View allAll Photos Tagged Introspective
Living in Transit: The Thinkers of a World in Turmoil
War looms over Europe, uncertainty seeps into everyday life, and the weight of history presses upon the present. The world is burning, and yet—there are those who seek understanding, those who bury themselves in the quiet refuge of books, the dim glow of libraries, the solitude of knowledge.
This series captures the introspective minds of young academic women—readers, thinkers, seekers. They wander through old university halls, their fingers tracing the spines of forgotten books, pulling out volumes of poetry, philosophy, and psychology. They drink coffee, they drink tea, they stay up late with ink-stained fingers, trying to decipher the world through words.
They turn to Simone Weil for moral clarity, Hannah Arendt for political insight, Rilke for existential wisdom. They read Baudrillard to untangle the illusions of modernity, Byung-Chul Han to understand society’s exhaustion, Camus to grasp the absurdity of it all. They devour Celan’s poetry, searching for beauty in catastrophe.
But they do not just read—they reflect, they question, they write. Their world is one of quiet resistance, an intellectual sanctuary amidst the chaos. In their solitude, they are not alone. Across time, across history, across the pages they turn, they are in conversation with those who, too, have sought meaning in troubled times.
This is a series about thought in transit—about seeking, reading, questioning, about the relentless pursuit of knowledge when the world feels on the brink.
Where the Thinkers Go
They gather where the dust has settled,
where books whisper in the hush of halls.
Pages thin as breath, torn at the edges,
cradling centuries of questions.
They drink coffee like it’s ink,
trace words like constellations,
follow Rilke into the dusk,
where solitude hums softly in the dark.
Outside, the world is fraying—
war threading through the seams of cities,
the weight of history pressing forward.
Inside, they turn pages, searching
for answers, for solace, for fire.
And somewhere between the lines,
between time-stained margins and fading ink,
they find the ghosts of others who
once sought, once wondered, once read—
and they do not feel alone.
Three Haikus
Night falls on paper,
books stacked like silent towers,
thoughts burn in the dark.
Tea cools in the cup,
a poem lingers on lips,
war rumbles beyond.
Footsteps in silence,
the scent of old ink and dust,
pages turn like ghosts.
ooOOOoo
Reading as Resistance
These young women do not read passively. They underline, they take notes, they write in the margins. They challenge the texts and themselves. They read because the world demands it of them—because, in a time of conflict and uncertainty, thought itself is an act of resistance.
Their books are worn, their pages stained with coffee, their minds alive with the urgency of understanding.
1. Political Thought, Society & Liberation
Essays, theory and critique on democracy, power and resistance.
Chantal Mouffe – For a Left Populism (rethinking democracy through radical left-wing populism)
Nancy Fraser – Cannibal Capitalism (an urgent critique of capitalism’s role in the destruction of democracy, the planet, and social justice)
Étienne Balibar – Citizenship (rethinking the idea of citizenship in an era of migration and inequality)
Silvia Federici – Caliban and the Witch (a feminist Marxist analysis of capitalism and gender oppression)
Didier Eribon – Returning to Reims (a deeply personal sociological reflection on class and identity in contemporary Europe)
Antonio Negri & Michael Hardt – Empire (rethinking global capitalism and resistance from a leftist perspective)
Thomas Piketty – Capital and Ideology (a profound analysis of wealth distribution, inequality, and the future of economic justice)
Mark Fisher – Capitalist Realism (on why it’s easier to imagine the end of the world than the end of capitalism)
2. Feminist & Queer Theory, Gender & Body Politics
Texts that redefine identity, gender, and liberation in the 21st century.
Paul B. Preciado – Testo Junkie (an autobiographical, philosophical essay on gender, hormones, and biopolitics)
Judith Butler – The Force of Nonviolence (rethinking ethics and resistance beyond violence)
Virginie Despentes – King Kong Theory (a raw and radical take on sex, power, and feminism)
Amia Srinivasan – The Right to Sex (rethinking sex, power, and feminism for a new generation)
Laurent de Sutter – Narcocapitalism (on how capitalism exploits our bodies, desires, and emotions)
Sara Ahmed – Living a Feminist Life (a deeply personal and political exploration of what it means to be feminist today)
3. Literature & Poetry of Resistance, Liberation & Exile
European novels, poetry and literature that embrace freedom, revolution, and identity.
Annie Ernaux – The Years (a groundbreaking memoir that blends personal and collective history, feminism, and social change)
Olga Tokarczuk – The Books of Jacob (an epic novel about alternative histories, belief systems, and European identity)
Édouard Louis – Who Killed My Father (a deeply political and personal exploration of class struggle and masculinity)
Bernardine Evaristo – Girl, Woman, Other (a polyphonic novel on race, gender, and identity in contemporary Europe)
Maggie Nelson (though American, widely read in European academia) – On Freedom: Four Songs of Care and Constraint (a poetic, intellectual meditation on freedom and constraint)
Benjamín Labatut – When We Cease to Understand the World (a deeply philosophical novel on science, war, and moral responsibility)
Michel Houellebecq – Submission (controversial but widely read as a dystopian critique of political passivity in Europe)
4. Ecology, Anti-Capitalism & Posthumanism
Texts that explore the intersections of nature, economics, and radical change.
