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Shot this twice. The first Bo was dressed conservatively... Angora sweater, up to her chin, jacket, jeans and tan boots. The second more in a tribute to John Derek. John photographed Bo sensually, and, in retrospect; tastefully. Making the beauty of Bo, natural yet sexy but not overtly sexual, but suggestively beautiful.
More shots from this shoot on pinterest; www.pinterest.com/myfarrah/pins/
Bo Derek as repainted and restyled by Noel Cruz of www.ncruz.com for www.myfarrah.com to become the ultimate "10" Bo Derek!
1:6 scale articulated horse and blue shirt are from Monkey Depot (www.monkeydepot.com). The knitted hand gloves are from Pechenuha on eBay; www.ebay.com/usr/pechenuha-1?_trksid=p2056016.l2559
Bo Derek continues to act and is an animal rights activist. You can see her official web site at www.officialboderek.com.
From IMDB: She is a member of the California Horse Racing Board. Named envoy to Fight Animal Trafficking by the United States State Department. Has her own pampering pet care product company: "Bo Derek's Bless the Beasts", products in the range include numerous nourishing dog shampoos and conditioners, fragrances and fur polish.
Photo/Graphic Layout & web sites ncruz.com & myfarrah.com by www.stevemckinnis.com.
In a city where the town hall is a sheik’s palace, the Chamber of Commerce is a Turkish harem, and the train station is a mosque, you would probably expect to be somewhere in the Middle East. But no, this is Opa-Locka, Florida, a diminutive city northwest of Miami with the nation’s largest and strangest collection of Islamic Revival architecture.
Opa-Locka was built during the Florida Land Boom of the 1920s, when films like Rudolf Valentino’s orientalist fantasy The Sheik and Douglas Fairbanks’ The Thief of Baghdad had harnessed the sultry and romantic appeal of the Middle East into a full-blown cultural fad.
Florida was hot and tropical enough to feel exotic, so when developer Glenn Curtiss built Opa-Locka, he did so around an overt One Thousand and One Nights theme. In addition to the orientalist architecture, the streets were given names such as Ali Baba Avenue and Sabur Lane.
Though the Great Miami Hurricane of 1926 destroyed a number of Opa-Locka buildings, several of the Moorish buildings survived and have since been added to the National Register of Historic Places. The crowning jewel is the former Opa-Locka City Hall building, an onion-domed and minaret-sporting marvel inspired by the description of the palace of Emperor Kosroushah in One Thousand and One Nights.
Opa-locka is currently in a state of advanced decay as the cash-strapped city faces financial collapse. Many of the Arabian-inspired buildings are falling apart, and the former City Hall itself is boarded up and in a state of advanced disrepair, but a walk through the little town still offers a look at the 1920s’ idea of exotic luxury.
The building is at the intersection of Fisherman Street and Sherazad Street, about two blocks from the current (modern) city hall; the old city hall is clearly visible from the new one. There is ample free parking in the Sherbondy Park lot.
Credit for the data above is given to the following website:
The flamboyantly colored Purple Gallinule moves dauntlessly and noisily among endless marsh grasses and through aquatic vegetation in search of food. Its large feet help distribute its weight over a greater surface area giving it the appearance of buoyancy so great that it seems, at times, to walk on water. Belonging to the rail family, it is a close cousin of the Moorhen and Coot, from which it differentiates predominantly by color. With a diet that includes a wide variety of plant material, insects, amphibians, snails, and fish, the marshes and swamps of Southern Florida provide these birds with a bountiful feast. Capable of flight and equally as adept at swimming the most noted characteristic of this bird is still its ability to step lightly across aquatic vegetation, like the lily pad, a trait endowed predominantly by having overtly large feet. So when it comes to feet, bigger sometimes means a less imposing imprint. #iLoveNature #iLoveWildlife #WildlifePhotography in #Florida #Nature in #NorthAmerica #PurpleGallinule #DrDADBooks #Canon #WildlifeConservation
Pose 'Strip chic (jacket)' available now Del May Mainstore
Hair: ( R E D ) M I N T ~ B L A C K S ~ No.02 (M) (includes blindfold)
Skin: 'ILLUSORY' from FrostBite Winter Set
Cigarette: [ hoorenbeek ] from Smoking Pack
Bruises: OVERT Bruised Torso 1
Jacket: [LeLutka]-CHARLIE jacket/dark
Belt: BI3 ~ Basic Leather Belt
Pants: [LeLutka]-DIELLICIOUS jumpsuit/dark (pants only)
During a period of aimless wandering around the backroads of Waimea (Kamuela) yesterday, trying to kill time before a newspaper assignment, I happened upon this horse and decided to stop and shoot the big fella.
As I walked towards him I noticed this Jackson's Chameleon sitting right where you see it pictured here.
Luckily, and luck is always part of any decent captured, candid moment, as I stepped back to compose a shot with the lizard and horse in frame, the horse took notice of the lizard and gave it one of those "What the...?!" looks, as you can see if you view a larger version of this photo.
The horse was quite curious about the lizard and immediately started to give it the proverbial "sniff test".
I watched this process for a few moments and was momentarily concerned that it might accidentally injure or kill the little green monster.
I knew the horse wouldn't try to eat the lizard, 'cause horses are herbivores. Both animals are non-predatory, as indicated by the placement of their eyes, which are on the sides of their respective heads.
(Actually, if you're an insect you'd probably see the chameleon as being somewhat predatory when its tongue is thrusting towards you at lightning-fast speed.)
Predatory animals, like those who are capable of reading this, have eyes positioned on the front of their heads.
The Jackson's Chameleon, though fierce looking, is one of the most slow-moving, docile and harmless lizards I've ever encountered. Periodically they'll open their mouth when they're trying to scare you off or become frightened. They only open the mouth, but never overtly try to bite. Even so, I wouldn't stick my finger in there while in the open state.
I had a good photo shoot with these two beautiful animals while they interacted with each other for about a half hour. This half hour was the best I had all week.
The horse accidentally knocked the lizard off the fence once. When I departed, the lizard was making it's way down the fence towards some overhanging trees.
Though it didn't call me this morning, as I had requested, I have to assume it's still alive and well and doing whatever it is that lizards do when people like me aren't shootin' 'em.
The main feature of an evening at the Moulin Rouge is the performance. The revue has become internationally famous as the home of the traditional French can-can, which is still performed there today.
The can-can existed for many years as a respectable, working-class party dance, but it was in the early days of the Moulin Rouge that courtesans first adapted the dance to entertain the male clientele. The dance was usually performed individually, with courtesans moving in an energetic and provocative way in an attempt to seduce potential clients. It was common for them to lift their skirts and reveal their legs, underwear and occasionally the genitals,and as time progressed can-cans seen at the Moulin Rouge became increasingly vulgar and overtly erotic, causing much public outrage.
Later however, with the rising popularity of music hall entertainment in Europe, courtesans were no longer required at the Moulin Rouge and it became a legitimate nightclub. The modern can-can was born as dancers (many of them failed ballet dancers with exceptional skill) were introduced to entertain the guests. The can-can that we recognise today comes directly from this period and, as the vulgarity of the dance lessened, it became renowned for its athletic and acrobatic tricks.
The Moulin Rouge lost much of its former reputation as a « high-class brothel » and it soon became fashionable for French society to visit and see the spectacular cabarets, which have included a can-can ever since. The dance is recognisable for the long skirts with heavily frilled undergarments that the dancers wear, high kicks, hops in a circle whilst holding the other leg in the air, splits, cartwheels and other acrobatic tricks, normally accompanied by squeals and shrieks. Whilst the dance became less crude, the choreography has always intended to be a little risqué and somewhat provocative.
Botany Bay Boneyard Beach Sunrise Reflections
Charleston County, Lowcountry South Carolina
Accessed via Botany Bay Road (dirt/sand)
Date taken: March 20, 2013
Unsigned prints are available for purchase at Fine Art America.
Website & Social Media Links: Facebook | Website | Google+
I realized this morning as I was thinking about spring in Charleston that I never posted this image to my Flickr portfolio! It was a rare morning for me at the Boneyard because I had typically always planned my visit to coincide with at least a half- to full-tide. There is a certain energy--an electricity--when the ocean is lapping and smashing at the base of these stranded trees. It invites the photographer, basically shouts to them, to concentrate on the interaction between the sea and the tree. On this morning however, conditions were calm; the ocean was safely behind the trees and the waves largely without energy. My initial instinct was disappointment. I had been conditioned to see a certain action at this location and when I didn't see what I expected, I thought that the photograph couldn't possibly be, or represent, my best. However, I settled in, gave in to the situation and began observing the immediate environment. A recent tidal pool had left a stretch of water stranded up the beach and the skies were shaping up to have some interest if the clouds would stay or push just a touch out to sea. I eventually settled on a super low perspective, basically laying in the sand and capturing the scene you see above. While it is a static image versus a lively and dynamic one that I may have initially had on my mind, the response to this image on my social media outlets and Fine Art America has far surpassed the response that I've seen from the aforementioned action shots. The absence of the wave action at the trees allowed me to pull back and take a broader landscape that suggests the situation but doesn't overtly illustrate it--it allows reflection by the photographic subject and perhaps even encourages reflection on the situation by the viewer as well. Something about this photograph allows individuals to connect in a way that is stronger than my other images--and to be completely honest, I don't know that I can pinpoint why or what it is. What do you think? Does this image register with you? Care to share why?
Thanks folks and have a wonderful weekend! Get outside and find something incredible to see!
My Christmas decorations are pure nostalgia, each bringing a significant memory of love, warmth and family. I am not overtly religious but in times of darkness it is an enduring celebration of all that is light
Drents Museum, Assen.
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Edward Hopper (July 22, 1882 – May 15, 1967) was a prominent American realist painter and printmaker. While he was most popularly known for his oil paintings, he was equally proficient as a watercolorist and printmaker in etching. Both in his urban and rural scenes, his spare and finely calculated renderings reflected his personal vision of modern American life.
Hopper was born in 1882 in Upper Nyack, New York, a yacht-building center on the Hudson River north of New York City. He was one of two children of a comfortably well-to-do family. His parents, of mostly Dutch ancestry, were Elizabeth Griffiths Smith and Garret Henry Hopper, a dry-goods merchant. Although not so successful as his forebears, Garrett provided well for his two children with considerable help from his wife's inheritance. He retired at age forty-nine. Edward and his only sister Marion attended both private and public schools. They were raised in a strict Baptist home. His father had a mild nature, and the household was dominated by women: Hopper's mother, grandmother, sister, and maid.
His birthplace and boyhood home was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 2000. It is now operated as the Edward Hopper House Art Center. It serves as a nonprofit community cultural center featuring exhibitions, workshops, lectures, performances, and special events.
Hopper was a good student in grade school and showed talent in drawing at age five. He readily absorbed his father's intellectual tendencies and love of French and Russian cultures. He also demonstrated his mother's artistic heritage. Hopper's parents encouraged his art and kept him amply supplied with materials, instructional magazines, and illustrated books. By his teens, he was working in pen-and-ink, charcoal, watercolor, and oil—drawing from nature as well as making political cartoons. In 1895, he created his first signed oil painting, Rowboat in Rocky Cove. It shows his early interest in nautical subjects.
In his early self-portraits, Hopper tended to represent himself as skinny, ungraceful, and homely. Though a tall and quiet teenager, his prankish sense of humor found outlet in his art, sometimes in depictions of immigrants or of women dominating men in comic situations. Later in life, he mostly depicted women as the figures in his paintings. In high school, he dreamed of being a naval architect, but after graduation he declared his intention to follow an art career. Hopper's parents insisted that he study commercial art to have a reliable means of income. In developing his self-image and individualistic philosophy of life, Hopper was influenced by the writings of Ralph Waldo Emerson. He later said, "I admire him greatly...I read him over and over again."
