au musée en plein air Middelheim à Anvers: www.middelheimmuseum.be/fr
Pollet BJD by orangeteadolls.
I was just overcome with joy to be able to possess one of these beauties! I may redo her a bit, her lips turned out too orange for me... I wanted them more pinky. But I am in love with her moody, introspective features and graceful hands.
Got a new Canon 50mm f1.8 lens and wanted to try it out, plus the light from the window was just right. Very introspective today, hmmm... perhaps I'm contemplating what to buy next... :)
~and in this life, i will walk alone at times~
it is difficult when you feel like life is beating you
and it is so hard to explain this to others
you don't want pity or sorrow
just understanding
we are meant to struggle
it is the path toward learning and growth
yet it can be painful and empty
life is just a series of moments strung together
for us to make into a creation
Thy noble steed in the long and tiresome ride into the heart of the Sahara desert. We rode through the night to shelter ourselves from the blistering heat. As the sun set, a cool presence lay upon the desert. The starry sky and the moonlight was the only illumination to guide our journey in this barren land of wavy sand. The camels sneer and stench were somehow warming and comforting. To know that nothing could be seen for miles, no city lights, no pollution, no trace of humanity was truly surreal and introspective. Nothing but pure, unadulterated nature and thy noble steed.
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Things to believe if you're told often enough . You're too ugly .You're too big . You're too stupid You're too clumsy . After a while . There is not a lot of you left .
Rudolf Stingel conceived this exhibition especially for Palazzo Grassi. Given the utmost freedom of execution, Stingel has completely transformed the museum, filling the entire space with an oriental carpet. Moving beyond the idea of two-dimensionality that is conventionally associated with painting, the exhibition aims to subvert the usual spatial relationship between a painting and viewer.
The carpet evokes the thousand-year history of Venice, the ‘Most Serene Republic’, but also recalls the Middle-European culture so loved by the artist; for example, we are reminded of Sigmund Freud’s early twentieth-century Viennese study. This reference undoubtedly provides a key to interpreting this installation: on entering the ‘labyrinth’, an all-encompassing feeling and sensorial experience transport us towards the transcendence of the Ego, by means of its removal and its ghosts. The nearly thirty paintings exhibited suggest presences that are ‘buried’ in memory, and removed experiences that thrive again. The architectural space becomes an introspective and projective space, silent and welcoming, suitable for meditation: but Stingel’s work alters our visual and spatial perception of it, suggesting a new, rarified and suspenseful atmosphere in which the silver, white and black of the paintings stands out like so many other ‘openings’ on Venice, in an another dimension.
From the Palazzo Grassi website
One of the most frightening things I recall from my childhood was a television programme (I forget what it was called) where a boy, who was a bed-ridden invalid, kept looking out of his window to observe these huge stones getting closer and closer to his house. I don't recall what happened if and when they got there or why they were moving but the sinister idea has haunted me for years. However, when I visited Avebury in Wiltshire I wasn't freaked out and I prefer this enigmatic site to the (arguably more) famous Stonehenge.
www.seance-centre.com/michel-banabila
BLEEP
Ex-Invisible City founder Brandon Hocura puts together the very best tribal ambient, fourth world and punk-as-fuck tape music from the archives of Michel Banabila. Largely conceived in a gritty Amsterdam squat during the 80s, these recordings also dip into more recent years yet maintain a strong vibe throughout. If you like your music vast, introspective and slightly lysergic then this one is unmissable, a bona fide journey through 'My Life in the Bush of Ghosts' inspired experimentalism and technologically charged faux-fusion. Trespassing includes twenty compositions spread across two heavyweight discs for your full listening enjoyment.
