View allAll Photos Tagged SlaughterHouseFive
Opposite to the mannequin from yesterday, these girls are ready for a tropical adventure...in Dresden, Germany. Typically, this is also where I would like to go for a tropical adventure (hey, at least Angela Merkel actually knows facts about Science as opposed to Trump who is illiterate). I went to Dresden specifically because I love the book Slaughterhouse Five by Kurt Vonnegut and I wanted to photograph the barracks where he was imprisoned after being captured in WWII. In fact, I have a Kurt Vonnegut tattoo from Billy Pilgrim's grave tattood on my left arm. It reads EVERYTHING WAS BEAUTIFUL AND NOTHING HURTS, which I suppose is exactly how these mannequins live their lives to be honest. Nothing hurts them either. So it goes.
In any case, while I set out on my literary excursion, I was not planning on having the idea of a safari marketed to me when I arrived. But, that's the thing about mannequins. Sometimes, we need them to help us imagine better days. Right now in the time of Coronavirus with travel restrictions, shelter at home orders, and other quarantine measures, we need that probably more than ever. Who wouldn't want to go visit warm sunny Dresden and hang out with these two? Their dreamy reality doesn't even call for 6ft of social distancing! Just remember to bring your sunglasses and suspend your disbelief.
...and, as I listened more closely while passing by, I think I may have heard that bird call, "“Poo-tee-weet?”
***All photos are copyrighted***
I often think about the collective consciousness of the world and how, as we lose certain people and ow certain people are born into it, the world changes indefinitely each time. It's a rapidly moving fluid with a constantly dynamic sense of energy.
It's difficult not to feel the loss of what was left behind by the deaths of so many not just Kurt Vonnegut and Leonard Cohen and Tom Petty but all of the immigrants that couldn't be saved because of greedy governments. All of those people have a light and a life in their souls, have an energy that could help redeem us as humans and that has been stifled and not nurtured time and time again.
This photograph is of The Memory Wall in Dresden, Germany, which I photographed on a Kurt Vonnegut tour. This is literally inside the Slaughterhouse Five barracks. The center photograph is of the entire Memory Wall and the surrounding photographs are 8 closeups of Memory Wall tiles I particularly liked. If you are in Dresden or ever visit there, I recommend checking out this tour:
www.kurtvonnegut-tour.com/neu.html
I've always loved Kurt Vonnegut more than any other author because he was able to still see the absolute absurdity of life and the complete range of deplorable acts humans are capable of and yet I feel he still believed humans are ultimately worth saving.
The Tralfamadorians would have wanted us to continually experience Kurt Vonnegut's alive moments as if they were still occurring constantly and that he's just a corpse at one particular moment so let's keep reading his books and remember what he gave to the world!
**All photos are copyrighted. Please don't use without permission**
¿Por qué usted? ¿Por qué nosotros?, podríamos decir. ¿Por qué cualquier cosa? Porque este momento, sencillamente, es. ¿Ha visto usted insectos atrapados en ámbar? Bien, aquí estamos, señor Pilgrim, atrapados en el ámbar de este momento. No hay ningún porqué.
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lo importante era concentrarse tan sólo en los momentos felices de la vida ignorando los desdichados, disfrutar de las cosas bonitas puesto que no podían ser eternas, y es que todos los momentos, el pasado, el presente y el futuro, siempre han existido y siempre existirán (...) aquí en la Tierra creemos que un momento sigue a otro, como los guisantes dentro de la vaina y que cuando un momento pasa ya ha pasado para siempre, pero no es más que una ilusión.
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"-...Yo soy tralfamadoriano, y veo el tiempo en su totalidad de la misma forma que usted puede ver un paisaje de las Montañas Rocosas. Todo el tiempo es todo el tiempo. Nada cambia ni necesita advertencia ni explicación. Simplemente es. Tome los momentos como lo que son, momentos, y pronto se dará cuenta de que todos somos, como he dicho anteriormente, insectos prisioneros del ámbar.
-Eso me suena como si ustedes no creyeran en el libre albedrío-dijo Billy Pilgrim
-Si no hubiera pasado tanto tiempo estudiando a los terrestres -explicó el tralfamadoriano- no tendría ni idea de lo que significa «libre albedrío». He visto treinta y un planetas habitados del universo, y he estudiado informes de otros cien. Sólo en la tierra se habla de «libre albedrío»"
Fragmentos de "Matadero 5" de Kurt Vonnegut
"The most important thing I learned on Tralfamadore was that when a person dies he only appears to die. He is still very much alive in the past, so it is very silly for people to cry at his funeral. All moments, past, present, and future, always have existed, always will exist. The Tralfamadorians can look at all the different moments just the way we can look at a stretch of the Rocky Mountains, for instance. They can see how permanent all the moments are, and they can look at any moment that interests them. It is just an illusion we have here on Earth that one moment follows another one, like beads on a string, and that once a moment is gone, it is gone forever.
