New Year's Day is always an outdoor day for me. I use to stay up late on NYE but over the years I have begun to favor an early bedtime in order to get a head start on the fresh year - generally heading out somewhere to be in nature. This year saw me hiking Silver Falls State Park. But I have talked about my New Year habits in previous posts over previous years. The thread of today's image is actually involving Harman Phoenix 200 - the film used to make this image.

 

I will say, I have not completely made up my mind on this film, though my opinion of it has evolved since my first roll with it. It is definitely interesting stuff and I am glad Harman is making it. How long it remains available is still to be seen though. But even if it is phased out, it seems like that will be just to make room for a newly evolved color film.

 

But it does surprise me sometimes how film photographers don't quite seem to realize how malleable a material film is to work with. I see it sometimes at work. Customers will drop off film and then be amazed to discover how much work we can do to an image at the printing or scanning stage. Some think the image is more or less baked into the film and there is only one possible way that it will come out of a printer. But this also happens online too, especially with the rise of home developing and home scanning. Folks will develop a film like Phoenix then scan it (sometimes poorly) and characterize it by the results they get as if those are the only results possible. One example of this is the fact that Phoenix has a purple base. Most color films have a dusky orange film base. But Phoenix must share technology with XP2, a black and white C-41 film also known for a blue-purple film base. This purplish base makes it trickier to scan since a lot of film scanners are calibrated to see, and negate, the orange film base. And since we are dealing with negatives where everything inverts, that purple base of Phoenix inverts into a yellow-orange color cast in the positive scans. That is to say unless you work to correct/calibrate for it. My initial tests with this film only had modest color corrections and I just kind of let it be yellowish. But then I saw some optical prints we had done in our lab where our printing tech had put in a bit more effort to see if he could correct Phoenix to something a bit more neutral. The results impressed even me and at first I did not even realize the prints I was looking at had come from Harman Phoenix. So having seen this as an example of what the film could do I spent more time scanning my next couple of rolls. Specifically I used the Nikon Coolscan's ROC (restoration of color) feature to automatically correct the color cast. It did an impressive job but also had a tendency to add too much contrast. So lately I have been dialing in the color corrections manually and ending up with results like this image and without the heavy yellow tinge of my earlier images made on Phoenix.

 

I guess my point is multi-pronged. One - be careful about rushing to conclusions, especially when you have relatively little evidence to work with. Two - don't believe everything you read online because the folks giving you info might be failing at point One. Three - Remember that you are blind to your own blind spots. Meaning you have them, but you cannot see them. And it is easy to forget about something you cannot see. I had begun to characterize my own expectations of this film without realizing it and it took the print work of our lab to make me conscious of the bias I was forming about Phoenix. Four - keep your mind open and be curious, don't stop asking questions and don't stop looking for the answers to them, even if you want to think you already know those answers.

 

Anyhoo, just some Phoenix-related thoughts that may or may not be applicable in other ways.

 

Hasselblad 500C/M

Harman Phoenix 200

Dahlia has a rich symbolism: the flower stands for wealth and elegance, and also for love and involvement. For the Aztecs, Dahlia was a religious symbol.

1.i have date night every friday night, even if no one else is here to share it.

date night involves me taking a bath and lighting about 50 candles in the living room.

i put on some groovy tunes and something satiny and drink something alcoholic and cuddle up to the softest

blanket ever and yeah, that is about it.

 

2.i have another date night every saturday night, with my best friend jessica.

it usually involves kung pao tofo and peppers and some crappy romantic comedy

and a crafty creative project.

 

3.i have 2 bathrooms in my place. one of them has doorknob issues. everyone who

has ever used it freaks out because they think they can't open the door. actually,

you just have to turn the knob the other direction ( to the left ) ... but trust me on this

... almost every doorknob is supposed to turn to the right.

 

4.i don't watch that much tv anymore but i have noticed that my favorite shows over the

years are ones that involve major sexual tension between the main characters ( i.e. moonlighting,

who's the boss, x files etc.)

 

5.i have temperature issues in bed.

i am usually naked or in a slip at night.

if i am really cold, i love tons of warm blankets

and if i am really warm, i love one super cold sheet wrapped around me.

 

6.i have a fascination with Starbucks Iced tea Lemonade concoction.

i have yet to find a barista make it the same way twice and i know they have

directions for all their drinks.

i finally found a man who made it perfectly

it used to be my favorite drink there

...

he quit and now no one makes it good anymore.

 

7.i have serious light bulb issues in this apartment.

with all my ceiling lights, bathroom lights, kitchen lights, bedroom lights, etc.

i probably manage to kill 2 light bulbs a week.

even on a step stool i can't reach them, so i have to wait until saturday night date night

to have my tall best friend change my bulbs.

i spoke to her earlier tonight and told her she needs to come over tomorrow

because if i wait any longer, i am going to be sitting here in the dark.

 

8.i've been thinking about quitting my job and moving.

something very unlike me but i really feel as if i need a change.

i don't know where i'd go. i have ideas, but not really.

all my friends and family are here.

i have a good job at a company i have been with now starting 8 years.

i just need something different somewhere else.

  

9.one of my favorite ice creams is Nestle's King Size Drumstick ice cream cones.

my friend just came by and i made him drive me to 7-11 to get one and i gobbled that fucker right up.

yum!

 

10.i've been really poopy all year.

i am not used to this feeling of gloom.

i find myself crying far too much and it kind of sucks.

i don't really have it in me to go on more about that, so pffft.

  

11.i have a magnetic dart board on the back of my front door.

i suck at it.

with practice i am sure i could get better.

these magnetic darts are what suck, not me.

 

12.which reminds me, i used to love to shoot pool.

i grew up with a pool table ( my parents own one)

and i used to frequent a coffee house in high school that had one.

sadly, the coffee shop table had this horrid tilt and i had to learn the tricks and secrets

of how to play on that table..but when new comers would play, i managed to kick and ass

or two.

 

13.i collect wrapping paper, but not in a Dyxie way :P

i have this tall clear glass vase with rolls of beautifully printed wrapping

paper sticking out of it. i use it as art or something.

once in a while, if i am feeling crafty, i cover a coffee can in it, or frame it, or cover

my refrigerator in it, or wrap a pringles can in it for my ttv contraption.

 

....

if you want more random things about me,

click here and

read more.

thanks for listening.

carry on with your bad selves.

xoxox

 

Highest position: 85 on Monday, December 31, 2007

...involve lunch, friends and a shopping trip to Baileys Home & Garden and sometimes all three together!

Leica Ⅲf Summaron 35mm f3.5 Fujicolor 100

Staged toboggan accident involving three women in bathing suits, Mount Rainier National Park, Washington, ca. 1925.

 

Photographer:

Unknown

 

Subjects (LCTGM):

Mount Rainier National Park (Wash.)

Rainier, Mount (Wash.)

Tobogganing--Washington (State)--Mount Rainier National Park

 

Digital Collection:

Rainier National Park Mountain-Glacier Wonderland Album

http://content.lib.washington.edu/glacierweb/index.html

 

Item Number: RNP35

 

Persistent URL:

http://content.lib.washington.edu/u?/glacier,4

 

Visit Special Collections reproductions and rights page for information on ordering a copy.

 

University of Washington Libraries. Digital Collections http://content.lib.washington.edu/

 

Of course...

 

Gotham News reports multiples homicides, all involving bite marks and scratches on an Arkham Asylum security guard and multiple other citizens, and Manbat's cell just so happens to be in pieces and empty.

 

I knew it wouldn't be long until he broke out, but i expected it to be longer than a week. Oh well, that's Arkham. No time, for that right now, though. Alfred says i need to get out of the house. Says people are starting to worry that something's happened to me. He's not wrong. It has been a while since I've been in public. Alot longer than the usual amount of time that people mourn a death. But i haven't been mourning...I've been seeking vengeance. Joker's going to pay for his crimes against Gotham, and against me. Oh right, gotta smile for the cameras.

 

When i get outside, the flashes are almost blinding. So many of them all at once. Alfred holds them back to the best of his ability as i walk to the Black Bentley that's waiting in the driveway. The chauffeur starts driving once i get situated.

 

After a couple minutes, when we are driving through a wooded area, the car slows down to a stop and three guys get in the car.

 

"What are you you doing?! Who are you guys?"

 

"Shut up," one guy says.

 

And before i know it, i get sprayed with something...crap...it's c-it's chloro--chlorof.....

________________________________

 

I wake up in complete darkness, when a bright screen lights up in front of my face, about 20 feet or so away. I can now see that I'm in a giant concrete box, sitting in a metal chair, with my hands locked to the arms by metal cuffs. And then i realize that I'm in an electric chair.

 

On the screen, i see a man in a white smiley face mask with spiked shoulder plates and tech body armor. I can only see that far down. And then i notice the symbol on his chest. A cracked red skull. Anarky.

 

//"Hello Mr. Grayson. Or should say Nightwing?"//

 

"What do you want Anarky? I don't have time for this."

 

//"Aw, no time for me? That hurt my feelings. You need to be taught a lesson about manners!"// Suddenly i begin to feel extreme volts of electricity shocking me. The pain is unbearable.

 

"AAAAAGGGHHHH!!!"

 

//"Now, have we learned some manners?"//

 

"..."

 

//"HAVE WE learned some manners, Mr. Grayson?"//

 

"Yes, sir."

 

//"Good. Now I'm going to tell you where you need to go, and you-"//

 

"If you think I'm going to listen to a word you say, then-"

 

//"I WAS TALKING!"//

 

There's that shock again. "AAAAAGGGGGHHHHH!!!"

 

//"As i was saying, I am going to tell you where i want you to go and you will go there."//

 

"And why the heck would i do that?"

 

//"Because i left you a little...present there. *chuckles* The location of your gift is Gotham Bank. You better get there fast because there isnt much time before someone else gets it!"//

 

*Video turns to static*

 

Suddenly, the cuffs unlock and I can get up from the chair. Just then, a piece of the floor opens up in the far left corner of the room and a metal latter rises to the ceiling, leading to a manhole cover. I climb out of the room and find myself in the middle of a street. The bank is two blocks away. Great. So, i run the whole two blocks to Gotham Bank.

 

When i walk up to the doors, i start hearing screaming. Not just one person, lots of people. But then i hear a sound that's out of the ordinary. Almost like a giant...bat. Then i realize, someone else got my present.

 

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

 

Thanks for reading guys! im so glad that i am able to write this, and that i came up wuth this idea, because its already so much fun. If you'd like me to tag you guys when issues are released, then comment poopydoo below! Yes, poopydoo.

 

~FANTXTIK

During the Balkan Wars, the previously Ottoman city of Scutari fell 1913 to Serbia and Montenegro after a seven-month siege. However, an international conference in London awarded the city to the young state of Albania. An international naval blockade involving the German cruiser Breslau forced the withdrawal of troops from Scutari. An international corps of British, German, French, Italian and Austro-Hungarian contingents was formed as military security. The German contribution consisted of a company-sized naval infantry detachment of 120 volunteers.

An incident involving a truck at the June Truck race at Thruxton in England. The driver was ok, with only a small scratch to show after the accident.

On the recent art events that involve to some degree concept of invisibility.

 

Various artist do a one-shot attempt at the invisible concept. As a rule it happens one time in the given artist’s career. (Rest assured that nobody except Paul Jaisini had their life time spent in the Invisible creativity premises).

 

The Invisibility one-shooter artist would not continue in this direction to be repetitive or simple do the same gig unable to develop further as the original attempt failed to be profitable or even promising.

 

Halloween 2024 Challenge - October 2024

www.flickr.com/groups/challenges_community_group/

Mystic Challenge Group

~

ai/pixlr/gimp

~

Traditionally, sugar skulls are created as ornamental gifts for children and family members during Día de los Muertos. Unlike the ghoulish skulls and skeletons associated with Halloween, these brightly colored skulls represent the departed souls in the circle of life -

The Day of the Dead is a holiday traditionally celebrated on November 1 and 2, though other days, such as October 31 or November 6, may be included depending on the locality. The multi-day holiday involves family and friends gathering to pay respects and to remember friends and family members who have died

#oilpainting

#pintura

#painting

#oleo

#figurative-painting

#Life-drawing

#life-painting

#figure-painting

#acuarela

#aquarelle

#art

#arte

#artist

#newmexicoartist #drawing

#dibujo #

#painting

#paint

#pen

#penandink

#sketch

#sketchbook

#watercolor_involve #watercolorpainting

#linoleumcutprint

#linoprint

#blockprint

#printmakersofinstagram

#printmaker

#reliefprintingworkshop

Disclaimer: The contents of this chapter include very sensitive subject matter involving of death of family and the PTSD that comes with it and may be triggering to some individuals.

 

...

 

Vincent lifted his gaze from the picture and leaned his head back against the pillow propped up behind him and closed his eyes. Right now, he was very grateful to his cousin and her bhang concoctions. If not for that, he wasn't sure if he'd be able to get through this today. Honestly he was still uncertain if he still actually could do this.

But as Vincent settled in, a slight smile drew upon his lips as he began to speak as he let him go back four years ago. And as he did, Aiden relaxed more beside him and listened to his story.

"I suppose this story began with my promotion to Captaincy. My uncle is very much a generous man as much as he is proud. He threw a ball to celebrate me. After all, I was the son he never had and it was expected of us. I was to greet and receive endless congratulations by many Captains and their wives, several Lords and Ladies and the worst ones of all." There was a dramatic pause. "Marriage-minded mothers and their daughters."

Vincent actually shuddered which made Aiden laugh softly. But at the same time, it put Vincent in a somewhat new perspective for him: Vincent was not just any ship's captain. He came from a wealthy family; perhaps even possibly related to a Lord or Lady! He supposed he should have realized that last week when Vincent mentioned being required to attend a huge event such as the coming masquerade ball.

"So a couple of hours into my endless parade of greetings and congratulations I happened upon a conversation of a small group discussing horror novels."

"Sounds like something you could get into."

"Indeed. Shh."

"Sorry."

"As I approached, the main speaker turned out to be a woman elaborating about a book she'd read. It turned out to be by the same author who wrote the book you gave me. Her audience had been quite shocked as she spun the summarized tale of how a scorned witch took bloody revenge on all those who'd wronged her. And trust me, it was absolutely tame compared to the novel itself. No one seemed to know what to say. And so when I announced that I knew the novel she was speaking of and that I'd enjoyed it, myself, she'd turned in excitement with such a brilliant smile. She promptly took my arm and, I quote, 'Now HERE'S someone worth talking to! Hello, good Sir, my name is Miss Emily Fenton. It's a pleasure to meet you. Shall we grab some lemonade together?' And as I escorted her away she mentioned the party had been dull until I arrived and that I was right on time."

Both men chuckled softly and Aiden thought to himself that Vincent's wife must have been a very interesting woman. He was very amused that Vincent imitated an enthusiastic young woman's voice quite well.

"She really turned my world upside down. I remember thinking to myself, how did I not notice her before? As it turned out, she was a visiting cousin of an acquaintance of the family. I remember the details of her eyes, those little flecks of green that encircled her iris. How she smelled of lilies which happened to be her favorite flower. She had this sly smile which was so full of mischief and had the most twisted sense of humor which I adored. But you'd never know the depth of her by looking at her. Oh, she would smile and act as a lady should be in public. Well....mostly. She was sharp, witty, and very well-read. She was a scholar and loved to delve into book after book. But her mind and the things that would come out of her mouth! And she'd do it with a straight face too! And you'd never see it coming!"

And Vincent was laughing! Aiden grinned and he listened, painting this picture in his head of the eventual Mrs. Emily Dubois. She seemed quite the character! She sounded like someone Vincent could easily get along with and clearly did.

Vincent's laughter quickly settled and he licked his lips before reaching for the cup of bhang tea beside him and drained the rest of it. He knew by the end of this, he was going to need it in his system. It had been a couple of years since he'd really talked about any of this. The last time had been to Damien and it hadn't given him as much closure as he'd have liked. Of course, Damien had been there to witness the majority of it all and hadn't needed explanations. He'd simply been there as a shoulder for Vincent to lean on. Sure, talking to Damien HAD helped and eventually he was able to get through each day again but...something about this time was different. He was able to let it flow differently this time as he got to tell the actual whole story to someone for the first time. It felt good to finally talk about it.

"You have to know something about me. Well, about who I was. I was married to my career. I loved everything about my life in the sky and had everything I wanted. I had no need for marriage at the time. I was young; only twenty-three. I wasn't expected to look for a wife for several years and even so I didn't have to. I was a captain! I could live my life completely in the air if I wanted to! And it was what I did want. My thirst for knowledge paired beautifully with my love of travel and I could chart any course and go anywhere and learn anything I wanted when I wanted. I knew what my life would be. That was until I met Emily.

"I hadn't realized how much sharing the joys of sharing one's life with another person could be until I found myself in her presence nearly every day. She was a fascinating woman and very knowledgeable and well read. She was always happy to hear about places and things I've seen. In turn, I was happy to listen to her talk about her novels and things she'd learned in her studies and we shared deep, intellectual conversations. We became fast friends, but I knew it was more than that. I found myself waking every day with her in my thoughts. She had quickly become someone I had to keep in my life and she seemed to fit perfectly somehow. I felt alive in a new, different way.

"Of course it was perfectly possible for me to have a wife and live my life too. After all, I had grown up watching the love between my uncle and aunt and they had married young as well. My uncle was gone most of the time; home during Summers and occasionally throughout the year for important holidays and still does it to this day. And every time they are together, you can see the love and happiness they share together. It's as clear as day. And they are more in love than the day they married. And even then, I knew it. So I knew I could make it work with Emily if she were willing. Of course, fate would have it that I found out that Emily was due to return home and would be leaving the capitol the following week. It would be a long time before we would see each other in person. After all, she didn't live in a major port and I was due to start my first trip as captain soon. I was expecting to subject myself to written correspondence with her. But when I saw that forlorn look in her eyes and how she admitted that she'd miss seeing my face? Well, what else could I do but ask her to marry me?"

Vincent blinked and tears slid down his cheeks in memory of Emily as he saw her in her bridal gown and how she'd glowed that day. "We were happy. I knew my life would be perfect. Emily understood me and the expectations of my life. No, we wouldn't be together every day but we'd see each other more often than if she was going back to her hometown. She was happy and eager to get our lives started together. She'd made friends with my cousins and had her own cousin in town as well. She'd have a happy life here and once we had children, her days would be more joyful. She was looking forward to becoming a mother one day."

How wonderful Vincent made it seem! Of course, Aiden knew how this story would end. But it was important, he realized, for Vincent to talk about this...about her and their life. Something told him he'd not told this story before. Not like this. Aiden felt his heart go out to Vincent and he continued to listen to Vincent's story.

"As you can imagine, it was a very short engagement and a small wedding. I'd gotten us a place big enough for us and a little one for when we were ready. With all the excitement of a ball held in my honor, wooing my lady, and becoming a husband, I'd taken time off from work for quite some time. But it was time for me to get back into the swing of life and provide for my wife and our home together. So the day finally came where Damien and I were to set off for our first cargo trip on Leon's Claw. And that's when she gave me this."

Vincent leaned over and reached for the compass and brought it to his lap and opened it up. He held it along with the picture frame and just stared for a long moment. Aiden gazed at the compass over Vincent's shoulder with new appreciation. He'd noticed the slight smoothness of the spots where Vincent's fingers had rubbed it when he'd repaired it a few months ago. It was a well loved piece to have so much wear in such a short amount of time. And he'd certainly not forgotten Vincent's distraught expression when it had broken.

"'Though pleas`d to see the dolphins play, I mind my compass and my way,'" * Vincent recited the inscription inside the compass. "She said that it was to help me remember to stay my course; to seek to enjoy life and all it has to offer and to always help me find my way home. She was worried I'd find it silly and corny but I loved her for it."

"It was a thoughtful gift."

"It really is. I was touched."

Vincent closed the compass and held it tight in his hand for a long moment. He licked his lips and then glanced up at Aiden who gave him a small encouraging smile. But Vincent saw that something was off about Aiden and how he was smiling. A small part of him wanted to turn and reassure Aiden...but what was there to reassure him about? He wasn't sure what was wrong but he just seemed a little...despondent. Perhaps it was because he knew it was a sad story? Or was there something else bothering him?

"So what happened next?" Aiden inquired softly, not realizing that Vincent was reading him so well. Vincent gazed at him for another long moment, blinking a couple of times as he allowed himself to tuck this mental inquiry about Aiden away to think about later.

