View allAll Photos Tagged federation
Federation decorations at Martin Place, Sydney
Dated: 01/01/1901
Digital ID: 4481_a026_000299
Rights: www.records.nsw.gov.au/about-us/rights-and-permissions
We'd love to hear from you if you use our photos.
Many other photos in our collection are available to view and browse on our website using Photo Investigator.
Voronezh is a city and the administrative centre of Voronezh Oblast in southwestern Russia straddling the Voronezh River, located 12 kilometers (7.5 mi) from where it flows into the Don River. The city sits on the Southeastern Railway, which connects western Russia with the Urals and Siberia, the Caucasus and Ukraine, and the M4 highway (Moscow–Voronezh–Rostov-on-Don–Novorossiysk). In recent years the city has experienced rapid population growth, rising in 2021 to 1,057,681, up from 889,680 recorded in the 2010 Census, making it the 14th-most populous city in the country.
For many years, the hypothesis of the Soviet historian Vladimir Zagorovsky dominated: he produced the toponym "Voronezh" from the hypothetical Slavic personal name Voroneg. This man allegedly gave the name of a small town in the Chernigov Principality (now the village of Voronizh in Ukraine). Later, in the 11th or 12th century, the settlers were able to "transfer" this name to the Don region, where they named the second city Voronezh, and the river got its name from the city. However, now many researchers criticize the hypothesis, since in reality neither the name of Voroneg nor the second city was revealed, and usually the names of Russian cities repeated the names of the rivers, but not vice versa.
A comprehensive scientific analysis was conducted in 2015–2016 by the historian Pavel Popov. His conclusion: "Voronezh" is a probable Slavic macrotoponym associated with outstanding signs of nature, has a root voron- (from the proto-Slavic vorn) in the meaning of "black, dark" and the suffix -ezh (-azh, -ozh). It was not “transferred” and in the 8th - 9th centuries it marked a vast territory covered with black forests (oak forests) - from the mouth of the Voronezh river to the Voronozhsky annalistic forests in the middle and upper reaches of the river, and in the west to the Don (many forests were cut down). The historian believes that the main "city" of the early town-planning complex could repeat the name of the region – Voronezh. Now the hillfort is located in the administrative part of the modern city, in the Voronezh upland oak forest. This is one of Europe's largest ancient Slavic hillforts, the area of which – more than 9 hectares – 13 times the area of the main settlement in Kyiv before the baptism of Rus.
In it is assumed that the word "Voronezh" means bluing - a technique to increase the corrosion resistance of iron products. This explanation fits well with the proximity to the ancient city of Voronezh of a large iron deposit and the city of Stary Oskol. As well as the name of Voroneț Monastery known for its blue shade.
Folk etymology claims the name comes from combining the Russian words for raven (ворон) and hedgehog (еж) into Воронеж. According to this explanation two Slavic tribes named after the animals used this combination to name the river which later in turn provided the name for a settlement. There is not believed to be any scientific support for this explanation.
In the 16th century, the Middle Don basin, including the Voronezh river, was gradually conquered by Muscovy from the Nogai Horde (a successor state of the Golden Horde), and the current city of Voronezh was established in 1585 by Feodor I as a fort protecting the Muravsky Trail trade route against the slave raids of the Nogai and Crimean Tatars. The city was named after the river.
17th to 19th centuries
In the 17th century, Voronezh gradually evolved into a sizable town. Weronecz is shown on the Worona river in Resania in Joan Blaeu's map of 1645. Peter the Great built a dockyard in Voronezh where the Azov Flotilla was constructed for the Azov campaigns in 1695 and 1696. This fleet, the first ever built in Russia, included the first Russian ship of the line, Goto Predestinatsia. The Orthodox diocese of Voronezh was instituted in 1682 and its first bishop, Mitrofan of Voronezh, was later proclaimed the town's patron saint.
Owing to the Voronezh Admiralty Wharf, for a short time, Voronezh became the largest city of South Russia and the economic center of a large and fertile region. In 1711, it was made the seat of the Azov Governorate, which eventually morphed into the Voronezh Governorate.
In the 19th century, Voronezh was a center of the Central Black Earth Region. Manufacturing industry (mills, tallow-melting, butter-making, soap, leather, and other works) as well as bread, cattle, suet, and the hair trade developed in the town. A railway connected Voronezh with Moscow in 1868 and Rostov-on-Don in 1871.
Located on the Yarra River this is a popular meeting and eating place. To the right of this restaurant is a big screen which is a used to screen a lot of major sporting events. On a photowalk last January there was a huge crowd watching the Australian Open Tennis.
This is another shot that I have given HDR processing, although a little more subtle than the St Pauls Cathedral shot from yesterday. The original even exposure for this shot was a bit flat, hence the decision to process in HDR. I also think this building lends itself towards an HDR look.
I would be interested in others views on the merits of HDR and whether you are fans of it or not.
Hero City: Voronezh.
From 10 to 17 September 2011, Voronezh celebrated its 425th anniversary. The anniversary of the city was given the status of a federal scale celebration that helped attract large investments from the federal and regional budgets for development. On December 17, 2012, Voronezh became the fifteenth city in Russia with a population of over one million people. Today Voronezh is the economic, industrial, cultural, and scientific center of the Central Black Earth Region. As part of the annual tradition in the Russian city of Voronezh, every winter the main city square is thematically drawn around a classic literature. In 2020, the city was decorated using the motifs from Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky's The Nutcracker. In the year of 2021, the architects drew inspiration from Hans Christian Andersen's fairy tale The Snow Queen as well as the animation classic The Snow Queen from the Soviet Union.
Voronezh is a city and the administrative centre of Voronezh Oblast in southwestern Russia straddling the Voronezh River, located 12 kilometers (7.5 mi) from where it flows into the Don River. The city sits on the Southeastern Railway, which connects western Russia with the Urals and Siberia, the Caucasus and Ukraine, and the M4 highway (Moscow–Voronezh–Rostov-on-Don–Novorossiysk). In recent years the city has experienced rapid population growth, rising in 2021 to 1,057,681, up from 889,680 recorded in the 2010 Census, making it the 14th-most populous city in the country.
For many years, the hypothesis of the Soviet historian Vladimir Zagorovsky dominated: he produced the toponym "Voronezh" from the hypothetical Slavic personal name Voroneg. This man allegedly gave the name of a small town in the Chernigov Principality (now the village of Voronizh in Ukraine). Later, in the 11th or 12th century, the settlers were able to "transfer" this name to the Don region, where they named the second city Voronezh, and the river got its name from the city. However, now many researchers criticize the hypothesis, since in reality neither the name of Voroneg nor the second city was revealed, and usually the names of Russian cities repeated the names of the rivers, but not vice versa.
A comprehensive scientific analysis was conducted in 2015–2016 by the historian Pavel Popov. His conclusion: "Voronezh" is a probable Slavic macrotoponym associated with outstanding signs of nature, has a root voron- (from the proto-Slavic vorn) in the meaning of "black, dark" and the suffix -ezh (-azh, -ozh). It was not “transferred” and in the 8th - 9th centuries it marked a vast territory covered with black forests (oak forests) - from the mouth of the Voronezh river to the Voronozhsky annalistic forests in the middle and upper reaches of the river, and in the west to the Don (many forests were cut down). The historian believes that the main "city" of the early town-planning complex could repeat the name of the region – Voronezh. Now the hillfort is located in the administrative part of the modern city, in the Voronezh upland oak forest. This is one of Europe's largest ancient Slavic hillforts, the area of which – more than 9 hectares – 13 times the area of the main settlement in Kyiv before the baptism of Rus.
In it is assumed that the word "Voronezh" means bluing - a technique to increase the corrosion resistance of iron products. This explanation fits well with the proximity to the ancient city of Voronezh of a large iron deposit and the city of Stary Oskol. As well as the name of Voroneț Monastery known for its blue shade.
Folk etymology claims the name comes from combining the Russian words for raven (ворон) and hedgehog (еж) into Воронеж. According to this explanation two Slavic tribes named after the animals used this combination to name the river which later in turn provided the name for a settlement. There is not believed to be any scientific support for this explanation.
In the 16th century, the Middle Don basin, including the Voronezh river, was gradually conquered by Muscovy from the Nogai Horde (a successor state of the Golden Horde), and the current city of Voronezh was established in 1585 by Feodor I as a fort protecting the Muravsky Trail trade route against the slave raids of the Nogai and Crimean Tatars. The city was named after the river.
17th to 19th centuries
In the 17th century, Voronezh gradually evolved into a sizable town. Weronecz is shown on the Worona river in Resania in Joan Blaeu's map of 1645. Peter the Great built a dockyard in Voronezh where the Azov Flotilla was constructed for the Azov campaigns in 1695 and 1696. This fleet, the first ever built in Russia, included the first Russian ship of the line, Goto Predestinatsia. The Orthodox diocese of Voronezh was instituted in 1682 and its first bishop, Mitrofan of Voronezh, was later proclaimed the town's patron saint.
Owing to the Voronezh Admiralty Wharf, for a short time, Voronezh became the largest city of South Russia and the economic center of a large and fertile region. In 1711, it was made the seat of the Azov Governorate, which eventually morphed into the Voronezh Governorate.
In the 19th century, Voronezh was a center of the Central Black Earth Region. Manufacturing industry (mills, tallow-melting, butter-making, soap, leather, and other works) as well as bread, cattle, suet, and the hair trade developed in the town. A railway connected Voronezh with Moscow in 1868 and Rostov-on-Don in 1871.
L'énorme Tillandsia fendleri in situ durant un TOUR EXCEPTIONNEL DE 14 JOURS que je viens de guider pour un 2eme groupe de la Fédération Française d'Orchidophilie. Tous les records d'observation battus: 235 ESPÈCES D'ORCHIDÉES FLEURIES IN SITU sans parler d'oiseaux fantastiques, d'autres raretés botaniques etc... Le paradis de la biodiversité c'est la COLOMBIE !
La enorme Tillandsia fendleri in situ durante un TOUR EXCEPCIONAL DE 14 DÍAS que acabo de guiar para un segundo grupo de la Federación Francesa de Orquideología. Todos los récords de observación vencidos: 235 ESPECIES DE ORQUÍDEAS FLORECIDAS IN SITU, sin hablar de aves fantásticas, de otras rarezas botánicas etc... El paraíso de la biodiversidad es COLOMBIA !
Young Street, looking towards the corner of Bent and Bligh Streets. Federation celebrations, Sydney
Dated: 1901
Digital ID: 4481_a026_000281
Rights: www.records.nsw.gov.au/about-us/rights-and-permissions
We'd love to hear from you if you use our photos/documents.
Many other photos in our collection are available to view and browse on our website using Photo Investigator.
Moscow is the capital and largest city of Russia, standing on the Moskva River in Central Russia. It has a population estimated at over 13 million residents within the city limits, over 19.1 million residents in the urban area, and over 21.5 million residents in its metropolitan area. The city covers an area of 2,511 square kilometers (970 sq mi), while the urban area covers 5,891 square kilometers (2,275 sq mi), and the metropolitan area covers over 26,000 square kilometers (10,000 sq mi). Moscow is among the world's largest cities, being the most populous city entirely in Europe, the largest urban and metropolitan area in Europe, and the largest city by land area on the European continent.