When a Tralfamadorian sees a corpse, all he thinks is that the dead person is in a bad condition in that particular moment but that same person is just fine in plenty of other moments. Now, when I myself hear that somebody is dead, I simply shrug and saw what the Tralfamadorians say about dead people, which is 'So it goes.'"
"Everything was beautiful and nothing hurts."
Rest in peace, grandma.
Vista a rovescio da Billy la storia era questa:
Gli aerei americani, pieni di fori e di feriti e di cadaveri decollavano all'indietro da un campo di aviazione in Inghilterra. Quando furono sopra la Francia, alcuni caccia tedeschi li raggiunsero, sempre volando all'indietro, e succhiarono proiettili e schegge da alcuni degli aerei e degli aviatori. Fecero lo stesso con alcuni bombardieri americani distrutti, che erano a terra e poi decollarono all'indietro, per unirsi alla formazione.
Lo stormo, volando all'indietro, sorvolò una città tedesca in fiamme. I bombardieri aprirono i portelli del vano bombe, esercitarono un miracoloso magnetismo che ridusse gli incendi e li raccolse in recipienti cilindrici d'acciaio, e sollevarono questi recipienti fino a farli sparire nel ventre degli aerei. I contenitori furono sistemati ordinatamente su alcune rastrelliere. Anche i tedeschi, là sotto, avevano degli strumenti portentosi, costituiti da lunghi tubi di acciaio. Li usavano per succhiare altri frammenti dagli aviatori e dagli aerei. ma c'erano ancora degli americani feriti, e qualche bombardiere era gravemente danneggiato. Sopra la Francia, però, i caccia tedeschi tornarono ad alzarsi e rimisero tutti e tutto a nuovo.
Quando i bombardieri tornarono alla base, i cilindri d'acciaio furono tolti dalle rastrelliere e rimandati negli Stati Uniti, dove c'erano degli stabilimenti impegnati giorno e notte a smantellarli, a separare il pericoloso contenuto e a riportarlo allo stato minerale. Cosa commovente, erano soprattutto donne a fare questo lavoro. I minerali venivano poi spediti a specialisti in zone remote. Là dovevano rimetterli nel terreno e nasconderli per bene in modo che non potessero mai più fare male a nessuno. [K.Vonnegut]
I stopped by Barnes & Noble at the Americana. I guess everyone is getting on the bandwagon, though I can't blame them. I love books and I love reading, and many of these on the table I have read over the years.
Recently, as I have been on my reading bender, I have also adapted my readings to film. Because of that I have decided to start an album collecting all my photos dedicated to literature.
This is a picture of my sunday morning a few weeks back. It was the first time my girlfriend and I have had a sunday off together in a while, so we wanted to keep it cozy. I feel that starting the day with cinnamon rolls and chocolate milk set the mood pretty well. During the day I read most of Slaughter House Five, which was the first Kurt Vonnegut Jr novel I had read. I was absorbed by his blend of fiction and non-fiction, as well as his unique style in breaking the fourth wall.
I would love to discuss any of the books I have read, so please feel free to leave a comment!
Nikon F4: Roll#3
Mr. Vonnegut you will be remembered. And not just for your splendid doodles of buttholes. (That's my roommate Madeline with that amazing new tattoo, which she got the day he passed away.)
Vonnegut Kurt Jr.: "Slaughterhouse-Five or The Children's Crusade. A duty-dance with death". Vintage Books, Random House, UK 1991.
Look closely
The Zebra didn’t
There are two lionesses
Twenty seconds ago they were invisible, mere hints in the grass
In five seconds time the Zebra will give up
He will stand, stock still
The lionesses will push him to the ground
There will be a brief flurry of legs
Thirty seconds later another lioness will materialise, from nowhere
The cubs will follow
The family will feed
So it goes
if you have not read it already, pick up a copy of "slaughterhouse-five," take a day off of work, and enjoy
Vonnegut Kurt Jr.: "Slaughterhouse-Five or The Children's Crusade. A duty-dance with death". Vintage Books, Random House, UK 1991.
i feel like athena and thoreau rolled into one
simple living in natural surroundings &
heroic endeavors when need be
fact: bigger is better
I've been catching up on my reading over winter break. I've read It's Kind of a Funny Story by Ned Vizzini, Eat, Pray, Love by Elizabeth Gilbert, and re-read Slaughterhouse Five by Kurt Vonnegut. I'm starting on Breakfast of Champions, also by Kurt Vonnegut, next.
I was pretty nervous last night, so I didn't sleep well. I stayed up until 2am distraction reading goofy vampire novels but felt unable to sleep in this morning. I got about 5 hours of sleep.
I got up, made the bed, started a load of laundry and hovered over the furnace for a bit before doing my yoga for the day. Morning yoga seems to be the best. I might feel stiff just out of bed and then I am all warm and noodly after the yoga, and it seems easier.