Hopper began art studies with a correspondence course in 1899. Soon he transferred to the New York School of Art and Design, the forerunner of Parsons The New School for Design. There he studied for six years, with teachers including William Merritt Chase, who instructed him in oil painting. Early on, Hopper modeled his style after Chase and French Impressionist masters Édouard Manet and Edgar Degas. Sketching from live models proved a challenge and a shock for the conservatively raised Hopper.
Another of his teachers, artist Robert Henri, taught life class. Henri encouraged his students to use their art to "make a stir in the world". He also advised his students, "It isn't the subject that counts but what you feel about it" and "Forget about art and paint pictures of what interests you in life." In this manner, Henri influenced Hopper, as well as notable future artists George Bellows and Rockwell Kent. He encouraged them to imbue a modern spirit in their work. Some artists in Henri's circle, including John Sloan, became members of "The Eight", also known as the Ashcan School of American Art. Hopper's first existing oil painting to hint at his famous interiors was Solitary Figure in a Theater (c. 1904). During his student years, he also painted dozens of nudes, still life studies, landscapes, and portraits, including his self-portraits.
In 1905, Hopper landed a part-time job with an advertising agency, where he created cover designs for trade magazines. Hopper came to detest illustration. He was bound to it by economic necessity until the mid-1920s. He temporarily escaped by making three trips to Europe, each centered in Paris, ostensibly to study the emerging art scene there. In fact, however, he studied alone and seemed mostly unaffected by the new currents in art. Later he said that he "didn't remember having heard of Picasso at all." He was highly impressed by Rembrandt, particularly his Night Watch, which he said was "the most wonderful thing of his I have seen; it's past belief in its reality."
Hopper began painting urban and architectural scenes in a dark palette. Then he shifted to the lighter palette of the Impressionists before returning to the darker palette with which he was comfortable. Hopper later said, "I got over that and later things done in Paris were more the kind of things I do now." Hopper spent much of his time drawing street and café scenes, and going to the theater and opera. Unlike many of his contemporaries who imitated the abstract cubist experiments, Hopper was attracted to realist art. Later, he admitted to no European influences other than French engraver Charles Méryon, whose moody Paris scenes Hopper imitated.
After returning from his last European trip, Hopper rented a studio in New York City, where he struggled to define his own style. Reluctantly, he returned to illustration to support himself. Being a freelancer, Hopper was forced to solicit for projects, and had to knock on the doors of magazine and agency offices to find business. His painting languished: "it's hard for me to decide what I want to paint. I go for months without finding it sometimes. It comes slowly." His fellow illustrator, Walter Tittle, described Hopper's depressed emotional state in sharper terms, seeing his friend "suffering...from long periods of unconquerable inertia, sitting for days at a time before his easel in helpless unhappiness, unable to raise a hand to break the spell."
In 1912, Hopper traveled to Gloucester, Massachusetts, to seek some inspiration and made his first outdoor paintings in America. He painted Squam Light, the first of many lighthouse paintings to come.
In 1913, at the famous Armory Show, Hopper earned $250 when he sold his first painting, Sailing (1911), which he had painted over an earlier self-portrait. Hopper was thirty-one, and although he hoped his first sale would lead to others in short order, his career would not catch on for many more years. He continued to participate in group exhibitions at smaller venues, such as the MacDowell Club of New York. Shortly after his father's death that same year, Hopper moved to the 3 Washington Square North apartment in the Greenwich Village section of Manhattan, where he would live for the rest of his life.
The following year he received a commission to make some movie posters and handle publicity for a movie company. Although he did not like the illustration work, Hopper was a lifelong devotee of the cinema and the theatre, both of which he treated as subjects for his paintings. Each form influenced his compositional methods.
At an impasse over his oil paintings, in 1915 Hopper turned to etching. By 1923 he had produced most of his approximately 70 works in this medium, many of urban scenes of both Paris and New York. He also produced some posters for the war effort, as well as continuing with occasional commercial projects. When he could, Hopper did some outdoor watercolors on visits to New England, especially at the art colonies at Ogunquit, and Monhegan Island.
During the early 1920s his etchings began to receive public recognition. They expressed some of his later themes, as in Night on the El Train (couples in silence), Evening Wind (solitary female), and The Catboat (simple nautical scene). Two notable oil paintings of this time were New York Interior (1921) and New York Restaurant (1922). He also painted two of his many "window" paintings to come: Girl at Sewing Machine and Moonlight Interior, both of which show a figure (clothed or nude) near a window of an apartment viewed as gazing out or from the point of view from the outside looking in.
Although these were frustrating years, Hopper gained some recognition. In 1918, Hopper was awarded the U.S. Shipping Board Prize for his war poster, "Smash the Hun." He participated in three exhibitions: in 1917 with the Society of Independent Artists, in January 1920 (a one-man exhibition at the Whitney Studio Club, which was the precursor to the Whitney Museum), and in 1922 (again with the Whitney Studio Club). In 1923, Hopper received two awards for his etchings: the Logan Prize from the Chicago Society of Etchers, and the W. A. Bryan Prize.
By 1923, Hopper's slow climb finally produced a breakthrough. He re-encountered Josephine Nivison, an artist and former student of Robert Henri, during a summer painting trip in Gloucester, Massachusetts. They were opposites: she was short, open, gregarious, sociable, and liberal, while he was tall, secretive, shy, quiet, introspective, and conservative. They married a year later. She remarked famously, "Sometimes talking to Eddie is just like dropping a stone in a well, except that it doesn't thump when it hits bottom." She subordinated her career to his and shared his reclusive life style. The rest of their lives revolved around their spare walk-up apartment in the city and their summers in South Truro on Cape Cod. She managed his career and his interviews, was his primary model, and was his life companion.
With Nivison's help, six of Hopper's Gloucester watercolors were admitted to an exhibit at the Brooklyn Museum in 1923. One of them, The Mansard Roof, was purchased by the museum for its permanent collection for the sum of $100. The critics generally raved about his work; one stated, "What vitality, force and directness! Observe what can be done with the homeliest subject." Hopper sold all his watercolors at a one-man show the following year and finally decided to put illustration behind him.
The artist had demonstrated his ability to transfer his attraction to Parisian architecture to American urban and rural architecture. According to Boston Museum of Fine Arts curator Carol Troyen, "Hopper really liked the way these houses, with their turrets and towers and porches and mansard roofs and ornament cast wonderful shadows. He always said that his favorite thing was painting sunlight on the side of a house."
At forty-one, Hopper received further recognition for his work. He continued to harbor bitterness about his career, later turning down appearances and awards. With his financial stability secured by steady sales, Hopper would live a simple, stable life and continue creating art in his distinctive style for four more decades.
His Two on the Aisle (1927) sold for a personal record $1,500, enabling Hopper to purchase an automobile, which he used to make field trips to remote areas of New England. In 1929, he produced Chop Suey and Railroad Sunset. The following year, art patron Stephen Clark donated House by the Railroad (1925) to the Museum of Modern Art, the first oil painting that it acquired for its collection. Hopper painted his last self-portrait in oil around 1930. Although Josephine posed for many of his paintings, she sat for only one formal oil portrait by her husband, Jo Painting (1936).
Hopper fared better than many other artists during the Great Depression. His stature took a sharp rise in 1931 when major museums, including the Whitney Museum of American Art and the Metropolitan Museum of Art, paid thousands of dollars for his works. He sold 30 paintings that year, including 13 watercolors. The following year he participated in the first Whitney Annual, and he continued to exhibit in every annual at the museum for the rest of his life. In 1933, the Museum of Modern Art gave Hopper his first large-scale retrospective.
In 1930, the Hoppers rented a cottage on Cape Cod in South Truro, Massachusetts. They returned to South Truro every summer for the rest of their lives, building a summer house there in 1934. From there, they would take driving trips into other areas when Edward needed to search for fresh material to paint. In the summers of 1937 and '38, the Hoppers spent extended sojourns on Wagon Wheels Farm in South Royalton, Vermont, where Edward painted a series of watercolors along the White River. These scenes are atypical among Hopper's mature works, as most are "pure" landscapes, devoid of architecture or human figures. First Branch of the White River (1938), now in the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, is the most well-known of Hopper's Vermont landscapes.
Hopper was very productive through the 1930s and early 1940s, producing among many important works New York Movie (1939), Girlie Show (1941), Nighthawks (1942), Hotel Lobby (1943), and Morning in a City (1944). During the late 1940s, however, he suffered a period of relative inactivity. He admitted, "I wish I could paint more. I get sick of reading and going to the movies." During the next two decades, his health faltered, and he had several prostate surgeries and other medical problems. But, in the 1950s and early 1960s, he created several more major works, including First Row Orchestra (1951); as well as Morning Sun and Hotel by a Railroad, both in 1952; and Intermission in 1963.
Hopper died in his studio near Washington Square in New York City on May 15, 1967. He was buried two days later in the family's grave at Oak Hill Cemetery in Nyack, New York, his place of birth. His wife died ten months later.
His wife bequeathed their joint collection of more than three thousand works to the Whitney Museum of American Art. Other significant paintings by Hopper are held by the Museum of Modern Art in New York, The Des Moines Art Center, and the Art Institute of Chicago.
Always reluctant to discuss himself and his art, Hopper simply said, "The whole answer is there on the canvas." Hopper was stoic and fatalistic—a quiet introverted man with a gentle sense of humor and a frank manner. Hopper was someone drawn to an emblematic, anti-narrative symbolism, who "painted short isolated moments of configuration, saturated with suggestion". His silent spaces and uneasy encounters "touch us where we are most vulnerable",[ and have "a suggestion of melancholy, that melancholy being enacted". His sense of color revealed him as a pure painter as he "turned the Puritan into the purist, in his quiet canvasses where blemishes and blessings balance". According to critic Lloyd Goodrich, he was "an eminently native painter, who more than any other was getting more of the quality of America into his canvases".
Conservative in politics and social matters (Hopper asserted for example that "artists' lives should be written by people very close to them"), he accepted things as they were and displayed a lack of idealism. Cultured and sophisticated, he was well-read, and many of his paintings show figures reading. He was generally good company and unperturbed by silences, though sometimes taciturn, grumpy, or detached. He was always serious about his art and the art of others, and when asked would return frank opinions.
Hopper's most systematic declaration of his philosophy as an artist was given in a handwritten note, entitled "Statement", submitted in 1953 to the journal, Reality:
Great art is the outward expression of an inner life in the artist, and this inner life will result in his personal vision of the world. No amount of skillful invention can replace the essential element of imagination. One of the weaknesses of much abstract painting is the attempt to substitute the inventions of the human intellect for a private imaginative conception.
The inner life of a human being is a vast and varied realm and does not concern itself alone with stimulating arrangements of color, form and design.
The term life used in art is something not to be held in contempt, for it implies all of existence and the province of art is to react to it and not to shun it.
Painting will have to deal more fully and less obliquely with life and nature's phenomena before it can again become great.
Though Hopper claimed that he didn't consciously embed psychological meaning in his paintings, he was deeply interested in Freud and the power of the subconscious mind. He wrote in 1939, "So much of every art is an expression of the subconscious that it seems to me most of all the important qualities are put there unconsciously, and little of importance by the conscious intellect."
Although he is best known for his oil paintings, Hopper initially achieved recognition for his watercolors and he also produced some commercially successful etchings. Additionally, his notebooks contain high-quality pen and pencil sketches, which were never meant for public viewing.
Hopper paid particular attention to geometrical design and the careful placement of human figures in proper balance with their environment. He was a slow and methodical artist; as he wrote, "It takes a long time for an idea to strike. Then I have to think about it for a long time. I don't start painting until I have it all worked out in my mind. I'm all right when I get to the easel". He often made preparatory sketches to work out his carefully calculated compositions. He and his wife kept a detailed ledger of their works noting such items as "sad face of woman unlit", "electric light from ceiling", and "thighs cooler".