BLOGFOOLK
Abbiamo il grande piacere di annunciare la pubblicazione di “Trespassing”, una splendida raccolta di brani del compositore e artista sonoro olandese Michel Banabila. Disponibile ufficialmente in formato fisico a partire dal 30 Settembre, “Trespassing” si pone come ponte ideale tra il passato e il presente di Michel, un artista restio a facili etichette che trova nella comunicazione continua tra suoni, linguaggi e discipline un costante stimolo creativo. Elettronica, World Music, Jazz e Ambient, si fondono con Field Recordings e “suoni trovati” in un peculiare e cangiante “unicum” dove non esiste categoria alcuna. Suoni e culture diverse, in apparenza lontane, comunicano e vengono filtrate attraverso le nuove tecnologie in una sintesi che fonde arcaico e moderno, passato e futuro, un’ ideale risposta a quell’ipotetico “Fourth World” in grado di trascendere le categorie imposte dalla nostra cultura. La citazione non è casuale, come Hassell, Banabila abbraccia questo approccio, dove fare musica significa immaginare qualcosa che non sia definito ma costantemente aperto a continue e ulteriori possibilità. “Trespassing” copre un arco temporale piuttosto considerevole che va dal 1982 sino al 2017. Il primo vinile spazia da composizioni risalenti al 2017 come : “Where Old Meets New”, guardandosi indietro sino alla metà degli anni 80 con: “Des Traces Retrouvées 2” del 1985 o “The Attic” del 1987. Il secondo lp è invece riservato alla presentazione integrale dell’ormai storico esordio “Marilli”, un viaggio sonoro ispirato dall’Lsd, registrato con un otto piste tra il 1982 e il 1983. Le dieci parti omonime di questo lavoro omaggiano con spiccata personalità lo storico “My Life In The Bush of Ghosts” pubblicato da Brian Eno e David Byrne il primo febbraio del 1981. Tra “voci trovate”, poderosi groove guidati dal basso, sermoni di predicatori, inserti percussivi e un’orgia di tastiere vintage, tra le quali segnaliamo: l’Arp Solina Strings e il Korg MS20, Michel sembra ipotizzare una “cultura immaginaria” traducendo in musica tutto l’impeto e la passione di un giovane e determinato musicista. Le intuizioni e gli approcci dell’indimenticabile Holger Czukay (con cui Michel ha persino collaborato) di Jon Hassell, Brian Eno e David Byrne, assumono qui una luce nuova diventando punto di partenza e nuova opportunità creativa, suggerendo possibilità potenzialmente infinite. “Trespassing” è una bellissima occasione per scoprire l’opera di Banabila che da oltre trent’anni pubblica con regolarità lavori molto interessanti, eclettici e liberi da qualsiasi classificazione da solista o con l’aiuto di collaboratori. Dalla metà degli anni 2000 gestisce anche un’etichetta personale, la Tapu Records che si occupa della pubblicazione dei suoi album. A tal proposito, segnaliamo anche il recentissimo Sound Years. Se siete incuriositi da quello che vi abbiamo raccontato e soprattutto, se amate questo approccio investigativo nei confronti del suono come “materia plasmabile”, non vi rimane che fermarvi e dedicare del tempo a questo doppio album con una certezza; non ne rimarrete affatto delusi. (Marco Calloni)
NIEUWE NOTEN:
‘Trespassing’ verscheen als dubbel LP bij het Canadese Séance Centre en bestaat deels uit werk dat Banabila eerder opnam en deels uit nieuw werk. De eerste LP bevat zes stukken die nooit eerder werden uitgebracht en vier stukken die op eerdere albums stonden, terwijl de tweede LP een integrale hertuitgave is van Banabila’s allereerste album, ‘Marilli’ dat verscheen in 1983. Ook op dit album is goed te horen dat Banabila graag muzikale grenzen overschrijdt. De eerste drie stukken van de eerste LP, allen niet eerder uitgebracht, vormen hiertoe het onomstotelijke bewijs. In ‘Where Old Meets New’, ‘The Attic en ‘Our Alien Voice’ vermengt Banabila op bijzondere wijze de traditie van niet westerse muzikale culturen met moderne elektronica, waarbij overigens vooral het laatste stuk bijzonder is vanwege de stemsample. En natuurlijk is het fantastisch dat Banabila’s debuut op deze wijze weer verkrijgbaar is. In dit eerste album, ‘Marilli’ zit dat zoeken naar onverwachte, exotische klanken overigens al verstopt. (Ben Taffijn)
MERURIDO:
80’S蘭霊性電子音楽の最重要人物ミシェル・バナビラのキャリア総決算! 辺境～ニューエイジ / バレアリック・ファンまで虜にする、無敵のトライバル・アンビエント超強力コンピが2LPヴァイナル・リリース!!