First documented in 1147, Moscow became the capital of the Grand Principality of Moscow, which led the unification of the Russian lands in the 15th century and became the center of a unified state. Following the proclamation of the Tsardom of Russia in 1547, Moscow remained the political and economic center for most of its history. During the reign of Peter the Great, the Russian capital was moved to the newly founded city of Saint Petersburg in 1712, leading to a decline in Moscow's importance throughout the imperial period. Following the Russian Revolution and the establishment of the Russian SFSR, the capital was moved back to Moscow in 1918. The city later became the political center of the Soviet Union and experienced significant population growth throughout the Soviet period. In the aftermath of the dissolution of the Soviet Union, Moscow remained the capital city of the newly reconstituted Russian Federation and has experienced continued growth.
The northernmost and coldest megacity in the world, Moscow is governed as a federal city, where it serves as the political, economic, cultural, and scientific center of Russia and Eastern Europe. Moscow has one of the world's largest urban economies. Moscow has the second-highest number of billionaires of any city (tied with Hong Kong). The Moscow International Business Center is one of the largest financial centers in the world and features the majority of Europe's tallest skyscrapers. Moscow was the host city of the 1980 Summer Olympics and one of the host cities of the 2018 FIFA World Cup.
The city contains several UNESCO World Heritage Sites and is known for its display of Russian architecture, particularly in areas such as Red Square and buildings such as Saint Basil's Cathedral and the Moscow Kremlin, the latter of which is the seat of power of the Government of Russia. Moscow is home to Russian companies in different industries and is served by a comprehensive transit network, which includes four international airports, ten railway terminals, a tram system, a monorail system, and the Moscow Metro, which is the busiest metro system in Europe and one of the largest rapid transit systems in the world. The city has over 40 percent of its territory covered by greenery, making it one of the greenest cities in the world.[
The history of chocolate dates back more than 5,000 years, when the cacao tree was first domesticated in present-day southeast Ecuador. Soon after domestication, the tree was introduced to Mesoamerica, where cacao drinks gained significance as an elite beverage among different cultures including the Maya and the Aztecs. Cacao was extremely important: considered a gift from the gods, it was used as a currency, medicinally and ceremonially. Multiple cacao beverages were consumed, including an alcoholic beverage made by fermenting the pulp around cacao seeds, and it is unclear when a drink that can be strictly understood as chocolate originated. Early evidence of chocolate consumption dates to 600 BC; this product was often associated with the heart and was believed to be psychedelic.
Spanish conquistadors encountered chocolate in 1519 and brought it to Spain as a medicine. From Spain, it gained popularity among the European elite over the following three centuries, was debated for its medicinal and religious merits, and was understood as an aphrodisiac. In the 19th century, technological innovations completely changed chocolate, from a drink for the elite to a solid, milky block increasingly eaten by the public. That century saw the rise of Swiss and British chocolate makers, and production was industrialized.
Since World War I, chocolate has been developed further, creating couverture and white chocolate, while manufacturers added ingredients such as cheaper fats and lecithin. Chocolate production has increased dramatically, and new markets in Asia and Africa have opened. Attitudes towards the quality of chocolate, and the ethics of its production have shifted, as awareness of child labor has risen. As of 2018, the global trade of chocolate was worth more than US$100 billion, and production was concentrated among a small set of cocoa processors and chocolate makers.
Flag of the United Colonial Federation. Each star represents the 5 founding colonies of the Federation; Olympia, Athens, Thebes, Marathon and Sparta. The flag was updated in 2273, so any members who have joined since aren't included in the flag yet.
No Repro Fee.
Conall MacCoille, Chief Economist, Davy (left) with Tom Parlon, Director General, Construction Federation Industry (CIF) and Jeanette Mair, Economic & Research Director (CIF), pictured in Davys Offices in Dawson Street, Dublin at the Construction Industry Federation’s first construction industry economic outlook hosted by Davys voicing the underlying challenges facing the sector that could impact on its ability to deliver essential housing and infrastructure activity in the next decade.
Pic. Robbie Reynolds
For further information please contact:
CIF Communications Director, Shane Dempsey sdempsey@cif.ie or 087 9884465CIF Communications Executive, Joanna Kiernan jkiernan@cif.ie or 087 1671306
22 March 2023, Oxford, England, United Kingdom: Arni Thor Thorsson of the Evangelical Lutheran Church of Iceland pictured as one of many representatives of Lutheran World Federation member churches from across Europe gathering at Mansfield College in the English city of Oxford, United Kingdom, for a regional Europe Pre-Assembly to the LWF 13th Assembly, to be held in Krakow, Poland in September 2023. Photo: LWF/Albin Hillert
Situated on the crest of a hill overlooking the Colac township, nestled on a large block well back from the street, is this wonderful Edwardian villa featuring a concoction of Art Nouveau stained glass, half timbered gabling and tall, chimneys.
Built around the turn of the Twentieth Century, this villa has been built in the Queen Anne style, which was mostly a residential style inspired by the Arts and Crafts movement in England, but also encompassed some of the more stylised elements of Art Nouveau, which gave it an more decorative look. The weatherboard from which the villa is built, the shingling of the dominant gable and the awning that rund across the facade are all in keeping with the Arts and Crafts movement. Yet the stylised stained glass windows and door panels, ornate chimneys and the fretwork around the enclosed porch are very Art Nouveau in design.
Queen Anne style was most popular around the time of Federation. With complex roofline structures, ornamental towers of unusual proportions and undulating facades, many Queen Anne houses fell out of fashion at the beginning of the modern era, and were demolished.
Considering its size and location near to the religious district and the centre of town, a house such as this would have appealed to the moneyed middle-classes of Colac whose money derived from the thriving business district of this large Western District commercial centre. Comfortable and reflecting the prevailing architectural style coming out of Great Britain at the time, it would have shown respectability and would also have been used as a show of wealth.
Located approximately 150 kilometres to the south-west of Melbourne, past Geelong is the small Western District city of Colac. The area was originally settled by Europeans in 1837 by pastoralist Hugh Murray. A small community sprung up on the southern shore of a large lake amid the volcanic plains. The community was proclaimed a town, Lake Colac, in 1848, named after the lake upon which it perches. The post office opened in 1848 as Lake Colac and was renamed Colac in 1854 when the city changed its name. The township grew over the years, its wealth generated by the booming grazing industries of the large estates of the Western District and the dairy industry that accompanied it. Colac has a long high street shopping precinct, several churches, botanic gardens, a Masonic hall and a smattering of large properties within its boundaries, showing the conspicuous wealth of the city. Today Colac is still a commercial centre for the agricultural district that surrounds it with a population of around 10,000 people. Although not strictly a tourist town, Colac has many beautiful surviving historical buildings or interest, tree lined streets. Colac is known as “the Gateway to the Otways” (a reference to the Otway Ranges and surrounding forest area that is located just to the south of the town).
Sergei Alexandrovich Yesenin, sometimes spelled as Esenin, was a Russian lyric poet. He is one of the most popular and well-known Russian poets of the 20th century, known for "his lyrical evocations of and nostalgia for the village life of his childhood – no idyll, presented in all its rawness, with an implied curse on urbanisation and industrialisation".
Biography
Early life
Sergei Yesenin was born in village of Konstantinovo in Ryazan County, Ryazan Governorate of the Russian Empire (now Rybnovsky District, Ryazan Oblast) to a peasant family. His father was Alexander Nikitich Yesenin (1873–1931), his mother's name was Tatyana Fyodorovna (nee Titova, 1875–1955).
Both his parents spent most of their time looking for work, father in Moscow, mother in Ryazan, so at age two Sergei was moved to the nearby village Matovo, to join Fyodor Alexeyevich and Natalya Yevtikhiyevna Titovs, his relatively well-off maternal grandparents, who essentially raised him.
The Titovs had three grown-up sons, and it was they who were Yesenin's early years' companions. "My uncles taught me horse-riding and swimming, one of them... even employed me as hound-dog, when going out to the ponds hunting ducks," he later remembered. He started to read aged five, and at nine began to write poetry, inspired originally by chastushkas and folklore, provided mostly by the grandmother whom he also remembered as a highly religious woman who used to take him to every single monastery she chose to visit. He had two younger sisters, Yekaterina (1905–1977), and Alexandra (1911–1981).
In 1904 Yesenin joined the Konstantinovo zemstvo school. In 1909 he graduated from it with an honorary certificate, and went on to study in the local secondary parochial school in Spas-Klepiki. From 1910 onwards, he started to write poetry systematically; eight poems dated that year were later included in his 1925 Collected Works. In all, Yesenin wrote around thirty poems during his school years. He compiled them into what was supposed to be his first book which he titled "Bolnye Dumy" (Sick Thoughts) and tried to publish it in 1912 in Ryazan, but failed.
In 1912, with a teacher’s diploma, Yesenin moved to Moscow, where he supported himself working as a proofreader's assistant at Sytin's printing company. The following year he enrolled in Shanyavsky Moscow City People's University to study history and philology as an external student (вольнослушатель), but had to leave it after eighteen months due to lack of funds. In the University he became friends with several aspiring poets, among them Dmitry Semyonovsky, Vasily Nasedkin, Nikolai Kolokolov and Ivan Filipchenko. Yesenin’s first marriage (which lasted three years) was in 1913 to Anna Izryadnova, a co-worker from the publishing house, with whom he had a son, Yuri.
1913 saw Yesenin becoming increasingly interested in Christianity, biblical motives became frequent in his poems. "Grisha, what I am reading at the moment is the Gospel and find a lot of things which for me are new," he wrote to his close childhood friend G. Panfilov. That was also the year when he became involved with the Moscow revolutionary circles: for several months his flat was under secret police surveillance and in September 1913 it was raided and searched.
Birch Tree) appeared in the children's magazine Mirok (Small World). More appearances followed in minor magazines such as Protalinka and Mlechny Put. In December 1914 Yesenin quit work "and gave himself to poetry, writing continually," according to his wife. Around this time he became a member of the Surikov Literary and Music circle.
In 1915, exasperated with the lack of interest in Moscow, Yesenin moved to Petrograd. He arrived to Petrograd on 8 March and the next day met Alexander Blok at his home, to read him poetry. He was quickly acquainted with fellow-poets Sergey Gorodetsky, Nikolai Klyuev and Andrei Bely who were well known. Blok was especially helpful in promoting Yesenin's early literary career, describing him as "a gem of a peasant poet" and his verse as "fresh, pure and resounding", even if "wordy".
The same year he joined the Krasa (Beauty) group of peasant poets which included Klyuyev, Gorodetsky, Sergey Klychkov and Alexander Shiryayevets, among others. In his 1925 autobiography Yesenin said that Bely gave him the meaning of form while Blok and Klyuev taught him lyricism. It was Klyuyev who introduced Yesenin to the publisher Averyanov, who in early 1916 released his debut poetry collection Radunitsa which featured many of his early spiritual-themed verse. "I would have eagerly relinquished some of my religious poems, large and small, but they make sense as an illustration of poets' progress towards the revolution," he would later write. Yesenin and Klyuyev maintained close and intimate friendship which lasted several years, and indeed it is likely they became lovers.
Later in 1915, Yesenin became a co-founder of the Krasa literary group and published numerous poems in the Petrograd magazines Russkaya Mysl, Ezhemesyachny Zhurnal, Novy Zhurnal Dlya Vsekh, Golos Zhizni and Niva. Among the authors he met later in the year were Maxim Gorky, Vladimir Mayakovsky, Nikolai Gumilyov and Anna Akhmatova; he also visited painter Ilya Repin in his Penaty. Yesenin's rise to fame was meteoric; by the end of the year he became the star of St Petersburg's literary circles and salons. "The city took to him with the delight a gourmet reserves for strawberries in winter. A barrage of praise hit him, excessive and often insincere," Maxim Gorky wrote to Romain Rolland.