For New York Movie (1939), Hopper demonstrates his thorough preparation with more than 53 sketches of the theater interior and the figure of the pensive usherette.
The effective use of light and shadow to create mood also is central to Hopper's methods. Bright sunlight (as an emblem of insight or revelation), and the shadows it casts, also play symbolically powerful roles in Hopper paintings such as Early Sunday Morning (1930), Summertime (1943), Seven A.M. (1948), and Sun in an Empty Room (1963). His use of light and shadow effects have been compared to the cinematography of film noir.
Although a realist painter, Hopper's "soft" realism simplified shapes and details. He used saturated color to heighten contrast and create mood.
Hopper derived his subject matter from two primary sources: one, the common features of American life (gas stations, motels, restaurants, theaters, railroads, and street scenes) and its inhabitants; and two, seascapes and rural landscapes. Regarding his style, Hopper defined himself as "an amalgam of many races" and not a member of any school, particularly the "Ashcan School".[69] Once Hopper achieved his mature style, his art remained consistent and self-contained, in spite of the numerous art trends that came and went during his long career.
Hopper's seascapes fall into three main groups: pure landscapes of rocks, sea, and beach grass; lighthouses and farmhouses; and sailboats. Sometimes he combined these elements. Most of these paintings depict strong light and fair weather; he showed little interest in snow or rain scenes, or in seasonal color changes. He painted the majority of the pure seascapes in the period between 1916 and 1919 on Monhegan Island. Hopper's The Long Leg (1935) is a nearly all-blue sailing picture with the simplest of elements, while his Ground Swell (1939) is more complex and depicts a group of youngsters out for a sail, a theme reminiscent of Winslow Homer's iconic Breezing Up (1876).
Urban architecture and cityscapes also were major subjects for Hopper. He was fascinated with the American urban scene, "our native architecture with its hideous beauty, its fantastic roofs, pseudo-gothic, French Mansard, Colonial, mongrel or what not, with eye-searing color or delicate harmonies of faded paint, shouldering one another along interminable streets that taper off into swamps or dump heaps."
In 1925, he produced House by the Railroad. This classic work depicts an isolated Victorian wood mansion, partly obscured by the raised embankment of a railroad. It marked Hopper's artistic maturity. Lloyd Goodrich praised the work as "one of the most poignant and desolating pieces of realism." The work is the first of a series of stark rural and urban scenes that uses sharp lines and large shapes, played upon by unusual lighting to capture the lonely mood of his subjects. Although critics and viewers interpret meaning and mood in these cityscapes, Hopper insisted "I was more interested in the sunlight on the buildings and on the figures than any symbolism." As if to prove the point, his late painting Sun in an Empty Room (1963) is a pure study of sunlight.
Most of Hopper's figure paintings focus on the subtle interaction of human beings with their environment—carried out with solo figures, couples, or groups. His primary emotional themes are solitude, loneliness, regret, boredom, and resignation. He expresses the emotions in various environments, including the office, in public places, in apartments, on the road, or on vacation. As if he were creating stills for a movie or tableaux in a play, Hopper positioned his characters as if they were captured just before or just after the climax of a scene.
Hopper's solitary figures are mostly women—dressed, semi-clad, and nude—often reading or looking out a window, or in the workplace. In the early 1920s, Hopper painted his first such images Girl at Sewing Machine (1921), New York Interior (another woman sewing) (1921), and Moonlight Interior (a nude getting into bed) (1923). Automat (1927) and Hotel Room (1931), however, are more representative of his mature style, emphasizing the solitude more overtly.
As Hopper scholar, Gail Levin, wrote of Hotel Room:
The spare vertical and diagonal bands of color and sharp electric shadows create a concise and intense drama in the night...Combining poignant subject matter with such a powerful formal arrangement, Hopper's composition is pure enough to approach an almost abstract sensibility, yet layered with a poetic meaning for the observer.
Hopper's Room in New York (1932) and Cape Cod Evening (1939) are prime examples of his "couple" paintings. In the first, a young couple appear alienated and uncommunicative—he reading the newspaper while she idles by the piano. The viewer takes on the role of a voyeur, as if looking with a telescope through the window of the apartment to spy on the couple's lack of intimacy. In the latter painting, an older couple with little to say to each other, are playing with their dog, whose own attention is drawn away from his masters.[80] Hopper takes the couple theme to a more ambitious level with Excursion into Philosophy (1959). A middle-aged man sits dejectedly on the edge of a bed. Beside him lies an open book and a partially clad woman. A shaft of light illuminates the floor in front of him. Jo Hopper noted in their log book, "[T]he open book is Plato, reread too late".
Levin interprets the painting:
Plato's philosopher, in search of the real and the true, must turn away from this transitory realm and contemplate the eternal Forms and Ideas. The pensive man in Hopper's painting is positioned between the lure of the earthly domain, figured by the woman, and the call of the higher spiritual domain, represented by the ethereal lightfall. The pain of thinking about this choice and its consequences, after reading Plato all night, is evident. He is paralysed by the fervent inner labour of the melancholic.
In Office at Night (1940), another "couple" painting, Hopper creates a psychological puzzle. The painting shows a man focusing on his work papers, while nearby his attractive female secretary pulls a file. Several studies for the painting show how Hopper experimented with the positioning of the two figures, perhaps to heighten the eroticism and the tension. Hopper presents the viewer with the possibilities that the man is either truly uninterested in the woman's appeal or that he is working hard to ignore her. Another interesting aspect of the painting is how Hopper employs three light sources, from a desk lamp, through a window and indirect light from above. Hopper went on to make several "office" pictures, but none with a sensual undercurrent.
The best-known of Hopper's paintings, Nighthawks (1942), is one of his paintings of groups. It shows customers sitting at the counter of an all-night diner. The shapes and diagonals are carefully constructed. The viewpoint is cinematic—from the sidewalk, as if the viewer were approaching the restaurant. The diner's harsh electric light sets it apart from the dark night outside, enhancing the mood and subtle emotion.[82] As in many Hopper paintings, the interaction is minimal. The restaurant depicted was inspired by one in Greenwich Village. Both Hopper and his wife posed for the figures, and Jo Hopper gave the painting its title. The inspiration for the picture may have come from Ernest Hemingway's short story "The Killers", which Hopper greatly admired, or from the more philosophical "A Clean, Well-Lighted Place".[83] In keeping with the title of his painting, Hopper later said, Nighthawks has more to do with the possibility of predators in the night than with loneliness.
His second most recognizable painting after Nighthawks is another urban painting, Early Sunday Morning (originally called Seventh Avenue Shops), which shows an empty street scene in sharp side light, with a fire hydrant and a barber pole as stand-ins for human figures. Originally Hopper intended to put figures in the upstairs windows but left them empty to heighten the feeling of desolation.
Hopper's rural New England scenes, such as Gas (1940), are no less meaningful. Gas represents "a different, equally clean, well-lighted refuge ... ke[pt] open for those in need as they navigate the night, traveling their own miles to go before they sleep." The work presents a fusion of several Hopper themes: the solitary figure, the melancholy of dusk, and the lonely road.
Hopper approaches Surrealism with Rooms by the Sea (1951), where an open door gives a view of the ocean, without an apparent ladder or steps and no indication of a beach.
After his student years, Hopper's nudes were all women. Unlike past artists who painted the female nude to glorify the female form and to highlight female eroticism, Hopper's nudes are solitary women who are psychologically exposed. One audacious exception is Girlie Show (1941), where a red-headed strip-tease queen strides confidently across a stage to the accompaniment of the musicians in the pit. Girlie Show was inspired by Hopper's visit to a burlesque show a few days earlier. Hopper's wife, as usual, posed for him for the painting, and noted in her diary, "Ed beginning a new canvas—a burlesque queen doing a strip tease—and I posing without a stitch on in front of the stove—nothing but high heels in a lottery dance pose."
Hopper's portraits and self-portraits were relatively few after his student years.[91] Hopper did produce a commissioned "portrait" of a house, The MacArthurs' Home (1939), where he faithfully details the Victorian architecture of the home of actress Helen Hayes. She reported later, "I guess I never met a more misanthropic, grumpy individual in my life." Hopper grumbled throughout the project and never again accepted a commission.[92] Hopper also painted Portrait of Orleans (1950), a "portrait" of the Cape Cod town from its main street.
Though very interested in the American Civil War and Mathew Brady's battlefield photographs, Hopper made only two historical paintings. Both depicted soldiers on their way to Gettysburg. Also rare among his themes are paintings showing action. The best example of an action painting is Bridle Path (1939), but Hopper's struggle with the proper anatomy of the horses may have discouraged him from similar attempts.
Hopper's final oil painting, Two Comedians (1966), painted one year before his death, focuses on his love of the theater. Two French pantomime actors, one male and one female, both dressed in bright white costumes, take their bow in front of a darkened stage. Jo Hopper confirmed that her husband intended the figures to suggest their taking their life's last bows together as husband and wife.
Hopper's paintings have often been seen by others as having a narrative or thematic content that the artist may not have intended. Much meaning can be added to a painting by its title, but the titles of Hopper's paintings were sometimes chosen by others, or were selected by Hopper and his wife in a way that makes it unclear whether they have any real connection with the artist's meaning. For example, Hopper once told an interviewer that he was "fond of Early Sunday Morning... but it wasn't necessarily Sunday. That word was tacked on later by someone else."
The tendency to read thematic or narrative content into Hopper's paintings, that Hopper had not intended, extended even to his wife. When Jo Hopper commented on the figure in Cape Cod Morning "It's a woman looking out to see if the weather's good enough to hang out her wash," Hopper retorted, "Did I say that? You're making it Norman Rockwell. From my point of view she's just looking out the window." Another example of the same phenomenon is recorded in a 1948 article in Time:
Hopper's Summer Evening, a young couple talking in the harsh light of a cottage porch, is inescapably romantic, but Hopper was hurt by one critic's suggestion that it would do for an illustration in "any woman's magazine." Hopper had the painting in the back of his head "for 20 years and I never thought of putting the figures in until I actually started last summer. Why any art director would tear the picture apart. The figures were not what interested me; it was the light streaming down, and the night all around."
Place in American art
In focusing primarily on quiet moments, very rarely showing action, Hopper employed a form of realism adopted by another leading American realist, Andrew Wyeth, but Hopper's technique was completely different from Wyeth's hyper-detailed style.[46] In league with some of his contemporaries, Hopper shared his urban sensibility with John Sloan and George Bellows, but avoided their overt action and violence. Where Joseph Stella and Georgia O'Keeffe glamorized the monumental structures of the city, Hopper reduced them to everyday geometrics and he depicted the pulse of the city as desolate and dangerous rather than "elegant or seductive".
Charles Burchfield, whom Hopper admired and to whom he was compared, said of Hopper, "he achieves such a complete verity that you can read into his interpretations of houses and conceptions of New York life any human implications you wish." He also attributed Hopper's success to his "bold individualism. ... In him we have regained that sturdy American independence which Thomas Eakins gave us, but which for a time was lost." Hopper considered this a high compliment since he considered Eakins the greatest American painter.
Hopper scholar, Deborah Lyons, writes, "Our own moments of revelation are often mirrored, transcendent, in his work. Once seen, Hopper's interpretations exist in our consciousness in tandem with our own experience. We forever see a certain type of house as a Hopper house, invested perhaps with a mystery that Hopper implanted in our own vision." Hopper's paintings highlight the seemingly mundane and typical scenes in our everyday life and give them cause for epiphany. In this way Hopper's art takes the gritty American landscape and lonely gas stations and creates within them a sense of beautiful anticipation.