先日もTAPU RECORDSから最新作をリリースし、その才気をいかんなく発揮したオランダが誇るサウンド・アーティスト / 電子音楽家MICHEL BANABILAのコンピレーションが2LP仕様でヴァイナル・リリース。1983年にリリースされた1ST『MARILLI』(オリジナル盤は無論の事レア!!)に加え、最新作『TRACES』からの楽曲を含んだ1985年～2017年までの選りすぐりのトラック、さらに未発表音源までも収録したキャリア総決算と言える大ヴォリュームの内容。
インドネシア人女性ヴォーカルをメインに据え、JON HASSELファン～MUSIC FROM MEMORY好きまで一網打尽にする第4世界系トライバル・アンビエント傑作”2”、RITA KUPPENSなる人物によるHAIKU？？をフィーチャーした、早すぎた和ンビエント・トラック”7”、その圧倒的透明度に言葉もない霊性バレアリック・エレクトロニクス”6”と、全トラックが綺羅星のごとき輝きを放つ珠玉のトラックばかり。これを聴かなきゃ2018年を迎えられないと断言。問答無用で買いですよ!!
※限定盤のためショートの可能性がございます。ご了承くださいませ
A "bed" on Lower Wacker Drive in Chicago. When I'm introspective or blue, I go down here...While walking, I passed a man laying down on a bed like this one. I walked past him again, this time I looked more closely. He wasn't asking for money--he was just trying to survive, shaking under his blanket. I gave him some money which he feebly accepted and all I could say was "hey dude"...What is so heart-wrenching about all this is that this place is invisible to the world of wealth above.
Ongoing exploration of work as I develop a potential series "Introspective Illumination". This project is a deeply personal exploration of mindfulness and self-reflection. It is set against the relentless pace of our hyperconnected society with its incessant urgency and the pervasive challenge of accomplishing more in less time. The project seeks to juxtapose the relentless pursuit for efficiency and productivity with the inherent human need for rest and contemplation.
West German postcard by Kolibri-Verlag G.m.b.H., Minden/Westf, no. 645. Photo: Marszalek / Kurt Ulrich-Film / Deutschen Film Hansa. Erik Schumann in So angelt man keinen Mann/That's No Way to Land a Man (Hans Deppe, 1959).
Erik Schumann (1925-2007) was an intense, dark-haired leading actor of post-war German cinema, who often specialised in playing introspective or psychologically damaged characters. He appeared regularly on stage in Berlin, Frankfurt, Stuttgart and Munich from 1943. He was at the peak of his popularity, both in films and on television, during the 1950s and 1960s. A prolific voice-over artist, Schumann also provided the German voice for stars like Peter O'Toole, Marcello Mastroianni, Christopher Lee and Roger Moore.
Erich Heinz Schumann was born in 1925 in Grechwitz (now Grimma-Grechwitz), Germany. In addition to his musical training in piano and trombone, he took acting lessons at the Dresden Conservatory. Afterwards, he got his first engagements at the Staatstheater Dresden, at the Berlin Schloßparktheater as well as in Frankfurt am Main, in Stuttgart and in Munich from 1943. As a youth, he appeared in the Nazi Propaganda film Himmelhunde/Sky dogs (Roger von Norman, 1942) about young Germans at a Hitler Youth camp who engage in a program to learn how to build and fly gliders. His first film role as an adult was as a corps student in the DEFA film Semmelweis - Retter der Mütter/Dr. Semmelweis (Georg C. Klaren, 1950) starring Karl Paryla. In 1954 he played his first role in a Federal Republic film, in Konsul Strotthoff/Melody Beyond Love (Erich Engel, 1954). opposite Willy Birgel and Inge Egger. His breakthrough came with the East-West love drama Himmel ohne Sterne/Sky Without Stars (Helmut Käutner, 1955). From then on he appeared in various roles alongside Heinz Erhardt, Bernhard Wicki, Hansjörg Felmy, Ulla Jacobsson, Sonja Ziemann and Gunnar Möller among others. In 1960 he appeared in Fabrik der Offiziere/Operation Terror (Frank Wisbar, 1960) alongside Helmut Griem and Horst Frank.