On 25 March 1916, Yesenin was drafted for military duty and in April joined a medical train based in Tsarskoye Selo, under the command of colonel D.N. Loman. In 22 July 1916, at a special concert attended by the Empress Alexandra Fyodorovna (the train's patron) and her daughters, Yesenin recited his poems "Rus" and "In Scarlet Fireglow". "The Empress told me my poems were beautiful, but sad. I replied, the same could be said about Russia as a whole," he recalled later. His relationships with Loman soon deteriorated. In October, Yesenin declined the colonel's offer to write (with Klyuyev) and have published a book of pro-monarchist verses, and spent twenty days under arrest as a consequence.
In March 1917, Yesenin was sent to the Warrant Officers School but soon deserted Kerensky's army. In August 1917 (having divorced Izryadnova a year earlier) Yesenin married for a second time, to Zinaida Raikh (later an actress and the wife of Vsevolod Meyerhold). They had two children, a daughter Tatyana and a son Konstantin. The parents subsequently quarreled and lived separately for some time prior to their divorce in 1921. Tatyana became a writer and journalist and Konstantin Yesenin would become a well-known soccer statistician.
Yesenin supported the February Revolution. "If not for [it], I might have withered away on useless religious symbolism," he wrote later. He greeted the rise of the Bolsheviks too. "In the Revolution I was all on the side of the October, even if perceiving everything in my own peculiar way, from a peasant's standpoint," he remembered in his 1925 autobiography. Later he criticized the Bolshevik rule, in such poems as "The Stern October Has Deceived Me". "I feel very sad now, for we are going through such a period in [our] history when human individuality is being destroyed, and the approaching socialism is totally different from the one I was dreaming of," he wrote in an August 1920 letter to his friend Yevgeniya Livshits. "I never joined the RKP, being further to the left than them," he maintained in his 1922 autobiography.
Artistically, the revolutionary years were exciting time for Yesenin. Among the important poems he wrote in 1917–1918 were "Prishestviye" (The Advent), "Preobrazheniye" (Transformation, which gave the title to the 1918 collection), and "Inoniya". In February 1918, after the Sovnarkom issued the "Socialist Homeland is in Danger!" decree-appeal, he joined the esers' military unit. He actively participated in the magazine Nash Put (Our Way), as well as the almanacs Skify (Скифы) and Krasny Zvon (in February his large poem "Marfa Posadnitsa" appeared in one of the latter). In September 1918 Yesenin co-founded (with Andrey Bely, Pyotr Oreshin, Lev Povitsky and Sergey Klychkov) the publishing house Трудовая Артель Художников Слова (the Labor Artel of the Artists of the Word) which reissued (in six books) all that he had written by this time.
In September 1918, Yesenin became friends with Anatoly Marienhof, with whom he founded the Russian literary movement of imaginism. Describing their group's general appeal, he wrote in 1922: "Prostitutes and bandits are our fans. With them, we are pals. Bolsheviks do not like us due to some kind of misunderstanding." In January 1919, Yesenin signed the Imaginists' Manifest. In February he, Marienhof and Vadim Shershenevich, founded the Imaginists' publishing house. Before that, Yesenin became a member of the Moscow Union of Professional Writers and several months later was elected a member of the All-Russian Union of Poets. Two of his books, Kobyliyu Korabli (Mare's Ships) and Klyuchi Marii (The Keys of Mary) came out later that year.
In July–August 1920, Yesenin toured the Russian South, starting in Rostov-on-Don and ending in Tiflis, Georgia. In November 1920, he met Galina Benislavskaya, his future secretary and close friend. Following an anonymous report, he and two of his Imaginist friends, brothers Alexander and Ruben Kusikovs, were arrested by the Cheka in October but released a week later on the solicitation of his friend Yakov Blumkin. In the course of that year, the publication of three of Yesenin's books were refused by publishing house Goslitizdat. His Triptych collection came out through the Skify Publishers in Berlin. Next year saw the collections Confessions of a Hooligan (January) and Treryaditsa (February) published. The drama in verse Pygachov came out in December 1921, to much acclaim.
In May 1921, he visited a friend, the poet Alexander Shiryaevets, in Tashkent, giving poetry readings and making a short trip to Samarkand. In the fall of 1921, while visiting the studio of painter Georgi Yakulov, Yesenin met the Paris-based American dancer Isadora Duncan, a woman 18 years his senior. She knew only a dozen words in Russian, and he spoke no foreign languages. Nevertheless, they married on 2 May 1922. Yesenin accompanied his celebrity wife on a tour of Europe and the United States. His marriage to Duncan was brief and in May 1923, he returned to Moscow.
In his 1922 autobiography, Yesenin wrote: "Russia's recent nomadic past does not appeal to me, and I am all for civilization. But I dislike America intensely. America is a stinking place where not just art is being murdered, but with it, all the loftiest aspirations of humankind. If it's America that we are looking up to, as [a model for our] future, then I'd rather stay under our greyish skies... We do not have those skyscrapers that's managed to produce up to date nothing but Rockefeller and McCormick, but here Tolstoy, Dostoyevsky, Pushkin and Lermontov were born."
In 1923, Yesenin became romantically involved with the actress Augusta Miklashevskaya to whom he dedicated several poems, among them those of the Hooligan's Love cycle. In the same year, he had a son by the poet Nadezhda Volpina. Alexander Esenin-Volpin grew up to become a poet and a prominent activist in the Soviet dissident movement of the 1960s. Since 1972, till his death in 2016, he lived in the United States as a famous mathematician and teacher. As Yesenin's popularity grew, stories began to circulate about his heavy drinking and consequent public outbursts. In autumn 1923, he was arrested in Moscow twice and underwent a series of enquiries from the OGPU secret police. Fellow poet Vladimir Mayakovsky, wrote that, after his return from America, Yesenin became more visible in newspaper police log sections than in poetry. This may have been caused by a struggle to deal with his bisexuality.
More serious were the accusations of anti-Semitism against Yesenin and three of his close friends, fellow poets, Sergey Klytchkov, Alexei Ganin and Pyotr Oreshin, made by Lev Sosnovsky, a prominent journalist and close Trotsky associate. The foursome retorted with an open letter in Pravda and, in December, were cleared by the Writers' Union burlaw court. It was later suggested, though, that Yesenin's departure to the Caucasus in the summer of 1924 might have been a direct result of the harassment by the NKVD. Earlier that year, fourteen writers and poets, including his friend Ganin, were arrested as the alleged members of the (apparently fictitious) Order of the Russian Fascists, then tortured and executed in March without trial.
In January–April 1924, Yesenin was arrested and interrogated four times. In February, he entered the Sheremetev hospital, then was moved into the Kremlin clinic in March. Nevertheless, he continued to make public recitals and released several books in the course of the year, including Moskva Kabatskaya. In August 1924 Yesenin and fellow poet Ivan Gruzinov published a letter in Pravda, announcing the end of the Imaginists.
In early 1925, Yesenin met and married Sophia Andreyevna Tolstaya (1900–1957), a granddaughter of Leo Tolstoy. In May, what proved to be his final large poem Anna Snegina came out. During the year, he compiled and edited The Works by Yesenin in three volumes which was published by Gosizdat posthumously.
Death
On 28 December 1925, Yesenin was found dead in his room in the Hotel Angleterre in Leningrad. His last poem Goodbye my friend, goodbye (До свиданья, друг мой, до свиданья) according to Wolf Ehrlich was written by him the day before he died. Yesenin complained that there was no ink in the room, and he was forced to write with his blood.
До свиданья, друг мой, до свиданья.
Милый мой, ты у меня в груди.
Предназначенное расставанье
Обещает встречу впереди.
До свиданья, друг мой, без руки, без слова,
Не грусти и не печаль бровей, –
В этой жизни умирать не ново,
Но и жить, конечно, не новей.
Farewell, my good friend, farewell.
In my heart, forever, you’ll stay.
May the fated parting foretell
That again we’ll meet up someday.
Let no words, no handshakes ensue,
No saddened brows in remorse, –
To die, in this life, is not new,
And living’s no newer, of course.
According to his biographers, the poet was in a state of depression and committed suicide by hanging.
After the funeral in Leningrad, Yesenin's body was transported by train to Moscow, where a farewell for relatives and friends of the deceased was also arranged. He was buried 31 December 1925, in Moscow's Vagankovskoye Cemetery. His grave is marked by a white marble sculpture.
There is a theory that Yesenin's death was actually a murder by OGPU agents who staged it to look like suicide. The novel Yesenin. Story of a Murder by Vitali Bezrukov, is devoted to that version of Yesenin's death. In 2005, a TV serial, Sergey Yesenin, based on the novel, was shown on Channel One Russia, with Sergey Bezrukov playing Yesenin.[citation needed] Facts tending to support the assassination hypothesis were cited by Stanislav Kunyaev and Sergey Kunyaev in the final chapter of their biography of Yesenin.
Enraged by his death, Mayakovsky composed a poem called To Sergei Yesenin, where the resigned ending of Yesenin's death poem is countered by these verses: "in this life it is not hard to die, / to mold life is more difficult." In a later lecture on Yesenin, he said that the revolution demanded "that we glorify life." However, Mayakovsky himself would commit suicide in 1930.
Cultural impact
Yesenin's suicide triggered an epidemic of copycat suicides by his mostly female fans. For example, Galina Benislavskaya, his ex-girlfriend, killed herself by his graveside in December 1926. Although he was one of Russia's most popular poets and had been given an elaborate state funeral, some of his writings were banned by the Kremlin during the reigns of Joseph Stalin and Nikita Khrushchev. Nikolai Bukharin's criticism of Yesenin contributed significantly to the banning.
Only in 1966 were most of his works republished. Today Yesenin's poems are taught to Russian schoolchildren; many have been set to music and recorded as popular songs. His early death, coupled with unsympathetic views by some of the literary elite, adoration by ordinary people, and sensational behavior, all contributed to the enduring and near mythical popular image of the Russian poet.
Ukrainian composer Tamara Maliukova Sidorenko (1919-2005) set several of Yesenin’s poems to music.
Bernd Alois Zimmermann included his poetry in his Requiem für einen jungen Dichter (Requiem for a Young Poet), completed in 1969.
The Ryazan State University is named in his honor.
Multilanguage editions
Anna Snegina (Yesenin's poem translated into 12 languages; translated into English by Peter Tempest) ISBN 978-5-7380-0336-3
Works
The Scarlet of the Dawn (1910)
The high waters have licked (1910)
The Birch Tree (1913)
Autumn (1914)
Russia (1914)
A Song About a Dog/The B*tch (1915)
I'll glance in the field (1917)
I left the native home (1918)
Hooligan (1919)
Hooligan's Confession (1920) (Italian translation sung by Angelo Branduardi)
I am the last poet of the village (1920)
Prayer for the First Forty Days of the Dead (1920)
I don't pity, don't call, don't cry (1921)
Pugachev (1921)
Land of Scoundrels (1923)
One joy I have left (1923)
A Letter to Mother (1924)
Tavern Moscow (1924)
Confessions of a Hooligan (1924),
A Letter to a Woman (1924),
Desolate and Pale Moonlight (1925)
The Black Man (1925)
To Kachalov's Dog (1925)
Who Am I, What Am I (1925)
Goodbye, my friend, goodbye (1925) (His farewell poem)
Voronezh is a city and the administrative centre of Voronezh Oblast in southwestern Russia, straddling the Voronezh River 12 kilometers (7.5 mi) from where it flows into the Don River. The city sits on the Southeastern Railway, which connects western Russia with the Urals and Siberia, the Caucasus and Ukraine, and the M4 highway (Moscow–Voronezh–Rostov-on-Don–Novorossiysk). In recent years the city has experienced rapid population growth, rising to 1,057,681 in the 2021 Census, up from 889,680 recorded in the 2010 Census, making it the 14th-most populous city in the country.