Although compared to his contemporary Norman Rockwell in terms of subject matter, Hopper did not like the comparison. Hopper considered himself more subtle, less illustrative, and certainly not sentimental. Hopper also rejected comparisons with Grant Wood and Thomas Hart Benton stating "I think the American Scene painters caricatured America. I always wanted to do myself."
Hopper's influence on the art world and pop culture is undeniable. Though he had no formal students, many artists have cited him as an influence, including Willem de Kooning, Jim Dine, and Mark Rothko.[69] An illustration of Hopper's influence is Rothko's early work Composition I (c. 1931), which is a direct paraphrase of Hopper's Chop Suey.
Hopper's cinematic compositions and dramatic use of light and dark has made him a favorite among filmmakers. For example, House by the Railroad is reported to have heavily influenced the iconic house in the Alfred Hitchcock film Psycho.[108] The same painting has also been cited as being an influence on the home in the Terrence Malick film Days of Heaven. The 1981 film Pennies from Heaven includes a tableau vivant of Nighthawks, with the lead actors in the places of the diners. German director Wim Wenders also cites Hopper influence. His 1997 film The End of Violence also incorporates a tableau vivant of Nighthawks, recreated by actors. Noted surrealist horror film director Dario Argento went so far as to recreate the diner and the patrons in Nighthawks as part of a set for his 1976 film Deep Red (aka Profondo Rosso). Ridley Scott has cited the same painting as a visual inspiration for Blade Runner. To establish the lighting of scenes in the 2002 film Road to Perdition, director Sam Mendes drew from the paintings of Hopper as a source of inspiration, particularly New York Movie.
Homages to Nighthawks featuring cartoon characters or famous pop culture icons such as James Dean and Marilyn Monroe are often found in poster stores and gift shops. The cable television channel Turner Classic Movies sometimes runs animated clips based on Hopper paintings prior to airing its films. Hopper's painting New York Movie was featured in the television show Dead Like Me; the girl standing in the corner resembles Daisy Adair. In a 1998 episode of That '70s Show titled "Drive In," Red and Kitty settle in at a diner and create a reproduction of Nighthawks.
Musical influences include singer/songwriter Tom Waits's 1975 live-in-the-studio album titled Nighthawks at the Diner, after the painting. In 1993, Madonna was inspired sufficiently by Hopper's 1941 painting Girlie Show that she named her world tour after it and incorporated many of the theatrical elements and mood of the painting into the show. In 2004, British guitarist John Squire (formerly of The Stone Roses) released a concept album based on Hopper's work entitled Marshall's House. Each song on the album is inspired by, and shares its title with, a painting by Hopper. Canadian rock group The Weakerthans released their album Reunion Tour in 2007 featuring two songs inspired by and named after Hopper paintings, "Sun in an Empty Room", and "Night Windows", and have also referenced him in songs such as "Hospital Vespers". Hopper's Compartment C, Car 293 inspired Polish composer Paweł Szymański's Compartment 2, Car 7 for violin, viola, cello and vibraphone (2003), as well as Hubert-Félix Thiéfaine's song Compartiment C Voiture 293 Edward Hopper 1938 (2011). Hopper's work has influenced multiple recordings by British band Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark. Early Sunday Morning was the inspiration for the sleeve of Crush (1985). The same band's 2013 single "Night Café" was influenced by Nighthawks and mentions Hopper by name. Seven of his paintings are referenced in the lyrics.[110]
Each of the twelve chapters in New Zealander Chris Bell's 2004 novel Liquidambar (UKA Press/PABD) interprets one of Hopper's paintings to create a surreal detective story.
Hopper's influence reached the Japanese animation world in the dark cyberpunk thriller Texhnolyze. His artwork was used as the basis for the surface world in Texhnolyze as well as for much of the 2008 animated film Bolt (Wikipedia).
On my 4th trip to NYC this was my first overt negative reaction. She said don't take people's pictures without permission. She continued walking. Now I have had people look away or move in another direction in NYC. Until her no one said anything to me or at least nothing I could hear.
I think this is a few blocks from New York University
Round boxes known as pyxides (singular pyxis) were used throughout the Roman Empire to hold jewellery and other trinkets. The pastoral scenes decorating these examples contain no overt religious imagery. They show animals, shepherdesses and goatherds, and are reminiscent of earlier pagan artistic tastes. Both originally had hinged lids and could lock.
The pyxis on the left depicts two shepherdesses in long tunics and veils (in ancient Roman art, this velification would indicate deities), one with a basket of fruit and extending a crook over two shep, the other playing a pipe. What would have been called a Dionysian or Bacchic rural scene in centuries past.
The pyxis on the right depicts two men spearing a bear. The scene derives from ancient reliefs depicting Meleager and the hunt of the Calydonian boar.
Late Roman, Alexandria, Egypt, 4th-5th c. CE.
British Museum, London (1924,0617.1 and 1866,0714.1)
Guns? Absence of religion? Poor parenting? The entertainment industry? Who's to blame for Mr. Brown Pelican's irritable pleas? Numerous professionals (and not-so-professionals) have speculated and mulled, publicly and privately, over what has caused Mr. Pelican to destroy the sovereignty of all nations and every feeling or expression of patriotism.
The point is that Mr. Pelican's grand plan is to give people a new and largely artificial basis for evaluating things and making decisions. I'm sure Mao Tse Tung would approve. Even though Mr. Pelican presents a public face that avoids overt charlatanism, I have one itsy-bitsy problem with his monographs. Videlicet, they inaugurate an era of unrealistic authoritarianism. And that's saying nothing about how his primary goal is to flout all of society's rules. All of his other objectives are secondary to this one supreme purpose. That's why you must always remember that if five years ago I had described Mr. Pelican to you and told you that in five years he'd let piteous sybarites serve as our overlords, you'd have thought me Pecksniffian.
The background picture is entitled: St. Louis, May 1940. "Downtown street on Sunday morning." and is the property of Shorpy.com. The original picture can be viewed here
* Obviously the following commentary is quite lengthy and makes for difficult reading "on screen". (If) you care to take to trouble of reading the entire text, my suggestion would be to copy the text and paste it into a Word document.
........... and you think the world is in chaos today?..............
The New York Stock Exchange crashed in October 1929 throwing the nation into the grips of poverty and financial despair. 1930 was the beginning of the Great Depression. It would last a decade in the United States, where, at its nadir in 1933, 25 percent of all workers and 37 percent of all nonfarm workers were completely out of work. Some people starved; many others lost their farms and homes. Homeless vagabonds sneaked aboard the freight trains that crossed the nation. Dispossessed cotton farmers, the “Okies,” stuffed their possessions into dilapidated Model Ts and migrated to California in the false hope that the posters about plentiful jobs were true. Although the U.S. economy began to recover in the second quarter of 1933, the recovery largely stalled for most of 1934 and 1935. A more vigorous recovery commenced in late 1935 and continued into 1937, when a new depression occurred. The American economy had yet to fully recover from the Great Depression when the United States was drawn into World War II in December 1941. Because of this agonizingly slow recovery, the entire decade of the 1930s in the United States is often referred to as the Great Depression.
Socialism declared the Death of Capitalism; Hitler rose to power; From July 1936 to April 1939 Spain was ravaged by a Civil War, In 1931, the Japanese Kwangtung Army attacked Chinese troops in Manchuria. Ominous clouds of impending war loomed on the horizon. In the United States, the majority of its citizens were too preoccupied with trying to survive another day under the strains of the depression to notice.
But all of this drove technology forward: Radio was now the dominant mass medium in the so-called civilized world; the first commercial intercontinental airline flights began.
Some inventions and innovations of the 1930s and 40’s that shaped the culture:
1930: Planet discovered: Pluto, by Clyde W. Tombaugh at Lowell Observatory
1930: Photoflash bulb
1930: Freon invented by Midgley et al.
1930: Artificial fabric polymerized from acetylene (J. Walter Reppe, Germany)
1930: High-octane gasoline invented by Ipatief (Russia)
1931: Cyclotron invented (Ernest O. Lawrence, USA)
1931: Neoprene (synthetic rubber) developed by Julius A. Nieuwland
1931: Synthetic resin, invented by Hill (England)
1931: Electronic microscope, Lroll & Ruska (Germany)
1932: Vitamin D discovered
1933: Electronic television invented by Philo Farnsworth (USA)
1933: Pure Vitamin C synthesized by Tadeusz Reichstein
1934: Launderette, invented by Cantrell (USA)
1935: Aircraft-detecting radar, by Robert Watson Watt
1935: First sulfa drug (Prontosil) for streptococcal infections (G. Domagk, Germany)
1936: Artificial Heart invented by Dr. Alexis Carrel
1937: Nylon patented for DuPont by Wallace H. Carothers
1937: First jet engine, built by Frank Whittle
1938: Fiberglass invented at Owens-Corning
1938: Teflon invented at Du Pont
1938: Vitamin E identified
1938: Fluorescent lamp, at General Electric
1939: First nylon stockings
1939: Polyethylene invented
1939: First helicopter, built by Igor Sikorsky (Russian-American)
1939: FM (Frequency Modulation) radio invented by Edwin H. Armstrong
1940: First USA helicopter flight, Vought-Sikorsky Corporation
1940: Penicillin perfected by Howard Florey as useful antibiotic
1940: Cavity Magnetron developed (key to Radar)
1940: First transuranic element (Neptunium) discovered (Philip Abelson & Edwin McMillan)
1940: First electron microscope, RCA
Meanwhile, Hitler's Nazi party gained power (in 1930), and soon led to the annexation of Austria (1938) and the invasion of Poland (1939), which drew France and Great Britain into World War II, despite the dithering of Neville Chamberlain. In June of 1940 the rapidly advancing German Army captured Paris. Franklin Delano Roosevelt is U.S. president (1932 into the next decade). Great Britain sees three kings in the decade: Edward VIII, George V, and George VI.
1930 – 1940 (what were we reading, what were we watching and what were we listening to)
BOOKS:
1932 Aldous Huxley: "Brave New World"
1932 “Tobacco Road” by Erskine Caldwell is published. It is about Georgia sharecroppers.
1938 Ayn Rand: "Anthem”
1939 James Joyce: "Finnegans Wake"
1939 “The Grapes of Wrath” by John Steinbeck is published.
MOVIES:
1931 “Frankenstein”
1932"The Mummy" - With Boris Karloff.
1933 “Deluge” - New York is wiped out by tsunami. Based on 1928 novel of same name by S.
Fowler Wright. (Plot sound familiar?)
1933 “The Invisible Man” - with Claude Rains as Dr. Jack Giffin, John Carradine, Walter Brennan,
directed by James Whale.
1933 “King Kong” - with Leslie Fenton, Conrad Veidt, Jill Esmond, George Merritt. Directed by Karl Hartl.
1934 "The Thin Man" - With William Powell, Myrna Loy, Maureen O'Sullivan. Based on the book by
Dashiell Hammett.
1935 "Top Hat" - With Fred Astaire, Ginger Rogers, Edward Everett Horton, Eric Blore.
1936 “Flash Gordon” (many sequels to follow)
1936"The Charge of the Light Brigade" - With Erroll Flynn, Olivia DeHavilland, Donald Crisp, Nigel
Bruce, Patric Knowles, David Niven.
1937 "Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs"
1938 "The Adventures of Robin Hood" - With Errol Flynn, Olivia de Havilland, Basil Rathbone, Claude
Rains, Eugene Pallette, Alan Hale. Directed by Michael Curtiz.
1939 "Gone With the Wind" - With Clark Gable, Vivien Leigh, Leslie Howard, Olivia DeHavilland,
Thomas Mitchell, Hattie McDaniel.
1940 "The Grapes of Wrath" - With Henry Fonda, Jane Darwell, John Carradine. Directed by John
Ford.
1940 "The Bank Dick" - With W.C. Fields, Cora Witherspoon, Una Merkel, Franklin Pangborn, Shemp
Howard, Grady Sutton.