Erik Schumann began dubbing in 1949 and till 2004 he lent his voice to 600 films and TV productions. He dubbed actors such as Tony Curtis in Manche mögen's heiß/Some Like it Hot (Billy Wilder, 1959), Cary Grant in Leopards Don't Kiss/Bringing Up Baby (Howard Hawks, 1938), and Jack Nicholson in Die Ehre der Prizzis/Prizzi's Honor (John Huston, 1985). His distinctive voice was also in great demand for radio drama productions, and in 1968 he voiced Dr. Watson in six Sherlock Holmes stories for Bayerischer Rundfunk. Erik Schumann was also heard in roles in numerous television series, such as for Martin Landau in the first dubbing phase of Kobra, übernehmen Sie/Mission: Impossible (1967-1973), for Pernell Roberts in Hawkins (1973-1974). or for Jack Klugman in Du schon wieder/You again? (1986). On the series Eine schrecklich nette Familie/Married... with Children (1987-1997), he dubbed and was heard as the voice of Buck the dog. In the Brazilian telenovela Sinhá Moça - Die Tochter des Sklavenhalters/Sinha Moça (1986-1987), he lent his voice to the Latin-American star Rubens de Falco as Colonel Ferreira. In 1987, he was the first Jedermann (Everyman) at the Berlin Jedermann Festival. In 2000, Schumann dubbed the role of the gold digger Stinky Pete, originally voiced by Kelsey Grammer, in the computer-animated film Toy Story 2 (John Lasseter, 1999) produced by Pixar. He also appeared in numerous television productions and made guest appearances in the popular Krimi series Der Kommissar/The Commissioner (1969-1975) and Derrick (1983). His work as an investigator in the television series Tatort/Crime Scene was limited to one episode in 1981. In the 1980s he appeared in the cinema in two Fassbinder classics, Lili Marleen (Rainer Werner Fassbinder, 1981) with Hanna Schygulla and Die Sehnsucht der Veronika Voss/Veronika Voss (Rainer Werner Fassbinder, 1982) with Rosel Zech. He also appeared in the Italian film L'inchiesta /The Inquiry (Damiano Damiani, 1987) starring Keith Carradine and Harvey Keitel. His last role was in the crime film Mörderischer Plan/Murderous Plan (Raoul W. Heimrich, 2003). Erik Schumann was married twice (in his first marriage to the actress Erika Dannhoff) and had two children. He last lived in Straßlach near Munich, where he succumbed to cancer in 2007 at the age of 82 and was buried there.
Sources: Deutsche Synchron-kartei (German), Wikipedia (German and English) and IMDb.
And, please check out our blog European Film Star Postcards.
***Warning, long introspective, year end post ahead!!*** ;-)
365/365!!! Well its done! 365 days, one shot a day posted to Flickr, over 21,000 taken and a long journey is complete. This is not the shot I had planned (all the darned snow melted!!) and far from one of my best, but it seemed symbolic since I am saying goodbye to this year, and this project but have an unknown path ahead filled with new images, new techniques and new places to see and capture...As I move onto new trails, projects and a new year I can't help but look back and see where I was just 365 days ago, and what has happened to me along this project...
-I have been inspired in many ways this year. From seeing images from my Flickr friends, to reading duChemin who rocked my world, to seeing parts of the world and country I had never seen before, and to finding the beauty that was right in my own neighborhood, and front yard!
-I dug around in parts of my creative soul that I had never touched or was not even aware I had. I embarked on a mission to find my personal vision and how to bring it to life in my images and I saw things I used to pass by every day in a whole new light.
-I shared my pain, my joy, my hopes, my past, my insecurities, and my dreams...I encouraged some, and asked others for support, I pushed past those imaginary boundaries I had placed on myself to try and discover possibilities I had either had not imagined were out there or were beyond my reach...
-I failed, I learned, I failed again, I learned some more, and eventually I grew.
-I shared my images and let others edit them, and saw things I would have never seen. I took critique and it made me better. I gave critique to try and help others, and in doing that, I learned even more.
-I embraced types of photography I had previously shunned, just to see what I could learn. I captured my first national park, monuments from lost civilizations, and preserves near our house I had never been to.
-I went from a naive, "natural light only" shooter who then read McNally, Black, and Hobby, and embraced the world of flash even in nature, and how to use it to fulfill MY vision.
-I captured not only the seasons of the year, but the seasons of my life...I created and saw images that made me cry with sorrow and with joy...