I feel like doing a little more today (and I already did almost everything in day 7 of the 30 day challenge twice) but perhaps I shouldn't overdo it since I still have 3 weeks left of daily practice!
Print for the upcoming show at Benjamin Benjamin gallery in Portland.
"I have absolutely no idea if this image is any good. I'm definitely too close to it, having just finished it a few hours ago. SlaughterHouse Five is far and away my most favorite book. I first read Vonnegut's Galapagos when I was in High School as part of a book assignment. The other novels on that list seemed incredibly boring to me at the time, and Galapagos was the only one that the English teacher (name escapes me...) said came close to Science Fiction, so that's what I went for. After that, I was hooked, and went for Slaughterhouse Five next.
Slaughterhouse Five has shaped so much about my life and perception of it- how I feel about war, and reality, and death. It's an alternately sweeping and small novel, and I can't imagine it any differently than how it was written. Many times reading a book, I'll think- "oh, it could be better if the author had done X instead." But Slaughterhouse Five is written with an immutable authenticity- it could not have been any other way. Which is clearly a very Tralfamadorian concept, come to think of it.
This piece is probably my most ambitious- containing more actual drawing than maybe 3 other of my prints combined. I couldn't boil Slaughterhouse down to one image or moment as I usually do with my film prints. I wanted it to appear like how the book describes the Tralfamadorian novel- you see the story all at once and have to perceive the entire structure as a whole work of beauty, with all it's ups and downs.
Thank you for reading, and if this isn't nice, I don't know what is."
Bad sleep. Yoga was hard this morning. I took a stupid long bath. It's snowing but not a snow day. Lots of slipperly sliding sounds outside, though.
Photos from Tony Wilson's grave in Manchester's Southern Cemetery.
The phrase "So it goes" (bizarrely, drawn in marker pen on clear plastic) was the title of Tony Wilson's 70's music show on Granada TV. Rather aptly in this context, the show was named after a phrase from Kurt Vonnegut's Slaughterhouse Five:
"The novel uses certain phrases repetitively, such as 'so it goes'—which, used whenever death or dying is mentioned (be it that of a man, an animal, or the bubbles in champagne), serves to downplay mortality, making it routine and even humorous."
Best viewed large.
Kurt Vonnegut
convoluted typographical portrait
by Kenneth Rougeau
This portrait of author Kurt Vonnegut (Slaughterhouse Five, Harrison Bergeron) was created using the famous writer's own quotations. This image is part of my Convolutions series. Prints are available in both my Etsy and ArtFire shops.
Redesigned tattoo of Billy Pilgrim's gravestone from Kurt Vonnegut's "Slaughterhouse Five." You can see the original "Everything was beautiful, and nothing hurt" design and then my tampering with it. I got the tattoo done by Sun Il in Deajeon, Korea.
I decided to go back and re edit this one. ( flickr.com/photos/jessicaphotography/2431914223/ )
the original shot wasn't nearly as depth of field-y as i wanted ya dig?
idk the brighter editing is more of a afterlife kinda feel. (kurt's up in heaven. that's his favorite joke ha. ha. ha)
Senior year is rapidly ending
and my senior paper is due friday
and i'm scrambling to write it.
its just so many stupid hoops.
that mean nothing.
its such a stupid paper.
stupid stupid stupid.
yearbook is stressing me out.
& i'm afraid if they don't start getting their work done i'm going to have to hear the whole school complain :/
oh woe is me?
ha, i'm a big girl.
i'm just bitchy
and at my wit's end.
this church was reduced to rubble in the Dresden firebombing. One can see the near-black reused stones mixed with freshly quarried stones. It was completed a year or 2 after I visited.
"The Frauenkirche was built as a Lutheran (Protestant) cathedral....
The original baroque church was built between 1726 and 1743 and was designed by Dresden's city architect George Bähr (1666–1738), one of the greatest masters of German Baroque style, who did not live to see the completion of his greatest work. Bähr's distinctive design for the church captured the new spirit of the Protestant liturgy by placing the altar, chancel, and baptismal font directly centered in view of the entire congregation.
In 1736, famed organ maker Gottfried Silbermann (1683–1753) built a three-manual, 43-stop instrument for the church. The organ was dedicated on 25 November and Johann Sebastian Bach (1685–1750) gave a recital on the instrument on 1 December.
The church's most distinctive feature was its unconventional 314-foot-high dome, called die Steinerne Glocke or "Stone Bell". An engineering triumph comparable to Michelangelo's dome for St. Peter's Basilica in Rome, the Frauenkirche's 12,000-ton sandstone dome soared skyward with no internal supports. Despite initial doubts, the dome proved to be extremely stable. Witnesses in 1760 said that the dome had been hit by more than 100 cannonballs fired by the Prussian army led by Friedrich II during the Seven Years' War. The projectiles simply bounced off and the church survived."