To boldly sew what no one has sewn before! Because after all, if the Federation issued sewing machines, you know they'd be BERNINA!
Moscow is the capital and largest city of Russia, standing on the Moskva River in Central Russia. It has a population estimated at over 13 million residents within the city limits, over 19.1 million residents in the urban area, and over 21.5 million residents in its metropolitan area. The city covers an area of 2,511 square kilometers (970 sq mi), while the urban area covers 5,891 square kilometers (2,275 sq mi), and the metropolitan area covers over 26,000 square kilometers (10,000 sq mi). Moscow is among the world's largest cities, being the most populous city entirely in Europe, the largest urban and metropolitan area in Europe, and the largest city by land area on the European continent.
First documented in 1147, Moscow became the capital of the Grand Principality of Moscow, which led the unification of the Russian lands in the 15th century and became the center of a unified state. Following the proclamation of the Tsardom of Russia in 1547, Moscow remained the political and economic center for most of its history. During the reign of Peter the Great, the Russian capital was moved to the newly founded city of Saint Petersburg in 1712, leading to a decline in Moscow's importance throughout the imperial period. Following the Russian Revolution and the establishment of the Russian SFSR, the capital was moved back to Moscow in 1918. The city later became the political center of the Soviet Union and experienced significant population growth throughout the Soviet period. In the aftermath of the dissolution of the Soviet Union, Moscow remained the capital city of the newly reconstituted Russian Federation and has experienced continued growth.
The northernmost and coldest megacity in the world, Moscow is governed as a federal city, where it serves as the political, economic, cultural, and scientific center of Russia and Eastern Europe. Moscow has one of the world's largest urban economies. Moscow has the second-highest number of billionaires of any city (tied with Hong Kong). The Moscow International Business Center is one of the largest financial centers in the world and features the majority of Europe's tallest skyscrapers. Moscow was the host city of the 1980 Summer Olympics and one of the host cities of the 2018 FIFA World Cup.
The city contains several UNESCO World Heritage Sites and is known for its display of Russian architecture, particularly in areas such as Red Square and buildings such as Saint Basil's Cathedral and the Moscow Kremlin, the latter of which is the seat of power of the Government of Russia. Moscow is home to Russian companies in different industries and is served by a comprehensive transit network, which includes four international airports, ten railway terminals, a tram system, a monorail system, and the Moscow Metro, which is the busiest metro system in Europe and one of the largest rapid transit systems in the world. The city has over 40 percent of its territory covered by greenery, making it one of the greenest cities in the world.[
Mayor of PyeongChang Lee Seok-rae waves the Olympic flag after it was handed over from the mayor of Sochi during the Closing Ceremony of the Sochi Winter Olympics at the Fisht Olympic Stadium on February 23, 2014. AFP PHOTO / DAMIEN MEYER
Federation Square, Melbourne, Australia
My first try at HDR - from 7 exposures handheld, hence best viewed 'medium'!!
Voronezh is a city and the administrative centre of Voronezh Oblast in southwestern Russia straddling the Voronezh River, located 12 kilometers (7.5 mi) from where it flows into the Don River. The city sits on the Southeastern Railway, which connects western Russia with the Urals and Siberia, the Caucasus and Ukraine, and the M4 highway (Moscow–Voronezh–Rostov-on-Don–Novorossiysk). In recent years the city has experienced rapid population growth, rising in 2021 to 1,057,681, up from 889,680 recorded in the 2010 Census, making it the 14th-most populous city in the country.
For many years, the hypothesis of the Soviet historian Vladimir Zagorovsky dominated: he produced the toponym "Voronezh" from the hypothetical Slavic personal name Voroneg. This man allegedly gave the name of a small town in the Chernigov Principality (now the village of Voronizh in Ukraine). Later, in the 11th or 12th century, the settlers were able to "transfer" this name to the Don region, where they named the second city Voronezh, and the river got its name from the city. However, now many researchers criticize the hypothesis, since in reality neither the name of Voroneg nor the second city was revealed, and usually the names of Russian cities repeated the names of the rivers, but not vice versa.
A comprehensive scientific analysis was conducted in 2015–2016 by the historian Pavel Popov. His conclusion: "Voronezh" is a probable Slavic macrotoponym associated with outstanding signs of nature, has a root voron- (from the proto-Slavic vorn) in the meaning of "black, dark" and the suffix -ezh (-azh, -ozh). It was not “transferred” and in the 8th - 9th centuries it marked a vast territory covered with black forests (oak forests) - from the mouth of the Voronezh river to the Voronozhsky annalistic forests in the middle and upper reaches of the river, and in the west to the Don (many forests were cut down). The historian believes that the main "city" of the early town-planning complex could repeat the name of the region – Voronezh. Now the hillfort is located in the administrative part of the modern city, in the Voronezh upland oak forest. This is one of Europe's largest ancient Slavic hillforts, the area of which – more than 9 hectares – 13 times the area of the main settlement in Kyiv before the baptism of Rus.
In it is assumed that the word "Voronezh" means bluing - a technique to increase the corrosion resistance of iron products. This explanation fits well with the proximity to the ancient city of Voronezh of a large iron deposit and the city of Stary Oskol. As well as the name of Voroneț Monastery known for its blue shade.
Folk etymology claims the name comes from combining the Russian words for raven (ворон) and hedgehog (еж) into Воронеж. According to this explanation two Slavic tribes named after the animals used this combination to name the river which later in turn provided the name for a settlement. There is not believed to be any scientific support for this explanation.
In the 16th century, the Middle Don basin, including the Voronezh river, was gradually conquered by Muscovy from the Nogai Horde (a successor state of the Golden Horde), and the current city of Voronezh was established in 1585 by Feodor I as a fort protecting the Muravsky Trail trade route against the slave raids of the Nogai and Crimean Tatars. The city was named after the river.
17th to 19th centuries
In the 17th century, Voronezh gradually evolved into a sizable town. Weronecz is shown on the Worona river in Resania in Joan Blaeu's map of 1645. Peter the Great built a dockyard in Voronezh where the Azov Flotilla was constructed for the Azov campaigns in 1695 and 1696. This fleet, the first ever built in Russia, included the first Russian ship of the line, Goto Predestinatsia. The Orthodox diocese of Voronezh was instituted in 1682 and its first bishop, Mitrofan of Voronezh, was later proclaimed the town's patron saint.
Owing to the Voronezh Admiralty Wharf, for a short time, Voronezh became the largest city of South Russia and the economic center of a large and fertile region. In 1711, it was made the seat of the Azov Governorate, which eventually morphed into the Voronezh Governorate.
In the 19th century, Voronezh was a center of the Central Black Earth Region. Manufacturing industry (mills, tallow-melting, butter-making, soap, leather, and other works) as well as bread, cattle, suet, and the hair trade developed in the town. A railway connected Voronezh with Moscow in 1868 and Rostov-on-Don in 1871.
Moscow is the capital and largest city of Russia, standing on the Moskva River in Central Russia. It has a population estimated at over 13 million residents within the city limits, over 19.1 million residents in the urban area, and over 21.5 million residents in its metropolitan area. The city covers an area of 2,511 square kilometers (970 sq mi), while the urban area covers 5,891 square kilometers (2,275 sq mi), and the metropolitan area covers over 26,000 square kilometers (10,000 sq mi). Moscow is among the world's largest cities, being the most populous city entirely in Europe, the largest urban and metropolitan area in Europe, and the largest city by land area on the European continent.
First documented in 1147, Moscow became the capital of the Grand Principality of Moscow, which led the unification of the Russian lands in the 15th century and became the center of a unified state. Following the proclamation of the Tsardom of Russia in 1547, Moscow remained the political and economic center for most of its history. During the reign of Peter the Great, the Russian capital was moved to the newly founded city of Saint Petersburg in 1712, leading to a decline in Moscow's importance throughout the imperial period. Following the Russian Revolution and the establishment of the Russian SFSR, the capital was moved back to Moscow in 1918. The city later became the political center of the Soviet Union and experienced significant population growth throughout the Soviet period. In the aftermath of the dissolution of the Soviet Union, Moscow remained the capital city of the newly reconstituted Russian Federation and has experienced continued growth.
The northernmost and coldest megacity in the world, Moscow is governed as a federal city, where it serves as the political, economic, cultural, and scientific center of Russia and Eastern Europe. Moscow has one of the world's largest urban economies. Moscow has the second-highest number of billionaires of any city (tied with Hong Kong). The Moscow International Business Center is one of the largest financial centers in the world and features the majority of Europe's tallest skyscrapers. Moscow was the host city of the 1980 Summer Olympics and one of the host cities of the 2018 FIFA World Cup.
The city contains several UNESCO World Heritage Sites and is known for its display of Russian architecture, particularly in areas such as Red Square and buildings such as Saint Basil's Cathedral and the Moscow Kremlin, the latter of which is the seat of power of the Government of Russia. Moscow is home to Russian companies in different industries and is served by a comprehensive transit network, which includes four international airports, ten railway terminals, a tram system, a monorail system, and the Moscow Metro, which is the busiest metro system in Europe and one of the largest rapid transit systems in the world. The city has over 40 percent of its territory covered by greenery, making it one of the greenest cities in the world.[
Moscow is the capital and largest city of Russia. The city stands on the Moskva River in Central Russia, with a population estimated at over 13 million residents within the city limits, over 19.1 million residents in the urban area, and over 21.5 million residents in its metropolitan area. The city covers an area of 2,511 square kilometers (970 sq mi), while the urban area covers 5,891 square kilometers (2,275 sq mi), and the metropolitan area covers over 26,000 square kilometers (10,000 sq mi). Moscow is among the world's largest cities, being the most populous city in its entirety in Europe, the largest urban and metropolitan area in Europe, and the largest city by land area on the European continent.
First documented in 1147, Moscow grew to serve as the capital of the Grand Duchy of Moscow. When the Tsardom of Russia was proclaimed, Moscow remained the political and economic center for most of its history. Under the reign of Peter the Great, the Russian capital was moved to the newly founded city of Saint Petersburg in 1712, decreasing Moscow's influence. Following the Russian Revolution and the establishment of the Russian SFSR, the capital was moved back to Moscow in 1918, where it later became the political center of the Soviet Union. In the aftermath of the dissolution of the Soviet Union, Moscow remained the capital city of the newly established Russian Federation.
The northernmost and coldest megacity in the world, Moscow is governed as a federal city, where it serves as the political, economic, cultural, and scientific center of Russia and Eastern Europe. As a global city, Moscow has one of the world's largest urban economies. The city is one of the fastest-growing tourist destinations and is one of Europe's most visited cities. Moscow has the second-highest number of billionaires of any city (tied with Hong Kong). The Moscow International Business Center is one of the largest financial centers in the world and features the majority of Europe's tallest skyscrapers. Moscow was the host city of the 1980 Summer Olympics and one of the host cities of the 2018 FIFA World Cup.