Bruno Latour – Down to Earth: Politics in the New Climatic Regime (rethinking ecology and politics in a world of climate crisis)
Andreas Malm – How to Blow Up a Pipeline (on the ethics of radical environmental resistance)
Emanuele Coccia – The Life of Plants: A Metaphysics of Mixture (rethinking human and non-human coexistence)
Isabelle Stengers – Another Science is Possible (rethinking knowledge and resistance in an era of corporate science)
Kate Raworth – Doughnut Economics (rethinking economic models for social and ecological justice)
Donna Haraway – Staying with the Trouble (rethinking coexistence and posthumanist futures)
The Future of Thought
These are not just books; they are weapons, tools, compasses. These women read not for escapism, but for resistance. In a time of political upheaval, climate catastrophe, and rising authoritarianism, they seek alternative visions, radical possibilities, and new ways of imagining the world.
Their books are annotated, their margins filled with questions, their reading lists always expanding. Knowledge is not just power—it is revolution.
Trace decay theory explains memories that are stored in both short term and long term memory system. According to this theory, short term memory (STM) can only retain information for a limited amount of time, around 15 to 30 seconds unless it is rehearsed. If it is not rehearsed, the information will start to gradually fade away and decay.
My First Surrealist Vig:
This is the most introspective I've ever gotten with Lego.
The process was intense and I encountered many obstacles while formulating this creation. Delving deep into my psyche I discovered forces long dormant which were painfully brought to the surface. The terrifying vistas of reality are incredibly hard to comprehend by the human mind and can drive one to madness.
The base was designed and constructed to be viewed in person as a combination of cityscape, maze, organic growth, and representative of the passage of time and the shifting planes of reality.
"Fame" Series 3/3
"Maybe I should say something", he pondered as the unusual boy floated away by his thoughts.
Prints / Products of this Photo: bit.ly/1lbLvbt
— — — —
► Facebook | Twitter | Instagram
► My Gear
Alice Project Maria 0L (monthly midnight mania) Cae Papillon Necklace & Earring Set 0L (monthly midnight mania) Wicked Sylvi Tank Top (Army) 0L (lucky chair) Alaskametro MatteMist Eyeshadow Tester (surplus) 0L (marketplace) Alaskametro Sheer Gloss Tester (Golden) 0L (marketplace)
my daughter at 17
www.youtube.com/watch?v=GZo8_IV0IGQ
AUSÊNCIA
Por muito tempo achei que a ausência é falta.
E lastimava, ignorante, a falta.
Hoje não a lastimo.
Não há falta na ausência.
A ausência é um estar em mim.
E sinto-a, branca, tão pegada, aconchegada nos meus braços,
que rio e danço e invento exclamações alegres,
porque a ausência assimilada,
ninguém a rouba mais de mim.
Carlos Drummond de Andrade
I thought I'd try an oil painting "effect" on this image. View at a large or original size to see the "oil painting effect".
“If everything is spirit
then I know that you are near
and all the gifts our love has given us
are forever now and here
How easily we knew each other
With every step we became one
If everything is spirit
then this union still lives on
We live one heart, one life, one mind
One flesh and blood pours through
One word, one breath
One life, one death
One song of loving you
Like two waves we dove into each other
Full of trust and joy we were friends
Far beyond this time and space we knew
this ocean never ends
I still can hear your music playing
I still can feel your timeless kiss
Your blue eyes they still drown my very soul
and fill it with such bliss
Your voice still swims around my brain
like a river clean and true
Oh everything is spirit
as I connect with you
Like two waves we dive into each other
Full of trust and joy we are friends
and far beyond this time and space we know
this ocean never ends
We live one heart, one life, one mind
One flesh and blood pours through
One word, one breath
One life, one death
One song of loving you”
© Ganga Fondan, 2007
*This year something feels recharged within me and my heart just wants to dive into more introspective art. I have not purged many of these feelings and it feels deeply emotional and freeing at the same time. I'm not visiting too much at the moment ...but here and there I will. Love to you all.
Thinking...
My mind is often a hazy mess of storms and rain. I never really know what is going on inside or how to sort it all out.
This Painting/Illustration is part of an Ongoing Spiritual Series called: "Life-Journey Metaphors".
It was chosen as an award winner with "Manhattan Arts International" in New York, NY several years ago - And It was also chosen as a Cover Design for an international spirituality magazine - following the Exhibit/Competition.
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)
Model Ess Lue (www.modelmayhem.com/3119377), who also did her own Hair & Make Up. Ess said that in her native country in the East side of Africa, she is of royal blood and is recognized as a princess.
Photo Specs: Canon 1Ds MkIII, EF85mm f/1.2L USM (85mm), 1/80, f 2.2, ISO 160, Paul C. Buff Einstein (2'x3' softbox), Digital Photo Professional (Raw Viewer), Capture One Pro 7 (Lens Correction), Photoshop CS6, Color Efex Pro 4 (Dynamic Skin Softener), Sharpener Pro 3.0
Copyright 2013 by David K. Smith of DKS Media Solutions - Website: www.dksmediasolutions.com/ - Facebook: www.facebook.com/dksmedia/ - Twitter: www.twitter.com/dksmedia/ - Email: info@dksmediasolutions.com
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.
follow me on Instagram!: instagram.com/ruslangorsky/
.
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.