MUSIC – 1940
“When You Wish Upon a Star” - Glenn Miller
“In The Mood” - Glenn Miller
“When The Swallows Come Back To Capistrano” - Ink Spots
“Frenesi” - Artie Shaw
“Beat Me Daddy, Eight To The Bar” - Will Bradley
“Tuxedo Junction” - Glenn Miller
“Body and Soul” - Coleman Hawkins
“I'll Never Smile Again” - Tommy Dorsey
“Sierra Sue” - Bing Crosby
“Blueberry Hill” - Glenn Miller
“Careless” - Glenn Miller
“Ferryboat Serenade” - Andrews Sisters
“The Woodpecker Song” - Glenn Miller
“Only Forever” - Bing Crosby
“Imagination” - Glenn Miller
RADIO:
Although the origins of television can be traced back as far as 1873 the discovery of the photoconductivity of the element selenium by Willoughby Smith, the first regularly scheduled television service in the United States was not available until July 2, 1928 and yet then it was in its infancy and certainly not perfected and not a widely accepted form of media. Radio was the media of the time. Most Americans, although barely able to put food on the table or clothes on their backs, had some type of radio in their living quarters.
1932, November 7th - the First radio broadcast of "Buck Rogers" www.buck-rogers.com/radio_serial/
What followed was a whole host of Science fiction, mystery, comedy, westerns, detective and music programs. During the mid to late 30’s and 40’s millions of American families gathered around their radios in the evening listening to their favorite radio shows. Radio broadcasts continued well into the late 50’s when eventually television became readily accessible and affordable to most Americans.
A few of the earliest radio shows:
“Flash Gordon” – September, 1935: www.oldradioworld.com/media/Flash%20Gordon%201935-09-07%2...
“The Town Crier” 1929 - 1942: www.oldradioworld.com/media/The%20Town%20Crier%20Twenty%2...
“Sam Bass, Death Valley Days” 1930 – 1945: www.oldradioworld.com/media/Death%20Valley%20Days%201936-...
“The Aldrich Family” – 1939 - 1953: www.oldradioworld.com/media/The%20Aldrich%20Family%201952...
If you would care to delve a little further into the world of radio entertainment (before the days of sex, graphic violence and endless commercials on TV), I suggest you check out this excellent site - www.oldradioworld.com/
Notable events:
1931 - Empire State Building opens in New York City
1931, September – Japanese invade Manchuria
1932 - Ford introduces the Model B, the first low-priced car to have a V-8 engine
1933 - Franklin Delano Roosevelt sworn in as President; he is the last president to be inaugurated on
March 4.
1933, February - Less than a month after Hitler became chancellor, the Reichstag burns down. When the police arrive they find Marinus van der Lubbe on the premises. Upon being tortured by the Gestapo van der Lubbe confesses to starting the fire. However he denies that he was part of a Communist
Conspiracy. Hitler later gives orders that all leaders of the German Communist Party "will be
hanged that very night." Hermann Goering announces that the Nazi Party plans "to exterminate" German communists.
1934 Chancellor Dollfuss of Austria assassinated by Nazis. Hitler becomes führer. USSR admitted to League of Nations.
1934 - John Dillinger is killed in Chicago
1935 - Mussolini invades Ethiopia; League of Nations invokes sanctions. Roosevelt opens second
phase of New Deal in U.S., calling for social security, better housing, equitable taxation, and farm assistance. Huey Long assassinated in Louisiana.
1935, September - The Nuremberg Race Laws deprive German Jews of their rights of citizenship, giving them the status of "subjects" in Hitler's Reich. The laws also make it forbidden for Jews to marry or have sexual relations with Aryans or to employ young Aryan women as household help. The Nazis settle on defining a "full Jew" as a person with three Jewish grandparents. Those with less were designated as Mischlinge or a "mixed blood."
1937, May - the German passenger airship, the Hindenburg, catches fire and is destroyed while attempting to dock during a electrical storm at the Lakehurst Naval Air Station. Of the 97 people on board, 15 are killed along with people killed on the ground. The exact cause for this disaster is still unknown.
1936, August – The 1936 Summer Olympics officially known as Games of the XI Olympiad, are held in Berlin, Germany. Jesse Owens wins four gold medals: the 100m sprint, the long jump, 200m sprint and after he was added to the 4 x 100 m relay team, he won his fourth on August 9.
* Owens was allowed to travel with and stay in the same hotels as whites, while at the time blacks in many parts of the United States were denied equal rights. After a New York City ticker-tape parade of Fifth Avenue in his honor, Owens had to ride the freight elevator at the Waldorf-Astoria to reach the reception honoring him.......... a sad chapter in the history of the United States. Owens said, "Hitler didn't snub me – it was FDR who snubbed me. The president didn't even send me a telegram." On the other hand, Hitler sent Owens a commemorative inscribed cabinet photograph of himself. Jesse Owens was never invited to the White House nor were honors bestowed upon him by president Franklin D. Roosevelt (FDR) or his successor Harry S. Truman during their terms. In 1955, President Dwight D. Eisenhower honored Owens by naming him an "Ambassador of Sports."
1936 - Germans occupy Rhineland. Italy annexes Ethiopia. Rome-Berlin Axis proclaimed (Japan to join
in 1940). Trotsky exiled to Mexico.
1937 - Hitler repudiates war guilt clause of Versailles Treaty; continues to build German power. Italy withdraws from League of Nations. U.S. gunboat Panay sunk by Japanese in Yangtze River.
Japan invades China, conquers most of coastal area. Amelia Earhart lost somewhere in Pacific
on round-the-world flight. Picasso's Guernica mural – an abstract depicting the chaos and human calamity of the Spanish Civil War.
1938, November - The Kristallnacht or the "Night of Broken Glass" is a night when the Gestapo and the SS go through towns of Austria and smash the windows of Jewish occupations. Thousands of homes and businesses are ransacked, 91 Jews are murdered and 25,000 to 30,000 are arrested and placed in concentration camps.
1938, March - The Anschluss, Germany takes over Austria. The German speaking part of Austria wanted to unite with Germany and Hitler states that this was his purpose for the annexation of Austria. However, this is against the Treaty of Versailles.
1939, September - Nazi-Germany attacks Poland, essentially the beginning of World War II. Many
countries around Germany declared war on Germany but do not take overt action against the Third Reich. Recently, Adolf Hitler had agreed in the Munich Agreement that he would not invade Poland. Great Britain and Poland have a mutual aid treaty that requires either country to come to the aid of the other in the event of war. When Germany invades Poland, Britain (and the Commonwealth) is obligated to come to the aid of Poland by declaring war on Germany. The United States, however, does not officially declare war against Germany. Many countries rise up and voiced anger over Hitler’s betrayal but only Britain and the Commonwealth take overt actions to try and stop Hilter’s military aggression.
1939 - President Roosevelt, appears at the opening of the 1939 New York World's Fair, becoming the first President to give a speech that is broadcast on television. Semi-regular broadcasts air during the next two years
1940, August - The Battle of Britain begins. The German Luftwaffe attempts to take over British airspace and destroy the Royal Air Force with the intention of eventually invading England. Against all odds, Britain and The Royal Air Force resist the Luftwaffe aggression causing Hitler to abandon the idea of invading Britain and to turn his attention to Russia.
1940, March - "Lend/Lease" is the name of the program under which the US supplied the United Kingdom, the Soviet Union, China, France and other Allied nations with vast amounts of war material in return for military bases in Newfoundland, Bermuda, and the British West Indies. It
was intended to promote the defense of the US. This act also ended the neutrality of the United States.
1940, May (This picture) – A mostly vacant downtown area of St. Louis on an early Sunday
morning.
As this picture suggests, the United States lay basically asleep, as many Americans are either unaware , or prefer to ignore the ominous winds of war swirling all around them. In a few short months, the hammer would fall and Americans would find themselves anxiously gathered around their radios listening to the President of the United States announce:
“Yesterday, December 7th, 1941 - a date which will live in infamy - the United States of America was suddenly and deliberately attacked by naval and air forces of the Empire of Japan.
The United States was at peace with that nation and, at the solicitation of Japan, was still in conversation with its government and its emperor looking toward the maintenance of peace in the Pacific.
Indeed, one hour after Japanese air squadrons had commenced bombing in the American island of Oahu, the Japanese ambassador to the United States and his colleagues delivered to our Secretary of State a formal reply to a recent American message. And while this reply stated that it seemed useless to continue the existing diplomatic negotiations, it contained no threat or hint of war or of armed attack.
It will be recorded that the distance of Hawaii from Japan makes it obvious that the attack was deliberately planned many days or even weeks ago. During the intervening time, the Japanese government has deliberately sought to deceive the United States by false statements and expressions of hope for continued peace.
The attack yesterday on the Hawaiian islands has caused severe damage to American naval and military forces. I regret to tell you that very many American lives have been lost. In addition, American ships have been reported torpedoed on the high seas between San Francisco and Honolulu.
Yesterday, the Japanese government also launched an attack against Malaya.
Last night, Japanese forces attacked Hong Kong.
Last night, Japanese forces attacked Guam.
Last night, Japanese forces attacked the Philippine Islands.
Last night, the Japanese attacked Wake Island.
And this morning, the Japanese attacked Midway Island.
Japan has, therefore, undertaken a surprise offensive extending throughout the Pacific area. The facts of yesterday and today speak for themselves. The people of the United States have already formed their opinions and well understand the implications to the very life and safety of our nation.
As commander in chief of the Army and Navy, I have directed that all measures be taken for our defense.
But always will our whole nation remember the character of the onslaught against us.
No matter how long it may take us to overcome this premeditated invasion, the American people in their righteous might will win through to absolute victory.
I believe that I interpret the will of the Congress and of the people when I assert that we will not only defend ourselves to the uttermost, but will make it very certain that this form of treachery shall never again endanger us.
Hostilities exist. There is no blinking at the fact that our people, our territory and our interests are in grave danger.
With confidence in our armed forces - with the unbounding determination of our people - we will gain the inevitable triumph - so help us God.
I ask that the Congress declare that since the unprovoked and dastardly attack by Japan on Sunday, December 7th, 1941, a state of war has existed between the United States and the Japanese empire.”
From this day forward, life as American’s knew it, will be drastically and forever changed.
My dad photographed me a the zoo watching ducks before my sixth birthday. It seems I have been watching birds every since. If you look closely in middle of foto, there are geese flocking just under the colorful cloud layers. Enjoy!
To think back on past deeds and days, one wonders "what has my life been worth". Each of us have a different answer. What have we accomplished by overt acts and purposeful omissions? Is the World a better place because each of us traveled this way? What could each of us have done better?
What still needs to be done in our future time here before traveling to Paradise? Answer: ....
For most of the last 180 days, I have uploaded. Thanks to each of you that visited and found likable fotos.
Explore's interestingness seems in part to be a popularity contest. Your visits, comments, favorites, and awards have been and still are very appreciated at this end. Often over-whelming work obligations prohibit my visits to each of your wonderful foto streams as often as I would like. For that, I continue to apologize and ask you to please understand that while addicted to FLICKR, many of us also have other lives that call. God bless to each of you and your entire extended families as we each try to well accomplish our assigned daily chores of life.
EXPLORE 2008 # 97 on -01-24; # 130 on 07-06; # 159 on 08-03.
365(3)_18
18/1/2012
Out of my comfort zone, again.
Since I feel my inspiration left for the moon, I can at least practice things I have never tried before, right?!
I'm new to a tripod. I find it makes me stationary. I'll have to get used to scout way before for a good composition, change lenses, change POV and when happy, then set it on a tripod. Lesson learned.