"What happened next? Well, I started my new life as Captain. I felt like I was living my best life! I was having a grand time with one of my best friends and got to live my dream every day. It was everything I hoped it would be. Though, I admit that for somewhat selfish reasons, we didn't stray too far from home." Vincent chuckled slightly to himself which drew a small smirk from Aiden. "Damien was pretty annoyed with me, I think. I had made him wait and wait while I courted my wife and then we were only gone not even a full two months before we came home again. And that's when I found out that I was to become a father." Aiden could see the joy through the sadness and tears that were forming in Vincent's eyes.

"Six months or so later my daughter was born: Lily. She...she had my eyes and hair and her mother's nose and mouth. Lily was so small but she was healthy and perfect. She was my pride and joy." The tears spilled down Vincent's face as he let out a soft sob and yet he still managed a bittersweet smile as he gazed up at Aiden. "I wish I could show you...she was so beautiful and sweet. She never cried and loved being held. I never realized that I could be that happy. And then...then much too soon it was time for me to go."

And here Vincent's smile faded and he drew his knees up a little and his shoulders sunk. His gaze returned to the photograph. Aiden knew what was going to happen next. This was where Vincent's world would be ripped from him.

"There had been talk of illness in neighboring countries with major air and sea ports. In my line of work, I was at risk but it wasn't like I could stop with a family to provide for. And we lived in a city of massive commerce. She was scared of never seeing me again but I still chose to go."

Beside him, Aiden felt his heart suddenly clench even worse. He remembered all too well when that happened just over three years ago. There had been rumors and people were scared. But it never seemed to come and people began to wonder if maybe it was just a hoax. Then suddenly it hit with ferocity everywhere that had air and sea ports, rumored to have come thanks to commerce and the critters that resided on the ships. Aiden's hometown was a city of commerce and sure enough it had claimed many lives there including that of his own mother who was prone to illness more easily than others.

"It was the hardest farewell I'd ever had to make," Vincent continued painfully. "I kissed my wife and baby and went on my way." Vincent inhaled deeply and let it out sharply before swallowing hard and gave a small nod. Aiden had a feeling he was having to push himself to keep talking at this point.

"Then 'this,'" Vincent grumbled and gestured aggressively towards his blind and damaged eye, "happened." He inhaled slowly and deeply through his nostrils as fresh tears began to pool in his eyes. "While Damien and I were recovering, news came that the capitol had been ravaged by the illness; especially in the poorer parts of town. I prayed that my family would be safe, all of them. But then that's when I got the letter from Emily. Our little Lily was sick, but it had been dated a couple of weeks earlier! I wanted to get home right away but no one was flying or sailing out; especially to the capitol. And, of course, mail was not getting out nearly as quickly anymore.

"We weren't far from here but it wasn't close at all if you traveled on land. And, of course, Leon's Claw needed repairs and Damien had suffered a severe trauma with losing his arm saving me. I was stuck! It took a week to get the proper repairs done so I could fly home myself. Thankfully Damien was fitted for his arm and I could get home to my wife and daughter! I prayed to whatever powers may be that Lily would be okay. I STILL hadn't heard from anyone even though I'd sent letters! Not Emily, my cousins, nor my aunt. Nothing. All I knew was my baby was sick! And when we arrived at the capitol, my cousin Abigail was waiting for me. I knew it the moment I saw it was her waiting there for me; not Emily. I was too late!"

At this point, Vincent was just letting it all out. Now that he was talking and crying, he just couldn't seem to stop! Aiden felt like he couldn't breathe as his heart kept breaking more and more for Vincent.

"It wasn't only my little Lily that I'd lost! I'd lost Emily, too! Emily died the day before I arrived home and Lily three days before! It's not fair! I lost them BOTH!!! Lily and Emily died ALONE while I was stuck two cities away! I wasn't there with them! She asked me to stay but I didn't! What kind of a man am I?! I should have stayed!"

Aiden cried silently beside Vincent as he gazed at the distraught man. What could he say? What could he do? What could possibly console Vincent with something as heartbreaking as this?

So this was why Vincent had spoken to him the way he had when they had met, Aiden realized. He was remembering as he repaired the compass Vincent had spoken to him about Aiden's convictions and determination to leave home. Vincent had tried to convince him that it would be better to stay home with his family. But Aiden had been determined that he wanted this. The feelings and reasonings that Aiden had come back with that had apparently convinced Vincent to hire him seemed like they would be something the late Emily would have encouraged. And quite possibly, it seemed, Vincent had seen a bit of himself in Aiden at the time.

Aiden swallowed hard as the realizations hit him. It took him a minute but he finally got his thoughts together before he spoke softly.

"But at least you have that final memory of them. Of kissing them goodbye and-"

"NO! I DON'T! Just...don't even! You have NO idea!"

Aiden had jumped at Vincent's strangled, sudden outburst! Then Vincent suddenly gave a wrenched sob as he pressed his hands to his face and sobbed even harsher than Aiden had heard thus far. Seconds later, he wrapped his arms around his knees and pulled them quite painfully towards his chest. In his agonized state of being, as well as the intoxication from the bhang, Vincent didn't care about the physical pain flaring to life in his abdomen! Aiden wanted to stop him but right now he didn't dare say or do anything as he stared wide eyed at Vincent.

"You just don't know, Aiden!" Lifting his gaze, he stared up into Aiden's eyes desperately. Aiden had the impression that Vincent was almost pleading with him to understand.

"I wanted to remember them forever like that. Of my wife's smile and my daughter looking so perfect in her arms as I kissed them farewell. I would have that memory and all our happy memories to sustain me. I felt like I was in a daze as I made my way home. Then that's...that's when..."

Vincent closed his eyes and tears slid down his cheeks as the memory came back so painful and fresh as if it happened just yesterday. When he opened them, he was gazing back at Aiden and continued, this time his voice more calm but every bit as heart-wrenching as he said in a near whisper, "I came home as their bodies were being carried out of the building and tossed onto the cart with the other corpses. And the workers they...they just were talking so casually about them and the way they tossed their bodies onto the pile I- I just-"

And he cut himself off and buried his face in his knees and sobbed. He found that he just couldn't stop. Beside him, Aiden sat in shock as all this unfolded. Vincent was inconsolable, but he needed this. Who knew how long he'd kept this torment inside? Surely, he'd never broken down like this before! This seemed too fresh. Aiden wasn't sure what to say to any of that. What could someone say to that?

"And every time I sleep, the dreams always end the same way! I kiss them goodbye and then I see their corpses like that! EVERY! TIME! And I know how alone she was! How miserable and scared she must have been! I should have been there with them! What did I do to deserve this?! I don't want to do this anymore, Aiden! I should have died with them! I don't want to be here anymore! I want to die but I'm too much of a coward to end it all myself!"

And suddenly Vincent was wrapped in the warmth of Aiden's strong embrace before he was gently but firmly held close.

"Shh...shh..."

"Let go!"

At first Vincent started to push him off, but as he felt Aiden's hand come to cup the back of his head, he felt all his walls break down as he allowed himself to lean against Aiden's chest and actually clung to his shirt. The sobs came all over again, but this time they just did not stop coming. Aiden simply held him and pressed his nose and lips to the top of Vincent's head and closed his eyes. He didn't know what else to do but let him get it all out.

Some time had passed. Neither man had paid attention to the time, but eventually Vincent's sobs quieted and he hiccupped as he just leaned against Aiden in a quiet daze as he came down from all that. Aiden gently slid his hand down and rubbed Vincent's back. He wasn't in a hurry to let Vincent out of his arms right now. Once Vincent's breathing was back to normal, Aiden lifted his head and pressed his chin gently atop his head.

"I'm glad you're here, Vincent," he told him softly. "I'd miss you terribly if you were gone."

"Bet you wouldn't miss days like this."

"I'd not be anywhere else."

"You can't really mean that."

"Look at me."

And Vincent did. He sniffed and lifted his head from Aiden's chest and gazed up into his eyes. In a slightly bold move, Aiden reached up and gently brushed away Vincent's tears before stating calmly, "I'd not be anywhere else but here. I will always be here no matter what; whether that be a shoulder to lean on or-... or if you need a poking to lighten up and laugh once in a while. You are important to me, Vincent. You're my best friend."

Vincent's eyes widened and he felt his stomach flutter to life with butterflies. Aiden must truly feel strongly about their bond! Of course, Vincent knew of friendships like this. He had a small group of people he trusted and he was so thankful that Aiden was part of that circle now. And he had to admit that he loved that Aiden could speak his thoughts so freely with him and threw caution and vulnerability to the wind. And Vincent felt like he could as well and it felt liberating each and every time. He felt more free to do so around Aiden than...well, he couldn't even remember!

"You're one of my closest friends too. I'm lucky to have you in my corner, Aiden. I don't know what I did to deserve you. but thank you."

"Of course. I'll always have your back. Always."

Aiden wanted to tell Vincent the truth of his romantic feelings. He truly did. However, he knew that right now was not the time for it; especially not after Vincent's awful breakdown over his dearly missed wife. And as for Aiden, when he'd asked Vincent to talk about Emily, he hadn't expected to compare himself to her the way he unintentionally had. It was hard not to feel a touch of doubt considering he wanted to win Vincent's heart, himself. Aiden and Emily were quite different people. Would Vincent even want him, a man? Would he be open to finding love again to begin with?

Aiden still had every intention of wooing Vincent and telling him the truth one day. He just needed to go about things differently now that he understood how deeply Vincent was hurting.

However, Vincent still needed him as his friend, so romance was not an option right now, but perhaps one day, Aiden thought. He'd just have to be part of his life and hopefully one day things would work out so that Vincent would come to feel he needed Aiden the same way that Aiden needed him.

A very short time later once Vincent was more settled, Aiden released him from his arms and they moved back into the positions they had been in before Bernadette's departure. Vincent was grateful for Aiden's help shifting around before the young man settled in, himself. Vincent had wrenched his body around during his breakdown and now his ribs ached badly. Though thankfully soon after, he wasn't even paying attention to anything else but his new book as his body settled down from all the excitement and the pain became more bearable again.

When Bernadette returned from her errands, she found the men where she'd left them: content and happy beside each other with Vincent nose-deep into his book and Aiden scribbling in his notebook. And she thought silently to herself with a smile, 'Is it just me or are they sitting closer than before?'

At one point very soon after, Vincent needed a moment of privacy to use the bedpan. But as soon as he was done and the bedpan cleaned? Well Aiden was back on the bed beside his best friend and enjoying his company. But what really gave Aiden a reason to smile was when Vincent actually refrained from opening his book and turned to ask Aiden what he was doing in his notebook.

"I'm designing upgrades for Pete!"

"Pete?"

"Pete the Spider Lantern! You met him already."

"Wait. Are you talking about that lantern that came with you to find me?"

"That's the one!"

And that was when Aiden launched into an explanation about Pete and showed him the sketches he'd made of Pete with little added parts to enhance him. Vincent had almost forgotten about the lantern that had come to the tower with Aiden. He remembered now that Aiden had come back from one of his shopping trips a while back with the lantern and declared that he had a project he wanted to work on with it. That was the last Vincent had seen or heard of it until last week when Aiden came to rescue him with it as at his side.

A couple of minutes later there was a knock at the front door to which Bernadette went to answer it. She wasn't expecting anyone else today so who could it be? Surely, not Damien. It was Aiden's turn this evening to babysit Vincent with her tonight. However, it DID turn out to be Damien after all and in his arms were two bags of groceries!

"Damien! We weren't expecting you but thank you! You're spoiling us." She grinned up at him and closed the door behind him.

"You're welcome. And what do you mean? I'm helping out with dressings tonight, remember?"

"Oh!" She paused as she reached to help with the groceries as she thought about it, arms outstretched. "Wait...are you sure?"

At that second, there was a burst of laughter from the other room that belonged to Aiden. Damien glanced towards the room then looked back at Bernadette with a slight smirk and handed her both bags and replied, "Of course I am! You must be tired. Don't worry, Bernie. I'm sure you'll be able to catch up on rest soon." Damien patted her on the shoulder and turned to head towards the bedroom to see what was going on in there.

Bernadette blinked and stood there with the bags of groceries as she stared at his departing backside. She opened her mouth then closed it before looking at the weighty bags in her arms. Feeling a bit confused and a touch irritated, she turned and made her way towards the kitchen and grumbled, "Asshole."

Then a moment later...

"What do you think you're doing?!"

Aiden jumped and blinked as he looked up and around to see who shouted. It was Damien at the door and he looked pretty upset! Why was Damien here anyway? Today was his day off, wasn't it? Aiden opened his mouth but beside him, Vincent was faster to respond with a slightly stern tone, "What's the problem?"

Damien kept his eyes on Aiden and elaborated, "You shouldn't be on the bed! What if Vincent gets hurt worse because of your jostling!"

"Damien, I'm fine!" Vincent cut in before Aiden could even respond and rolled his eyes with a chuckle. "Relax! Here, have some bhang tea."

"I don't want tea!"

Damien scowled and folded his arms over his chest as he glared at the two of them. Vincent narrowed his eyes at Damien and sat up a bit straighter and gave him an even stare. Beside him, Aiden shrank where he sat. He wasn't going to get in the middle of this.

"What's really the problem?"

"I already told you!"

"No, you didn't but fine. Do you trust me?"

"Vincent-"

"Do. You. Trust. Me?"

"Well, yes, but-"

"Then trust me when I say I am fine! I'm not fragile! And in case you haven't noticed, Damien, I can handle a little bit of jostling." Vincent sarcastically gestured towards his beaten body. Then after a moment his gaze softened and he smiled a bit as he gestured towards Aiden's notebook. "Besides, Aiden is showing me his sketches! And he brought me a present! See?"

Instead of looking at whatever Vincent was holding up, Damien's gaze shifted towards Aiden who went a deep shade of red and brought his hand up to run through his hair with a shy chuckle and smile. Damien stared at him for a long moment before turning to look at what Vincent was holding out to him impatiently. Upon seeing what it was, Damien scoffed and chuckled, "Another book. Heh. Well, isn't that nice of him?"

Aiden blinked and made a slight face as he was feeling a little offended. And honestly? A little surprised. 'Another book?' he wanted to ask. Did he not know his own supposed best friend enough to know how much he loved and valued books? Surely, he had to! But even Aiden (who didn't enjoy novels the way Vincent did either) understood and appreciated what it meant to the man. And thankfully, it seemed, Vincent was of the same mind and jumped in his defense!

"It is, in fact! Look at it! Look! See who it's by?!" Vincent exclaimed eagerly with a grin. "It just released today!" In his excitement, Vincent had already brushed aside the intensity of Damien's arrival. He was used to Damien's worrywart personality by now and wanted to show off his present!

Aiden however, hadn't brushed it off yet. He knew he'd get over it, but right now he was still feeling a little sour towards Damien. 'What's with this guy?' he wondered silently as he watched Damien approach and ruin their alone time.

Damien finally took a seat on the chair beside Vincent. Even though he was looking at Vincent and listening to what he was saying, his mind was processing what he'd happened upon and the realizations that came with it.

So, Vincent had a brand new book and he hadn't shoved Aiden out the door? Not only that, he wasn't nose deep into it like Damien was used to him doing. His experiences had always taught him that Vincent liked to be left alone while reading, especially with a new book. So, why the Hell was Aiden allowed to be here? Damien certainly wasn't allowed to be! And wasn't this the second time Aiden had brought him a gift?

...was there something else going on between them that he didn't know about?

  

* "Though pleas`d to see the dolphins play, I mind my compass and my way." - Matthew Green

 

Inscription on the 'Madpea Compass' by MadPea which you can find on Marketplace!

 

---

 

Shout out to Stephen King and his book 'Carrie' for inspiring the book that Emily and Vincent were discussing during their meet-cute!

 

...

NEXT PART:

www.flickr.com/photos/153660805@N05/52441785152/in/datepo...

 

To start from the beginning or to read another chapter, here's the album link:

www.flickr.com/photos/153660805@N05/albums/72157717075565127

 

***Please note this is a BOY LOVE (BL/yaoi/gay) series. It is a slow burn and rated PG13!***

 

***

Special thank you to Vin Aydin Raven-Mysterious for collaborating with me on this series and co-starring as The Captain!

And a special thank you to our guest star: Khetas Nova as our spunky Emily Dubois!

  

DISCORD SERVER:

That's right! The Captain and The Engineer has a Discord Server! If you wanna join and chat with other crewmates and see what's new and happening before it gets posted to Flickr, click the link!

discord.gg/qBa769TAC4

  

***NEW!!!!***

 

The Captain and the Engineer now has a FACEBOOK PAGE! Please come Like, Follow, and join the crew! Thank you so much for all your support!

FACEBOOK PAGE:

www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=61558531406088

Facebook . 500px . Instagram

 

Forster's Tern courting ritual involves sharing food. They look so cute!!!

 

Huntington Beach(CA)

 

Canon EOS 7D2 @ 400mm ---- 1/3200s--- f/9 --- ISO 500

... this time involving not one, but two motor scooters. --> see here

 

Seen near the university library, Technical University of Darmstadt, Germany

 

Konica IIIa with Hexanon 1:1.8 / 50 mm

Kodak Ektar 100 professional grade colour negative film

Developed and scanned by www.meinfilmlab.de

Fimmvörðuháls is the area between the glaciers Eyjafjallajökull and Mýrdalsjökull in southern Iceland. The route between Skógar and Thórsmörk goes through this pass and is one of the most popular walking routes in Iceland, despite being 22 km long and involving 1,000 m of climbing.

 

At Fimmvörðuháls, there is a comfortable, modern mountain hut owned by Útivist, one of the Icelandic hiking associations. Also nearby is an older, less well-equipped hut called Baldvinsskáli. The route from Skógar is particularly beautiful, as numerous waterfalls are passed along the way.

 

The route is only accessible between mid-June and late-August. On the night of 16 May 1970, three travellers died in the mountain pass in a snowstorm.

 

It is also possible to combine the Fimmvörðuháls route with the Laugavegur trek between Landmannalaugar and Thórsmörk to make a trip of 4–6 days in length.

 

(Wikipedia)

 

-----

 

I returned to Iceland for my third time there to hike the world’s famous Laugavegurinn trek combined with its Fimmvörðuháls hiking neighbour; we went in the south-to-north direction starting in Skógar and finishing our journey in the colorful Landmannalaugar area.

 

The itinerary was rather straightforward and not surprising: Skógar -> Fimmvörðuháls -> Þórsmörk -> Emstrur (Botnar) -> Álftavatn -> Hrafntinnusker -> Landmannalaugar.

 

We were quite lucky with the weather except for Emstrur -> Álftavatn part when we experienced the most horrible weather I have ever encountered during my hiking trips – really strong wind and constant rain made from this part a “survival” odyssey. It is often said weather is a crucial factor in this hike and our experience from this particular day (and also from the other – beautiful – days) just confirmed that.

 

This is a shot taken during our journey up and along the Skogá river to the Fimmvörðuháls pass where we stayed overnight.

"involvement in these other things means that she is not so exposed to fear. But occasionally she wonders if she is being irresponsible because she is ‘not in touch with reality’. But immediately she has questioned herself over this, she is clear about her response: ‘I don’t think so … To me the greatest reality is still the sun on the hyacinths, the rabbit, the chocolate pudding, Beethoven, the grey hair at his temple..."

-Etty Hillesum: A Life Transformed by Patrick Woodhouse

Primavera, is a large panel painting in tempera paint by the Italian Renaissance painter Sandro Botticelli made in the late 1470s or early 1480s (datings vary). It has been described as "one of the most written about, and most controversial paintings in the world", and also "one of the most popular paintings in Western art".

The painting depicts a group of figures from classical mythology in a garden, but no story has been found that brings this particular group together. Most critics agree that the painting is an allegory based on the lush growth of Spring, but accounts of any precise meaning vary, though many involve the Renaissance Neoplatonism which then fascinated intellectual circles in Florence. The subject was first described as Primavera by the art historian Giorgio Vasari who saw it at Villa Castello, just outside Florence, by 1550.

Although the two are now known not to be a pair, the painting is inevitably discussed with Botticelli's other very large mythological painting, The Birth of Venus, also in the Uffizi. They are among the most famous paintings in the world, and icons of the Italian Renaissance; of the two, the Birth is even better known than the Primavera. As depictions of subjects from classical mythology on a very large scale, they were virtually unprecedented in Western art since classical antiquity.