-I finally could create in the camera what I was seeing in real life. I broke open new parts of my creativity to try and fulfill crazy DPS 365 themes!!
-I strove to create images that could tell a story, and not just capture a moment in time. I learned patience while waiting on the sun to set or occasionally rise! and then hurried home to upload my images.
-I honed my eyes for distractions in the frame I used to miss. I embraced how light, tones and editing could convey feelings.
-I struggled with creativity and the time to shoot, and obligations, but I was always thinking about my art.
-I learned how powerful Lightroom is to fulfill your vison and how much apart of the digital photo process it really needs to be!
-On some days I could not wait to show you the images I had created, and on others I hoped you would happen to skip my stream that day!
-At times I thought I wasn't good enough...and then there were the times when my heart did a skip when the shutter clicked on one I knew was going to be a keeper!
-I lamented missed shots, but I used that lament to make sure I would be ready next time!
-I both looked forward to and loathed the next season of weather and then embraced how it changed the backdrop of the world around me and how it brought new image opportunities I now saw with my new view of the world, myself, and the vision I wanted to capture...
-Photography went from a hobby, to a passion, to a drug I craved! Sometimes it was the devil, and also the way I saw God...it was there at my happiest and most joyous times, when all the stars aligned and at my saddest moments, when I just wanted to hide....
...I can not turn back now, I need to continue to capture, create and reveal my images to people or they shall never be able to see into my soul...
basically...I will never be the same....
Thank you to all of you who visited my stream,, commented on my photos, faved my images, and encouraged me to keep with this project, without you I would never have made it to the end! Thank you also for creating images that inspire me to try harder, learn new things and keep chasing the next great image.
I began to share my images to get advice, critique and to grow, and never knew I would gain so many dear friends around the country and the world!! You are like family now and I look forward to another fun exciting year ahead!!
Last of all I want to thank God for the gifts He gave me to create these photos and for leading me towards photography as a conduit to share my gift with others, may my images always honor and glorify the things You have created for me to capture! Last and certainly not least I want to thank my amazing wife Mariellen, she has always supported me and encouraged me no matter what I have done or tried and has continued to build into me this year during this long and tough project!
Copyright © 2012 Ruggero Poggianella Photostream. All rights reserved. Tous droits reservés.
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Please note that the fact that "This photo is public" doesn't mean it's public domain or a free stock image.
Please, do not use my photos without my written permission.
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Dressed in a flowing brown jellaba and peaked gray tarboosh, Abdelatif Benslimane wanders the narrow lanes of Old Fez, his eyes darting from wall to column to fountain, his mouth whispering familiar names. "Fifty points inside eight. Four clasped hands. Spider's house. Empty and full." This is not the secret patter of a mystic, but rather the precise terminology of a master craftsman. Benslimane is a ceramic mosaicist, a zlayji in Moroccan Arabic, and these are the names of just some of the many patterns he sees in any short stroll through the old city. His art of glazed and cut tiles arranged in complex geometries, known as zillij, is everywhere in Fez. Its broad range of color, its infinite possibilities of design and its sudden pleasure of discovery - around a corner at eye level or, at a distance, as part of an architectural whole - all contribute to the striking impression the city gives that it wears two faces at once: an ageless beauty masked by a well-worn antiquity. Titus Burkhardt, a Swiss art historian and one of the first advisors to the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) on the conservation of the old city, compared Fez in its bowl-shaped valley to an opened geode, "brimful of thousands of tightly packed crystals and surrounded by a silver-green rim; this was Fez, the Old City of Fez, in the twilight; the countless crystals now come more clearly into view; one side of them was light, while the other side had become darkened and weather-beaten."