The city contains several UNESCO World Heritage Sites and is known for its display of Russian architecture, particularly in areas such as the Red Square and buildings such as the Saint Basil's Cathedral and the Moscow Kremlin, the latter of which is the seat of power of the Government of Russia. Moscow is home to Russian companies in different industries and is served by a comprehensive transit network, which includes four international airports, ten railway terminals, a tram system, a monorail system, and the Moscow Metro, which is the busiest metro system in Europe and one of the largest rapid transit systems in the world. The city has over 40 percent of its territory covered by greenery, making it one of the greenest cities in the world.
Peter I was Tsar of all Russia from 1682, and the first Emperor of all Russia, known as Peter the Great, from 1721 until his death in 1725. He reigned jointly with his half-brother Ivan V until 1696. From this year, Peter was an absolute monarch, an autocrat who remained the ultimate authority and organized a well-ordered police state.
Most of Peter's reign was consumed by long wars against the Ottoman and Swedish empires. Despite initial difficulties, the wars were ultimately successful and led to expansion to the Sea of Azov and the Baltic Sea, thus laying the groundwork for the Imperial Russian Navy. His victory in the Great Northern War ended Sweden's era as a great power and was followed by the proclamation of the Russian Empire. Peter led a cultural revolution that replaced some of the traditionalist and medieval social and political systems with ones that were modern, scientific, Westernized, and based on radical Enlightenment.
In December 1699, he introduced the Julian calendar, which replaced the Byzantine calendar that was long used in Russia, but the Russian Orthodox Church was particularly resistant to this change. In 1703, he introduced the first Russian newspaper, Sankt-Peterburgskie Vedomosti, and ordered the civil script, a reform of Russian orthography largely designed by himself. On the shores of the Neva River, he founded Saint Petersburg, a city famously dubbed by Francesco Algarotti as the "window to the West". In 1714, Peter relocated the capital from Moscow to St. Petersburg, a status it retained until 1918.
Peter had a great interest in plants, animals and minerals, in malformed creatures or exceptions to the law of nature for his cabinet of curiosities. He encouraged research of deformities, all along trying to debunk the superstitious fear of monsters. He promoted industrialization in the Russian Empire and higher education. The Russian Academy of Sciences and the Saint Petersburg State University were founded in 1724, and invited Christian Wolff and Willem 's Gravesande.
Peter is primarily credited with the modernization of the country, quickly transforming it into a major European power. His administrative reforms, creating a Governing Senate in 1711, the Collegium in 1717 and the Table of Ranks in 1722 had a lasting impact on Russia, and many institutions of the Russian government trace their origins to his reign
The "The Gables" has a beautiful, light filled tea room which they call the "Peacock Room" because of the beautiful Art Nouveau inspired blue peacock wallpaper they have decorated the room with. It used to be "The Gables" best, or master bedroom and dressing room. Now turned into one room it has a high ceiling featuring Art Nouveau mouldings and several elegant stained glass windows featuring stylised Art Nouveau flowers depicted in a striking combination of blue and gold, and one window full of golden yellow pears. The window of pears has a similar window in the entrance hall.
"The Gables" is a substantial villa that sits proudly on leafy Finch Street in the exclusive inner city suburb of East Malvern.
Built in 1902 for local property developer Lawrence Alfred Birchnell and his wife Annie, "The Gables" is considered to be one of the most prominent houses in the Gascoigne Estate. The house was designed by Melbourne architect firm Ussher and Kemp in what was the prevailing style of the time, Queen Anne, which is also known as Federation style (named so after Australian Federation in 1901). Ussher and Kemp were renowned for their beautiful and complex Queen Anne houses and they designed at least six other houses in Finch Street alone. "The Gables" remained a private residence for many years. When Lawrence Birchnell sold it, the house was converted into a rooming house. It remained so throughout the tumultuous 1920s until 1930 when it was sold again. The new owners converted "The Gables" into a reception hall for hire for private functions. The first wedding reception was a breakfast held in the formal dining room in 1930, followed by dancing to Melbourne’s first jukebox in the upstairs rooms. Notorious Melbourne gangster Joseph Theodore Leslie "Squizzy" Taylor was reputed to have thrown a twenty-first birthday party for his girlfriend of the day in the main ballroom (what had originally been the house's billiards room). "The Gables" became very famous for its grand birthday parties throughout the 1930s and 1940s. With its easy proximity to the Caulfield Race Course, "The Gables" ran an underground speakeasy and gambling room upstairs and sold beer from the back door during Melbourne’s restrictive era of alcohol not sold after six o'clock at night. Throughout its history, "The Gables" has been a Melbourne icon, celebrating generation after generation of Melbourne’s wedding receptions, parties and balls. Lovingly restored, the atmosphere and charm of "The Gables" have been retained for the future generations.
Grand in its proportions, "The Gables" is a sprawling villa that is built of red brick, but its main feature, as the name suggests, is its many ornamented gables. The front façade is dominated by six different sized gables, each supported by ornamental Art Nouveau influenced timber brackets. The front and side of the house is skirted by a wide verandah decorated with wooden balustrades and rounded fretwork. "The Gables" features two grand bay windows and three other large sets of windows along the front facade, all of which feature beautiful and delicate Art Nouveau stained glass of stylised flowers or fruit. Impressive Art Nouveau stained glass windows can also be found around the entrance, which features the quote made quite popular at the time by Australian soprano Nellie Melba "east, west, home's best." Art Nouveau stained glass can be found in all of the principal rooms of the house; both upstairs and down. “The Gables” also features distinctive chimneys and the classic Queen Anne high pitched gable roofs with decorative barge-boards, terra-cotta tiles and ornate capping.
As a result of Federation in 1901, it was not unusual to find Australian flora and fauna celebrated in architecture. This is true of "The Gables", which features intricate plaster work and leadlight throughout the mansion showing off Australian gum leaves and flowers. "The Gables" has fifteen beautifully renovated rooms, many of which are traditionally decorated, including beautiful chandeliers, ornate restored wood and tile fireplaces, leadlight windows, parquetry flooring, sixteen foot ceilings and a sweeping staircase. The drawing room still also features the original leadlight conservatory "The Gables" boasted when it was first built.
"The Gables", set on an acre of land, still retains many of the original trees, including the original hedge and two enormous cypress trees in the front. The garden was designed by William Guilfoyle, the master landscape architect of the Royal Botanical Gardens, and "The Gables" still retains much of it original structure. It features a rose-covered gazebo, a pond and fountain, as well as the tallest Norfolk Island pine in the area, which can be seen from some of the tallest skyscrapers in the Melbourne CBD.
Henry Hardie Kemp was born in Lancashire in 1859 and designed many other fine homes around Melbourne, particularly in Kew, including his own home “Held Lawn” (1913). He also designed the APA Building in Elizabeth Street in 1889 (demolished in 1980) and the Melbourne Assembly Hall on Collins Street between 1914 and 1915. He died in Melbourne in 1946.
Beverley Ussher was born in Melbourne in 1868 and designed homes and commercial buildings around Melbourne, as well as homes in the country. He designed "Milliara" (John Whiting house) in Toorak, in 1895 (since demolished) and "Blackwood Homestead" in Western Australia. He died in 1908.
Beverley Ussher and Henry Kemp formed a partnership in 1899, which lasted until Beverley's death in 1908. Their last building design together was the Professional Chambers building in Collins Street in 1908. Both men had strong Arts and Crafts commitments, and both had been in partnerships before forming their own. The practice specialised in domestic work and their houses epitomize the Marseilles-tiled Queen Anne Federation style houses characteristic of Melbourne, and considered now to be a truly distinctive Australian genre. Their designs use red bricks, terracotta tiles and casement windows, avoid applied ornamentation and develop substantial timber details. The picturesque character of the houses results from a conscious attempt to express externally with gables, dormers, bays, roof axes, and chimneys, the functional variety of rooms within. The iconic Federation houses by Beverley Ussher and Henry Kemp did not appear until 1892-4. Then, several of those appeared in Malvern, Canterbury and Kew.
Queen Anne style was mostly a residential style inspired by the Arts and Crafts movement in England, but also encompassed some of the more stylised elements of Art Nouveau, which gave it an more decorative look. Queen Anne style was most popular around the time of Federation. With complex roofline structures and undulating facades, many Queen Anne houses fell out of fashion at the beginning of the modern era, and were demolished.
www.flickr.com/photos/neelelora/albums
You are welcome to use this photo . please ask before you use. No part of this picture may be reproduced or transmitted in any from or by any means without prior permission.
Please license before you use. Email: travellerstravelphotobook@yahoo.com
Please, let me know how you feel about my work and if there are any scope to improve this picture.
Facebook page l Blogspot l wordpress | instagram | 500px
======================================================
All rights reserved © by Travellers travel photobook
Yoko Ono’s own relationship and partnership with John Lennon have given her access and opportunities she might never have achieved on her own, but her status as a pop icon has largely obscured her own achievements as an artist. Now where is this more obvious than in the area of filmmaking. Between 1966 and 1971, Ono made substantial contribution to avant-garde cinema,
Most of which are now a vague memory, even for those generally cognizant of developments in this field. With few expectations, her films have been out of circulation for years, but fortunately this situation needs to be changing; in the spring of 1989 the Whitney Museum of American Art presented a film retrospective along with a small show of objects - eighties versions of conceptual objects Ono has exhibited in 1966 and 1967 – and the American Federation of Arts re-released Ono’s films in the spring of 1991.
Except as a film-goer, Ono was not involved with film until the 1960s, though by this time she began to make her own films, she was an established artist. At the end of the fifties, after studying poetry and music at Sarah Lawrence College, she became part of a circle of avant-garde musicians (including John Cage and Merce Cunningham): in fact the “Chambers Street Series.” An influential concert series organized by LaMonte Young, was held at Ono’s loft at 112 Chambers. Ono’s activities in music led to her first public concert, A Grapefruit in the World of Park (at the Village Gate, 1961) and later that same year to an evening of performance events in which Yvonne Rainer stood up and sat down before a table stacked with dishes for ten minutes, then smashed the dishes “accompanied by a rhythmic background of repeated syllables, a tape recording of moans and words spoken backwards, and by an aria of high-pitched wails sung by Ono” (Barbara Haskell’s description in Yoko Ono: Objects, Films, the catalogue for the 1989 Whitney Museum show).
In the early sixties Ono was part of what became known as Fluxus, an art movement with roots in Dada, in Marcel Duchamp and John Cage, and energised by George Maciunas. The Fluxus artists were dedicated to challenging conventional definitions in the fine arts, and conventional relationships between artwork and viewer. In the early sixties, Ono made such works as Painting to See the Room through (1961), a canvas with an almost invisible hole in the centre through which one peered to see the room, and Painting to Hammer the Nail in (1961), a white wood panel that “viewers” were instructed to hammer nails into with an attached hammer. Instructions for dozens of these early pieces, and for later ones, are reprinted in Ono’s Grapefruit, which has appeared several times in several different editions- most recently in a Simon and Schuster/ Touchstone paperback edition, reprinted in 1979.
By the mid sixties, Ono had become interested in film, as a writer of mini film scripts (sixteen are reprinted in the Fall 1989 Film Quarterly), and as a contributor of three films to the Fluxfilm Program coordinated by Maciunas in 1966: two one-shot films shot at 2000 frames per second, Eyeblink and Match, and No.4, a sequence of buttocks of walking males and females. Along with several other films in the Fluxfilm Program (and two 1966 films by Bruce Baillie), Eyeblink and No.4 are, so far as I know, the first instances of what was to become a mini-genre of avant-garde cinema: the single-shot film (films that are or appear to be precisely one shot long), No.4 (Bottoms) (1966).