The history of the painting is not certainly known; it may have been commissioned by one of the Medici family, but the certainty of its commission is unknown. It draws from a number of classical and Renaissance literary sources, including the works of the Ancient Roman poet Ovid and, less certainly, Lucretius, and may also allude to a poem by Poliziano, the Medici house poet who may have helped Botticelli devise the composition. Since 1919 the painting has been part of the collection of the Uffizi Gallery in Florence, Italy.

The painting features six female figures and two male, along with a cupid, in an orange grove. The movement of the composition is from right to left, so following that direction the standard identification of the figures is: at far right "Zephyrus, the biting wind of March, kidnaps and possesses the nymph Chloris, whom he later marries and transforms into a deity; she becomes the goddess of Spring, eternal bearer of life, and is scattering roses on the ground." Chloris the nymph overlaps Flora, the goddess she transforms into.

In the centre (but not exactly so) and somewhat set back from the other figures stands Venus, a red-draped woman in blue. Like the flower-gatherer, she returns the viewer's gaze. The trees behind her form a broken arch to draw the eye. In the air above her a blindfolded Cupid aims his bow to the left. On the left of the painting the Three Graces, a group of three females also in diaphanous white, join hands in a dance. At the extreme left Mercury, clothed in red with a sword and a helmet, raises his caduceus or wooden rod towards some wispy gray clouds.

The interactions between the figures are enigmatic. Zephyrus and Chloris are looking at each other. Flora and Venus look out at the viewer, the Cupid is blindfolded, and Mercury has turned his back on the others, and looks up at the clouds. The central Grace looks towards him, while the other two seem to look at each other. Flora's smile was very unusual in painting at this date.

The pastoral scenery is elaborate. There are 500 identified plant species depicted in the painting, with about 190 different flowers, of which at least 130 can be specifically identified. The overall appearance, and size, of the painting is similar to that of the millefleur ("thousand flower") Flemish tapestries that were popular decorations for palaces at the time.

These tapestries had not caught up by the 1480s with the artistic developments of the Italian Renaissance, and the composition of the painting has aspects that belong to this still Gothic style. The figures are spread in a rough line across the front of the picture space, "set side by side like pearls on a string". It is now known that in the setting for which the painting was designed the bottom was about at eye level, or slightly above it, partly explaining "the gently rising plane" on which the figures stand.

The feet of Venus are considerably higher than those of the others, showing she is behind them, but she is at the same scale, if not larger, than the other figures. Overlapping of other figures by Mercury's sword and Chloris' hands shows that they stand slightly in front of the left Grace and Flora respectively, which might not be obvious otherwise, for example from their feet. It has been argued that the flowers do not grow smaller to the rear of the picture space, certainly a feature of the millefleur tapestries.

The costumes of the figures are versions of the dress of contemporary Florence, though the sort of "quasi-theatrical costumes designed for masquerades of the sort that Vasari wrote were invented by Lorenzo de' Medici for civic festivals and tournaments." The lack of an obvious narrative may relate to the world of pageants and tableaux vivants as well as typically static Gothic allegories.

Various interpretations of the figures have been set forth, but it is generally agreed that at least at one level the painting is "an elaborate mythological allegory of the burgeoning fertility of the world." It is thought that Botticelli had help devising the composition of the painting and whatever meanings it was intended to contain, as it appears that the painting reflects a deep knowledge of classical literature and philosophy that Botticelli is unlikely to have possessed. Poliziano is usually thought to have been involved in this, though Marsilio Ficino, another member of Lorenzo de' Medici's circle and a key figure in Renaissance Neoplatonism, has also often been mentioned.

One aspect of the painting is a depiction of the progress of the season of spring, reading from right to left. The wind of early Spring blows on the land and brings forth growth and flowers, presided over by Venus, goddess of April, with at the left Mercury, the god of the month of May in an early Roman calendar, chasing away the last clouds before summer. As well as being part of a sequence over the season, Mercury in dispelling the clouds is acting as the guard of the garden, partly explaining his military dress and his facing out of the picture space. A passage in Virgil's Aeneid describes him clearing the skies with his caduceus. A more positive, Neoplatonist view of the clouds is that they are "the benificent veils through which the splendour of transcendent truth may reach the beholder without destroying him."

Venus presides over the garden – an orange grove (a Medici symbol). It is also the Garden of the Hesperides of classical myth, from which the golden apples used in the Judgement of Paris came; the Hellenistic Greeks had decided that these were citrus fruits, exotic to them. According to Claudian, no clouds were allowed there. Venus stands in front of the dark leaves of a myrtle bush. According to Hesiod, Venus had been born of the sea after the semen of Uranus had fallen upon the waters. Coming ashore in a shell she had clothed her nakedness in myrtle, and so the plant became sacred to her. Venus appears here in her character as a goddess of marriage, clothed and with her hair modestly covered, as married women were expected to appear in public.

The Three Graces are sisters, and traditionally accompany Venus. In classical art (but not literature) they are normally nude, and typically stand still as they hold hands, but the depiction here is very close to one adapting Seneca by Leon Battista Alberti in his De pictura (1435), which Botticelli certainly knew. From the left they are identified by Edgar Wind as Voluptas, Castitas, and Pulchritudo (Pleasure, Chastity and Beauty), though other names are found in mythology, and it is noticeable that many writers, including Lightbown and the Ettlingers, refrain from naming Botticelli's Graces at all.

Botticelli's Pallas and the Centaur (1482) has been proposed as the companion piece to Primavera.

Cupid's arrow is aimed at the middle Grace — Chastity, according to Wind — and the impact of love on chastity, leading to a marriage, features in many interpretations. Chastity looks towards Mercury, and some interpretations, especially those identifying the figures as modelled on actual individuals, see this couple as one to match Chloris and Zephyrus on the other side of the painting.

In a different interpretation the Earthy carnal love represented by Zephyrus to the right is renounced by the central figure of the Graces, who has turned her back to the scene, unconcerned by the threat represented to her by Cupid. Her focus is on Mercury, who himself gazes beyond the canvas at what many believe hung as the companion piece to Primavera: Pallas and the Centaur, in which "love oriented towards knowledge" (embodied by Pallas Athena) proves triumphant over lust (symbolized by the centaur).

The basic identification of the figures is now widely agreed,but in the past other names have sometimes been used for the females on the right, who are two stages of the same person in the usual interpretation. The woman in the flowered dress may be called Primavera (a personification of Spring), with Flora the figure pursued by Zephyrus. One scholar suggested in 2011 that the central figure is not Venus at all, but Persephone.

In addition to its overt meaning, the painting has been interpreted as an illustration of the ideal of Neoplatonic love popularized among the Medicis and their followers by Marsilio Ficino. The Neoplatonic philosophers saw Venus as ruling over both Earthly and divine love and argued that she was the classical equivalent of the Virgin Mary; this is alluded to by the way she is framed in an altar-like setting that is similar to contemporary images of the Virgin Mary. Venus' hand gesture of welcome, probably directed to the viewer, is the same as that used by Mary to the Archangel Gabriel in contemporary paintings of the Annunciation.

Punning allusions to Medici names probably include the golden balls of the oranges, recalling those on the Medici coat of arms, the laurel trees at right, for either Lorenzo, and the flames on the costume of both Mercury (for whom they are a regular attribute) and Venus, which are also an attribute of Saint Laurence (Lorenzo in Italian). Mercury was the god of medicine and "doctors", medici in Italian. Such puns for the Medici, and in Venus and Mars the Vespucci, run through all Botticelli's mythological paintings.

The origin of the painting is unclear. Botticelli was away in Rome for many months in 1481/82, painting in the Sistine Chapel, and suggested dates are in recent years mostly later than this, but still sometimes before. Thinking has been somewhat changed by the publication in 1975 of an inventory from 1499 of the collection of Lorenzo di Pierfrancesco de' Medici.

The 1499 inventory records it hanging in the city palace of Lorenzo di Pierfrancesco de' Medici and his brother Giovanni "Il Popolano". They were the cousins of Lorenzo de' Medici ("Lorenzo il Magnifico"), who was effectively the ruler of Florence, and after their father's early death had been his wards. It hung over a large lettuccio, an elaborate piece of furniture including a raised base, a seat and a backboard, probably topped with a cornice. The bottom of the painting was probably at about the viewer's eye-level, so rather higher than it is hung today.

In the same room was Botticelli's Pallas and the Centaur, and also a large tondo with the Virgin and Child. The tondo is now unidentified, but is a type of painting especially associated with Botticelli. This was given the highest value of the three paintings, at 180 lire. A further inventory of 1503 records that the Primavera had a large white frame.

In the first edition of his Life of Botticelli, published in 1550, Giorgio Vasari said that he had seen this painting, and the Birth of Venus, hanging in the Medici country Villa di Castello. Before the inventory was known it was usually believed that both paintings were made for the villa, probably soon after it was acquired in 1477, either commissioned by Lorenzo di Pierfrancesco or perhaps given to him by his older cousin and guardian Lorenzo de' Medici. Rather oddly, Vasari says both paintings contained female nudes, which is not strictly the case here.

Most scholars now connect the painting to the marriage of Lorenzo di Pierfrancesco de' Medici. Paintings and furniture were often given as presents celebrating weddings. The marriage was on 19 July 1482, but had been postponed after the death of the elder Lorenzo's mother on 25 March. It was originally planned for May. Recent datings tend to prefer the early 1480s, after Botticelli's return from Rome, suggesting it was directly commissioned in connection with this wedding, a view supported by many.

Another older theory, assuming an early date, suggests the older Lorenzo commissioned the portrait to celebrate the birth of his nephew Giulio di Giuliano de' Medici (who later became Pope), but changed his mind after the assassination of Giulo's father, his brother Giuliano in 1478, having it instead completed as a wedding gift for Lorenzo di Pierfrancesco.

It is frequently suggested that Lorenzo di Pierfrancesco is the model for Mercury in the portrait, and his bride Semiramide represented as Flora (or Venus). In older theories, placing the painting in the 1470s, it was proposed that the model for Venus was Simonetta Vespucci, wife of Marco Vespucci and according to popular legend the mistress of Giuliano de' Medici (who is also sometimes said to have been the model for Mercury); these identifications largely depend on an early date, in the 1470s, as both were dead by 1478. Simonetta was the aunt of Lorenzo's bride Semiramide. Summarizing the many interpretations of the painting, Leopold Ettlinger includes "descending to the ludricous – a Wagnerian pantomime enacted in memory of the murdered Giuliano de' Medici and his beloved Simonetta Vespucci with the Germanic Norns disguised as the Mediterranean Graces."

Whenever this painting and the Birth of Venus were united at Castello, they have remained together ever since. They stayed in Castello until 1815, when they were transferred to the Uffizi. For some years until 1919 they were kept in the Galleria dell'Accademia, another government museum in Florence. Since 1919, it has hung in the Uffizi Gallery in Florence. During the Italian campaign of World War Two, the picture was moved to Montegufoni Castle about ten miles south west of Florence to protect it from wartime bombing.

It was returned to the Uffizi Gallery where it remains to the present day. In 1978, the painting was restored.[66] The work has darkened considerably over the course of time

© Crystal Perido 2012. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

Registered with the U.S. Copyright Office.This image may not be copied, reproduced, republished, edited, downloaded, displayed, modified, transmitted, licensed, transferred, sold, distributed or uploaded in any way without my prior written permission. No rights granted unless in writing by Crystal Perido. Please do not use without my explicit permission, but feel free to contact me if interested

Photo 5 of a mini-story involving Elizabeth and Poppy.

(See the whole story uploaded in my stream or click on the album "Let's do Lunch") :)

 

Theme Rules: Food brings people together, and the more the merrier! Show us two or more of your dolls enjoying a midday meal. Are they sharing a romantic meeting at a Parisian café or at the newest burger joint? Are friends gathering for a picnic at the park or beach? Perhaps your dolls are learning how to prepare a yummy, healthy lunch together at home. There are many ways to spend a lunch date, so let's eat!

 

This photo: Poppy and Paul finish a quick hot dog lunch in the park on a beautiful summer day.

 

Poppy's dress, causing much jealousy on Elizabeth's part, is by Olgaomi (etsy.com/shop/olgaomi)

 

Involving extent

Process changes

Static description

involves sleeping in, back-to-back DEAL OR NO DEAL on mute at the gym, a hot fudge sundae, and, oh a listing for my upcoming show in Time Out New York!

 

so, yeah - art opening this weekend! click the link for deets, and I hope to see you there.

This was me after a long first birthday!

 

I've been busy trying to work on some more old family shots. They are SO bad, and some are almost gone. I'm glad I've managed to salvage most of the oldest ones so far, but editing them will be something that takes the rest of my life, and to be honest, I think I'm the only one in my family that will appreciate it. Sigh.

 

This was scanned from a negative. The fix incliudes everything from getting the yellow discoloration out to doing hand airbrush on the pic to add things that are needed, like the tiny roses that washed out when I colored the dress I was wearing to be a little more in line with the actual one.

 

Just so you know what a tiny baby I was at first, the dress is a size Zero! I was a year old. I recognize the dress because I still have it. Most moms will get it. I was a 4 lb. 6 oz. preemie, but shortly after this was taken, I was making up for lost time really fast! I grew like a weed, and was larger than most kids my age quickly, a testament to my mother's good care, although she overfed me, and consequently, I've struggled with my weight for the rest of my life.

 

Oddly enough, I can remember lying in that playpen. I was a very tactile child, and many of my memories involve how things felt, like the bars, or the firmness of the foam. Funny how a photo can bring that back to you....

 

This one had lots of noise issues. It doesn't show now in the smaller pic, but if you click it and open the larger one, you can see some of what I couldn't get out. Taking any more would have completely destroyed the detail, which I had to bring up in the first place, with an HDR-like filter. It will make a decent small print now, though.

Finally a project that doesn't involve software, hardware, computer code or math!

We had to edit this photo in photoshop with blending layers, textures, adjustment layers. I didn't realize until I finished and reread the assignment instructions we were supposed to add text with properties - so I took the lyrics from the song I was listening to while working on the project. Metric- Dreams so Real.

Fun. Okay back to math and programming. <3

View Large? Opinions?

An collection of sentiments involving a certain word.

Belgium.

National Botanic Garden.

www.br.fgov.be/PUBLIC/GENERAL/index.php

 

The azure damselfly (Coenagrion puella) is a species of damselfly found in most of Europe. It is notable for its distinctive black and blue colouring. They are commonly found around ponds and lakesides during the summer.

 

Mating in damselflies, as in dragonflies, is a complex, precisely choreographed process involving both indirect insemination and delayed fertilisation. First, the male has to attract a female to his territory, continually driving off rival males. When he is ready to mate, he transfers a packet of sperm from his primary genital opening on segment 9, near the end of his abdomen, to his secondary genitalia on segments 2–3, near the base of his abdomen. The male then grasps the female by the head with the claspers at the end of his abdomen; the structure of the claspers varies between species, and may help to prevent interspecific mating. The pair fly in tandem with the male in front, typically perching on a twig or plant stem. The female then curls her abdomen downwards and forwards under her body to pick up the sperm from the male's secondary genitalia, while the male uses his "tail" claspers to grip the female behind the head: this distinctive posture is called the "heart" or "wheel"; the pair may also be described as being "in cop".

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Damselfly

"When urban space is noticed to be designable."

More: www.pietschy.de

Graffiti (plural; singular graffiti or graffito, the latter rarely used except in archeology) is art that is written, painted or drawn on a wall or other surface, usually without permission and within public view. Graffiti ranges from simple written words to elaborate wall paintings, and has existed since ancient times, with examples dating back to ancient Egypt, ancient Greece, and the Roman Empire (see also mural).

 

Graffiti is a controversial subject. In most countries, marking or painting property without permission is considered by property owners and civic authorities as defacement and vandalism, which is a punishable crime, citing the use of graffiti by street gangs to mark territory or to serve as an indicator of gang-related activities. Graffiti has become visualized as a growing urban "problem" for many cities in industrialized nations, spreading from the New York City subway system and Philadelphia in the early 1970s to the rest of the United States and Europe and other world regions

 

"Graffiti" (usually both singular and plural) and the rare singular form "graffito" are from the Italian word graffiato ("scratched"). The term "graffiti" is used in art history for works of art produced by scratching a design into a surface. A related term is "sgraffito", which involves scratching through one layer of pigment to reveal another beneath it. This technique was primarily used by potters who would glaze their wares and then scratch a design into them. In ancient times graffiti were carved on walls with a sharp object, although sometimes chalk or coal were used. The word originates from Greek γράφειν—graphein—meaning "to write".

 

The term graffiti originally referred to the inscriptions, figure drawings, and such, found on the walls of ancient sepulchres or ruins, as in the Catacombs of Rome or at Pompeii. Historically, these writings were not considered vanadlism, which today is considered part of the definition of graffiti.

 

The only known source of the Safaitic language, an ancient form of Arabic, is from graffiti: inscriptions scratched on to the surface of rocks and boulders in the predominantly basalt desert of southern Syria, eastern Jordan and northern Saudi Arabia. Safaitic dates from the first century BC to the fourth century AD.

 

Some of the oldest cave paintings in the world are 40,000 year old ones found in Australia. The oldest written graffiti was found in ancient Rome around 2500 years ago. Most graffiti from the time was boasts about sexual experiences Graffiti in Ancient Rome was a form of communication, and was not considered vandalism.

 

Ancient tourists visiting the 5th-century citadel at Sigiriya in Sri Lanka write their names and commentary over the "mirror wall", adding up to over 1800 individual graffiti produced there between the 6th and 18th centuries. Most of the graffiti refer to the frescoes of semi-nude females found there. One reads:

 

Wet with cool dew drops

fragrant with perfume from the flowers

came the gentle breeze

jasmine and water lily

dance in the spring sunshine

side-long glances

of the golden-hued ladies

stab into my thoughts

heaven itself cannot take my mind

as it has been captivated by one lass

among the five hundred I have seen here.

 

Among the ancient political graffiti examples were Arab satirist poems. Yazid al-Himyari, an Umayyad Arab and Persian poet, was most known for writing his political poetry on the walls between Sajistan and Basra, manifesting a strong hatred towards the Umayyad regime and its walis, and people used to read and circulate them very widely.

 

Graffiti, known as Tacherons, were frequently scratched on Romanesque Scandinavian church walls. When Renaissance artists such as Pinturicchio, Raphael, Michelangelo, Ghirlandaio, or Filippino Lippi descended into the ruins of Nero's Domus Aurea, they carved or painted their names and returned to initiate the grottesche style of decoration.

 

There are also examples of graffiti occurring in American history, such as Independence Rock, a national landmark along the Oregon Trail.

 

Later, French soldiers carved their names on monuments during the Napoleonic campaign of Egypt in the 1790s. Lord Byron's survives on one of the columns of the Temple of Poseidon at Cape Sounion in Attica, Greece.

 

The oldest known example of graffiti "monikers" found on traincars created by hobos and railworkers since the late 1800s. The Bozo Texino monikers were documented by filmmaker Bill Daniel in his 2005 film, Who is Bozo Texino?.

 

In World War II, an inscription on a wall at the fortress of Verdun was seen as an illustration of the US response twice in a generation to the wrongs of the Old World:

 

During World War II and for decades after, the phrase "Kilroy was here" with an accompanying illustration was widespread throughout the world, due to its use by American troops and ultimately filtering into American popular culture. Shortly after the death of Charlie Parker (nicknamed "Yardbird" or "Bird"), graffiti began appearing around New York with the words "Bird Lives".

 

Modern graffiti art has its origins with young people in 1960s and 70s in New York City and Philadelphia. Tags were the first form of stylised contemporary graffiti. Eventually, throw-ups and pieces evolved with the desire to create larger art. Writers used spray paint and other kind of materials to leave tags or to create images on the sides subway trains. and eventually moved into the city after the NYC metro began to buy new trains and paint over graffiti.

 

While the art had many advocates and appreciators—including the cultural critic Norman Mailer—others, including New York City mayor Ed Koch, considered it to be defacement of public property, and saw it as a form of public blight. The ‘taggers’ called what they did ‘writing’—though an important 1974 essay by Mailer referred to it using the term ‘graffiti.’