Burkhardt might have been thinking specifically of the city's crystal-like zillij work, refracting the sun but darkening in the dim, covered suqs and lanes. Throughout the madinah - which is what Old Fez is called locally, using the Arabic word for "city" - small mosaic panels and narrow running bands of zillij decorate otherwise blank walls. They shimmer, hold the eye, and offer release, creating introspective moments in otherwise boisterous public spaces. Although zillij reached what many consider its apogee in the 16th-century Saadian Tombs in Marrakesh, and a second flowering in the many royal palaces and public buildings built throughout the country between 1961 and 1999 by King Hassan II, it is in Fez that zillij is best appreciated as an ever-present adornment of everyday life. Outside the madinah, in the sprawling modern city, it graces apartment building lobbies and office façades, café counters and sidewalk flower planters. In the madinah it accents the city's greatest monuments: the 14th-century Attarine and Bou Inaniyya madrasas (Islamic schools), the Qarawiyyin mosque and the tomb of Moulay Idriss II, who founded Fez in the year 809 of the western calendar. Even the donkeys that carry the old city's burdens drink from zillij -faced troughs. And Morocco's 20-dirham bank note is adorned by a fountain designed by a master zlayji from Fez. The Nejjarine Fountain, which still offers water to passerby, uses large star patterns and fills a lower register with a smaller, all-over pattern. The Moroccan city of Fez has been likened to a geode, filled with glittering crystals of art and architecture. Among its brightest refractions are the geometric tile works known as zillij, which grace homes, shops, schools, mosques and streets. Much ofthe best zillij has been made by members of the last five generations of the Benslimane family, which has recently opened its first branch store - in lower Manhattan.
Roger LeTourneau, the leading western historian of Fez, said that among all of the city's various craftsmen, zlayjis were most worthy of being called artists, because "their reputation went beyond the city walls. It was not unusual for the sultan or a notable personage from another great Moroccan city to call upon their talent." And among such zlayjis, not a few of them have come from five generations of the Benslimane family. In the 1920's, at the behest of the newly installed French colonial governor, Abdelatif Benslimane's grandfather Ahmad retiled the well-known 17th-century Nejjarine Fountain, one of the city's best, just outside the Funduq Nejjarine. Abdelatif's father, Muhammad, later repaired Ahmad's jewel, taking apart one by one the mosaic pieces damaged by rough public use and mounting them afresh. "Whenever I walk this way," says Abdelatif, "I bow my head in respect to the masters who preceded me."
His father also repaired Nasrid-era zillij in Cordoba and Granada, Spain and worked five years in Paris. Abdelatif worked as his apprentice in three royal palaces, the tomb of King Muhammed V in Rabat, and on the Palais Jamaï Hotel, one of Fez's finest. He died in 1984, while helping make the private home of the pasha of Marrakesh into a modern masterpiece. Abdelatif, now 67, learned well from his father. Works of his mature hand can be found in places near and far - the entryway and fountain of the Wataniyya Commercial Center on the new city's main avenue, in five-star hotel lobbies throughout the country, and even in Jiddah, Saudi Arabia, in the interior of the Zeinab Mosque. His own son, Muhammad, recently opened a shop in New York selling his father's work and his own, designed especially for the North American market: table-tops, small fountains, decoratively edged mirrors and patterned runners for kitchen and bath.
Radiating from a central 10-pointed star, a zillij pattern expands, logically and coherently, toward infinity.
Mosaic work in Morocco is not unique to the Islamic period, and neither is zillij unique to Morocco. Not far from Fez lie the remains of the Roman city of Volubilis, where intricate marble floor mosaics take on myriad forms. Beginning in the mid-llth century, North Africa's Almoravid rulers, and later the Almohads, introduced zillij to the buildings of their imperial cities in Morocco and Spain. It can still be seen on important dynastic landmarks such as the minaret of the Kutubiyya Mosque in Marrakesh, the Hassan Tower in Rabat and the Giralda in Seville. Near-cousins of the art form are also found in lands east of the Mediterranean. In the 14th century, Tangier-born Ibn Battuta favorably compared the zillij of his homeland to the eastern mosaics called qashani. Thirteenth-century Seljuk Turkey and 12th-century Persia knew the beauty of cut tile work in floral patterns, and the Egyptian Mamluks made extensive use of mosaics, marquetry and other patterns in polychrome stone.