I spend way to much time trying to make sense of the swan and duck trails (2nd post in comments) with the Chapel bridge all the while ignoring the shot I really liked that was behind my back. When I got there, the sky was already inky blue which meant PSing it back to what it was supposed to be. How annoying. Another lesson learned.
Since night shots are notoriously hard to correct without damaging the pixels and I was prepared for trouble (although I imagined WB issues which in the end were not a problem) I did two things - I shot on ISO 50 as well as took a shot of just the sky. Before and after and how editing can be done in Ps avoiding overt loss of quality can be found on blog.
The other 3 blue shots below are as blue as they were :-)
I could have just kept quiet LOL
But I prefer to be honest.
No, I do not photoshop all my shots :-D
but when I do... I go to town LOL
Since opening in June 1999
the Millennium Stadium has welcomed
on average
over 1.3 million visitors per year. Sporting the first fully-retractable roof in the UK
the venue is at the leading edge as a multi-purpose
multi-faceted event venue. The Millennium Stadium boasts a UEFA 5-Star rating and has hosted matches from two Rugby World Cups including the Final in 1999
witnessed two Wales Grand Slam successes in the RBS Six Nations
staged six showpiece FA Cup Finals plus hosted the major artists of the music business with a plethora of major concerts and motorsports events on its CV. The installation of a partition drape system in July 2005 now means that the bowl of the Millennium
must visit venue and has played home to five major sporting bodies over the last eight years. Background to the Millennium Stadium Project As early as 1994 a group redevelopment committee was set up to look at redeveloping the Wales National Stadium and
the Welsh Rugby Union won the right to host the 1999 Rugby World Cup against severe competition from rival bids from the Southern Hemisphere. A review of the National Stadium at Cardiff Arms Park (designed in 1962) showed that it had long since been overt
000 and 67
000 respectively and France about to build the Stade de France with a capacity of over 80
000. Capacity in the old National Stadium was 53
000 (including 11
000 standing in the East Terrace). New safety regulations would mean that the capacity would be further reduced by 'all-seater' arrangements. There were no spectator facilities in the old Stadium other than toilets. It was decided that the new Stadium sho
000); the home of Ajax Football Club.
Modèle / Model : Scania P230
Affectation / Assignment : Service Départemental d'Incendie et de Secours de Seine-et-Marne (SDIS 77) / Departmental Fire and Rescue Service of Seine-et-Marne
Caserne / Fire station : Centre d'Incendie et de Secours (CIS) de Lognes (LGS 258) / Center of Fire and Rescue of Lognes
Fonction / Function : Fourgon de Pompe-Tonne (FPT) / Pumper
Mise en service / Commissioning : 2008
Équipementier / Maker : Gimaex
Indicatif / Indicative : 47616
Événement / Event : Journée Porte Ouverte du Centre d'Incendie et de Secours de Lognes (77) / Open Day of the Center of Fire and Rescue of Lognes
'Cause Mayple explained it so well, I'm copy/pasting what she said :
"Some sad news today - because the big fashion names behind the MODOLL project have such a huge following on social media, artists getting their work stolen and plagiarised so overtly are having a hard time "finding a voice"
Searching the #modoll hashtag on instagram will show you the huge follower power this "project" has, with hundreds of fans innocent of what has actually happened sharing and commenting. Whenever one of us Popovy Sisters fans writes a comment asking for information on the similarities - our comments get deleted.
I created this square-format image, that speaks loudly for itself, for anyone on instagram wishing to share - remember to tag MODOLL so that people innocent of what has happened can find out and decide for themselves."
Please help spread the word of this shameless copy.
for four hours or so I sat and conversed with other patrons; afterwards, I sometimes wonder--Did any of them "know?" (you get my drift)
The fact is, I never got that impression (were they just being blase or so very polite?) I'm certainly not the prettiest girl in the world; I try to keep my voice androgynous, but that's the best I can do; my mannerisms are feminine, but not overtly so.
I guess I would chalk up my "success" to several factors: I try to dress "nice," not in a "draggy" style; I make an effort to be outgoing (a corollary--I don't hide in the shadows); but mostly, I make every effort to exude confidence, which tends to take people off guard.
Bottom line: If I can do it, so can all you girls who look at least as femme as I do, but want so much to go out in public and yet haven't. Believe me, I have been there, for decades. But if you don't be yourself, no one else is going to do it for you.
Satan malade.
A french devil tissue view (diablerie) from the 1870s.
It is believed that these pictures might have been a satire on Napoleon. An overt review of his government had been awkward and so many puns and satirical jokes were hidden within these views. Of course they are difficult to read.
Modèle / Model : Mercedes-Benz Sprinter II
Affectation / Assignment : Service Départemental d'Incendie et de Secours de Seine-et-Marne (SDIS 77) / Departmental Fire and Rescue Service of Seine-et-Marne
Caserne / Fire station : Centre d'Incendie et de Secours (CIS) de Meaux (MUX 284) / Center of Fire and Rescue of Meaux
Fonction / Function : Véhicule de Secours Nautique (VSN) / Vehicle of Nautical Rescue
Mise en service / Commissioning : Juin 2015 / June 2015
Équipementier / Maker : Behm
Indicatif / Indicative : 56597
Événement / Event : Journée Porte Ouverte du Centre d'Incendie et de Secours de Lognes (77) / Open Day of the Center of Fire and Rescue of Lognes
Though the weather outside is frightful it's all steamy inside! Bo Derek graces the cover of PLAYBOY with features including; BILL O' REILLY: Falklands; True of False and 50 Shades of Pink; The Smack heard round the cinema.
Shot in tribute to John Derek. John photographed Bo sensually, and, in retrospect; tastefully. Making the beauty of Bo, natural yet sexy but not overtly sexual, but suggestively beautiful.
More shots from this shoot on pinterest; www.pinterest.com/myfarrah/pins/
Bo Derek as repainted and restyled by Cruz for www.myfarrah.com to become the ultimate "10" Bo Derek! 1:6 Scale Diorama by Ken Haseltine of Regent Miniatures.
1:6 scale chair and Blue Shirt are from Monkey Depot (www.monkeydepot.com). The knitted hand gloves are from Pechenuha on eBay; www.ebay.com/usr/pechenuha-1?_trksid=p2056016.l2559
Bo Derek continues to act and is an animal rights activist. You can see her official web site at www.officialboderek.com.
From IMDB: She is a member of the California Horse Racing Board. Named envoy to Fight Animal Trafficking by the United States State Department. Has her own pampering pet care product company: "Bo Derek's Bless the Beasts", products in the range include numerous nourishing dog shampoos and conditioners, fragrances and fur polish.
Photo/Graphic Layout & web sites ncruz.com & myfarrah.com by www.stevemckinnis.com.
God Hates FAQs. I saw this comment on Tumblr earlier and it made me chuckle.
FAQ = Frequently Asked Questions.
I’ve been doing a lot of questioning since New Year (as many do).
Not many of the questions are good ones and often diving off the cliff into a sea of mindless illogic.
Do I have a Narcissistic Personality Disorder?
(From above) Why do I dislike myself?
How much do I care about the people around me?
Will I ever accept the colour of my skin or are the grooves of the implied and overt racism from my youth grained too deep?
Is self contemplation a neurotic obsession or a necessary path to growth?
Why did I eat sausages today when I’m (a.) on a diet and (b) still suffering a stomach upset?
All these questions and more are, perhaps, a waste of time.
And my progress as a rational whole human is agonisingly slow – too slow for a man with grey in his beard.
Should I shave my beard before I attend my friends birthday party tomorrow?
"The Hôtel de Ville (French pronunciation: [otɛl də vil], City Hall) in Paris, France, is the building housing the city's local administration, standing on the place de l'Hôtel-de-Ville in the 4th arrondissement. The south wing was originally constructed by François I beginning in 1535 until 1551. The north wing was built by Henry IV and Louis XIII between 1605 and 1628. It was burned by the Paris Commune, along with all the city archives that it contained, during the Commune's final days in May 1871. The outside was rebuilt following the original design, but larger, between 1874 and 1882, while the inside was considerably modified. It has been the headquarters of the municipality of Paris since 1357. It serves multiple functions, housing the local administration, the Mayor of Paris (since 1977), and also serves as a venue for large receptions.
The 4th arrondissement of Paris (IVe arrondissement) is one of the twenty arrondissements of the capital city of France. In spoken French, this arrondissement is referred to as quatrième. Along with the 1st, 2nd and 3rd arrondissements, it is in the first sector of Paris, which maintains a single local government rather than four separate ones.
The arrondissement, also known as Hôtel-de-Ville, is situated on the right bank of the River Seine. It contains the Renaissance-era Paris City Hall, rebuilt between 1874 and 1882. It also contains the Renaissance square of Place des Vosges, the overtly modern Pompidou Centre, and the lively southern part of the medieval district of Le Marais, which today is known for being the gay district of Paris. (The quieter northern part of Le Marais is within the 3rd arrondissement). The eastern part of the Île de la Cité (including Notre-Dame de Paris) and all of the Île Saint-Louis are also included within the 4th arrondissement.
The 4th arrondissement is known for its little streets, cafés, and shops but is often regarded by Parisians as expensive and congested. It has old buildings and a mix of many cultures.
Paris (French pronunciation: [paʁi]) is the capital and most populous city of France, with an estimated population of 2,150,271 residents as of 2020, in an area of 105 square kilometres (41 square miles). Since the 17th century, Paris has been one of Europe's major centres of finance, diplomacy, commerce, fashion, science and arts. The City of Paris is the centre and seat of government of the Île-de-France, or Paris Region, which has an estimated official 2020 population of 12,278,210, or about 18 percent of the population of France. The Paris Region had a GDP of €709 billion ($808 billion) in 2017. According to the Economist Intelligence Unit Worldwide Cost of Living Survey in 2018, Paris was the second most expensive city in the world, after Singapore, and ahead of Zürich, Hong Kong, Oslo and Geneva. Another source ranked Paris as most expensive, on a par with Singapore and Hong Kong, in 2018.
The city is a major railway, highway and air-transport hub served by two international airports: Paris–Charles de Gaulle (the second busiest airport in Europe) and Paris–Orly. Opened in 1900, the city's subway system, the Paris Métro, serves 5.23 million passengers daily; it is the second busiest metro system in Europe after the Moscow Metro. Gare du Nord is the 24th busiest railway station in the world, but the first located outside Japan, with 262 million passengers in 2015 Paris is especially known for its museums and architectural landmarks: the Louvre was the most visited art museum in the world in 2019, with 9.6 million visitors. The Musée d'Orsay, Musée Marmottan Monet, and Musée de l'Orangerie are noted for their collections of French Impressionist art, the Pompidou Centre Musée National d'Art Moderne has the largest collection of modern and contemporary art in Europe, and the Musée Rodin and Musée Picasso exhibit the works of two noted Parisians. The historical district along the Seine in the city centre is classified as a UNESCO Heritage Site, and popular landmarks in the city centre included the Cathedral of Notre Dame de Paris, on the Île de la Cité, now closed for renovation after the 15 April 2019 fire. Other popular tourist sites include the Gothic royal chapel of Sainte-Chapelle, also on the Île de la Cité; the Eiffel Tower, constructed for the Paris Universal Exposition of 1889; the Grand Palais and Petit Palais, built for the Paris Universal Exposition of 1900; the Arc de Triomphe on the Champs-Élysées, and the Basilica of Sacré-Coeur on the hill of Montmartre.
Paris received 38 million visitors in 2019, measured by hotel stays, with the largest numbers of foreign visitors coming from the United States, the United Kingdom, Germany and China. It was ranked as the second most visited travel destination in the world in 2019, after Bangkok and just ahead of London. The football club Paris Saint-Germain and the rugby union club Stade Français are based in Paris. The 80,000-seat Stade de France, built for the 1998 FIFA World Cup, is located just north of Paris in the neighbouring commune of Saint-Denis. Paris hosts the annual French Open Grand Slam tennis tournament on the red clay of Roland Garros. The city hosted the Olympic Games in 1900, 1924 and will host the 2024 Summer Olympics. The 1938 and 1998 FIFA World Cups, the 2007 Rugby World Cup, as well as the 1960, 1984 and 2016 UEFA European Championships were also held in the city. Every July, the Tour de France bicycle race finishes on the Avenue des Champs-Élysées in Paris." - info from Wikipedia.