 

Contemporary graffiti style has been heavily influenced by hip hop culture and the myriad international styles derived from Philadelphia and New York City Subway graffiti; however, there are many other traditions of notable graffiti in the twentieth century. Graffiti have long appeared on building walls, in latrines, railroad boxcars, subways, and bridges.

 

An early graffito outside of New York or Philadelphia was the inscription in London reading "Clapton is God" in reference to the guitarist Eric Clapton. Creating the cult of the guitar hero, the phrase was spray-painted by an admirer on a wall in an Islington, north London in the autumn of 1967. The graffito was captured in a photograph, in which a dog is urinating on the wall.

 

Films like Style Wars in the 80s depicting famous writers such as Skeme, Dondi, MinOne, and ZEPHYR reinforced graffiti's role within New York's emerging hip-hop culture. Although many officers of the New York City Police Department found this film to be controversial, Style Wars is still recognized as the most prolific film representation of what was going on within the young hip hop culture of the early 1980s. Fab 5 Freddy and Futura 2000 took hip hop graffiti to Paris and London as part of the New York City Rap Tour in 1983

 

Commercialization and entrance into mainstream pop culture

Main article: Commercial graffiti

With the popularity and legitimization of graffiti has come a level of commercialization. In 2001, computer giant IBM launched an advertising campaign in Chicago and San Francisco which involved people spray painting on sidewalks a peace symbol, a heart, and a penguin (Linux mascot), to represent "Peace, Love, and Linux." IBM paid Chicago and San Francisco collectively US$120,000 for punitive damages and clean-up costs.

 

In 2005, a similar ad campaign was launched by Sony and executed by its advertising agency in New York, Chicago, Atlanta, Philadelphia, Los Angeles, and Miami, to market its handheld PSP gaming system. In this campaign, taking notice of the legal problems of the IBM campaign, Sony paid building owners for the rights to paint on their buildings "a collection of dizzy-eyed urban kids playing with the PSP as if it were a skateboard, a paddle, or a rocking horse".

 

Tristan Manco wrote that Brazil "boasts a unique and particularly rich, graffiti scene ... [earning] it an international reputation as the place to go for artistic inspiration". Graffiti "flourishes in every conceivable space in Brazil's cities". Artistic parallels "are often drawn between the energy of São Paulo today and 1970s New York". The "sprawling metropolis", of São Paulo has "become the new shrine to graffiti"; Manco alludes to "poverty and unemployment ... [and] the epic struggles and conditions of the country's marginalised peoples", and to "Brazil's chronic poverty", as the main engines that "have fuelled a vibrant graffiti culture". In world terms, Brazil has "one of the most uneven distributions of income. Laws and taxes change frequently". Such factors, Manco argues, contribute to a very fluid society, riven with those economic divisions and social tensions that underpin and feed the "folkloric vandalism and an urban sport for the disenfranchised", that is South American graffiti art.

 

Prominent Brazilian writers include Os Gêmeos, Boleta, Nunca, Nina, Speto, Tikka, and T.Freak. Their artistic success and involvement in commercial design ventures has highlighted divisions within the Brazilian graffiti community between adherents of the cruder transgressive form of pichação and the more conventionally artistic values of the practitioners of grafite.

 

Graffiti in the Middle East has emerged slowly, with taggers operating in Egypt, Lebanon, the Gulf countries like Bahrain or the United Arab Emirates, Israel, and in Iran. The major Iranian newspaper Hamshahri has published two articles on illegal writers in the city with photographic coverage of Iranian artist A1one's works on Tehran walls. Tokyo-based design magazine, PingMag, has interviewed A1one and featured photographs of his work. The Israeli West Bank barrier has become a site for graffiti, reminiscent in this sense of the Berlin Wall. Many writers in Israel come from other places around the globe, such as JUIF from Los Angeles and DEVIONE from London. The religious reference "נ נח נחמ נחמן מאומן" ("Na Nach Nachma Nachman Meuman") is commonly seen in graffiti around Israel.

 

Graffiti has played an important role within the street art scene in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA), especially following the events of the Arab Spring of 2011 or the Sudanese Revolution of 2018/19. Graffiti is a tool of expression in the context of conflict in the region, allowing people to raise their voices politically and socially. Famous street artist Banksy has had an important effect in the street art scene in the MENA area, especially in Palestine where some of his works are located in the West Bank barrier and Bethlehem.

 

There are also a large number of graffiti influences in Southeast Asian countries that mostly come from modern Western culture, such as Malaysia, where graffiti have long been a common sight in Malaysia's capital city, Kuala Lumpur. Since 2010, the country has begun hosting a street festival to encourage all generations and people from all walks of life to enjoy and encourage Malaysian street culture.

 

The modern-day graffitists can be found with an arsenal of various materials that allow for a successful production of a piece. This includes such techniques as scribing. However, spray paint in aerosol cans is the number one medium for graffiti. From this commodity comes different styles, technique, and abilities to form master works of graffiti. Spray paint can be found at hardware and art stores and comes in virtually every color.

 

Stencil graffiti is created by cutting out shapes and designs in a stiff material (such as cardboard or subject folders) to form an overall design or image. The stencil is then placed on the "canvas" gently and with quick, easy strokes of the aerosol can, the image begins to appear on the intended surface.

 

Some of the first examples were created in 1981 by artists Blek le Rat in Paris, in 1982 by Jef Aerosol in Tours (France); by 1985 stencils had appeared in other cities including New York City, Sydney, and Melbourne, where they were documented by American photographer Charles Gatewood and Australian photographer Rennie Ellis

 

Tagging is the practice of someone spray-painting "their name, initial or logo onto a public surface" in a handstyle unique to the writer. Tags were the first form of modern graffiti.

 

Modern graffiti art often incorporates additional arts and technologies. For example, Graffiti Research Lab has encouraged the use of projected images and magnetic light-emitting diodes (throwies) as new media for graffitists. yarnbombing is another recent form of graffiti. Yarnbombers occasionally target previous graffiti for modification, which had been avoided among the majority of graffitists.

 

Theories on the use of graffiti by avant-garde artists have a history dating back at least to the Asger Jorn, who in 1962 painting declared in a graffiti-like gesture "the avant-garde won't give up"

 

Many contemporary analysts and even art critics have begun to see artistic value in some graffiti and to recognize it as a form of public art. According to many art researchers, particularly in the Netherlands and in Los Angeles, that type of public art is, in fact an effective tool of social emancipation or, in the achievement of a political goal

 

In times of conflict, such murals have offered a means of communication and self-expression for members of these socially, ethnically, or racially divided communities, and have proven themselves as effective tools in establishing dialog and thus, of addressing cleavages in the long run. The Berlin Wall was also extensively covered by graffiti reflecting social pressures relating to the oppressive Soviet rule over the GDR.

 

Many artists involved with graffiti are also concerned with the similar activity of stenciling. Essentially, this entails stenciling a print of one or more colors using spray-paint. Recognized while exhibiting and publishing several of her coloured stencils and paintings portraying the Sri Lankan Civil War and urban Britain in the early 2000s, graffitists Mathangi Arulpragasam, aka M.I.A., has also become known for integrating her imagery of political violence into her music videos for singles "Galang" and "Bucky Done Gun", and her cover art. Stickers of her artwork also often appear around places such as London in Brick Lane, stuck to lamp posts and street signs, she having become a muse for other graffitists and painters worldwide in cities including Seville.

 

Graffitist believes that art should be on display for everyone in the public eye or in plain sight, not hidden away in a museum or a gallery. Art should color the streets, not the inside of some building. Graffiti is a form of art that cannot be owned or bought. It does not last forever, it is temporary, yet one of a kind. It is a form of self promotion for the artist that can be displayed anywhere form sidewalks, roofs, subways, building wall, etc. Art to them is for everyone and should be showed to everyone for free.

 

Graffiti is a way of communicating and a way of expressing what one feels in the moment. It is both art and a functional thing that can warn people of something or inform people of something. However, graffiti is to some people a form of art, but to some a form of vandalism. And many graffitists choose to protect their identities and remain anonymous or to hinder prosecution.

 

With the commercialization of graffiti (and hip hop in general), in most cases, even with legally painted "graffiti" art, graffitists tend to choose anonymity. This may be attributed to various reasons or a combination of reasons. Graffiti still remains the one of four hip hop elements that is not considered "performance art" despite the image of the "singing and dancing star" that sells hip hop culture to the mainstream. Being a graphic form of art, it might also be said that many graffitists still fall in the category of the introverted archetypal artist.

 

Banksy is one of the world's most notorious and popular street artists who continues to remain faceless in today's society. He is known for his political, anti-war stencil art mainly in Bristol, England, but his work may be seen anywhere from Los Angeles to Palestine. In the UK, Banksy is the most recognizable icon for this cultural artistic movement and keeps his identity a secret to avoid arrest. Much of Banksy's artwork may be seen around the streets of London and surrounding suburbs, although he has painted pictures throughout the world, including the Middle East, where he has painted on Israel's controversial West Bank barrier with satirical images of life on the other side. One depicted a hole in the wall with an idyllic beach, while another shows a mountain landscape on the other side. A number of exhibitions also have taken place since 2000, and recent works of art have fetched vast sums of money. Banksy's art is a prime example of the classic controversy: vandalism vs. art. Art supporters endorse his work distributed in urban areas as pieces of art and some councils, such as Bristol and Islington, have officially protected them, while officials of other areas have deemed his work to be vandalism and have removed it.

 

Pixnit is another artist who chooses to keep her identity from the general public. Her work focuses on beauty and design aspects of graffiti as opposed to Banksy's anti-government shock value. Her paintings are often of flower designs above shops and stores in her local urban area of Cambridge, Massachusetts. Some store owners endorse her work and encourage others to do similar work as well. "One of the pieces was left up above Steve's Kitchen, because it looks pretty awesome"- Erin Scott, the manager of New England Comics in Allston, Massachusetts.

 

Graffiti artists may become offended if photographs of their art are published in a commercial context without their permission. In March 2020, the Finnish graffiti artist Psyke expressed his displeasure at the newspaper Ilta-Sanomat publishing a photograph of a Peugeot 208 in an article about new cars, with his graffiti prominently shown on the background. The artist claims he does not want his art being used in commercial context, not even if he were to receive compensation.

 

Territorial graffiti marks urban neighborhoods with tags and logos to differentiate certain groups from others. These images are meant to show outsiders a stern look at whose turf is whose. The subject matter of gang-related graffiti consists of cryptic symbols and initials strictly fashioned with unique calligraphies. Gang members use graffiti to designate membership throughout the gang, to differentiate rivals and associates and, most commonly, to mark borders which are both territorial and ideological.

 

Graffiti has been used as a means of advertising both legally and illegally. Bronx-based TATS CRU has made a name for themselves doing legal advertising campaigns for companies such as Coca-Cola, McDonald's, Toyota, and MTV. In the UK, Covent Garden's Boxfresh used stencil images of a Zapatista revolutionary in the hopes that cross referencing would promote their store.

 

Smirnoff hired artists to use reverse graffiti (the use of high pressure hoses to clean dirty surfaces to leave a clean image in the surrounding dirt) to increase awareness of their product.

 

Graffiti often has a reputation as part of a subculture that rebels against authority, although the considerations of the practitioners often diverge and can relate to a wide range of attitudes. It can express a political practice and can form just one tool in an array of resistance techniques. One early example includes the anarcho-punk band Crass, who conducted a campaign of stenciling anti-war, anarchist, feminist, and anti-consumerist messages throughout the London Underground system during the late 1970s and early 1980s. In Amsterdam graffiti was a major part of the punk scene. The city was covered with names such as "De Zoot", "Vendex", and "Dr Rat". To document the graffiti a punk magazine was started that was called Gallery Anus. So when hip hop came to Europe in the early 1980s there was already a vibrant graffiti culture.

 

The student protests and general strike of May 1968 saw Paris bedecked in revolutionary, anarchistic, and situationist slogans such as L'ennui est contre-révolutionnaire ("Boredom is counterrevolutionary") and Lisez moins, vivez plus ("Read less, live more"). While not exhaustive, the graffiti gave a sense of the 'millenarian' and rebellious spirit, tempered with a good deal of verbal wit, of the strikers.

 

I think graffiti writing is a way of defining what our generation is like. Excuse the French, we're not a bunch of p---- artists. Traditionally artists have been considered soft and mellow people, a little bit kooky. Maybe we're a little bit more like pirates that way. We defend our territory, whatever space we steal to paint on, we defend it fiercely.

 

The developments of graffiti art which took place in art galleries and colleges as well as "on the street" or "underground", contributed to the resurfacing in the 1990s of a far more overtly politicized art form in the subvertising, culture jamming, or tactical media movements. These movements or styles tend to classify the artists by their relationship to their social and economic contexts, since, in most countries, graffiti art remains illegal in many forms except when using non-permanent paint. Since the 1990s with the rise of Street Art, a growing number of artists are switching to non-permanent paints and non-traditional forms of painting.

 

Contemporary practitioners, accordingly, have varied and often conflicting practices. Some individuals, such as Alexander Brener, have used the medium to politicize other art forms, and have used the prison sentences enforced on them as a means of further protest. The practices of anonymous groups and individuals also vary widely, and practitioners by no means always agree with each other's practices. For example, the anti-capitalist art group the Space Hijackers did a piece in 2004 about the contradiction between the capitalistic elements of Banksy and his use of political imagery.

 

Berlin human rights activist Irmela Mensah-Schramm has received global media attention and numerous awards for her 35-year campaign of effacing neo-Nazi and other right-wing extremist graffiti throughout Germany, often by altering hate speech in humorous ways.

 

In Serbian capital, Belgrade, the graffiti depicting a uniformed former general of Serb army and war criminal, convicted at ICTY for war crimes and crimes against humanity, including genocide and ethnic cleansing in Bosnian War, Ratko Mladić, appeared in a military salute alongside the words "General, thank to your mother". Aleks Eror, Berlin-based journalist, explains how "veneration of historical and wartime figures" through street art is not a new phenomenon in the region of former Yugoslavia, and that "in most cases is firmly focused on the future, rather than retelling the past". Eror is not only analyst pointing to danger of such an expressions for the region's future. In a long expose on the subject of Bosnian genocide denial, at Balkan Diskurs magazine and multimedia platform website, Kristina Gadže and Taylor Whitsell referred to these experiences as a young generations' "cultural heritage", in which young are being exposed to celebration and affirmation of war-criminals as part of their "formal education" and "inheritance".

 

There are numerous examples of genocide denial through celebration and affirmation of war criminals throughout the region of Western Balkans inhabited by Serbs using this form of artistic expression. Several more of these graffiti are found in Serbian capital, and many more across Serbia and Bosnian and Herzegovinian administrative entity, Republika Srpska, which is the ethnic Serbian majority enclave. Critics point that Serbia as a state, is willing to defend the mural of convicted war criminal, and have no intention to react on cases of genocide denial, noting that Interior Minister of Serbia, Aleksandar Vulin decision to ban any gathering with an intent to remove the mural, with the deployment of riot police, sends the message of "tacit endorsement". Consequently, on 9 November 2021, Serbian heavy police in riot gear, with graffiti creators and their supporters, blocked the access to the mural to prevent human rights groups and other activists to paint over it and mark the International Day Against Fascism and Antisemitism in that way, and even arrested two civic activist for throwing eggs at the graffiti.

 

Graffiti may also be used as an offensive expression. This form of graffiti may be difficult to identify, as it is mostly removed by the local authority (as councils which have adopted strategies of criminalization also strive to remove graffiti quickly). Therefore, existing racist graffiti is mostly more subtle and at first sight, not easily recognized as "racist". It can then be understood only if one knows the relevant "local code" (social, historical, political, temporal, and spatial), which is seen as heteroglot and thus a 'unique set of conditions' in a cultural context.

 

A spatial code for example, could be that there is a certain youth group in an area that is engaging heavily in racist activities. So, for residents (knowing the local code), a graffiti containing only the name or abbreviation of this gang already is a racist expression, reminding the offended people of their gang activities. Also a graffiti is in most cases, the herald of more serious criminal activity to come. A person who does not know these gang activities would not be able to recognize the meaning of this graffiti. Also if a tag of this youth group or gang is placed on a building occupied by asylum seekers, for example, its racist character is even stronger.

By making the graffiti less explicit (as adapted to social and legal constraints), these drawings are less likely to be removed, but do not lose their threatening and offensive character.

 

Elsewhere, activists in Russia have used painted caricatures of local officials with their mouths as potholes, to show their anger about the poor state of the roads. In Manchester, England, a graffitists painted obscene images around potholes, which often resulted in them being repaired within 48 hours.

 

In the early 1980s, the first art galleries to show graffitists to the public were Fashion Moda in the Bronx, Now Gallery and Fun Gallery, both in the East Village, Manhattan.

 

A 2006 exhibition at the Brooklyn Museum displayed graffiti as an art form that began in New York's outer boroughs and reached great heights in the early 1980s with the work of Crash, Lee, Daze, Keith Haring, and Jean-Michel Basquiat. It displayed 22 works by New York graffitists, including Crash, Daze, and Lady Pink. In an article about the exhibition in the magazine Time Out, curator Charlotta Kotik said that she hoped the exhibition would cause viewers to rethink their assumptions about graffiti.

 

From the 1970s onwards, Burhan Doğançay photographed urban walls all over the world; these he then archived for use as sources of inspiration for his painterly works. The project today known as "Walls of the World" grew beyond even his own expectations and comprises about 30,000 individual images. It spans a period of 40 years across five continents and 114 countries. In 1982, photographs from this project comprised a one-man exhibition titled "Les murs murmurent, ils crient, ils chantent ..." (The walls whisper, shout and sing ...) at the Centre Georges Pompidou in Paris.

 

In Australia, art historians have judged some local graffiti of sufficient creative merit to rank them firmly within the arts. Oxford University Press's art history text Australian Painting 1788–2000 concludes with a long discussion of graffiti's key place within contemporary visual culture, including the work of several Australian practitioners.

 

Between March and April 2009, 150 artists exhibited 300 pieces of graffiti at the Grand Palais in Paris.

 

Spray paint has many negative environmental effects. The paint contains toxic chemicals, and the can uses volatile hydrocarbon gases to spray the paint onto a surface.

 

Volatile organic compound (VOC) leads to ground level ozone formation and most of graffiti related emissions are VOCs. A 2010 paper estimates 4,862 tons of VOCs were released in the United States in activities related to graffiti.

  

In China, Mao Zedong in the 1920s used revolutionary slogans and paintings in public places to galvanize the country's communist movement.

 

Based on different national conditions, many people believe that China's attitude towards Graffiti is fierce, but in fact, according to Lance Crayon in his film Spray Paint Beijing: Graffiti in the Capital of China, Graffiti is generally accepted in Beijing, with artists not seeing much police interference. Political and religiously sensitive graffiti, however, is not allowed.

 

In Hong Kong, Tsang Tsou Choi was known as the King of Kowloon for his calligraphy graffiti over many years, in which he claimed ownership of the area. Now some of his work is preserved officially.

 

In Taiwan, the government has made some concessions to graffitists. Since 2005 they have been allowed to freely display their work along some sections of riverside retaining walls in designated "Graffiti Zones". From 2007, Taipei's department of cultural affairs also began permitting graffiti on fences around major public construction sites. Department head Yong-ping Lee (李永萍) stated, "We will promote graffiti starting with the public sector, and then later in the private sector too. It's our goal to beautify the city with graffiti". The government later helped organize a graffiti contest in Ximending, a popular shopping district. graffitists caught working outside of these designated areas still face fines up to NT$6,000 under a department of environmental protection regulation. However, Taiwanese authorities can be relatively lenient, one veteran police officer stating anonymously, "Unless someone complains about vandalism, we won't get involved. We don't go after it proactively."

 

In 1993, after several expensive cars in Singapore were spray-painted, the police arrested a student from the Singapore American School, Michael P. Fay, questioned him, and subsequently charged him with vandalism. Fay pleaded guilty to vandalizing a car in addition to stealing road signs. Under the 1966 Vandalism Act of Singapore, originally passed to curb the spread of communist graffiti in Singapore, the court sentenced him to four months in jail, a fine of S$3,500 (US$2,233), and a caning. The New York Times ran several editorials and op-eds that condemned the punishment and called on the American public to flood the Singaporean embassy with protests. Although the Singapore government received many calls for clemency, Fay's caning took place in Singapore on 5 May 1994. Fay had originally received a sentence of six strokes of the cane, but the presiding president of Singapore, Ong Teng Cheong, agreed to reduce his caning sentence to four lashes.