For the eighty minutes of No.4 (Bottoms), all we see are human buttocks in the act of walking, filmed in black and white, in close-up, so that each buttocks fills the screen: the crack between the cheeks and the crease between hams and legs divide the frame into four approximately equal sectors: we cannot see around the edges of the walking bodies. Each buttocks is filmed for a few seconds (often for fifteen seconds or so; sometimes for less than ten seconds), and is then followed immediately by the next buttocks. The sound track consists of interviews with people whose buttocks we see and with other people considering whether to allow themselves to be filmed; they talk about the project in general, and they raise the issue of the film’s probable boredom, which becomes a comment on viewers’ actual experience of the film. The sound track also includes segments of television news coverage of the project (which had considerable visibility in London in 1966), including an interview with Ono, who discusses the conceptual design of the film.
No. 4 (Bottoms) is fascinating and entertaining, especially in its revelation of the human body. Because Ono’s structuring of the visuals is rigorously serial, No.4 (Bottoms) is reminiscent of Edward Muybridge’s motion studies, though in this instance the “grid” against which we measure the motion is temporal, as well as implicitly spatial: though there’s no literal grid behind the bottoms, each bottom is framed in precisely the same way. What we realize from seeing these bottoms, and inevitably comparing them with one another- and with our idea of “bottom”- is both obvious and startling. Not only are people’s bottoms remarkably varied in their shape, colouring, and texture, but no two bottoms move in the same way.
On a more formal level No.4 (Bottoms) is interesting both as an early instance of the serial structuring that was to become so common in avant-garde film by the end of the sixties (in Snow’s Wavelength and Ernie Gehr’s Serene Velocity, 1970; Hollis Frampton’s Zorns Lemma, 1970 and Robert Huot’s Rolls: 1971, 1972; J.J. Murphey’s Print Generation, 1974…) and because Ono’s editing makes the experience of No.4 (Bottoms) more complex than simple descriptions of the film seem to suggest. As the film develops, particular bottoms and comments on the sound track are sometimes repeated, often in new contexts; and a variety of subtle interconnections between image and sound occur.
Like No.4 (Bottoms), Ono’s next long film, Film No.5 (Smile) (1968, fifty-one minutes), was an extension of work included in the Fluxfilm Program. Like her Eyeblink and Match- and like Chieko Shiomi’s Disappearing Music for Face (in which Ono’s smile gradually “disappears”), also on the Fluxfilm Program- Film No.5 (Smile) was shot with a high-speed camera. Unlike these earlier films, all of which filmed simple actions in black and white, indoors, at 2000 frames per second, Film No.5 (Smile) reveals John Lennon’s face, recorded at 333 frames per second for an extended duration, outdoors, in colour, and accompanied by a sound track of outdoor sounds recorded at the same time the imagery was recorded. Film No.5 (Smile) divides roughly into two halves, one continuous shot each. During the first half, the film is a meditation on Lennon’s face, which is so still that on first viewing I wasn’t entirely sure for a while that the film was live action and not an optically printed photograph of Lennon smiling slightly. Though almost nothing happens in any conventional sense, the intersection of the high-speed filming and our extended gaze creates continuous, subtle transformations: it is as if we can see Lennon’s expression evolve in conjunction with the flow of his thoughts. Well into the first shot, Lennon forms his lips into an “O”- a kiss perhaps- and then slowly returns to the slight smile with which the shot opens. During the second shot of Film No.5 (Smile), which differs from the first in subtleties of colour and texture (both shots are lovely), Lennon’s face is more active; he blinks several times, sticks his tongue out, smiles broadly twice, and seems to say “Ah!” Of course, while the second shot is more active than the first, the amount of activity remains minimal by conventional standards (and unusually so even for avant-garde film.) It is as though those of us in the theatre and Lennon are meditating on each other from opposite sides of the cinematic apparatus, joined together by Ono in a lovely, hypnotic stasis.
The excitement Ono and Lennon were discovering living and working together fuelled Two Virgins (1968) and Bed-In (1969), both of which were collaborations. Two Virgins enacts two metaphors for the two artists’ interaction. First, we see a long passage of Ono’s and Lennon’s faces superimposed, often with a third layer of leaves, sky, and water; then we see an extended shot of Ono and Lennon looking at each other, then kissing. Bed-In is a relatively conventional record of the Montreal performance; it includes a number of remarkable moments, most noteworthy among them, perhaps, Al Capp’s blatantly mean-spirited, passive-aggressive visit, and the song “Give Peace a Chance.” Nearly all of Ono’s remaining films were collaborations with John Lennon.
When the Whitney Museum presented Ono’s films at its 1989 retrospective, Rape (1969) provoked the most extensive critical commentary. The relentless seventy-seven-minute feature elaborates the single action of a small filmmaking crew coming upon a woman in a London park and following her through the park, along streets, and into her apartment where she becomes increasingly isolated by her cinematic tormentors. (Her isolation is a theme from the beginning since the woman speaks German; because the film isn’t subtitled, even we don’t know what she’s saying in any detail.) The film was, according to Ono, a candid recording by cinematographer Nic Knowland of a woman who was not willingly a part of this project. When Rape was first released, it was widely seen as a comment on Ono’s experience on being in the media spotlight with Lennon. Two decades later, the films seems more a parable about the implicit victimization of women by the institution of cinema.
Fly (1970) has a number of historical precedents- Willard Maas’s Geography of the Body (1943), most obviously- but it remains powerful and fascinating. At first, a fly is seen, in extreme close-up, as it “explores” the body of a nude woman (she’s identified as “Virginia Lust” in the credits); later more and more flies are seen crawling on the body, which now looks more like a corpse; and at the end, the camera pans up and “flies” out the window of the room. The remarkable sound track is a combination of excerpts from Ono’s vocal piece, Fly, and music composed by Lennon.
Up Your Legs Forever (1970) is basically a remake of No.4 (Bottoms), using legs, rather than buttocks: the camera continually pans up from the feet to the upper thighs of hundreds of men and women, as we listen to the sound of the panning apparatus and a variety of conversations about the project. Though UP Your Legs Forever has some interesting moments, it doesn’t have the drama or the humour of No.4 (Bottoms).
Ono and Lennon also collaborated on two Lennon films (whether a film is a “Lennon film” or and “Ono film” depends on whose basic concept instigated the project). Apotheosis (1970) is one of the most ingenious single-shot films ever made. A camera pans up the cloaked bodies of Lennon and Ono, then on up into the sky above a village, higher and higher across snow-covered fields (the camera was mounted in a hot-air balloon, which we never see- though we hear the device that heats the air) and then up into the clouds; the screen remains completely white for several minutes, and finally, once many members of the audience have given up on the film, the camera rises out into the sunny skyscraper above the clouds. The film is a test and reward of viewer patience and serenity. For Erection, a camera was mounted so that we can watch the construction of a building, in time-lapse dissolves from one image to another, several hours or days later. The film is not so much about the action of constructing a building (as a pixellated film of such a subject might be), as it is about the subtle, sometimes magical changes that take place between the dissolves. Erection is more mystery than documentation.
Imagine (1971)- not to be confused with the recent Imagine: John Lennon (1988, directed by Andrew Solt)- was the final Ono/Lennon cinematic collaboration: it’s a series of sketches accompanied by their music. Since 1971 Ono has made no films, though she did make a seven minute video documenting the response to a conceptual event at the Museum of Modern Art: Museum of Modern Art Show (1971). She has also made several music videos that document her process of recovering from Lennon’s death- Walking on Thin Ice (1981), Woman (1981), Goodbye Sadness (1982)- as well as records and art objects.
Of course, she remains one of the world’s most visible public figures and the most widely known conceptual artist.
I spoke with Ono at her office at the Dakota in May 1989.
MacDonald: Were you a moviegoer as a child?
Ono: I was a movie buff, yes. In prep school in Tokyo you were supposed to go directly home after school. But most kids often went to the movies. We used to hide our school badges and sneak into the theatre.
MacDonald: Do you remember what you saw?
Ono: Yes, I mostly saw French films. There was a group of kids who like American films- Jimmy Stewart and Katharine Hepburn, Doris Day and Rock Hudson, Bob Hope and Bing Crosby- and there was another crowd of girls who thought they were intellectuals, and went to French films. I was in the French film group. We would go to see The Children of Paradise (1945), that sort of thing. It was a very exciting time. I loved those films.
MacDonald: Did you see some of the early French surrealist films from the twenties?
Ono: Those things I saw much later. We’re talking about when I was in high school in the late forties. I saw the surrealist films in the sixties in New York and Paris.
The films I saw in high school that were closest to surrealism wee the Cocteau films, Beauty and the Beast and Orpheus (1950). Those films really gave me some ideas.
MacDonald: The earliest I know of you in connection with film is the sound track you did for Taka Iimura’s Love in 1963 by hanging the microphone out the window. I know the later Fluxfilm reels that were made in 1966, but did the Fluxus group get involved with film before that?
Ono: No. I think that one of the reasons why we couldn’t make films or didn’t think of making films was that we felt that it was an enormously expensive venture. At that time, I didn’t even have the money to buy canvas. I’d go to army surplus shops and get that canvas that’s rolled up. During that period, I felt that getting a camera to do a film was unrealistic.
MacDonald: Grapefruit includes three tiny descriptions of conceptual film projects that are identified as excerpts from “Six Film Scripts by Yoko Ono.” Were there others, or was the indication that there were six scripts a conceptual joke?
Ono: No, there were six at first; then later there were others. At the time I wrote those scripts, I sent most of them to Jones Mekas, to document them. Actually, that’s why I have copies of them now.
MacDonald: There seems to be confusion about the names and numbers of the films on the Fluxfilm Program, and about who did them. I assume you made the two slow-motion films, Eyeblink and Match, and the first film about buttocks, No.4.
Ono: Those are mine, yes.
MacDonald: Did people collaborate in making those films, or did everybody work individually and then just put the films onto those two Fluxus reels?
Ono: One day George (Maciunas) called me and said he’s got the use of a high-speed camera and it’s a good opportunity, so just come over (to Peter Moore’s apartment on East 36th St) and make some films. So I went there, and the high-speed camera was set up and he said, “Give me some ideas!” Think of some ideas for films!” There weren’t many people around, at the beginning just George and…
MacDonald: Peter Moore is credited on a lot of the slow-motion films.
Ono: Yeah, Peter Moore was there, and Barbara Moore came too. And other people were coming in- I forget who they were- but not many. When I arrived, I was the only person there, outside of George. I don’t know how George managed to get the high-speed camera. I don’t think he paid for it. But it was the kind of opportunity that if you can get it, you grab it. So I’m there, and I got the idea of Match and Eyeblink and we shot these. Eyeblink didn’t come out too well. It was my eye, and I didn’t like my eye.
MacDonald: I like that film a lot. Framed the way it is, the eye becomes erotic; it’s suggestive of body parts normally considered more erotic.
Ono: The one of those high-speed films I liked best was one you didn’t mention: Smoking.
MacDonald: The one by Joe Jones.
Ono: Yes. I thought that one was amazing, so beautiful; it was like frozen smoke.
MacDonald: There’s a film on that reel called Disappearing Music for Face…
Ono: Chieko Shiomi’s film, yeah.