Summer 2019 I did a solo cycling tour across Europe through 12 countries over the course of 3 months. I began my adventure in Edinburgh, Scotland and finished in Florence, Italy cycling 8,816 km. During my trip I took 47,000 photos.
Now on Instagram.
Become a patron to my photography on Patreon.
Posing next to a statue of our city's namesake, Queen Charlotte of Mecklenburg-Strelitz.
I'll not go overtly negative here. I'll just say that if the queen had been here to critique the artist's work....he might just have lost his head. 😉
In a city where the town hall is a sheik’s palace, the Chamber of Commerce is a Turkish harem, and the train station is a mosque, you would probably expect to be somewhere in the Middle East. But no, this is Opa-Locka, Florida, a diminutive city northwest of Miami with the nation’s largest and strangest collection of Islamic Revival architecture.
Opa-Locka was built during the Florida Land Boom of the 1920s, when films like Rudolf Valentino’s orientalist fantasy The Sheik and Douglas Fairbanks’ The Thief of Baghdad had harnessed the sultry and romantic appeal of the Middle East into a full-blown cultural fad.
Florida was hot and tropical enough to feel exotic, so when developer Glenn Curtiss built Opa-Locka, he did so around an overt One Thousand and One Nights theme. In addition to the orientalist architecture, the streets were given names such as Ali Baba Avenue and Sabur Lane.
Though the Great Miami Hurricane of 1926 destroyed a number of Opa-Locka buildings, several of the Moorish buildings survived and have since been added to the National Register of Historic Places. The crowning jewel is the former Opa-Locka City Hall building, an onion-domed and minaret-sporting marvel inspired by the description of the palace of Emperor Kosroushah in One Thousand and One Nights.
Opa-locka is currently in a state of advanced decay as the cash-strapped city faces financial collapse. Many of the Arabian-inspired buildings are falling apart, and the former City Hall itself is boarded up and in a state of advanced disrepair, but a walk through the little town still offers a look at the 1920s’ idea of exotic luxury.
The building is at the intersection of Fisherman Street and Sherazad Street, about two blocks from the current (modern) city hall; the old city hall is clearly visible from the new one. There is ample free parking in the Sherbondy Park lot.
Credit for the data above is given to the following website:
I had to shoot a new promo for Source magazine today, and took a bit of a gamble on a Black and White cover. This is Evil Nine, you need to maybe watch the video for their new track They Live
uk.youtube.com/watch?v=-nVplcJTtY0
to get some of the overtly heavyhanded imagery in the shot.... then like me spend hours reliving the glories of Roddy Piper on Youtube "They Live" Clips. If your interested there were 4 lights on this, plus the lightbulb. No real post..... (oh and the wires/names idea was matts- but i just stole it when he wasnt looking)
For me today, Memorial Day, is a day full of gratitude, overt patriotism, time spent with family and friends, while enjoying the rewards possible because of those who sacrificed before us. No matter where you are, I hope your day is fantastic!
Memorial Day is a federal holiday observed annually in the United States on the last Monday of May. It is a day of remembering the men and women who died while serving in the United States Armed Forces. It typically marks the start of the summer vacation season, while Labor Day marks its end.
{Lightbox - No joke, it rocks! - Punch, don't poke your L key to see}
Thank you for stopping by, looking and commenting. I will wade into your 'stream as well.
The search for truth then becomes all-pervasive, drawing implications for the essence and destiny of life itself. Even if not overtly admitted, the search for truth is nevertheless hauntingly present, propelled by the need for incontrovertible answers to four inescapable questions, those dealing with origin, meaning, morality, and destiny – connecting the what with the why. No thinking person can avoid this search, and it can only end when one is convinced that the answers espoused are true. Aristotle was right when he said that all philosophy begins with wonder; but the journey, I suggest, can only progress with truth. (Ravi Zacharias)
A wonderful memory of my first meeting with Fiona. We had a wonderful time this day and have struck up a very lovely friendship. She lives too far away to see often but not so far that we can never meet. You will find quite a few more images from this and another shoot we've done in her album here on Flickr.
I am often trying to find some bodyscape detail that is interesting without being overtly sexual. This is an example of what I am trying for. This is not quite what I have in mind but it's close, close enough that I am happy to share it online.
Recommended: View large on black
Sorry, they are not giveaway dolls. They are real people. And they are beautiful geishas.
Been watching them closely and I was so impressed by their overt suppleness and grace. Every single body movement is almost like a choreographed dance with a silent music that only they can hear. And every single look is a look of a geisha I only see in period Japanese movies. I thought they can only be found in history books and can only be seen in films depicting the Japanese Edo era. But, what makes a geisha?
Architectural photography
#patternsofthecity #texturesoflive
This architecture, with its networks of tubes and the lookit has of being an expo or world's fair building, with its (calculated?) fragility deterringany traditional mentality or monumentality, overtly proclaims that our time will neveragain be that of duration, that our only temporality is that of the accelerated cycle and ofrecycling, that of the circuit and of the transit of fluids. Our only culture in the end is thatof hydrocarbons, that of refining, cracking, breaking cultural molecules and of theirrecombination into synthesized products. And this is what underlies the beauty ofthe cadaver and the failure of the interior spaces. In any case, the very ideology of "cultural production" is antithetical to all culture, as is that of visibility and of the polyvalent space: culture is a site of the secret, of seduction, of initiation, of a restrainedand highly ritualized symbolic exchange.
Jean Baudrillard /
"Simulacra et simulation"
Darci wanted trees for a not-so-overtly-Christmasy quilt with only red & green fabrics
Darci - you'll need to add another strip of white on the left side, I ran out!
AC Greyhound (1959-63) Engine 1971 cc S6 OHV (Bristol engine) Production 83
Registration Number 699 BPX
AC CARS ALBUM
www.flickr.com/photos/45676495@N05/sets/72157623759779024...
The AC Greyhound was introduced at the 1959 Earls Court (London), Motorshow as a 2+2 Grand Tourer to compliment the more overtly sporty AC Ace and Aceca sports cars. Carrying over mostof the mechanics of the Ace - Aceca, the Greyhound had a four seater aluminium body and was built on a wheelbase 10 inches longer than its stablemates, with and coil springs in place of a transverse leaf spring at the front:
arious straight-six engines were fitted.
1991cc S6 OHC AC engine of 75bhp
1971cc S6 OHV Bristol of 125bhp
2216cc S6 Bristol 105bhp
2553cc S6 Ford Zephyr up to 170bhp
In 1961 The Motor magazine tested a 1971cc engined car, recording a top speed of 110 mph, a time of 11.4 seconds for the o-60mph sprint and an overall fuel consumption of 21.8 ,pg, the test car costing £ 3,185 inc. taxes
Diolch am 79,962,962 o olygfeydd anhygoel, mae pob un yn cael ei werthfawrogi'n fawr.
Thanks for 79,962,962 amazing views, every one is greatly appreciated.
Shot 05.01.2020.at Bicester Heritage Centre, Bicester, Oxon 144-655
.
This is Angela...she a gorgeous, sexy, geeky girl that just happened to be a little tied up at the convention... She is also a friend of mine and I will NOT tolerate ANY derogatory or overtly sexual comments here. So keep it clean folks!
Lennox case update. Defence lawyers have made legal arguments to appeal judge. will have to wait to see what happens. Sorry I've not been around, hope to be fully back in the swing soon.
Statement on Lennox by Sarah Fisher
It has been brought to my attention that a small clip of my assessment of Lennox has been put on the
internet. This clip has been taken completely out of context and whilst I have remained relatively
quiet on this case since I spoke in court, I feel that I am now forced to make a statement to clarify
what actually happened during the time I was with Lennox.
Wrongly or rightly many documents and details about this case have been passed onto different
parties. I do not feel it is appropriate for me at this moment to discuss in detail everything that has
been said to me, nor to put forward my own ideas regarding all the statements made, as everyone is
entitled to their own opinion and beliefs. What I am qualified to do however is to discuss behaviour.
My assessments, statements and videos of those assessments have been accepted in other court cases
at Magistrates, County and Crown Courts here in the UK so the field of assessment in cases such as
this is not unknown to me.
I do not care if I am to be criticized by members of the public or even other professional bodies as I
have a wealth of experience handling and working with many breeds of dogs, large and small and I
also work with horses with behavioural issues so do not need to defend the claims that I have little or
no experience of working with powerful animals such as Pit Bull Types. I would however like to
clarify that a Pit Bull Type is often a mix of dogs. Nothing extraordinary happens to the psyche of a
dog when it conforms to certain measurements.
I do care however that Lennox is being portrayed in a poor light through this video clip as my
experience of handling Lennox was thoroughly enjoyable and I now feel the need to explain in greater
detail the truth, as I see it, about my assessment. I know that Victoria Stilwell has been what I would
consider to be a sane voice amidst the madness that surrounds this case and she has seen full video
footage of the assessments carried out by myself and David Ryan plus other documentation.
When the door to the van was first opened Lennox barked. He barked at me three times when I
approached. As I said in my report this is not uncommon behaviour in any dog that is in a confined
situation in a crate, kennel or in a car. He was also shaking like a leaf but this does not come over in
the video that my assistant took of this assessment. He was clearly frightened as he could not have
known what was going to happen to him and again this is not an uncommon behaviour in the dogs
that come to me for help. No one has ever disputed that Lennox can be anxious around some strangers
but I believe the key word some has sadly been overlooked.
I asked for someone that Lennox knew to take him out of the crate to keep his stress levels low. Entry
and exit points can be a source of conflict for any dog. I was told I had to handle Lennox on my own
for the entire assessment and that he had bitten the last person that came to see him. This is the clip
that has been released. Had I had any concerns for my safety or those around me given that I was to
be fully and wholly responsible for a dog that I do not know and that I had been told has bitten, I
would not have continued with the assessment if I believed that dog to be a danger either to myself or
those who were standing in the car park. Lennox gave me a lot of information about his temperament
whilst in the crate. In court however, and therefore under oath, Ms Lightfoot the Dog Warden stated
that in fact Lennox had not bitten anyone so I have to assume on the evidence placed before the court
that the statement made to me at the start of my assessment was untrue. Given the publicity
surrounding this case I am also confident that had Lennox actually bitten anyone whilst in the care of
his family as has been suggested someone would have come forward by now.
I spent approx 15 minutes with Lennox prior to being taken from the crate, working with a clicker and
some treats to see if, even in the environment that was causing him some anxiety, he could still learn
and take direction from a stranger. He could. His eyes were soft and he was friendly. At this point I
would also like to clarify the meaning of the word friendly. It does not mean confident. Was Lennox
anxious? Yes. Hostile? No.
I believe that Lennox would have been totally at ease had I indeed taken him out myself but I also
believe I have a duty of care to reduce stress where possible when handling any animal in a situation
that is causing them distress. No doubt this statement will also be taken out of context by those who
wish to discredit me and to discredit my belief that Lennox is not a danger to the public based on my
experience with him and also based on the video assessment carried out by David Ryan which I have
also seen.