 

In South Korea, Park Jung-soo was fined two million South Korean won by the Seoul Central District Court for spray-painting a rat on posters of the G-20 Summit a few days before the event in November 2011. Park alleged that the initial in "G-20" sounds like the Korean word for "rat", but Korean government prosecutors alleged that Park was making a derogatory statement about the president of South Korea, Lee Myung-bak, the host of the summit. This case led to public outcry and debate on the lack of government tolerance and in support of freedom of expression. The court ruled that the painting, "an ominous creature like a rat" amounts to "an organized criminal activity" and upheld the fine while denying the prosecution's request for imprisonment for Park.

 

In Europe, community cleaning squads have responded to graffiti, in some cases with reckless abandon, as when in 1992 in France a local Scout group, attempting to remove modern graffiti, damaged two prehistoric paintings of bison in the Cave of Mayrière supérieure near the French village of Bruniquel in Tarn-et-Garonne, earning them the 1992 Ig Nobel Prize in archeology.

 

In September 2006, the European Parliament directed the European Commission to create urban environment policies to prevent and eliminate dirt, litter, graffiti, animal excrement, and excessive noise from domestic and vehicular music systems in European cities, along with other concerns over urban life.

 

In Budapest, Hungary, both a city-backed movement called I Love Budapest and a special police division tackle the problem, including the provision of approved areas.

 

The Anti-social Behaviour Act 2003 became Britain's latest anti-graffiti legislation. In August 2004, the Keep Britain Tidy campaign issued a press release calling for zero tolerance of graffiti and supporting proposals such as issuing "on the spot" fines to graffiti offenders and banning the sale of aerosol paint to anyone under the age of 16. The press release also condemned the use of graffiti images in advertising and in music videos, arguing that real-world experience of graffiti stood far removed from its often-portrayed "cool" or "edgy'" image.

 

To back the campaign, 123 Members of Parliament (MPs) (including then Prime Minister Tony Blair), signed a charter which stated: "Graffiti is not art, it's crime. On behalf of my constituents, I will do all I can to rid our community of this problem."

 

In the UK, city councils have the power to take action against the owner of any property that has been defaced under the Anti-social Behaviour Act 2003 (as amended by the Clean Neighbourhoods and Environment Act 2005) or, in certain cases, the Highways Act. This is often used against owners of property that are complacent in allowing protective boards to be defaced so long as the property is not damaged.

 

In July 2008, a conspiracy charge was used to convict graffitists for the first time. After a three-month police surveillance operation, nine members of the DPM crew were convicted of conspiracy to commit criminal damage costing at least £1 million. Five of them received prison sentences, ranging from eighteen months to two years. The unprecedented scale of the investigation and the severity of the sentences rekindled public debate over whether graffiti should be considered art or crime.

 

Some councils, like those of Stroud and Loerrach, provide approved areas in the town where graffitists can showcase their talents, including underpasses, car parks, and walls that might otherwise prove a target for the "spray and run".

 

Graffiti Tunnel, University of Sydney at Camperdown (2009)

In an effort to reduce vandalism, many cities in Australia have designated walls or areas exclusively for use by graffitists. One early example is the "Graffiti Tunnel" located at the Camperdown Campus of the University of Sydney, which is available for use by any student at the university to tag, advertise, poster, and paint. Advocates of this idea suggest that this discourages petty vandalism yet encourages artists to take their time and produce great art, without worry of being caught or arrested for vandalism or trespassing.[108][109] Others disagree with this approach, arguing that the presence of legal graffiti walls does not demonstrably reduce illegal graffiti elsewhere. Some local government areas throughout Australia have introduced "anti-graffiti squads", who clean graffiti in the area, and such crews as BCW (Buffers Can't Win) have taken steps to keep one step ahead of local graffiti cleaners.

 

Many state governments have banned the sale or possession of spray paint to those under the age of 18 (age of majority). However, a number of local governments in Victoria have taken steps to recognize the cultural heritage value of some examples of graffiti, such as prominent political graffiti. Tough new graffiti laws have been introduced in Australia with fines of up to A$26,000 and two years in prison.

 

Melbourne is a prominent graffiti city of Australia with many of its lanes being tourist attractions, such as Hosier Lane in particular, a popular destination for photographers, wedding photography, and backdrops for corporate print advertising. The Lonely Planet travel guide cites Melbourne's street as a major attraction. All forms of graffiti, including sticker art, poster, stencil art, and wheatpasting, can be found in many places throughout the city. Prominent street art precincts include; Fitzroy, Collingwood, Northcote, Brunswick, St. Kilda, and the CBD, where stencil and sticker art is prominent. As one moves farther away from the city, mostly along suburban train lines, graffiti tags become more prominent. Many international artists such as Banksy have left their work in Melbourne and in early 2008 a perspex screen was installed to prevent a Banksy stencil art piece from being destroyed, it has survived since 2003 through the respect of local street artists avoiding posting over it, although it has recently had paint tipped over it.

 

In February 2008 Helen Clark, the New Zealand prime minister at that time, announced a government crackdown on tagging and other forms of graffiti vandalism, describing it as a destructive crime representing an invasion of public and private property. New legislation subsequently adopted included a ban on the sale of paint spray cans to persons under 18 and increases in maximum fines for the offence from NZ$200 to NZ$2,000 or extended community service. The issue of tagging become a widely debated one following an incident in Auckland during January 2008 in which a middle-aged property owner stabbed one of two teenage taggers to death and was subsequently convicted of manslaughter.

 

Graffiti databases have increased in the past decade because they allow vandalism incidents to be fully documented against an offender and help the police and prosecution charge and prosecute offenders for multiple counts of vandalism. They also provide law enforcement the ability to rapidly search for an offender's moniker or tag in a simple, effective, and comprehensive way. These systems can also help track costs of damage to a city to help allocate an anti-graffiti budget. The theory is that when an offender is caught putting up graffiti, they are not just charged with one count of vandalism; they can be held accountable for all the other damage for which they are responsible. This has two main benefits for law enforcement. One, it sends a signal to the offenders that their vandalism is being tracked. Two, a city can seek restitution from offenders for all the damage that they have committed, not merely a single incident. These systems give law enforcement personnel real-time, street-level intelligence that allows them not only to focus on the worst graffiti offenders and their damage, but also to monitor potential gang violence that is associated with the graffiti.

 

Many restrictions of civil gang injunctions are designed to help address and protect the physical environment and limit graffiti. Provisions of gang injunctions include things such as restricting the possession of marker pens, spray paint cans, or other sharp objects capable of defacing private or public property; spray painting, or marking with marker pens, scratching, applying stickers, or otherwise applying graffiti on any public or private property, including, but not limited to the street, alley, residences, block walls, and fences, vehicles or any other real or personal property. Some injunctions contain wording that restricts damaging or vandalizing both public and private property, including but not limited to any vehicle, light fixture, door, fence, wall, gate, window, building, street sign, utility box, telephone box, tree, or power pole.

 

To help address many of these issues, many local jurisdictions have set up graffiti abatement hotlines, where citizens can call in and report vandalism and have it removed. San Diego's hotline receives more than 5,000 calls per year, in addition to reporting the graffiti, callers can learn more about prevention. One of the complaints about these hotlines is the response time; there is often a lag time between a property owner calling about the graffiti and its removal. The length of delay should be a consideration for any jurisdiction planning on operating a hotline. Local jurisdictions must convince the callers that their complaint of vandalism will be a priority and cleaned off right away. If the jurisdiction does not have the resources to respond to complaints in a timely manner, the value of the hotline diminishes. Crews must be able to respond to individual service calls made to the graffiti hotline as well as focus on cleanup near schools, parks, and major intersections and transit routes to have the biggest impact. Some cities offer a reward for information leading to the arrest and prosecution of suspects for tagging or graffiti related vandalism. The amount of the reward is based on the information provided, and the action taken.

 

When police obtain search warrants in connection with a vandalism investigation, they are often seeking judicial approval to look for items such as cans of spray paint and nozzles from other kinds of aerosol sprays; etching tools, or other sharp or pointed objects, which could be used to etch or scratch glass and other hard surfaces; permanent marking pens, markers, or paint sticks; evidence of membership or affiliation with any gang or tagging crew; paraphernalia including any reference to "(tagger's name)"; any drawings, writing, objects, or graffiti depicting taggers' names, initials, logos, monikers, slogans, or any mention of tagging crew membership; and any newspaper clippings relating to graffiti crime.

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Start of a series I'm going to be doing.

Not sure exactly how it's going to go yet, but it's going to be inspired by travel and involve this map. :)

 

I had suuuch a wonderful day. Spent the whole time with my mom out and about and I got this glorious map, a fantabulous sweater, and decided on a hair style/dye that I'm gonna do for my trip! Oh, lifee. c:

  

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Warm colours adorn a pair of Class 37 locomotives, as Network Rail loco 97304 'Rheilffordd Talyllyn Railway' and HN Rail loco 37405 pull into Chester station from Saltney Junction. The pair arrive double heading the 6C56 loaded timber from Aberystwyth to Chirk, which involves both locos running round and heading back towards Saltney Junction in order to gain access to Chirk Kronospan

Sometimes a "trip" to take a pic, just involves walking to the backyard.

Shot 2:35 on a cloudy afternoon. Used Neewer Vision5 strobe at full power with a 60cm x 60cm Softbox. Nikon D800, Tamron 28-75 @44mm. ISO 200, 1/800 @ f/8

i am not immune to gambling. i like it in some ways. i like the risk involved. as vices go, this is a very interesting one. heroin, cocaine, alcohol. all of them involve highs and lows. but when you study the available information, and you make a choice, and hand over your money and wait, staring or listening to the decision as it unfolds, there is no sense of anticipation like it in this world. nothing can give you that sense of gratification. the routine, the job, the family, the debt, it all goes away. if nothing else, it nurtures a sense of identity: I made a decision, i took a risk, and I WAS RIGHT.

 

unfortunately, gambling is an institution that is laughed at by the higher echelons of society. they gamble too, but they can afford to lose. gambling is the greatest and the worst of all vices. homes are lost. jobs are lost. families are lost. these places should be torn down. they are slaughterhouses, they are houses of torture.

something fatally flawed exists, not in our brains, but in how society interacts and manipulates our brains. the allure of the win. the material world bombarding us with messages.

 

january is statistically the worst for the working man's finances. but this is an all year round thing. relentlessly tugging at the poor, to part with their cash on a long shot, and they leave these places empty handed into the unforgiving light.

 

uk.youtube.com/watch?v=0fv521fdbhw

 

The imposing two-tone blue totally-restored vehicle, which was discovered in derelict state in Indonesia in the 1980s, was designed to revive Mercedes-Benz’s image as a luxury carmaker following the devastation of its German factories in World War II.

The car was actually a prototype model of a luxury coupe and never went into production because of Germany's involvement in World War II, which has led to the devastation of the company's factories and other industrial facilities in the country. With the evolution of a much more advanced powertrain components like the single overhead camshaft engine, the platform of the 1948 Mercedes-Benz W142 A320 prototype was no longer used and the car was sold to a Dutch businessman and brought the car to Indonesia.

The car remained there for almost 40 years before being discovered by chance by an Australian rare car antiques seeker and transported to Melbourne in the late 1980s. At that time it was in a very bad condition, badly painted red and in an absolutely unusable condition. After an expert assessment by specially invited director of the Mercedes-Benz Museum, Max-Gerritt von Pein, the car's authentic status was confirmed and this gave impetus to its complete restoration. Payne is amazed not only that the vehicle has survived, but that it has been preserved in its original form. The work to return the convertible to its original factory design involved complete disassembly, which revealed traces of the original two-tone blue paint under the door hinges, and after removing the vinyl trim, the original two-tone leather upholstery was also revealed. With the help of specialists from Melbourne, the one-of-a-kind was fully restored in early 2006 to bring it as close as possible to its original specification.

The Mercedes-Benz W142 A320 cabrio measures about 5.5 meters (18.04 feet) and has 142-inch long wheelbase. Outside, the rare Mercedes-Benz cabriolet features a sleek two-tone blue exterior color and a soft top roof. On the inside, the restored leather seats remains in tack. The car is equipped with a 59kW side-valve engine under its hood.

Although the car went through a complete restoration, it looks like the original Mercedes-Benz W142 A320 prototype model developed in 1948, according to Max-Gerritt von Pein, the head of Mercedes-Benz Museum who inspected the car.

The 1948 W142 therefore remained a one-off prototype and eventually escaped into private hands, surviving today as a unique example of what might have been.

Sources: newatlas.com ; shannons.com.au ; Techno Classica Essen 2012

Double exposure involving hands and feeling.

(RAP) The reason I decided to use these images as a 'Diptych' is because the one on the right certainly releases the emotion of strain and anger due to its clenched up fingers etc to convey that feeling from a mistake they had made. I have used the red and sharp blood toned colours (from changing the saturation and more) to really present the anger on this side.

On the left 'Diptych' the hands are more relaxed and the toning is blue which is a more calm colour not like the right image. However it still has the accents of anger and i did this because you this person can not forget his mistake.

The reason I have not stated the mistake is because it will leave the spectator to let them think about it and how their mistakes may affect them now.

Prior to his involvement in the War of the Rough Wooing, Sir John Home of Cowdenknowes became embroiled in the feud between the Kerrs and the Scotts. This feud arose when James V, attempting to escape from the supervision of the Earl of Angus, enlisted the help of the Scotts of Buccleuch. They, with 600 men from Liddesdale and Annandale, attacked the royal train near Melrose. Their attempt to liberate the king failed and Kerr of Cessford was killed during the attack. Twenty-six years later, in 1552, the Kerrs had their revenge when a group of Kerr supporters waylaid Scott of Buccleuch in the High Street of Edinburgh, Buccleuch being slain by - Sir John Home of Cowdenknowes.

 

Following the death of Sir John Home in 1573 Cowdenknowes was inherited by his eldest son, Sir James Home of Synlaws. He was clearly a man of parts, being appointed Warden of the East March (1573); a Gentleman of the Bedchamber to James VI (1580); Baillie of the Earldom of the March, and a Privy Councilor. During the Earl of Arran’s regime, Sir James was imprisoned in Blackness Castle and ordered to give up the house and fortalice of Cowdenknowes, however on Arran’s fall, he was rewarded with the Captaincy of Edinburgh Castle.

 

Sir James Home greatly added to whatever work his father carried out, however only the ground floor of what he built survives, as the ground floor of the centre section of the current house as viewed from here - ie the section covered in wisteria and the wings to either side of it. This part of the house still retains 5 vaulted chambers - a sure sign that it dates back to the fortified era. There appear to have been two entrances, one in each of the wings. That in the wing to the left is surrounded by some nice stone carving and defended by a quatrefoil-shaped gunloop to the left (seen better in the previous photo). The other door was in the re-entrant of the right-hand tower and has a decorative panel above it with the initials S.I.H. in monogram for Sir James Home.

 

Above first floor level in the small wing to the right (east) of the main block, the walling is projected slightly on a course of corbelling, over which runs an inscription that reads:

 

"FEIR . GOD . FLEE . FROM . SYNNE . AND . MAK . FOR . YE . LYFE . EVERLASTING".

 

The ornate door was in the wing to the left (which is actually a stair-tower) has the initials S.I.H, and V.K.H. above it, for Sir James Home and his wife Katherine Home (V = U and stands for the Latin word uxorem, which translates into English as wife), daughter of John Home of Blackadder.

 

Sir James Home died in 1595.

The aircraft is designated the S102B Korpen in Flygvapnet service the aircraft is used in the SIGINT role. SIGINT is intelligence-gathering by interception of signals, whether between people (COMINT) or involving electronic signals not directly used in communication (ELINT) and can be a combinations of the two. Based at Malmen in the east of the country with 73 SIGINT Squadron, the aircraft were procured in 1995 to replace the outdated TP85 Sud Aviation Caravelle which had been in service since 1971. The Aircraft was finally retiered in 1998 after the S102B gained it Full mission capability. Both aircraft fitted out for the role come under the command of Transport & Special Flights Unit who are responsible for the care and maintenance of the SIS Division aircraft. Flown with a crew of 6 (pilot, co-pilot and four system operators), the aircraft is externally characterised by sensor fairings on either side of its nose and forward fuselage, a canoe fairing below its forward fuselage and an array of hook and blade antennas installed on the lower surfaces of its wings, fuselage centre section and rear fuselage. The S 102B provides intelligence data for the Swedish government's security agency (the FRA), the SF and the Swedish Navy. When operating with the armed services, the Korpen down links data directly to combined air operations centres and navy surface combatants. The two aircraft got the individual names “Hugin” and “Munin” after the Scandiavian ancient God Oden’s two ravens, who saw everything that happened in the world.

VE22 GOX

2022 DAF XG+ 480 FT

Involvement Packaging, Hyde, Greater Manchester

Buckingham, 16 November 2022

slfashionpassion.wordpress.com/2014/11/05/seduction-invol...

this was in the subway, underneath a peeled-back advertisement panel. I have no idea what it's on about, but it looks pretty cool.

New owners for Megabus/Scottish Citylink following the Stagecoach/National Express merger

 

Tuesday 14 December 2021 became a significant day in the history of the bus industry as the long-mooted merger between Stagecoach and National Express was announced that it would be going ahead. Although it’s stated in the financial press as a merger, it’s effectively a takeover of Stagecoach by National Express.

 

The deal, which involves an all-share takeover by National Express, comes after talks between the transport giants were revealed in September. It will create a combined firm worth about £1.9bn, with a fleet of about 40,000 vehicles and a workforce of about 70,000. Under the deal, National Express shareholders would own about 75% of the combined group and Stagecoach 25%.. The proposal values Perth-based Stagecoach at about £437million. It’s subject to shareholder approval from both the respective companies’ shareholders but assuming it does, it’ll be completed by late 2022. It’ll create a super-group and will be the biggest bus company in the United Kingdom by far. It’s not clear whether any rationalisation of operations will happen as National Express’s bus operations consisted of its West Midlands operations which didn’t tend to compete with Stagecoach to any major extent except maybe at the fringes in the South Midlands. It will also take National Express back into Tayside with Stagecoach’s operations there, having left there when it sold Xplore Dundee to McGill’s Buses.

 

National Express wants to use Stagecoach’s range of depots to improve its express coach network. Whether this will probably mean Stagecoach subsidiaries will be used to provide Nat Ex services going forward seems very likely but there will be little change at least initially whilst the new business sorts out its new image and branding.

 

However, enclosed within the press realise was the story that Stagecoach had exited its joint venture with Comfort Delgro and sold its remaining 35% of the shares to Comfort Delgro. It means that both Scottish Citylink and Megabus will pass to Comfort Delgro who’ll assume sole control. Also passing to Comfort Delgro will be responsibility for Stagecoach’s Falcon service in the South West of England.

 

There’s going to be some major unpicking of vehicles and routes here as Stagecoach provides virtually all the vehicles for Megabus, all the vehicles for Falcon and most of the vehicles for Scottish Citylink. Of course other operators provide services such as Park’s, as seen here with HSK643 heading out of Glasgow to Dundee on a Citylink service. This is one of eight similar coaches delivered to the company and although not visible in the shot is that they feature a green strip of LEDs above the rear windows on both sides of the coaches to make them stand out. They were apparently a cancelled order for an Irish operator.

 

So after a while under effective Stagecoach control, Citylink regains its independence. To be fair, Stagecoach didn’t really need to sell Citylink as Nat Ex didn’t really compete with Citylink- it was Megabus that was the issue - but it’s obviously felt rather than fight with the competition authorities it was easier this way. Stagecoach will continue to provide Citylink vehicles in the short to medium term but whether that’ll continue long term will no doubt be seen. With FLiXBUS now on the scene it obviously felt that the combined business with access to a vast range of depots was a good defensive measure. But will we see, as an example, the revival of Caledonian Express to compete with Citylink? Time will tell.

...a peculiar unfathomable combination of understanding and misunderstanding."

 

Diane Arbus

Nieuwe Waterweg 1-7-2018

This involves a long customer service nightmare at Kernersville Ram in Kernersville, NC. I'm saving for my records

The libretto of Tannhäuser combines mythological elements characteristic of German Romantische Oper (Romantic opera) and the medieval setting typical of many French Grand Operas. Wagner brings these two together by constructing a plot involving the 14th-century Minnesingers and the myth of Venus and her subterranean realm of Venusberg. Both the historical and the mythological are united in Tannhäuser's personality; although he is a historical poet composer, little is known about him other than myths that surround him.