About Fez, at the beginning of the 13th century, a survey of the city ordered by the Almohad ruler al-Nasir Muhammad (1199-1213) counted 188 ceramic workshops. In the 14th century, historian Ibn Khaldun noted the desire of wealthy merchants there "to build great houses and decorate them with ceramics, mosaics, and arabesques." In later years in Muslim Spain, or al-Andalus, zillij reached artistic heights that have never been surpassed, evident especially in the Alcazar and Alhambra palaces. As Arab historian Leo Africanus noted, the eventual expulsion of the Muslims from Spain in 1492 benefited Fez: It provided the city with an influx not only of great craftsmen, but also a new class of patrons. Today, private patronage is still the key to sustaining labor-intensive zillij, which - though an unusually expensive art form - is considered indispensable by Moroccans of all social and economic stations. Benslimane's clients range from Shaykh Zayed bin Sultan Al Nahyan, president of the United Arab Emirates, who owns several houses in Morocco, to businessmen and countless others of more ordinary means. New homeowners on even the most limited budgets often yearn for a traditional Moroccan reception room, or salon, which means zillij halfway up walls whose upper portions are finished by elaborately carved stucco and topped with an inlaid wooden ceiling—and if they can't afford all of it at once, it is commissioned piecemeal, over years.
A typical job for a zlayji starts with a call from an architect whose client has asked for a mosaic panel measuring, let us say, two meters (78") square, to decorate a new home's salon. Any traditional design and color scheme are possible, but the space and its proportions impose certain overall constraints: A 50-point star, for example, needs room for its 24- and 12-point satellite stars, a common Islamic pattern that Burkhardt called "a shimmering planetarium, in which each line starts from a center and leads to a center."
An encyclopedia could not contain the full array of complex, often individually varied patterns and the individually shaped, hand-cut tesserae, or furmah, found in zillij work. Star-based patterns are identified by their number of points—'itnashari for 12, 'ishrini for 20, arba' wa 'ishrini for 24 and so on, but they are not necessarily named with exactitude. The so-called khamsini, for 50 points, and mi'ini, for 100, actually consist of 48 and 96 points respectively, because geometry requires that the number of points of any star in this sequence be divisible by six. (There are also sequences based on five and on eight.)
Within a single star pattern, variations abound—by the mix of colors, the size of the furmah, and the complexity and size of interspacing elements such as strapping, braids, or "lanterns." And then there are all the non-star patterns—honeycombs, webs, steps and shoulders, and checkerboards. The Alhambra's interlocking zillij patterns were reportedly a source of inspiration for the tessellations of modern Dutch artist M.C. Escher. The more commonly used of the 360 different furmah, according to one scholar's exhaustive count, run the geometrical gamut from star medallions, which are used as the center of the star patterns, to chevrons and triangles, hexagons and octagons, lozenges and diamonds, and curvilinear and rectilinear strapwork. Organic shapes go by the names of the objects from which they are abstracted - bottlenecks, ducks, combs, bracelets, cups and hands.
"There are many, too many for me to remember, but I have almost surely used them all," says Benslimane.
For one of his current private commissions, a wall-mounted fountain decorated with a 24-point star pattern on a square-meter panel (39" square), Benslimane figures about 5000 furmah will be needed, consisting of 32 different shapes in eight colors. He works backward from these numbers to calculate how many square, glazed "mother tiles," each 10 centimeters (4") on a side, he must order from the kiln in order to cut this combination of furmah. The pottery quarter, where smoke always lingers on the slopes of the Fez River below the madinah, is located just inside the 18th-century gate called Bab al-Ftouh. Bi-level, beehive-shaped ovens are fueled with faytour, or olive pomace, the pits and dry pulpy material left after olives have been pressed for oil. Faytour burns at an extraordinarily high temperature. Tiles are molded of a special, fine-bodied clay from nearby Jebel Ben Jelliq, which, after being fired, can be scored and struck to break cleanly along straight lines. The glaze too contains a key local ingredient. A sandy red soil from Meknes is added to recycled battery lead and kiln-baked for two days. Then it is milled into a powdered glazing compound and mixed with water and a pigment. Some pigments are made locally, such as green from recycled copper and dark blue and black from mineral ores, while other, modern colors unknown in older work, such as turquoise, rose and yellow, are imported. The tiles are fired twice, first in the kiln's hotter lower level before being glazed and again in the upper story after one face has been dipped in a color bath. A single finished square costs the zlayji about 10 cents, but broken pieces, bought at discount prices, will often suffice when the furmah to be cut from the mother tile are small.
The next step is to cut the furmah, and this is a two-stage process. Ahmad Burqadi is an independent tile cutter, or nqaash, who frequently fills Benslimane's larger orders. His workshop is in the old city's busy Bab al-Khokha quarter, and on this day he and his assistants are cutting furmah called qamarshun, whose shape is a Greek cross with tapered ends, that measure about one centimeter (3/8") end to end.