MacDonald: I understand you were involved in that one too.
Ono: Well, that was my smile. That was me. What happened was that Chieko Shiomi was in Japan at the time. She was coming here often; it wasn’t like she was stationed in Japan all the time, but at the time I think she had just left to go to Japan. Then this high-speed camera idea came up, and when George was saying, “Quick, quick, ideas,” I said, “Well, how about smile”; and he said, “NO, that you can’t do, think of something else.” “But,” I said, “Smile is a very important one, I really want to do it,” because I always had that idea, but George keeps saying, “No you can’t do that one.” Finally, he said, “Well, OK , actually I wanted to save that for Chieko Shiomi because she had the same idea. But I will let you perform.” So that’s me smiling. Later I found out that her concept was totally different from what I wanted to do. Chieko Shiomi’s idea is beautiful; she catches the disappearance of a smile. At the time I didn’t know what her title was.
MacDonald: I assume No.4 was shot at a different time.
Ono: Yes. At the time I was living at 1 West 100th Street. It was shot in my apartment. My then husband Tony Cox and Jeff Perkins helped.
MacDonald: The long version of the buttocks film, No.4 (Bottoms), is still amazing.
Ono: I think that film had a social impact at the time because of what was going on in the world and also because of what was going on in the film world. It’s a pretty interesting film really.
Do you know the statement I wrote about taking any film and burying it underground for fifty years [see Grapefruit (New York; Simon and Schuster/ Touchstone, 1971), Section 9, “On Film No.4,” paragraph 3, and “On Film No.5 and Two Virgins,” paragraph 2]? It’s like wine. Any film, any cheap film, if you put it underground for fifty years, becomes interesting [laughter]. You just take a shot of people walking, and that’s enough: the weight of history is so incredible.
MacDonald: When No.4 (Bottoms) was made, the idea of showing a lot of asses was completely outrageous. Bottoms were less-respected, less-revealed part of the anatomy. These days things have changed. Now bottoms are OK- certain bottoms. What I found exhilarating about watching the film (maybe because I’ve always been insecure about my bottom!) is that after you see hundreds of bottoms, you realize that during the whole time you watched the film, you never saw the “correct,” marketable jean-ad bottom. You realize that nobody’s bottom is the way bottoms are supposed to be: the droop, or there are pimples- something is “wrong.” I think the film has almost as much impact now as it did then- though in a different way.
Ono: Well, you see, it’s not just to do with bottoms. For me the film is less about bottoms than about a certain bear, a beat you didn’t see in films, even in avant-garde films, then.
This is something else, but I remember one beautiful film where the stationary camera just keeps zooming toward a wall…
MacDonald: Wavelength? Michael Snow’s film?
Ono: Right, Michael Snow. That’s an incredibly beautiful film. A revolution in itself really. Bottoms film was a different thing, but just as revolutionary I think. It was about a beat, about movement. The beat in bottoms film is comparable to a rock beat. Even in the music world there wasn’t that beat until rock came. It’s the closest thing to the heartbeat. I tried to capture that again with Up Your Legs Forever. But in No.4 (Bottoms) it worked much better. Maybe it was the bottoms. That film has a basic energy. I couldn’t capture it in Up Your Legs Forever.
MacDonald: No.4 (Bottoms) plays with perceptions and memory in different ways. For a while it seems like a simple, serial structure, one bottom after another. Then at a certain point you realize, Oh I’ve seen that bottom before… but was it with this sound? No, I don’t think so. Later you may see another bottom a second time, clearly with the same sound. A new kind of viewing experience develops. Did you record all the bottoms and the spoken material for the track, and then later, using that material, develop a structure? It seems almost scored.
Ono: Yes. I spent a lot of hours editing. It wasn’t just put together. The sequence was important. A sympathetic studio said that I could come at midnight or whenever no one was using the facilities, to do the editing. I got a lot of editing time free; that’s how I was able to finish it.
MacDonald: On the sound track some of the participants talk about the process of getting people to show up to have their bottoms recorded, but I’m not completely sure what the process was. You put an ad in a theatrical paper apparently.
Ono: Well, we had an ad, yes, but most of the people were friends of friends. It became a fantastic event. You have to understand, the minute the announcement was made, there was a new joke about it in the newspapers everyday, and everybody was into it. We filmed at Victor Musgrave’s place; he was a very good friend who was very generous in letting me use his townhouse.
MacDonald: Did you select bottoms or did you use everybody that was filmed? Were there really 365 bottoms involved?
Ono: I didn’t select bottoms. There was not enough for 365 anyway. And the impact of the film as a happening was already getting lost from filming for so long. And there was the rental of the camera and the practical aspect of the shooting schedule. At a certain point I said, “Oh well, the number’s conceptual anyway, so who cares. It’s enough!”
MacDonald: I assume that when you did the early Fluxus version of No.4, you just followed people walking across an apartment. For the long film you’d built a machine to do the filming, which allowed you to film in more controlled close-up; we can’t see around the sides of the bodies the way we can in the earlier film.
Ono: Well, in the first No.4 I was pretty close too. But, as you say, it wasn’t really perfect. In London we did it almost perfect. In London we did it almost perfectly. My idea both times was very visual. All my films had very visual concepts behind them in the beginning. I mean No.4 (Bottoms) has many levels of impact- one being political- but originally I simply wanted to cover the screen with one object, with something that was moving constantly. There’s always a background. The closest you get to what I mean s like some macho guy, a cowboy or something, standing with his back to the screen, but you always see a little background. The screen is never covered; so I thought, if you don’t leave a background it might be like the whole screen is moving. I just wanted to have that experience. As you say, it didn’t work in the early version, but it was the first idea I had for the film actually.
And also, the juxtaposition of the movement of the four sections of the bottoms was fascinating, I thought.
MacDonald: No.4 (Bottoms) reminds me of Edward Muybridge’s motion photographs.
Ono: Oh I see, yeah.
MacDonald: Was the finished film shown a lot?
Ono: Well, I finally got an OK from the censor and we showed it in Charing Cross Road. Then some American Hollywood producer came and said he wanted to buy it and take it to the United States. Also, he wanted me to make 365 breasts, and I said, if we’re going to do breasts, then I will do a sequence of one breast, you know, fill the screen with a single breast over and over, but I don’t think that was erotic enough for him. He was thinking eroticism; I was thinking about visual, graphic concepts- a totally different thing. I was too proud to make two breasts [laughter]. I think there was an attempt to take the bottoms film to the United States, but it was promptly confiscated by the censor.
MacDonald: At customs?
Ono: Yes.
MacDonald: There’s a mention on the sound track that you were planning to do other versions of that film in other countries, and the film ends with the phrase, “To Be Continued.” Was that a concept for other films, or were there some specific plans for follow-ups?
Ono: Well you see, all my films do have a conceptual side. I have all these scripts, and I get excited just to show them to people because my hope is that maybe they will want to make some of them. That would be great. I mean most of my films are film instructions; they were never made actually. Just as film instructions, I think they are valid, but it wouldn’t be very good if somebody makes them. I don’t have to make them myself. And also, each film I made had a projection of future plans built into the idea. If somebody picks up on one of them, that’s great.
At the time I was making films, what I felt I was doing was similar to what The Rocky Horror Picture Show [1975] did later. I wanted to involve the audience directly in new ways.
MacDonald: How did Film No.5 (Smile) come about?
Ono: When I went to London, I still kept thinking about the idea of smile, so when I had the chance, I decided to do my version. Of course, until John and I got together, I could never have rented a high-speed camera. Well, maybe if I’d looked into it, I could have. I don’t know, but I thought it would be too expensive.
MacDonald: Did you know Lennon well at the point when you did Film No.5 (Smile)?
Ono: Yes.
MacDonald: Because I wondered whether you made the film because you wanted to capture a certain complexity in him, or whether the complexity that’s revealed in that seemingly simple image is a result of what the high-speed camera reveals, or creates, as it films,
Ono: Well, certainly I knew John was complex person. But the film wasn’t so much about his complexity as a person. I was trying to capture the complexity of a visual experience. What you see in that film is very similar to how you perceive somebody when you are on acid. We had done acid trips together, and that gave me the idea. I wondered how do you capture this?
MacDonald: It’s a beautiful film.
Ono: Well, of course, you know from the statements I made about Smile [see Ono, Grapefruit, “On Film No.5 & Two Virgins”] that my idea was really very different from the film I finally made. My idea was to do everybody’s smile. But when I met John, I thought, doing everybody’s smile is going to be impossible; and he can represent everybody’s smile.
MacDonald: What I find incredible about Smile is that as you watch John’s face, it’s almost as though you can see his mind working. I don’t know whether it’s an optical illusion, maybe it’s created by the way that the camera works. But it’s almost as though as you watch, the expression is changing every second.
Ono: I know. It’s incredible, isn’t it? Of course I didn’t know what exactly a high-speed camera would do. I knew in general, but I didn’t know what the exact effect would be. And, of course, I never would have known unless George Maciunas had rented a high-speed camera and called me up. George was a very interesting person. He had a very artistic mind. I never knew why he didn’t create his own art; he always wanted to take the role of helping create other people’s work. But that combination was very good; he not only executed what we wanted, he gave us the opportunity to look into the areas we would never have looked into. He had that kind of mind.
MacDonald: With Two Virgins you and John began collaborating on films and in the next few years there was a whole series of collaborations. Judging from the credits on the films, I assume that one or the other of you would get an idea and then both of you would work the idea out, and whoever had the original idea for a particular film- that film was theirs. Normally, the directorial credit is considered the most important one, but on these films there’s a more basic credit. It might be “Film by Yoko Ono,” then “Directed and produced by John and Yoko.” Am I correct: was it that whoever had the original concept for the film, that’s whose film it was?
Ono: Yes.
MacDonald: I remember reading years ago in a collection of Rolling Stone interviews that when you and John got involved with politics and in particular with the Bed-In, It was partly because Peter Watkins had written you a letter. Is that how you remember it?
Ono: Well, yes, Peter Watkin’s letter was a confrontation to us, and at the time we had a conversation about what we felt we had been doing politically: “Well, I was doing this, Yes I was doing that.” As a Beatle, John was always asked, “What is your position about the Vietnam War,” or something else; and I think that their manager, Brian Epstein, was very concerned that they wouldn’t make any statements, and so they didn’t make any direct statements. But a covert statement was made through an album cover that was censored, as you know. And I was standing in Trafalgar Square, in a bag, for peace and all that. So separately we had that awareness, and we were expressing it in the ways that we could. I was doing it more freely because it was easier for me. So we were comparing notes after getting the letter, and then we were saying, “Well what about doing something together,” which was the Bed-In (and the film Bed-In), so Peter Watkin’s letter definitely did mean something to us.
MacDonald: How much control did you (or you and John) have over the way Bed-In looks? You credit a large crew on that film. What was your part in the final film, other than as performers?
Ono: We always maintained careful control over the finished films. I was generally in charge of editing, which I did for that film, and for others, frame by frame. I mean I would have a film editor working with me- I don’t know the technology- but I would be very specific about what I wanted. When Jonas [Mekas] did the John and Yoko screenings at Anthology [Anthology Film Archives], I had three editing machines and editors brought into our hotel room, and I edited Bed-In there because of the deadline.
I enjoy the editing part of filmmaking most of all; that’s where the films really get made.
MacDonald: Rape is often talked about as a parable of the media intruding into your lives, but when I saw it again the other week, it struck me as very similar to pieces in Grapefruit.