 

Wagner wove a variety of sources into the opera narrative. According to his autobiography, he was inspired by finding the story in "a Volksbuch (popular book) about the Venusberg", which he claimed "fell into his hands", although he admits knowing of the story from the Phantasus of Ludwig Tieck and E. T. A. Hoffmann's story, Der Kampf der Sänger (The Singers' Contest). Tieck's tale, which names the hero "Tannenhäuser", tells of the minnesinger-knight's amorous adventures in the Venusberg, his travels to Rome as a Pilgrim, and his repudiation by the pope. To this Wagner added material from Hoffmann's story, from Serapions-Brüder (1819), describing a song contest at the Wartburg castle,[1] a castle which featured prominently in Thuringian history. Heinrich Heine had provided Wagner with the inspiration for Der fliegende Holländer and Wagner again drew on Heine for Tannhäuser. In Heine's sardonic essay Elementargeister (Elemental spirits), there appears a poem about Tannhäuser and the lure of the grotto of Venus, published in 1837 in the third volume of Der Salon.[1] Other possible sources include Friedrich de la Motte Fouqué's play Der Sängerkrieg auf der Wartburg and Eichendorff's Das Marmorbild (The Marble Statue, 1819).[1][2]

 

The legend of Tannhäuser, the amorous crusading Franconian knight, and that of the song contest on the Wartburg (which did not involve Tannhäuser, but the semi-mythical minnesinger Heinrich von Ofterdingen), came from quite separate traditions. Ludwig Bechstein wove together the two legends in the first volume of his collection of Thuringian legends, Der Sagenschatz und die Sagenkreise des Thüringerlandes (A treasury of the tales of Thuringian legends and legend cycles, 1835), which was probably the Volksbuch to which Wagner refers to in his autobiography.[3][1] Wagner also knew of the work of another contemporary, Christian Theodor Ludwig Lucas, whose Über den Krieg von Wartburg of 1838 also conflated the two legends.[4][5] This confusion (which explains why Tannhäuser is referred to as 'Heinrich' in the opera) does not fit with the historical timeline of the events in the opera, since the Singers' Contest involving von Ofterdingen is said to have taken place around 1207, while Tannhäuser's poetry appeared much later (1245–1265). The sources used by Wagner therefore reflected a nineteenth century romantic view of the medieval period, with concerns about artistic freedom and the constraints of organised religion typical of the period of Romanticism.[6]

 

During Wagner's first stay in Paris (1839–1842) he read a paper by Ludwig Lucas on the Sängerkrieg which sparked his imagination, and encouraged him to return to Germany, which he reached on 7 April 1842.[7] Having crossed the Rhine, the Wagners drove towards Thuringia, and saw the early rays of sun striking the Wartburg; Wagner immediately began to sketch the scenery that would become the stage sets.[8] Wagner wrote the prose draft of Tannhäuser between June and July 1842 and the libretto in April 1843.[9]

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tannhäuser_(opera)

Neuschwanstein Castle (German: Schloss Neuschwanstein, pronounced [ˈʃlɔs nɔʏˈʃvaːnʃtaɪn], Southern Bavarian: Schloss Neischwanstoa) is a 19th-century Romanesque Revival palace on a rugged hill above the village of Hohenschwangau near Füssen in southwest Bavaria, Germany. The palace was commissioned by King Ludwig II of Bavaria as a retreat and in honour of Richard Wagner. Ludwig paid for the palace out of his personal fortune and by means of extensive borrowing, rather than Bavarian public funds.

 

The castle was intended as a home for the King, until he died in 1886. It was open to the public shortly after his death.[1] Since then more than 61 million people have visited Neuschwanstein Castle.[2] More than 1.3 million people visit annually, with as many as 6,000 per day in the summer.[3]

  

Contents

1Location

2History

2.1Inspiration and design

2.2Construction

2.3Funding

2.4Simplified completion

2.5World War II

3Architecture

3.1Exterior

3.2Interior

4Tourism

5In culture, art, and science

5.1World Heritage candidature

6Panoramas

7Notes

8Citations

9General sources

10External links

Location[edit]

 

A northward view of Neuschwanstein Castle from Mount Säuling (2,047 m or 6,716 ft) on the border between Bavaria and Tyrol: Schwangau between large Forggensee reservoir (1952) and Hohenschwangau and Neuschwanstein palaces

The municipality of Schwangau lies at an elevation of 800 m (2,620 ft) at the southwest border of the German state of Bavaria. Its surroundings are characterised by the transition between the Alpine foothills in the south (toward the nearby Austrian border) and a hilly landscape in the north that appears flat by comparison.

 

In the Middle Ages, three castles overlooked the villages. One was called Schwanstein Castle.[nb 1] In 1832, Ludwig's father King Maximilian II of Bavaria bought its ruins to replace them with the comfortable neo-Gothic palace known as Hohenschwangau Castle. Finished in 1837, the palace became his family's summer residence, and his elder son Ludwig (born 1845) spent a large part of his childhood here.[4]

 

Vorderhohenschwangau Castle and Hinterhohenschwangau Castle[nb 2] sat on a rugged hill overlooking Schwanstein Castle, two nearby lakes (Alpsee and Schwansee), and the village. Separated by only a moat, they jointly consisted of a hall, a keep, and a fortified tower house.[5] In the nineteenth century only ruins remained of the twin medieval castles, but those of Hinterhohenschwangau served as a lookout place known as Sylphenturm.[6]

 

The ruins above the family palace were known to the crown prince from his excursions. He first sketched one of them in his diary in 1859.[7] When the young king came to power in 1864, the construction of a new palace in place of the two ruined castles became the first in his series of palace building projects.[8] Ludwig called the new palace New Hohenschwangau Castle; only after his death was it renamed Neuschwanstein.[9] The confusing result is that Hohenschwangau and Schwanstein have effectively swapped names: Hohenschwangau Castle replaced the ruins of Schwanstein Castle, and Neuschwanstein Castle replaced the ruins of the two Hohenschwangau Castles.

 

History[edit]

Inspiration and design[edit]

Neuschwanstein embodies both the contemporaneous architectural fashion known as castle romanticism (German: Burgenromantik), and King Ludwig II's enthusiasm for the operas of Richard Wagner.

 

In the 19th century, many castles were constructed or reconstructed, often with significant changes to make them more picturesque. Palace-building projects similar to Neuschwanstein had been undertaken earlier in several of the German states and included Hohenschwangau Castle, Lichtenstein Castle, Hohenzollern Castle, and numerous buildings on the River Rhine such as Stolzenfels Castle.[10] The inspiration for the construction of Neuschwanstein came from two journeys in 1867—one in May to the reconstructed Wartburg near Eisenach,[11] another in July to the Château de Pierrefonds, which Eugène Viollet-le-Duc was transforming from a ruined castle into a historistic palace.[12][nb 3]

  

Neuschwanstein project drawing (Christian Jank 1869)

The King saw both buildings as representatives of a romantic interpretation of the Middle Ages, as well as the musical mythology of his friend Wagner, whose operas Tannhäuser and Lohengrin had made a lasting impression on him.[13]

 

In February 1868, Ludwig's grandfather King Ludwig I died, freeing the considerable sums that were previously spent on the abdicated King's appanage.[8][nb 4] This allowed Ludwig II to start the architectural project of building a private refuge in the familiar landscape far from the capital Munich, so that he could live out his idea of the Middle Ages.

 

It is my intention to rebuild the old castle ruin of Hohenschwangau near the Pöllat Gorge in the authentic style of the old German knights' castles, and I must confess to you that I am looking forward very much to living there one day [...]; you know the revered guest I would like to accommodate there; the location is one of the most beautiful to be found, holy and unapproachable, a worthy temple for the divine friend who has brought salvation and true blessing to the world. It will also remind you of "Tannhäuser" (Singers' Hall with a view of the castle in the background), "Lohengrin'" (castle courtyard, open corridor, path to the chapel) ...

 

— Ludwig II, Letter to Richard Wagner, May 1868[14]

The building design was drafted by the stage designer Christian Jank and realised by the architect Eduard Riedel.[15] For technical reasons, the ruined castles could not be integrated into the plan. Initial ideas for the palace drew stylistically on Nuremberg Castle and envisaged a simple building in place of the old Vorderhohenschwangau Castle, but they were rejected and replaced by increasingly extensive drafts, culminating in a bigger palace modelled on the Wartburg.[16] The king insisted on a detailed plan and on personal approval of each and every draft.[17] Ludwig's control went so far that the palace has been regarded as his own creation, rather than that of the architects involved.[18]

 

Whereas contemporary architecture critics derided Neuschwanstein, one of the last big palace building projects of the nineteenth century, as kitsch, Neuschwanstein and Ludwig II's other buildings are now counted among the major works of European historicism.[19][20] For financial reasons, a project similar to Neuschwanstein – Falkenstein Castle – never left the planning stages.[21]

 

The palace can be regarded as typical for nineteenth-century architecture. The shapes of Romanesque (simple geometric figures such as cuboids and semicircular arches), Gothic (upward-pointing lines, slim towers, delicate embellishments) and Byzantine architecture and art (the Throne Hall décor) were mingled in an eclectic fashion and supplemented with 19th-century technical achievements. The Patrona Bavariae and Saint George on the court face of the Palas (main building) are depicted in the local Lüftlmalerei style, a fresco technique typical for Allgäu farmers' houses, while the unimplemented drafts for the Knights' House gallery foreshadow elements of Art Nouveau.[22] Characteristic of Neuschwanstein's design are theatre themes: Christian Jank drew on coulisse drafts from his time as a scenic painter.[23]

 

The basic style was originally planned to be neo-Gothic but the palace was primarily built in Romanesque style in the end. The operatic themes moved gradually from Tannhäuser and Lohengrin to Parsifal.[24]

 

Construction[edit]

 

Neuschwanstein under construction: Bower still missing, Rectangular Tower under construction (photograph c. 1882–85)

 

Neuschwanstein under construction: upper courtyard (photograph c. 1886)

In 1868, the ruins of the medieval twin castles were completely demolished; the remains of the old keep were blown up.[25] The foundation stone for the palace was laid on 5 September 1869; in 1872 its cellar was completed and in 1876, everything up to the first floor, the gatehouse being finished first. At the end of 1882 it was completed and fully furnished, allowing Ludwig to take provisional lodgings there and observe the ongoing construction work.[24] In 1874, management of the civil works passed from Eduard Riedel to Georg von Dollmann.[26] The topping out ceremony for the Palas was in 1880, and in 1884, the King was able to move in to the new building. In the same year, the direction of the project passed to Julius Hofmann, after Dollmann had fallen from the King's favour.

 

The palace was erected as a conventional brick construction and later encased in various types of rock. The white limestone used for the fronts came from a nearby quarry.[27]

 

The sandstone bricks for the portals and bay windows came from Schlaitdorf in Württemberg. Marble from Untersberg near Salzburg was used for the windows, the arch ribs, the columns and the capitals. The Throne Hall was a later addition to the plans and required a steel framework.

 

The transport of building materials was facilitated by scaffolding and a steam crane that lifted the material to the construction site. Another crane was used at the construction site. The recently founded Dampfkessel-Revisionsverein (Steam Boiler Inspection Association) regularly inspected both boilers.

 

For about two decades the construction site was the principal employer in the region.[28] In 1880, about 200 craftsmen were occupied at the site,[29] not counting suppliers and other persons indirectly involved in the construction. At times when the King insisted on particularly close deadlines and urgent changes, reportedly up to 300 workers per day were active, sometimes working at night by the light of oil lamps. Statistics from the years 1879/1880 support an immense amount of building materials: 465 tonnes (513 short tons) of Salzburg marble, 1,550 t (1,710 short tons) of sandstone, 400,000 bricks and 2,050 cubic metres (2,680 cu yd) of wood for the scaffolding.

 

In 1870, a society was founded for insuring the workers, for a low monthly fee, augmented by the King. The heirs of construction casualties (30 cases are mentioned in the statistics) received a small pension.

 

In 1884, the King was able to move into the (still unfinished) Palas,[30] and in 1885, he invited his mother Marie to Neuschwanstein on the occasion of her 60th birthday.[nb 5] By 1886, the external structure of the Palas (hall) was mostly finished.[30] In the same year, Ludwig had the first, wooden Marienbrücke over the Pöllat Gorge replaced by a steel construction.

 

Despite its size, Neuschwanstein did not have space for the royal court, but contained only the King's private lodging and servants' rooms. The court buildings served decorative, rather than residential purposes:[9] The palace was intended to serve King Ludwig II as a kind of inhabitable theatrical setting.[30] As a temple of friendship it was also dedicated to the life and work of Richard Wagner, who died in 1883 before he had set foot in the building.[31] In the end, Ludwig II lived in the palace for a total of only 172 days.[32]

 

Funding[edit]

 

Neuschwanstein in 1886

The King's wishes and demands expanded during the construction of Neuschwanstein, and so did the expenses. Drafts and estimated costs were revised repeatedly.[33] Initially a modest study was planned instead of the great throne hall, and projected guest rooms were struck from the drafts to make place for a Moorish Hall, which could not be realised due to lack of resources. Completion was originally projected for 1872, but deferred repeatedly.[33]

 

Neuschwanstein, the symbolic medieval knight's castle, was not King Ludwig II's only huge construction project. It was followed by the rococo style Lustschloss of Linderhof Palace and the baroque palace of Herrenchiemsee, a monument to the era of absolutism.[8] Linderhof, the smallest of the projects, was finished in 1886, and the other two remain incomplete. All three projects together drained his resources. The King paid for his construction projects by private means and from his civil list income. Contrary to frequent claims, the Bavarian treasury was not directly burdened by his buildings.[30][34] From 1871, Ludwig had an additional secret income in return for a political favour given to Otto von Bismarck.[nb 6]

 

The construction costs of Neuschwanstein in the King's lifetime amounted to 6.2 million marks (equivalent to 40 million 2009 €),[35] almost twice the initial cost estimate of 3.2 million marks.[34] As his private means were insufficient for his increasingly escalating construction projects, the King continuously opened new lines of credit.[36] In 1876, a court counselor was replaced after pointing out the danger of insolvency.[37] By 1883 he already owed 7 million marks,[38] and in spring 1884 and August 1885 debt conversions of 7.5 million marks and 6.5 million marks, respectively, became necessary.[36]

 

Even after his debts had reached 14 million marks, King Ludwig II insisted on continuation of his architectural projects; he threatened suicide if his creditors seized his palaces.[37] In early 1886, Ludwig asked his cabinet for a credit of 6 million marks, which was denied. In April, he followed Bismarck's advice to apply for the money to his parliament. In June the Bavarian government decided to depose the King, who was living at Neuschwanstein at the time. On 9 June he was incapacitated, and on 10 June he had the deposition commission arrested in the gatehouse.[39] In expectation of the commission, he alerted the gendarmerie and fire brigades of surrounding places for his protection.[36] A second commission headed by Bernhard von Gudden arrived on the next day, and the King was forced to leave the palace that night. Ludwig was put under the supervision of von Gudden. On 13 June, both died under mysterious circumstances in the shallow shore water of Lake Starnberg near Berg Castle.

 

Simplified completion[edit]

 

Neuschwanstein front façade and surroundings (photochrom print, c. 1900)

 

A 1901 postcard of Berg Castle

At the time of King Ludwig's death the palace was far from complete. He slept only 11 nights in the castle. The external structures of the Gatehouse and the Palas were mostly finished but the Rectangular Tower was still scaffolded. Work on the Bower had not started, but was completed in a simplified form by 1892 without the planned figures of the female saints. The Knights' House was also simplified. In King Ludwig's plans the columns in the Knights' House gallery were held as tree trunks and the capitals as the corresponding crowns. Only the foundations existed for the core piece of the palace complex: a keep of 90 metres (300 ft) height planned in the upper courtyard, resting on a three-nave chapel. This was not realised,[17] and a connection wing between the Gatehouse and the Bower saw the same fate.[40] Plans for a castle garden with terraces and a fountain west of the Palas were also abandoned after the King's death.

 

The interior of the royal living space in the palace was mostly completed in 1886; the lobbies and corridors were painted in a simpler style by 1888.[41] The Moorish Hall desired by the King (and planned below the Throne Hall) was not realised any more than the so-called Knights' Bath, which, modelled after the Knights' Bath in the Wartburg, was intended to render homage to the knights' cult as a medieval baptism bath. A Bride Chamber in the Bower (after a location in Lohengrin),[23] guest rooms in the first and second floor of the Palas and a great banquet hall were further abandoned projects.[33] In fact, a complete development of Neuschwanstein had never even been planned, and at the time of the King's death there was not a utilisation concept for numerous rooms.[29]

 

Neuschwanstein was still incomplete when Ludwig II died in 1886. The King never intended to make the palace accessible to the public.[30] No more than six weeks after the King's death, however, the Prince-Regent Luitpold ordered the palace opened to paying visitors. The administrators of King Ludwig's estate managed to balance the construction debts by 1899.[42] From then until World War I, Neuschwanstein was a stable and lucrative source of revenue for the House of Wittelsbach, indeed King Ludwig's castles were probably the single largest income source earned by the Bavarian royal family in the last years prior to 1914. To guarantee a smooth course of visits, some rooms and the court buildings were finished first. Initially the visitors were allowed to move freely in the palace, causing the furniture to wear quickly.

 

When Bavaria became a republic in 1918, the government socialised the civil list. The resulting dispute with the House of Wittelsbach led to a split in 1923: King Ludwig's palaces including Neuschwanstein fell to the state and are now managed by the Bavarian Palace Department, a division of the Bavarian finance ministry. Nearby Hohenschwangau Castle fell to the Wittelsbacher Ausgleichsfonds, whose revenues go to the House of Wittelsbach.[43] The visitor numbers continued to rise, reaching 200,000 in 1939.[43]

 

World War II[edit]

Due to its secluded location, the palace survived the destruction of two World Wars. Until 1944, it served as a depot for Nazi plunder that was taken from France by the Reichsleiter Rosenberg Institute for the Occupied Territories (Einsatzstab Reichsleiter Rosenberg für die besetzten Gebiete), a suborganisation of the Nazi Party.[44] The castle was used to catalogue the works of arts. (After World War II 39 photo albums were found in the palace documenting the scale of the art seizures. The albums are now stored in the United States National Archives.[45])

 

In April 1945, the SS considered blowing up the palace to prevent the building itself and the artwork it contained from falling to the enemy.[46] The plan was not realised by the SS-Gruppenführer who had been assigned the task, however, and at the end of the war the palace was surrendered undamaged to representatives of the Allied forces.[46] Thereafter the Bavarian archives used some of the rooms as a provisional store for salvaged archivalia, as the premises in Munich had been bombed.[47]

 

Architecture[edit]

The effect of the Neuschwanstein ensemble is highly stylistic, both externally and internally. The king's influence is apparent throughout, and he took a keen personal interest in the design and decoration. An example can be seen in his comments, or commands, regarding a mural depicting Lohengrin in the Palas; "His Majesty wishes that ... the ship be placed further from the shore, that Lohengrin's neck be less tilted, that the chain from the ship to the swan be of gold and not of roses, and finally that the style of the castle shall be kept medieval."[48]

 

The suite of rooms within the Palas contains the Throne Room, King Ludwig's suite, the Singers' Hall, and the Grotto. The interior and especially the throne room Byzantine-Arab construction resumes to the chapels and churches of the royal Sicilian Norman-Swabian period in Palermo related to the Kings of Germany House of Hohenstaufen. Throughout, the design pays homage to the German legends of Lohengrin, the Swan Knight. Hohenschwangau, where King Ludwig spent much of his youth, had decorations of these sagas. These themes were taken up in the operas of Richard Wagner. Many rooms bear a border depicting the various operas written by Wagner, including a theatre permanently featuring the set of one such play. Many of the interior rooms remain undecorated, with only 14 rooms finished before Ludwig's death. With the palace under construction at the King's death, one of the major features of the palace remained unbuilt. A massive keep, which would have formed the highest point and central focus of the ensemble, was planned for the middle of the upper courtyard but was never built, at the decision of the King's family. The foundation for the keep is visible in the upper courtyard.[49]

 

Neuschwanstein Castle consists of several individual structures which were erected over a length of 150 metres on the top of a cliff ridge. The elongate building is furnished with numerous towers, ornamental turrets, gables, balconies, pinnacles and sculptures. Following Romanesque style, most window openings are fashioned as bi- and triforia. Before the backdrop of the Tegelberg and the Pöllat Gorge in the south and the Alpine foothills with their lakes in the north, the ensemble of individual buildings provides varying picturesque views of the palace from all directions. It was designed as the romantic ideal of a knight's castle. Unlike "real" castles, whose building stock is in most cases the result of centuries of building activity, Neuschwanstein was planned from the inception as an intentionally asymmetric building, and erected in consecutive stages.[33] Typical attributes of a castle were included, but real fortifications – the most important feature of a medieval aristocratic estate – were dispensed with.