Burqadi uses a finished qamarshun as a template to ink outlines onto a square mother tile. Striking it with a chisel-headed hammer against his anvil's steel tongue, he scores lightly along the drawn lines and snaps out the rough shape with his hand. He has cut along sixteen separate edges, and not one has fractured other than where he intended. He hands the piece off to the finish cutter sitting cross-legged beside him before an anvil with a tongue of terra cotta, which provides the softer striking surface required for the finer end-work. The finisher cleans up the shape and bevels the back side so that only the furmah's glazed edges will touch when set against another piece. Burqadi and his helper can make several hundred of these shapes per day. More delicate furmah, such as triangled strapwork pieces, take longer and break more often, so about 80 of these is considered a good day's output. Because many lengths of strapwork are required in any design using that motif, a simple 10-point star pattern - the same one found in the Bou Inaniyya madrasa - would today cost more than $1500 for a single square-meter panel. The entry wall to the prayer room of the Attarine madrasah, built by the Marinid Sultan Abu Said in 1325, displays a tour de force of the art of tile cutting. A master nqaash has cut the calligraphic word Allah (God) less than two centimeters across, the size of a dime, from a green tile, and also a space in which to inlay it within a white tile medallion. The curving edges of the inset and its background match perfectly. From that center, the pattern expands infinitely to cover the wall or, potentially, the universe.
The Attarine also boasts fine examples of another specialty of the nqaash that is called taqshir, or "peeled work," in which glaze is scraped off negative areas of the mother tile to leave behind a shiny pattern in low relief. This serves best to highlight the calligraphic and floral borders at waist height that top off the zillij work on walls, most often in black glaze. The effect is striking, as the exposed terracotta base of the tile weathers irregularly, setting off the glistening glaze all the more. After the furmah have been cut and bagged by shape and color, they are sent to the worksite for mounting. This last stage is the job of the fraash, or layout artist. Benslimane's most experienced fraash is Muhammad Rashidi, who first apprenticed with his boss at the age of 13 and is now in charge of the wall-mounted fountain project.
Rashidi takes a pencil to draw a partial diagram of the 24-point star pattern on the floor and gradually fills it in, placing each piece glazed-side down. At dead center is the twelve-pointed star medallion. From each of its tips sprout two elongated diamonds, thus giving the pattern its full count of twenty-four. Radiating around this center is a burst of evenly spaced eight-pointed star pieces called dirhams.
Starting with the dirhams, Rashidi lays out all the furmah of each shape and color in turn, slowly connecting the star piece coordinates with interspacing elements until the puzzle is complete. Because the back side of each furmah is monochromatic and irregularly beveled, the overall pattern is almost impossible to discern.
Galaxies of eight-pointed stars cover a wall in Fez as panels of zillij tilework are mounted and aligned. This quintessentially Morocan art form is not created by pressing tiles onto a grouted surface; rather, it is laid out on a dry floor upside-down,each tessera placed in precise contact with its neighbors, the final pattern visible only in the mind of the master zlayji. After a final firming of the pattern, which he accomplishes by gingerly walking over the layout to push the pieces toward the center, Rashidi sprays a powdery cement over the design. The next day he will apply a seven-centimeter-thick (3") concrete backing that, when dry, will allow the mosaic to be attached to a wall as a single panel. Only then will the brilliance and complexity of the design join the artistic firmament of the zlayji's universe.
Benslimane speaks of zillij as being more than simply a combination of glaze, tile and concrete. "Truthfulness - sidq - is in everything I make," he says. By this, he means being true to his metier and faithful to the traditions of his craft. On one occasion, after a client was late in paying, Benslimane sold his new car to help his assistants - with whom he had just completed a particularly fine piece of work - buy sheep for the annual 'Id al-Adha, or Feast of the Sacrifice. To this day he drives the old clunker that replaced that car. This act of generosity towards fellow zlayjis underscores what historian Roger LeTourneau meant when he noted that Fez's craftsmen feel so well compensated by the respect accorded them that they are unashamed of their otherwise modest economic status. "Fez is not," he wrote, "the city of mystery, as has often been said, but rather the city of good sense and good living" - values that are embodied in the art of zillij.