Ono: Well, they keep saying that. I’ll tell you what happened. By the time that I actually got to make the film, John and I were together, and the reporters were hounding us, but the Rape concept was something I thought of before John and I got together.
MacDonald: In Grapefruit there’s “Black Piece II,” a part of which is “Walk behind a person for four hours.”
Ono: It was that kind of thing, right. But it was also a film script
[“Film No.5 (Rape or Chase)”]
MacDonald: How candid is the Rape footage? It no longer looks candid to me.
Ono: It was completely candid- except for the effects we did later in the editing. The girl in the film did not know what was happening. Her sister was in on it, so when she calls her sister on the phone, her sister is just laughing at her and the girl doesn’t understand why. Nic Knowland did the actual shooting. I wasn’t there. Everything was candid, but I kept pushing him to bring back better material. The type of material he brought back at first was something like he would be standing on the street, and when a group of girls passed by, he would direct the camera to them. The girls would just giggle and run away, and he wouldn’t follow. I kept saying he could do better than that, be he actually had a personal problem doing the film because he was a Buddhist and a peacenik: he didn’t want to intrude on people’s privacy. I remember John saying later that no actress could have given a performance that real.
I’ve done tons of work, and I don’t have time to check it all out, but I wish I could check about this strange thing, which is that a lot of my works have been a projection of my future fate. It frightens me. It simply frightens me. I don’t want to see Rape now. I haven’t seen the Rape film in a long time, but just thinking about the concept of it frightens me because now I’m in that position, the position of the woman in the film.
MacDonald: In the video Walking on Thin Ice, we see a similar scene, but with you.
Ono: I know. And why did I think of that song? After I wrote that song all sorts of trouble started to happen, all of which was somehow related to the song, that feeling of walking on thin ice. Sometimes I intentionally try to write something positive. But in a situation like that, art comes first. I really thought “Walking on Thin Ice” was a good song when it came to me. I had no qualms about recording it. The artistic desire of expressing something supersedes the worry, I suppose, and you think, ah it’s nothing, it’s fine, it’s just a nice song or something; and then it turns out that it becomes my life and I don’t want that.
Just recently I was in this film where I performed as a bag lady [Homeless, by Yukihiko Tsutsumi, unreleased at time of interview]. I was a bit concerned what it might mean to enact a bag lady, in terms of future projections. But I reasoned that there are actors who die many times in films, but live long lives, so actually enacting death makes their real lives longer. Well, in the first scene it was a beautiful April day, one of those I’m-glad-to-be-in-New-York days, and I’m wearing these rags and I’m pushing an empty baby carriage in this beautiful green environment. And as I was doing it, I remembered the song “Greenfield Morning” and the line, “I pushed an empty baby carriage all over the city.” That was the first song we recorded for Yoko Ono’s Plastic Ono Band, and I think it’s in Grapefruit, too- I mean the instruction “Push an empty baby carriage” [See “City Piece: Walk all over the city with an empty baby carriage” (Winter, 1961) near the end of the first section (Music) of Grapefruit]. So I’m pushing the baby carriage and I’m thinking I don’t want to know about this. That aspect of projection is interesting, isn’t it?
MacDonald: Yes.
Ono: If you are somebody who makes films with a commercial concern or other concerns, other than just inspiration, maybe that sort of thing wouldn’t happen. I don’t know. But inspiration is very much connected with your life in past and future.
MacDonald: Apotheosis is a gorgeous film. It’s one of the collaborations that’s listed as John’s film, though the idea of stripping things away until you’ve got a white screen is very much like some of you work.
Ono: Well, I’ll tell you what happened. I think some of the instructions are already there in Grapefruit, or maybe not, maybe it’s one of the instructions that haven’t been published [Ono is referring to the second version of her film script, “Film No.1 (A Walk to the Taj Mahal)”]. There was a constant feeling of wanting to take an object that’s on the ground- not necessarily an object, could be a person- in fact the original idea was a drunken guy walking in a snowy field; you don’t see the drunken guy, but the camera suggests that he’s drunk because of the way it moves. So he walks and sways, and finally the camera goes up in the sky. When we did the cover for the “Two Virgins” album, where we were both naked, one of us said, “Why don’t we make a film where the camera moves from the ground up, shooting our naked bodies, and then just goes up in the air.” Later, John said, “Well, let’s make one where the camera goes up.” So the idea stemmed from that. What happened, of course, was that we didn’t expect the balloon film to be the way it was turned out. We went up in the balloon, and it happened to be a snowy day.
MacDonald: You were in the balloon with the camera?
Ono: Up to a certain point. The part where you go into the cloud, and then break out of the cloud, was taken later. The footage that came back from the lab was beautiful. It was just something that happened naturally, the dogs barking, everything that happened- it was an incredible experience. We didn’t expect it was going to be that beautiful. A lot of things just happen, you know.
MacDonald: If you allow them to, I guess.
Ono: Yes!
MacDonald: Fly seems almost the opposite of Apotheosis in a way; it seems…
Ono: Very much intentionally calculated?
MacDonald: Right.
Ono: It’s true
MacDonald: You did the sound [for the vocal piece Fly] before you did the film. Had you had the idea in mind then?
Ono: I was always thinking about the idea of fly. Actually, I was always fascinated with the pun “fly and “fly” in English. There was also a conceptual event about flies and where they fly to.
MacDonald: The piece you did for the Museum of Modern Art?
Ono: Yes. Did you see that Museum of Modern Art catalogue? [A 112-page, one foot by one foot catalogue- the title seems to be Museum of Modern FArt (Ono is carrying a shopping bag with the letter “F” directly beneath the Museum of Modern Art marquee)- which details her concept at length; the catalogue was designed by Ono and produced by Michael Gross.] At the end of that, I talk about how to fly,
MacDonald: I know the video with the sandwich-board guy in front of the Museum of Modern Art who interviews people about the Yoko Ono show that “isn’t there” [The Museum of Modern Art Show]. In the text for that piece, you explain how some flies were exposed to your perfume and let loose and that people are following those flies around to see where they land.
Ono: The catalogue was made for that event; it had all sorts of interesting stuff in it, about how to fly and all that. All the pages are postcards that you could mail, so the catalogue and Fly piece could fly all over the place.
MacDonald: So MoMA had this on sale?
Ono: No, no, no, no! MoMA would not do it. MoMA was busy saying to people, “There’s no Yoko Ono show here.” People would come in and ask, is there a Yoko Ono show, and they would say no. They were very upset; they didn’t know what was going on. I couldn’t sell the book anywhere. Nobody bought it, so I have piles of it.
MacDonald: Earlier, in the mid sixties, you did a number of descriptions of environmental boxes that the viewer would go inside of and images would be projected on the outside. Eyeblink was involved in a number of those descriptions, and another was called “Fly”. I guess the idea was that a viewer would go inside the box and on all sides you would project images that would create the sensation that the viewer was flying.
Ono: How do you know about those boxes?
MacDonald: I found the descriptions in the Fluxus Codex, in the Yoko Ono section [See John Hendricks, Fluxus Codex (New York: Harry N. Abrams, 1988), p.418 for the descriptions]. Was either piece ever built?
Ono: They were never built. I haven’t seen these ideas since I did them. Whenever I had an idea, I sent it to George Maciunas. He probably kept them. I don’t even have the originals for those. I’ll have to get this book. You know, I have this thing about reading about me. When something about me is in a book, I mostly don’t want to know about it.
MacDonald: One of the interesting things about watching the film Fly is that one’s sense of what the body we’re seeing is about, and what the film is about, is constantly changing.
Ono: A cartoon in a newspaper gave me the idea. There’s this woman with a low-cut dress, and a guy is looking at her, and the guy’s wife says, “What are you looking at!” and the guy says, “Oh, I’m looking at a fly on her.” I wanted the film to be an experience where you’re always wondering, am I following the movement of the fly or am I looking at the body? I think that life is full of that kind of thing. We’re always sort of deceiving ourselves about what we’re really seeing.
MacDonald: Do you know the Willard Maas film, Geography of the Body? It’s all close-ups of bodies, framed so that you can’t quite tell what body part you’re looking at- but they all look erotic. Eyeblink is a little like that, and Fly is full of the same effect. If you go close enough, every part of the body looks the same, and they’re all equally erotic.
Ono: Oh, there’s an incredible film instruction that has to do with that close-up idea. It’s a travelogue [“Film No.13 (Travelogue”]. You have a travelogue to Japan or somewhere, and you say, “Well, now I’m on Mount Fuji,” and there’s an incredible close-up of stones; and then, “We bathed in a mixed bath,” and you see just steam- you get it?- and then, “We ate noodles,” and you see an incredible close-up of noodles… so in effect you can make a travelogue of any country without going out of your apartment! “Then we saw geisha girls,” and you see an incredible close-up of hair [laughter]. I wanted to make that, but I just never got around it.
MacDonald: Freedom [1970], the little one-minute film of you trying to take your bra off, was made the same year as Fly.
Ono: Yeah, isn’t that a great little film?
MacDonald: It’s so paradoxical. You show freedom as the ability to try to break free, which implies that you’re never really free.
Ono: Right, exactly.
MacDonald: You mentioned earlier that you didn’t think Up Your Legs Forever worked as well as No.4 (Bottoms). I thought it was interesting to see that people’s one leg is very different from their other leg.
Ono: The best thing about that film is the title, I think. My first vision for that film was like going up all the legs, up, up, up, to eternity. [“Film No. 12 (Esstacy)”- the misspelling of “ecstasy” is left as it was in the original film script, at Ono’s request]. But in making it, that vision got lost because of what was necessary to film the legs. I don’t know how you can do what I originally had in mind.
MacDonald: Jonas and Adolfas Mekas are thanked at the end of Up Your Legs Forever.
Ono: Because they did the editing. That was one of the few films I didn’t edit myself.
MacDonald: Somebody mentioned to me the other day, and I assume it’s not true, that Erection was originally a film about John’s penis. Was there a film like that?
Ono: Yes, there was. But it wasn’t called Erection. I think it was called Self Portrait, and it wasn’t an erection, it was just a long shot of his penis. That was his idea. The funny thing was that Self Portrait was never questioned by customs because of it’s title, and Erection, which was about the erection of a building , was questioned.
MacDonald: Is there a relation between the 1971 version of Imagine and the recent Imagine: John Lennon?
Ono: There’s no relationship. We wanted to make surrealistic film in the tradition of Luis Bunuel and Jean Cocteau. It was John’s idea to say just one or two words at the beginning, and make the reset of the film silent, like silent movie. I liked that idea and we did it. I think that now it’s more or less known as a forefather of MTV. Each scene came from some idea John or I had. It was really a collaboration between John and me.
MacDonald: Are you involved in film now? Are you planning to make films? You made several videos in the early eighties, but it’s been a while since you’ve made a film.
Ono: I don’t know; it might get to that. I’m one of those people who can’t do something unless I’m totally motivated. That’s one of the reasons I jump from one medium to another. I did the Whitney Museum show, and suddenly all the inspiration is sculptural; and then last night or the night before, I went to the studio to do some music. But I’m not getting that feeling like I gotta make a film- except for The Tea Party [the film script “Film No.7 (Tea Party)”]: for years I’ve been wanting to make that one, but because of the technical difficulties I don’t seem to be able to get it together. I think one of the reasons I’m not making more films is that I’ve done so many film scripts. I’d like to see one of them made by somebody else. Maybe one day out of the blue I’ll feel it so strongly that I’ll make a film myself again.