 

Exterior[edit]

 

Palace roof

 

Overview of palace complex; position of the planned chapel marked in yellow

 

View from location of unrealised chapel along upper courtyard level: Bower (left), palace front, and Knights' House (right)

The palace complex is entered through the symmetrical Gatehouse flanked by two stair towers. The eastward-pointing gate building is the only structure of the palace whose wall area is fashioned in high-contrast colours; the exterior walls are cased with red bricks, the court fronts with yellow limestone. The roof cornice is surrounded by pinnacles. The upper floor of the Gatehouse is surmounted by a crow-stepped gable and held King Ludwig II's first lodging at Neuschwanstein, from which he occasionally observed the building work before the hall was completed. The ground floors of the Gatehouse were intended to accommodate the stables.

 

The passage through the Gatehouse, crowned with the royal Bavarian coat of arms, leads directly into the courtyard. The courtyard has two levels, the lower one being defined to the east by the Gatehouse and to the north by the foundations of the so-called Rectangular Tower and by the gallery building. The southern end of the courtyard is open, imparting a view of the surrounding mountain scenery. At its western end, the courtyard is delimited by a bricked embankment, whose polygonally protracting bulge marks the choir of the originally projected chapel; this three-nave church, never built, was intended to form the base of a 90-metre (295-ft) keep, the planned centrepiece of the architectural ensemble. A flight of steps at the side gives access to the upper level.

  

Saint George

 

Gatehouse

Today, the foundation plan of the chapel-keep is marked out in the upper-courtyard pavement. The most striking structure of the upper court level is the so-called Rectangular Tower (45 metres or 148 feet). Like most of the court buildings, it mostly serves a decorative purpose as part of the ensemble. Its viewing platform provides a vast view over the Alpine foothills to the north. The northern end of the upper courtyard is defined by the so-called Knights' House. The three-storey building is connected to the Rectangular Tower and the Gatehouse by means of a continuous gallery fashioned with a blind arcade. From the point of view of castle romanticism the Knights' House was the abode of a stronghold's menfolk; at Neuschwanstein, estate and service rooms were envisioned here. The Bower, which complements the Knights' House as the "ladies' house" but was never used as such, defines the south side of the courtyard. Both structures together form the motif of the Antwerp Castle featuring in the first act of Lohengrin. Embedded in the pavement is the floor plan of the planned palace chapel.

 

The western end of the courtyard is delimited by the Palas (hall). It constitutes the real main and residential building of the castle and contains the King's stateroom and the servants' rooms. The Palas is a colossal five-story structure in the shape of two huge cuboids that are connected in a flat angle and covered by two adjacent high gable roofs. The building's shape follows the course of the ridge. In its angles there are two stair towers, the northern one surmounting the palace roof by several storeys with its height of 65 metres (213 ft). With their polymorphic roofs, both towers are reminiscent of the Château de Pierrefonds. The western Palas front supports a two-storey balcony with view on the Alpsee, while northwards a low chair tower and the conservatory protract from the main structure. The entire Palas is spangled with numerous decorative chimneys and ornamental turrets, the court front with colourful frescos. The court-side gable is crowned with a copper lion, the western (outward) gable with the likeness of a knight.

 

Interior[edit]

 

Floor plan of third floor, position of fourth-floor Hall of the Singers marked in red

 

Corridor

 

Throne Hall detail

Had it been completed, the palace would have had more than 200 interior rooms, including premises for guests and servants, as well as for service and logistics. Ultimately, no more than about 15 rooms and halls were finished.[50] In its lower stories the Palas accommodates administrative and servants' rooms and the rooms of today's palace administration. The King's staterooms are situated in the upper stories: The anterior structure accommodates the lodgings in the third floor, above them the Hall of the Singers. The upper floors of the west-facing posterior structure are filled almost completely by the Throne Hall. The total floor space of all floors amounts to nearly 6,000 square metres (65,000 sq ft).[50]

 

Neuschwanstein houses numerous significant interior rooms of German historicism. The palace was fitted with several of the latest technical innovations of the late 19th century.[22][51] Among other things it had a battery-powered bell system for the servants and telephone lines. The kitchen equipment included a Rumford oven that turned the skewer with its heat and so automatically adjusted the turning speed. The hot air was used for a calorifère central heating system.[52] Further novelties for the era were running warm water and toilets with automatic flushing.

 

The largest room of the palace by area is the Hall of the Singers, followed by the Throne Hall. The 27-by-10-metre (89 by 33 ft)[53] Hall of the Singers is located in the eastern, court-side wing of the Palas, in the fourth floor above the King's lodgings. It is designed as an amalgamation of two rooms of the Wartburg: The Hall of the Singers and the Ballroom. It was one of the King's favourite projects for his palace.[54] The rectangular room was decorated with themes from Lohengrin and Parzival. Its longer side is terminated by a gallery that is crowned by a tribune, modelled after the Wartburg. The eastern narrow side is terminated by a stage that is structured by arcades and known as the Sängerlaube. The Hall of the Singers was never designed for court festivities of the reclusive King.[citation needed] Rather, like the Throne Hall it served as a walkable monument in which the culture of knights and courtly love of the Middle Ages was represented. The first performance in this hall took place in 1933: A concert commemorating the 50th anniversary of Richard Wagner's death.[34]

 

The Throne Hall, 20 by 12 metres (66 by 39 ft),[55] is situated in the west wing of the Palas. With its height of 13 metres (43 ft)[55] it occupies the third and fourth floors. Julius Hofmann modelled it after the Allerheiligen-Hofkirche in the Munich Residenz. On three sides it is surrounded by colorful arcades, ending in an apse that was intended to hold King Ludwig's throne – which was never completed. The throne dais is surrounded by paintings of Jesus, the Twelve Apostles and six canonised kings. The mural paintings were created by Wilhelm Hauschild. The floor mosaic was completed after the king's death. The chandelier is fashioned after a Byzantine crown. The Throne Hall makes a sacral impression. Following the king's wish, it amalgamated the Grail Hall from Parzival with a symbol of the divine right of kings,[19] an incorporation of unrestricted sovereign power, which King Ludwig as the head of a constitutional monarchy no longer held. The union of the sacral and regal is emphasised by the portraits in the apse of six canonised Kings: Saint Louis of France, Saint Stephen of Hungary, Saint Edward the Confessor of England, Saint Wenceslaus of Bohemia, Saint Olaf of Norway and Saint Henry, Holy Roman Emperor.

 

Palace rooms (late 19th century Photochrom prints)

 

Hall of the Singers

  

Throne Hall

  

Drawing room

  

Study room

  

Dining room

  

Bedroom

Apart from the large ceremonial rooms several smaller rooms were created for use by King Ludwig II.[41] The royal lodging is on the third floor of the palace in the east wing of the Palas. It consists of eight rooms with living space and several smaller rooms. In spite of the gaudy décor, the living space with its moderate room size and its sofas and suites makes a relatively modern impression on today's visitors. King Ludwig II did not attach importance to representative requirements of former times, in which the life of a monarch was mostly public. The interior decoration with mural paintings, tapestry, furniture and other handicraft generally refers to the King's favourite themes: the grail legend, the works of Wolfram von Eschenbach, and their interpretation by Richard Wagner.

  

Grotto

The eastward drawing room is adorned with themes from the Lohengrin legend. The furniture – sofa, table, armchairs and seats in a northward alcove – is comfortable and homelike. Next to the drawing room is a little artificial grotto that forms the passage to the study. The unusual room, originally equipped with an artificial waterfall and a so-called rainbow machine, is connected to a little conservatory. Depicting the Hörselberg grotto, it relates to Wagner's Tannhäuser, as does the décor of the adjacent study. In the park of Linderhof Palace the King had installed a similar grotto of greater dimensions. Opposite the study follows the dining room, adorned with themes of courtly love. Since the kitchen in Neuschwanstein is situated three stories below the dining room, it was impossible to install a wishing table (dining table disappearing by means of a mechanism) as at Linderhof Palace and Herrenchiemsee. Instead, the dining room was connected with the kitchen by means of a service lift.

  

Kitchen

The bedroom adjacent to the dining room and the subsequent house chapel are the only rooms of the palace that remain in neo-Gothic style. The King's bedroom is dominated by a huge bed adorned with carvings. Fourteen carvers worked more than four years on the bed canopy with its numerous pinnacles and on the oaken panellings.[56] It was in this room that Ludwig was arrested in the night from 11 to 12 June 1886. The adjacent little house chapel is consecrated to Saint Louis, after whom the owner was named.

 

The servants' rooms in the basement of the Palas are quite scantily equipped with massive oak furniture. Besides one table and one cabinet there are two beds of 1.80 metres (5 ft 11 in) length each. Opaque glass windows separated the rooms from the corridor that connects the exterior stairs with the main stairs, so that the King could enter and leave unseen. The servants were not allowed to use the main stairs, but were restricted to the much narrower and steeper servants' stairs.

 

Tourism[edit]

Neuschwanstein welcomes almost 1.5 million visitors per year making it one of the most popular tourist destinations in Europe.[3][57] For security reasons the palace can only be visited during a 35-minute guided tour, and no photography is allowed inside the castle. There are also special guided tours that focus on specific topics. In the peak season from June until August, Neuschwanstein has as many as 6,000 visitors per day, and guests without advance reservation may have to wait several hours. Those without tickets may still walk the long driveway from the base to the top of the mountain and visit the grounds and courtyard without a ticket, but will not be admitted to the interior of the castle. Ticket sales are processed exclusively via the ticket centre in Hohenschwangau.[58] As of 2008, the total number of visitors was more than 60 million.[2] In 2004, the revenues were booked as €6.5 million.[1]

 

In culture, art, and science[edit]

Neuschwanstein is a global symbol of the era of Romanticism. The palace has appeared prominently in several movies such as Helmut Käutner's Ludwig II (1955) and Luchino Visconti's Ludwig (1972), both biopics about the King; the musical Chitty Chitty Bang Bang (1968) and the war drama The Great Escape (1963). It served as the inspiration for Disneyland's Sleeping Beauty Castle, Cameran Palace in Lucario and The Mystery of Mew, and later similar structures.[59][60] It is also visited by the character Grace Nakimura alongside Herrenchiemsee in the game The Beast Within: A Gabriel Knight Mystery (1996).

 

In 1977, Neuschwanstein Castle became the motif of a West German definitive stamp, and it appeared on a €2 commemorative coin for the German Bundesländer series in 2012. In 2007, it was a finalist in the widely publicised on-line selection of the New Seven Wonders of the World.[61]

 

A meteorite that reached Earth spectacularly on 6 April 2002, at the Austrian border near Hohenschwangau was named Neuschwanstein after the palace. Three fragments were found: Neuschwanstein I (1.75 kg (3.9 lb), found July 2002) and Neuschwanstein II (1.63 kg (3.6 lb), found May 2003) on the German side, and Neuschwanstein III (2.84 kg (6.3 lb), found June 2003) on the Austrian side near Reutte.[62] The meteorite is classified as an enstatite chondrite with unusually large proportions of pure iron (29%), enstatite and the extremely rare mineral sinoite (Si2N2O).[63]

 

World Heritage candidature[edit]

Since 2015, Neuschwanstein and Ludwig's Linderhof and Herrenchiemsee palaces are on the German tentative list for a future designation as UNESCO World Heritage Sites. A joint candidature with other representative palaces of the romantic historicism is discussed (including Schwerin Palace, for example).[64]

 

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neuschwanstein_Castle

 

Synopsis[edit]

Background[edit]

In Eisenach, Germany, in the early 13th century, the landgraves of the Thuringian Valley ruled the area of Germany around the Wartburg. They were great patrons of the arts, particularly music and poetry, holding contests between the minnesingers at the Wartburg. Across the valley towered the Venusberg, in whose interior, according to legend, dwelt Holda, the Goddess of Spring. In time, Holda became identified with Venus, the pagan Goddess of Love, whose grotto was the home of sirens and nymphs. It was said that the Goddess would lure the Wartburg minnesinger-knights to her lair where her beauty would captivate them. The minnesinger-knight Heinrich von Ofterdingen, known as Tannhäuser, left the court of the Landgrave of Thuringia a year ago after a disagreement with his fellow knights. Since then he has been held as a willing captive through his love for Venus, in her grotto in the Venusberg.[27][incomplete short citation][17]

 

Overture[edit]

The substantial overture commences with the theme of the 'Pilgrim's Chorus' from Act 3, Scene 1, and also includes elements of the 'Venusberg' music from Act 1, Scene 1. The overture is frequently performed as a separate item in orchestral concerts, the first such performance having been given by Felix Mendelssohn conducting the Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra in February 1846.[28] Wagner later gave the opinion that perhaps it would be better to cut the overture at opera performances to the Pilgrim's Chorus alone – "the remainder – in the fortunate event of its being understood – is, as a prelude to the drama, too much; in the opposite event, too little."[29] In the original, "Dresden" version, the overture comes to a traditional concert close (the version heard in concert performances). For the "Paris" version the music leads directly into the first scene, without pausing.

 

Act 1[edit]

The Venusberg, (the Hörselberg of "Frau Holda" in Thuringia, in the vicinity of Eisenach), and a valley between the Venusberg and Wartburg

 

Scene 1. Wagner's stage directions state: "The stage represents the interior of the Venusberg...In the distant background is a bluish lake; in it one sees the bathing figures of naiads; on its elevated banks are sirens. In the extreme left foreground lies Venus bearing the head of the half kneeling Tannhäuser in her lap. The whole cave is illuminated by rosy light. – A group of dancing nymphs appears, joined gradually by members of loving couples from the cave. – A train of Bacchantes comes from the background in wild dance... – The ever-wilder dance answers as in echo the Chorus of Sirens": "Naht euch dem Strande" (Come to the shore).[30] In the "Paris" version this orgiastic ballet is greatly extended.

 

Scene 2. Following the orgy of the ballet, Tannhäuser's desires are finally satiated, and he longs for freedom, spring and the sound of church bells. He takes up his harp and pays homage to the goddess in a passionate love song, "Dir töne Lob!" (Let your praises be heard), which he ends with an earnest plea to be allowed to depart, "Aus deinem Reiche, muss ich fliehn! O Königin! Göttin! Lass mich ziehn!" (From your kingdom must I flee! O Queen! O Goddess, set me free). Surprised, Venus offers him further charms, but eventually his repeated pleas arouse her fury and she curses his desire for salvation. (In the "Paris" version Venus's inveighing against Tannhäuser is significantly expanded).[31] Eventually Tannhäuser declares: "Mein Heil ruht in Maria" (My salvation rests in Mary). These words break the unholy spell. Venus and the Venusberg disappear.

 

Scene 3. According to Wagner's stage directions, "Tannhäuser...finds himself a beautiful valley… To the left one sees the Hörselberg. To the right...a mountain path from the direction of the Wartburg ...; in the foreground, led to by a low promontory, an image of the Virgin Mary – From above left one hears the ringing of herder’s bells; on a high projection sits a young shepherd with pipes facing the valley".[32] It is May. The shepherd sings an ode to the pagan goddess Holda, "Frau Holda kam aus dem Berg hervor" (Lady Holda, come forth from the hill). A hymn "Zu dir wall ich, mein Jesus Christ" (To thee I turn, my Jesus Christ) can be heard, as Pilgrims are seen approaching from the Wartburg, and the shepherd stops playing. The pilgrims pass Tannhäuser as he stands motionless, and then, praising God, ("Allmächt'ger, dir sei Preis!" (Almighty God, to you be praise!)) he sinks to his knees, overcome with gratitude. At that moment the sound of hunting-horns can be heard, drawing ever nearer.

 

Scene 4. The Landgrave's hunting party appears. The minnesingers (Wolfram, Walther, Biterolf, Reinmar, and Heinrich) recognise Tannhäuser, still deep in prayer, and greet him ("Heinrich! Heinrich! Seh ich recht?" (Heinrich! Heinrich! Do I see right?)) cautiously, recalling past feuds. They question him about his recent whereabouts, to which he gives vague answers. The minnesingers urge Tannhäuser to rejoin them, which he declines until Wolfram mentions Elisabeth, the Landgrave's niece, "Bleib bei Elisabeth!" (Stay, for Elisabeth!). Tannhäuser is visibly moved, "Elisabeth! O Macht des Himmels, rufst du den süssen Namen mir?" (Elisabeth! O might of heaven, do you cry out the sweet name to me?). The minnesingers explain to Tannhäuser how he had enchanted Elisabeth, but when he had left she withdrew from their company and lost interest in music, expressing the hope that his return will also bring her back, "Auf's Neue leuchte uns ihr Stern!" (Let her star once more shine upon us). Tannhäuser begs them to lead him to her, "Zu ihr! Zu ihr!" (To her! To her!). The rest of the hunting party gathers, blowing horns.

 

Act 2[edit]

 

The Wartburg in Eisenach

The minnesingers' hall in the Wartburg castle

 

Introduction – Scene 1. Elisabeth enters, joyfully. She sings, to the hall, of how she has been beset by sadness since Tannhäuser's departure but now lives in hope that his songs will revive both of them, "Dich, teure Halle, grüss ich wieder" (Dear hall, I greet thee once again). Wolfram leads Tannhäuser into the hall.

 

Scene 2. Tannhäuser flings himself at Elisabeth's feet. He exclaims "O Fürstin!" (O Princess!). At first, seemingly confused, she questions him about where he has been, which he avoids answering. She then greets him joyfully ("Ich preise dieses Wunder aus meines Herzens Tiefe!" (I praise this miracle from my heart's depths!)), and they join in a duet, "Gepriesen sei die Stunde" (Praise be to this hour). Tannhäuser then leaves with Wolfram.

 

Scene 3. The Landgrave enters, and he and Elisabeth embrace. The Landgrave sings of his joy, "Dich treff ich hier in dieser Halle" (Do I find you in this hall) at her recovery and announces the upcoming song contest, at which she will preside, "dass du des Festes Fürstin seist" (that you will be the Princess of the Festival).

 

Scene 4 and Sängerkrieg (Song Contest). Elisabeth and the Landgrave watch the guests arrive. The guests assemble greeting the Landgrave and singing "Freudig begrüssen wir edle Halle" (With joy we greet the noble hall), take their places in a semicircle, with Elisabeth and the Landgrave in the seats of honour in the foreground. The Landgrave announces the contest and the theme, which shall be "Könnt ihr der Liebe Wesen mir ergründen?" (Can you explain the nature of Love?), and that the prize will be whatever the winner asks of Elisabeth. The knights place their names in a cup from which Elisabeth draws the first singer, Wolfram. Wolfram sings a trite song of courtly love and is applauded, but Tannhäuser chides him for his lack of passion. There is consternation, and once again Elisabeth appears confused, torn between rapture and anxiety. Biterolf accuses him of blasphemy and speaks of "Frauenehr und hohe Tugend" (women's virtue and honour). The knights draw their swords as Tannhäuser mocks Biterolf, but the Landgrave intervenes to restore order. However, Tannhäuser, as if in a trance, rises to his feet and sings a song of ecstatic love to Venus, "Dir Göttin der Liebe, soll mein Lied ertönen" (To thee, Goddess of Love, should my song resound). There is general horror as it is realised he has been in the Venusberg; the women, apart from Elisabeth, flee. She appears pale and shocked, while the knights and the Landgrave gather together and condemn Tannhäuser to death. Only Elisabeth, shielding him with her body, saves him, "Haltet ein!" (Stop!). She states that God's will is that a sinner shall achieve salvation through atonement. Tannhäuser collapses as all hail Elisabeth as an angel, "Ein Engel stieg aus lichtem Äther" (An angel rose out of the bright ether). He promises to seek atonement, the Landgrave exiles him and orders him to join another younger band of pilgrims then assembling. All depart, crying Nach Rom! (To Rome!).