I use food in an assessment to monitor the dogs stress levels and emotions at all times. It is not a
bribe. A habitually aggressive dog will generally seek out conflict in my experience but even these
dogs can often be rehabilitated. No amount of food can disguise this behaviour and giving food to a
dog with aggression issues can be extremely dangerous. The dog may be lured to a person by the
promise of food but once it has taken the food it may panic as the offering of the food has now
brought that dog into close proximity with the threat i.e. a stranger. I have worked with dogs with
aggression issues and whilst some may well take the food, the person delivering the food may not be
able to move once the food has gone as the movement of the person, even the smallest movement of
their arm, may trigger the dog to lunge and bite. I would not hand feed a dog that I deem to be
aggressive. The delivery of the treat must come from the person that the dog knows and trusts - not
the stranger. The dog can learn to approach a threat and then turn back to the person that the dog trusts
for the reward if the approach to the person is appropriate. I use food throughout an assessment to
monitor what is happening with the dog on an emotional and physical level not to make him my best
friend.
Lennox was so gentle with the taking of the food both in the crate and also later in the car park. He
was also appropriate in his behaviour with the games we played. He was also gentle when he jumped
up at me to see if he was allowed the food that I was withholding in my hand. When he realised it
wasn't forthcoming he politely backed off. This would suggest to me that he has been around a family.
Not chained up in a yard as has also been claimed by people who do not know the family or the dog.
Lennox showed excellent impulse control at all times and at no point did he grab me or my own
clothing which many dogs do when getting excited by a game. I have worked with some truly
challenging dogs and some will become increasingly aroused by lead ragging or games with toys and
start seriously mouthing or biting the handlers arms or clothing. This can quickly flip over to more
overt aggression and these dogs can be dangerous particularly if they are being handled by just one
person. It is imperative that dogs with this behaviour are taught a more appropriate way of interacting
with people and responding to the leash and also greater self control. There are many ways to help
dogs that have been encouraged, through mishandling and misunderstanding, to behave in such a
manner. Kicking and beating them is certainly not the answer.
Lennox does rag on the lead but it is very self controlled. He did not exhibit any of the behaviours that
I have mentioned above. Regardless of what some uneducated people may wish to think, it is possible
to glean a lot of information about a dog through games and food as many behaviour counsellors and
trainers will confirm.
I wrote a fifteen page report on my experience with Lennox and my thoughts about the David Ryan
assessment. In this report I state that I have concerns about the appearance of Lennox’s neck. In the
video I explain this too. His ears are unlevel and there was a change in the lay of his coat over the
Atlas in line with the nuchal ligament that is present between T1 and C2 vertebrae. Coat changes
often occur in dogs, cats and horses that have suffered injury or those that are unwell. I have studied
this over seventeen years of handling many animals. In all cases where I referred an animal back to a
vet, whether it was in the care of a shelter, owned by my private clients or students that I teach
changes to the soft tissue or skeleton were noted on further detailed investigation. When I see this
around the neck in a dog I know that it is likely to give the dog cause for concern when someone
unknown to that dog attempts to handle the collar or put on or take off a lead. Coat changes may well
be present where deep bruising has also occurred. Pain and pain memory is a key factor in many
behavioural problems.
Lennox was quite rightly put on Amitriptyline. I do not believe that the Council have failed in their
duty to care for Lennox when it comes to the stress that he has been under and I understand that this
drug is used to treat anxiety and depression. It was with interest, though, that I discovered that this
drug is also used to treat chronic pain in dogs. Again this was mentioned in my written report. This
may explain in part why my experience with Lennox seems to fly in the face of other evidence
presented before the courts. He was not on Amitriptyline when he was assessed by David Ryan.
I would absolutely move on to touch an animal all over its body in any assessment that I do. I may or
may not choose to muzzle a dog that is unknown to me to do this if I have concerns about the body
language that I have seen prior to this part of my assessment. I elected not to stroke Lennox all over
because of my concerns about his neck, the newly forming scabs that were present on his flanks and
the blood that was present around the nail beds around his right hind foot. This decision was made
based on the physical evidence before me not because I felt I would be in danger. I talked about this
in court which was open to the public and at the end of my assessment which is also on film I
explained this to a representative from the BCC Dog Warden team and asked if there was anything
else that she would like me to do with Lennox. She said no.
I cannot comment on what happened when Lennox was seized or measured by Peter Tallack because I
wasn't there. I can explain behaviour though and any frightened animal can be intimidating. I have
recently been in Romania working with traumatised horses and two stallions had not been mucked out
for months as the staff (men) were too scared to go in with them. They called them 'pitbulls' such is
the misguided impression of this type of dog. Hay had been simply thrown over the stable doors and
their water buckets were hanging crushed against the stable wall. I went in with them, not because I
have any desire to be a hero, but because I can read an animal well and within minutes they were
quiet, standing at the end of their stables albeit it pressed up against the walls. I was calm with them
and we took out all the filthy bedding and fetched new water buckets for them too. They didn't attack
anyone. They were simply terrified and they were not provoked. I spent time with one of them on my
own, hand feeding him and was finally able to touch his face. This process probably took less than
half an hour. I was totally absorbed in what I was doing and when I turned to walk out I realised that
one of the Romanian men had been watching me. He raised his eyebrows, gave me the thumbs up and
walked away. Other people could then go in with this magnificent horse too and hand feed him the
fresh sweet grass that we had picked from the surrounding fields so it isn’t simply that I am quiet in
my handling of animals nor possess some extraordinary skill that can make even the most savage lion
behave like a lamb when in my company.
I can perhaps, help an animal that is struggling, gain trust in human beings as many people can. I can
perhaps work with a difficult animal and make it look as though that animal is calm but all the time I
am reading that animal. Every second of the way. I am looking at the eyes if it is safe to do so, I am
watching the respiration, I am studying the movement, the set of the ears and the tail and so on and
my opinions about an animal are based on many years of working in this way. One case that will
always stand out in my mind was a large member of the Bull Breed family. I believe she was two
years old. I won’t go into the details here but I will say that when I worked with her she appeared to
be very good to the member of kennel staff that was watching. At the end of my assessment the
member of staff asked me what I thought. I sadly had to say that I thought the dog should be put to
sleep. The member of staff was horrified and I remember her saying ‘but she’s been so good with
you’. But I had noticed some worrying signs. The shelter ignored my advice and rehomed the dog
who savaged the new owner so badly the owner ended up in the ICU. Of course the dog was
immediately destroyed.
I knew what I was walking into when I agreed to go and assess Lennox for the family. To have to
defend Lennox outside of the court has, however, come as a surprise. I have made this statement to
shed a little more light on what is a distressing case for all those involved, knowing full well that I
will no doubt be subject to further scrutiny and criticism. So be it. I am not afraid. If nothing else this
case has highlighted some important issues about the fears and prejudice concerning dogs, their breed
types and their behaviour. Certainly it highlights the sad truth as Xenephon said so wisely in 400 BC.
Where knowledge ends, violence begins.
Modèle / Model : Renault Trucks D18
Affectation / Assignment : Service Départemental d'Incendie et de Secours de Seine-et-Marne (SDIS 77) / Departmental Fire and Rescue Service of Seine-et-Marne
Caserne / Fire station : Centre d'Incendie et de Secours (CIS) de Lognes (LGS 258) / Center of Fire and Rescue of Lognes
Fonction / Function : Fourgon de Secours Routier (FSR) / Truck of Road Rescue
Mise en service / Commissioning : Mars 2017 / March 2017
Équipementier / Maker : Behm
Indicatif / Indicative : 57411
Événement / Event : Journée Porte Ouverte du Centre d'Incendie et de Secours de Lognes (77) / Open Day of the Center of Fire and Rescue of Lognes
This is another action series from earlier this summer at Huntley Meadows Park near Alexandria, VA.
As pool levels in the marsh got lower in August, greater numbers of Great Blue Herons and Great Egrets appeared. I saw more than a dozen of each on multiple visits. Though it seemed like there was plenty of space for everyone to me, there was more than a little bit of squabbling as the dominant ones wanted their favorite places for themselves. On the morning documented in this series, one particular Great Blue Heron seemed to want to fight everyone else at the marsh. I was surprised by the overt aggressiveness, but even more so by the fierce fighting that took place.
The action in this series took place in a mere 30 seconds, but it must have seemed like an eternity to the one that barely escaped with its life. I'm convinced the aggressor was doing its best to kill the other one, not just get it to move along. Very early in the skirmish the aggressor speared the other (I'll refer to it as the victim) through its mouth, fully penetrating it so I could see it on the other side of the victim's beak. Once it had the victim under its control it tried (and finally succeeded) to force the victim's head under the water ..... and hold it there (Pic 4).
I guess it was pure desperation that allowed the victim to finally lift its head from the water and then break free.
Zoom in on the shots to get a better idea of the intensity of the fight and particularly on the last one where you can see the hole in the victim's jaw where the other one had speared it.
One quintessential component to any effective military is simply communication. The presence of a robust telecommunications network ensures nearly any armed force is able to mobilize units effectively and therein able to counter the efforts of the enemy. Indeed nearly every element of NATO's order of battle is able to send and receive data in real-time, therein giving the alliance a three-dimensional impression of the battlefield. This ability to rapidly map the combat space has given Western armies a leg up in almost every campaign they've been involved with, including their stabilization efforts in the Balkans and Eastern Europe more broadly.
Lacking the funds and diverse domestic electronics industry to create parity with the West's fine-tuned command and control network, Yugoslavia instead focused on manufacturing select technologies to mute NATO's constant data transmissions. The M-104 is one iteration of this effort as it was designed as a terrestrial electronic warfare suite capable of intercepting or otherwise corrupting wireless transmissions from UAVs, radios, and so forth. In effect, NATO's Stabilization Force (SFOR) in Eastern Europe has often found its ISR operations interfered with by unidentifiable sources. For nearly two years the organization was unaware that Yugoslavia possessed the means to inflict such localized information blackouts. After a bout of FININT, however, it was discovered the JNA had shadily purchased rights to West Russian EW technology. This purchase was laundered extensively, so it's no wonder it took some time before NATO was able to discover it.
Regardless, the JNA--or more accurately, the Black Cross terror organization--has utilized the Ozhwiena to great effect. During the hotter spells of the conflict in Ukraine, dozens of donated UAVs had their relay components fried and several sorties by piloted SFOR aircraft had to be written off after "substantial external interference compromised targeting and transmission modules" aboard the offending jets. Although NATO has committed a considerable number of clandestine and overt assets to counter the threat to their battlefield information monopoly, the operators of the M-104 are often highly trained and are able to avoid getting blasted thanks to the conservative use of the EW systems and rapid deployment times. It's very uncommon for the same truck to linger in an area for more than a day and even then it often has some sort of anti-aircraft coverage lingering nearby to bite back against confident pilots. If electronic warfare technologies like those found in the Ozhwiena are allowed to proliferate in Eastern Europe--and indeed East Asia as well--then NATO and its allies are likely going to need to re-train themselves in more primitive information conveyance methods. Perhaps the carrier pigeon isn't totally outmoded after all.
[...] Poetry lifts the veil from the hidden beauty of the world, and makes familiar objects be as if they were not familiar [...]
-- Quote by Percy Bysshe Shelley (English Romantic Poet whose passionate search for personal love and social justice was gradually channeled from overt actions into poems that rank with the greatest in the English language. 1792-1822)
Nikon D200, Sigma 70-300 apo/macro 3.5-4.5, 300mm - f/8 - 1/250s
Rome, Italy (September, 2014)
After 5 years away from The Sun, I am back shooting football this season—and doing it exactly the way I want. No deadlines, full access and I can overtly cheer for my team from the sidelines.
My first 100 or so assignments were shooting high school football for The Leesburg (FL) Commercial back in the early 1980's. Very, very cool to have come full circle back to the beginning after hundreds of prep, college and pro games shot for publication.
I am shooting on my own, for the school. My daughter is a freshmen this year, with my son three years behind her. I told them they just got a sports photographer for the next seven years. I couldn't be happier.
(Oh, and this one's 10k+ pixels on the long side. It's a six-shot pano.)