 

In the "Paris" version, the song contest is somewhat shortened, possibly because of the lack of suitable soloists for the Paris production.[citation needed]

 

Act 3[edit]

The valley of the Wartburg, in autumn. Elisabeth is kneeling, praying before the Virgin as Wolfram comes down the path and notices her

 

Scene 1. Orchestral music describes the pilgrimage of Tannhäuser. It is evening. Wolfram muses on Elisabeth's sorrow during Tannhäuser's second absence, "Wohl wusst' ich hier sie im Gebet zu finden" (I knew well I might find her here in prayer) and her longing for the return of the pilgrims, and expresses concerns that he may not have been absolved. As he does so he hears a pilgrims' prayer in the distance, "Beglückt darf nun dich, O Heimat, ich schauen" (Joyfully may I now you, O homeland, behold). Elisabeth rises and she and Wolfram listen to the hymn, watching the pilgrims approach and pass by. She anxiously searches the procession, but in vain, realising sorrowfully he is not amongst them, "Er kehret nicht züruck!" (He has not returned). She again kneels with a prayer to the Virgin that appears to foretell her death, "Allmächt'ge Jungfrau! Hör mein Flehen" (Almighty Virgin, hear my plea!). On rising she sees Wolfram but motions him not to speak. He offers to escort her back to the Wartburg, but she again motions him to be still, and gestures that she is grateful for his devotion but her path leads to heaven. She slowly makes her way up the path alone.

 

Scene 2. Wolfram, left alone as darkness draws on and the stars appear, begins to play and sings a hymn to the evening star that also hints at Elisabeth's approaching death, "Wie Todesahnung Dämmrung deckt die Lande...O du mein holder Abendstern" (Like a premonition of death the twilight shrouds the earth... O thou my fair evening star).

 

Scene 3. It is now night. Tannhäuser appears, ragged, pale and haggard, walking feebly leaning on his staff. Wolfram suddenly recognises Tannhäuser, and startled challenges him, since he is exiled. To Wolfram's horror, Tannhäuser explains he is once again seeking the company of Venus. Wolfram tries to restrain him, at the same time expressing compassion and begging him to tell the story of his pilgrimage. Tannhäuser urges Wolfram to listen to his story, "Nun denn, hör an! Du, Wolfram, du sollst es erfahren" (Now then, listen! You, Wolfram, shall learn all that has passed). Tannhäuser sings of his penitence and suffering, all the time thinking of Elisabeth's gesture and pain, "Inbrunst im Herzen, wie kein Büsser noch" (With a flame in my heart, such as no penitent has known). He explains how he reached Rome, and the "Heiligtumes Schwelle" (Holy shrine), and witnessed thousands of pilgrims being absolved. Finally he approaches "ihn, durch den sich Gott verkündigt'" (he, through whom God speaks)[a] and tells his story. However, rather than finding absolution, he is cursed, "bist nun ewig du verdammt!" (you are forever damned!), and is told by the pope that "Wie dieser Stab in meiner Hand, nie mehr sich schmückt mit frischem Grün, kann aus der Hölle heissem Brand, Erlösung nimmer dir erblühn!" (As this staff in my hand, no more shall bear fresh leaves, from the hot fires of hell, salvation never shall bloom for thee). Whereupon, absolutely crushed, he fled, seeking his former source of bliss.

 

Having completed his tale, Tannhäuser calls out to Venus to take him back, "Zu dir, Frau Venus, kehr ich wieder" (To you, Lady Venus, I return). The two men struggle as a faint image of dancing becomes apparent. As Tannhäuser repeatedly calls on Venus, she suddenly appears and welcomes him back, "Willkommen, ungetreuer Mann!" (Welcome, faithless man!). As Venus continues to beckon, "Zu mir! Zu mir!" (To me!, To me!), in desperation, Wolfram suddenly remembers there is one word that can change Tannhäuser's heart, and exclaims "Elisabeth!" Tannhäuser, as if frozen in time, repeats the name. As he does so, torches are seen, and a funeral hymn is heard approaching, "Der Seele Heil, die nun entflohn" (Hail, the soul that now is flown). Wolfram realises it must be Elisabeth's body that is being borne, and that in her death lies Tannhäuser's redemption, "Heinrich, du bist erlöst!" (Heinrich, you are saved). Venus cries out, "Weh! Mir verloren" (Alas! Lost to me!) and vanishes with her kingdom. As dawn breaks the procession appears bearing Elisabeth's body on a bier. Wolfram beckons to them to set it down, and as Tannhäuser bends over the body uttering, "Heilige Elisabeth, bitte für mich!" (Holy Elisabeth!, pray for me!) he dies. As the growing light bathes the scene the younger pilgrims arrive bearing the pope's staff sprouting new leaves, and proclaiming a miracle, "Heil! Heil! Der Gnade Wunder Heil!" (Hail!, Hail! To this miracle of grace, Hail!). All then sing "Der Gnade Heil ist dem Büsser beschieden, er geht nun ein in der Seligen Frieden!" (The Holy Grace of God is to the penitent given, who now enters into the joy of Heaven!).[27][incomplete short citation][25][30]

 

After Wagner[edit]

Productions[edit]

Wagner died in 1883. The first production of the opera at Wagner's Bayreuth Festspielhaus (originally constructed for the performance of his Ring Cycle), was undertaken under the supervision of Cosima in 1891, and adhered closely to the 'Vienna' version. Later performances at Bayreuth included one conducted by Richard Strauss (1894), and one where the Bacchanal was choreographed by Isadora Duncan (1904).[33] Duncan envisaged the Bacchanal as a fantasy of Tannhäuser's fevered brain, as Wagner had written to Mathilde Wesendonck in 1860.[34] Arturo Toscanini conducted the opera at Bayreuth in the 1930/31 season.[35][incomplete short citation]

 

In the words of the Wagner scholar Thomas S. Grey, "The Bacchanal remained a defining focus of many ...productions, as a proving ground for changing conceptions of the psychosexual symbolism of the Venusberg." Productions including those of Götz Friedrich at Bayreuth (1972) and Otto Schenk at the Metropolitan Opera, New York, (1977) "routinely offer quantities of simulated copulation and post-coital langour, for which the Paris score offers ample encouragement".[33] A Munich production (1994) included as part of Tannhäuser's fantasies "creatures out of Hieronymus Bosch crawl[ing] around the oblivious protagonist".[36]

 

The Operabase website indicates that in the two calendar years 2014/2015, there were 163 performances of 41 productions of Tannhäuser in 30 cities throughout the world.[37]

 

Literature[edit]

Many scholars and writers on opera have advanced theories to explain the motives and behaviour of the characters,[9] including Jungian psychoanalysis,[1] in particular as regards Tannhäuser's apparently self-destructive behaviour. In 2014 an analysis suggested that his apparently inconsistent behaviour, when analysed by game theory, is actually consistent with a redemption strategy. Only by public disclosure can Tannhäuser force a resolution of his inner conflict.[38]

The Nepalese Peace Pagoda complemented the Nepalese Pavilion at the World Exposition 1988 (Expo 88), held at Southbank in Brisbane. The square, three-level replica of a traditional Nepalese temple is built of hand-carved wood, and has a double-tiered roof of brass with brass trimmings. It proved popular with the crowds who attended Expo 88, and the Peace Pagoda is the last international exhibit remaining on the Expo 88 site. It was originally sited near the Vulture Street entrance to Expo 88. In 1991 it was moved to its current location, amongst the rainforest near the northern riverbank entrance to the Southbank Parklands.

 

World Expositions (or Exhibitions) become increasingly popular after the 1851 Great Exhibition in London, but their frequency, and the standard of their facilities, was not regulated until after the 1928 Paris Convention on International Expositions. The Bureau International des Expositions (BIE) was established in 1931 to administer the Convention. Under BIE rules there are two types of international exposition: the Universal/Category A/General Exposition, and the International/Category B/Special Exposition. The former involves broad themes, and participants design their own pavilions from the ground up, based on the theme.

 

The International Exposition, which has a narrower theme, is much cheaper to host, and is usually limited to one branch of human endeavour. Participants rent prefabricated pavilions from the host country's committee. Brisbane's Expo 88 was an International Exposition, with the theme "Leisure in the Age of Technology". Most of the structures built on exposition sites are intended to be temporary, but some sites have become parks, incorporating surviving exposition elements, including the sites of Montreal 1967, Seville 1992, Taejon 1993, and Lisbon 1998. Some structures have gone on to become landmarks in their own right, such as the Royal Exhibition Building (Melbourne 1880), the Eiffel Tower (Paris 1889), and the Space Needle (Seattle 1962).

 

The first bid to bring an exposition to Brisbane in 1988 began with James Maccormick , the architect who had designed the Australian pavilions at Montreal 1967, Osaka 1970, and Spokane 1974. The Brisbane Chamber of Commerce was converted to the idea, and lobbied the Queensland State Government during 1977. However, the Queensland Government was worried about the cost of a Universal Exposition, and was preoccupied with its bid for the 1982 Commonwealth Games. A second Queensland bid was made in 1981. The Australian Bicentennial Authority (ABA), under John Reid, wanted an Universal Exposition in Australia as part of Bicentennial in 1988, and the Federal Government was prepared to fund half of the cost of an exposition in Melbourne or Sydney. However, when these states turned the offer down in January 1981, Reid approached the Queensland Government with a proposal for a cheaper International Exposition. In late 1981 the State Cabinet funded a study that identified South Brisbane as the preferred site. The State Cabinet approved the study on 5 November 1981, on the condition that the Federal Government share the capital costs, but Prime Minister Malcolm Fraser rejected this notion in December 1981.

 

Queensland made two more attempts in 1982 for an International Exposition. Frank Moore, Chairman of the Queensland Tourist and Travel Corporation (QTTC), believed that private enterprise could fund the exposition, and that it would benefit Queensland's tourism. Queensland's Premier Joh Bjelke-Petersen asked Prime Minister Fraser to get the BIE to keep a slot open for Brisbane in 1988. Fraser was willing to support this proposal, so long as there was no Federal financial commitment. However, Queensland private enterprise was not forthcoming, and Bjelke-Petersen withdrew the proposal in April 1982. November of 1982 witnessed a renewed bid by the State Government. The State would lend money to a statutory authority, which would be tasked with buying and developing the land, and managing the exposition. Brisbane's application was sent to the December 1982 meeting of the BIE in Paris, and was approved in June 1983.

 

The Brisbane Exposition and South Bank Redevelopment Authority (BESBRA) was established in February 1984 by an Act of the Queensland Parliament. BESBRA was soon referred to in the media as the Expo 88 Authority, or the Expo Authority. Sir Llewellyn Edwards, the Deputy Premier, was appointed as Chairman. In April 1984 the Expo 88 Authority's general manager, Bob Minnikin, claimed that Expo 88 would require $180 million to produce, including resumptions and development, and $90 million to run. It was hoped that gate takings and sponsorship would cover the running costs, and that the development cost would be recouped through selling off the site after Expo 88. Only 13 hectares of the Expo 88 site was private land, with the remainder of the 40 hectares belonging to either the State Government or the Brisbane City Council. Nonetheless, the last resumption did not occur until October 1984, as the owner of the heritage-listed residence 'Collins Place' fought a running legal battle with the Expo 88 Authority.

 

Grey and Stanley Streets were closed to traffic in July 1985, and demolition work began. Construction of the pavilions started in January 1986. The concept of the Expo 88 architects, Bligh Maccormick 88, included eight large shade-canopies, to protect the public from the Queensland sun. Landscaping began in March 1987, and the Monorail, which would circle the site on a 2.3 kilometre long track, was commissioned in June of that year. By January 1988, $90 million of the $136.8 million construction budget had been spent, and 7.8 million visitors were expected.

 

During 1987 developers had been asked to present their proposals for Southbank's redevelopment after Expo 88. In February 1988 the State Government announced that the redevelopment plan of the River City 2000 Consortium had been accepted. The Consortium, headed by Sir Frank Moore of the QTTC, had visions of a World Trade Centre on an island, and a casino. However, by early 1988 there was a growing call in the media for more of the site to be turned into public parkland. During March and April 1988 the National Trust protested the River City 2000 Consortium's scheme to move Collins Place, the Plough Inn, and the Allgas Building, three heritage listed buildings, to a historic village. Premier Mike Ahern eventually gave reassurances that this would not happen.

 

Expo 88 ran for seven days a week, between the hours of 10am-10pm, for six months. Between its opening on 30 April, attended by Queen Elizabeth II, and 30 October 1988, the Expo attracted 15,760,447 visitors, the majority of these being Australians. Most of the international visitors were Japanese, but 100,000 came from the United Kingdom and Europe, with 150,000 visitors from the United States. A total of 36 nations, two international organisations, 14 state and regional governments, and 34 corporations had exhibits.

 

The pavilions were mostly plain, modular, and temporary. However, the Nepalese Peace Pagoda is a distinctive building, and was easily noticed as the public came through the Vulture Street entrance to Expo 88. The Association to Preserve Asian Culture (APAC) commissioned the Peace Pagoda, which was built by 160 craftsmen of the Kathmandu Valley over two years, before being assembled in Brisbane. It is one of only three such temples outside Nepal, the others being at Munich and Osaka. Nepal has a long history of intricate woodcarving on buildings, and the Peace Pagoda was an attempt to showcase this skill to the world. The two small timber pavilions in front of the Peace Pagoda sold yoghurt lati, samosas, orange juice and lemon tea. Artisans demonstrated their crafts inside the ground floor of the Pagoda, and people could drink their tea and watch the Expo crowds from the teahouse on the first floor. The nearby Nepalese pavilion showcased traditional costumes, climbing dress, photographs, and artefacts.

 

Expo 88 was a turning point for Queensland's culture and economy, especially in Brisbane. On 30 May 1983 Joh Bjelke-Petersen had noted that if Brisbane's bid were successful, it would focus the world's spotlight on Queensland. Sir Frank Moore believed that the key to developing a major tourist industry in Queensland was a series of hallmark events, including the 1982 Commonwealth Games, which would focus attention on Queensland far better than any advertising campaign. Expo 88 was also intended to start Brisbane on a modernisation process, and towards becoming a 'global' city. The urban renewal of South Brisbane was just one aspect. In April 1984 Sir Llew stated that Queensland would never be the same again after Expo 88, and Brisbane would develop an image as a centre of trade, culture and entertainment. In April 1988 the Courier Mail claimed that Expo 88 was "bridging the yawning gap from a hayseed State to an urbane, international future". Sir Llew also claimed in April 1988 that the aim was for Expo 88 to be a catalyst for a change in lifestyle. Queenslanders had experienced extended opening hours and outdoor café dining, and had liked it.

 

While the crowds enjoyed Expo 88, controversy continued regarding future plans for the site. There were calls for more public input on redevelopment plans. About 4.5 hectares of land between Stanley Street and the river belonged to the Brisbane City Council (BCC), as Clem Jones Park, and had been lent to the Expo 88 Authority. In June 1988 it was decided to restore this land as parkland, and the River City 2000 Consortium lost its Preferred Developer status.

 

Government plans for a South Bank Development Corporation were announced, and in July 1988 an interim committee, headed by Sir Llew, was formed to oversee redevelopment. Sir Llew noted in October 1988 that more public funding was necessary to increase the parkland component of the new Southbank, as the land had been earmarked for development to repay for the cost of Expo 88. The draft redevelopment plans released in November 1988 included 12 hectares of parkland. Public submissions on the plan suggested that people wanted to be able to return to the Expo 88 site, to a public facility that had a similar combination of food, art and nature.

 

At the end of Expo 88, the APAC had planned to sell the Nepalese Peace Pagoda, and it appeared likely that it would be moved to Japan. However, 90,000 people had signed a petition during Expo 88 to keep the Peace Pagoda in Brisbane, and in late 1988 the BCC offered to provide land for the Peace Pagoda, if the Federal Government would pay for its cost and maintenance. A "Save the Pagoda Campaign" was active by February 1989. Public donations eventually totalled $52,000, with $30,000 coming from one couple, who wanted to "give Brisbane something to remember from Expo 88". The BCC provided $50,000, and the Federal Government supplied $100,000. "The Friends of the Pagoda Committee" also raised funds to buy several items that had complemented the Peace Pagoda, including a brass statue of the deity of compassion, a bronze bell and carved stone frame, and a stone lingam.

 

The Southbank Development Corporation was set up February 1989, with Vic Pullar as the Chairman. Approximately $200 million had been spent on developing the Expo site, and this money had to be recouped. The South Bank Corporation Act was passed in May 1989, and the former Clem Jones Park area was transferred to the Southbank Corporation, which was tasked with managing a new parkland precinct. In June 1989 submissions were sought from five architectural firms, and in August the "Media Five" concept of a mixed residential, commercial, and parkland development was chosen. Under Media Five's plans, the Peace Pagoda would be moved to the northern part of the parklands. The Media Five Chairman, Desmond Brooks, also suggested that Collins Place, the Plough Inn and the Allgas Building be removed to a historic village, but Vic Pullar rejected this idea. However, when the Southbank Corporation's Draft Development Plan was released in November 1989, it proposed to only keep the facades of the historic buildings. After protests by the National Trust, the State Government overruled the Southbank Corporation.

 

The proposed redevelopment included a waterway through the park, and a large lagoon, which was later downsized. In March 1990 the Final Plan was presented, after public submissions, and site redevelopment started in July 1990. The official Southbank Parklands opening occurred on 20 June 1992. The Waterway was later filled in and replaced with the Energex Arbour, which was officially opened in March 2000.

 

The transfer of the Peace Pagoda to its current site started on 24 September 1991. The deity of compassion was moved from the first floor to a glass case on the ground floor, the sides of the ground floor were encased in glass, and a display case was added inside. Access to the first floor was sealed off. The two smaller pavilions were also transferred, but their service windows were locked up. Two lion statues and two elephant statues were also relocated. The building was originally designed to be demountable, but it is currently set in a ceramic tiled floor. The Peace Pagoda was one of the best-loved exhibits at Expo 88, as visitors were able to relax in it away from the bustle of the crowds. Today it is still popular, both with tourists, and those who go there to meditate and reflect.

 

Source: Queensland Heritage Register.

Lemme tell you a funny story that both predates and involves this shot by Emmanuela (her take on it can be found here):

 

I was completely exhausted one day after work and simply just plopped down against the wall as I waited for an elevator to take me down so I could get the heck home. I was soon joined by a couple of other staff members.

 

One of them - long on degrees and initials after her name but well short on either common sense or human decency - smiled, stooped over, actually rubbed my ample gut and said something to the effect of "rubbing the Buddha belly for luck" and laughed.

 

Since she was a convert to Buddhism, I suspect she thought she was making a friendly gesture in the name of fun. Since I'm very self-conscious about my weight (having not originally been a "big guy") I in fact immediately placed the gesture HIGH on my list of most insensitive and insulting actions directed toward me.

 

Where, years later, it still ranks today.

 

We went our separate ways once the elevator arrived - and later professionally as first she then I left the company.

 

Fast forward to this photo shoot. In her pre-shoot interviews, Emmanuela asks her subjects to list parts of their bodies that the do and do NOT like. Suffice to say, my paunch was on the NOT list.

 

As is her wont, Emmanuela respected my NOT list throughout the week. With the exception of this picture. She handed me this glass vase, had me sit in the light and fired away.

 

She wanted to make a point.

 

"This IS you," she would explain. "And all of you is beautiful. I want you to see that.

 

"As you look through this crystal, I want you to see that. And I want you to LOVE AND EMBRACE YOUR BUDDHA BELLY." And, no, she didn't know about my elevator experience - until now.

 

BTW, Emmanuela has a lot of degrees and letters after her name - but there's also a HUGE sense of compassion, prescience, common sense, love and support thrown in.

 

And she makes damn good points.

 

DEDICATIONS: Emmanuela, of course. And to the slowly-shrinking gut, which in a way has helped me be more approachable as some sort of "big 'ol teddy bear type" Who knew a body part could actually put people at ease?

 

And, of course, to Francis Albert Sinatra , who makes the thought of embracing myself and those I love feel like beautiful music to my ears. (Great karaoke song, btw....)