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The eye of the storm is not so much what goes on in the world, it is the confusion of how to think, feel, digest, and react to what goes on.
Model: Queentoy Cyberstar
Photographer: Queentoy Cyberstar
Look Details Look Details: letmeupgradecha.blogspot.com/2015/06/do-it-again.html
Irises are some of the most elegant flowers.
It looks like they take on different ballet poses...
PORT DE BRAS?
A gentle arm curve creates a soft frame around the dancer’s head.
Fifth Position is a world famous ballet pose. Fifth position or bras en couronne (arms like a crown): both arms are rounded and held above and slightly forward of the head.
Bought a mixed bouquet, saw just the tips of the yellow Irises, to my amazement, the center turned out blue, not seen that before, thus photo-session with my new elegant models.
This definitely spoke of ballet ...
I don't talk to flowers, they talk to me and I gladly listen!
In Flowers'-language: Iris means faith; hope; wisdom and valour
In Fine Arts: the lenses also have an iris diaphragm which can be opened and closed to control the amount of light reaching the film.
Iris can mean:
* The sphincter around the pupil of the eye, the iris is the most visible part of the eye, when photographed with a flash, the iris only reacts to protect the retina, and not fast enough to avoid the red eye effect.
* The equivalent device in a camera,
* The messenger of the gods in Greek mythology
* A variety of flower,
* A female first name.
I wish you a good day and thanx for your visit, so very much appreciated, Magda, (*_*)
For more of my other work visit here: www.indigo2photography.com
IT IS STRICTLY FORBIDDEN (BY LAW!!!) TO USE ANY OF MY images or TEXT on websites, blogs or any other media without my explicit permission. If you do, without accreditation, it is STEALING © All rights reserved
Iris, "Dutch Iris", yellow, blue, petals, flowers, studio, black-background, colour, design, square, NikonD7000, "Magda indigo"
Playing around with my new toy, flashgun with beauty dish and blue gel and a sparkler. Tripod and lens swapped. No Photoshop Home Faff 17-08-2019ps
The Asahiflex Test experience
Asahi Opt. Co. Asahiflex IIb (1954 second model) + Takumar 83mm f1.9
Lomochrome Purple XR 100-400
Fuji Color Service Low-res scan from negative
Stalking her photo preys. Shinjuku, Tokyo, Japan. © Michele Marcolin, 2022.
Some of weeks ago (during my banning from FB), while waiting for the slide film of a Miranda S Test to be processed, I spotted a LOMOChrome Purple film, in a photo shop I check out frequently. And I couldn't resist the curiosity, being the results so reminiscent of infra-red and cross processed film (which I like so much). So I decided to give it a try. However, not being sure if everything was fine with the Miranda (which turned out with a cut curtain-later repaired), I was left only with the old Asahiflex IIb that came with the Takumar 58mm f2.4, quite some time ago. A camera so far I used only for... 'decoration'. Fortunately it worked pretty well - marvels of the golden age of camera making - and I was quite satisfied with the results, considering that I have not been shooting color film (and in complete manual mode) since years. I am particularly happy with the results of the precious chrome Takumar 83mm f1.9. A very beautiful portrait lens, I have to say. Will post some later.
I still need to understand well, when and how the film reacts better to produce purples and greens, but I really like the results. A bit of grain here is the fault also of the low-res film scan: the prints are way smoother. Unfortunately the shop refuses to do high-res scan to avoid losing printing customers, knowing that digitally reproducing negatives is not that straightforward task you can do with one single command or in batch. But, don't worry... we have also Pentax Film Duplicator.
Second model Asahiflex II b starts around noº 52117.
Differences:
- vertical lug for straps.
- bold arrow on rewind knob
- smaller AOCO logo, slimmer type
- filled triangles instead of arrows
- different design on shutter time dial
- flash sync X in red
- bold type arrow on winder in bold type
- logo on the back removed.
So this is a follow up to the Anakin Skywalker - What If I posted a while back. It's based in the same universe and operating under the same galaxy changing event.
Obi-Wan Kenobi - With the public execution of Supreme Chancellor Palpatine at the hands of the CIS commander General Grievous, the Jedi council made it their highest priority to capture the villainous commander and bring to justice before the Senate. To accomplish this, they assigned the Open Circle Armada commanded by Jedi Generals Obi-Wan Kenobi and Anakin Skywalker to lead the spearhead into the heartland of Separatist space with one objective. Capture Grievous.
Having faced the droid general on multiple occasions and failing to best him in combat, Obi-Wan would often feel guilt for Palpatine's death, believing that had he not failed in the past the Clone War would have come to an end long ago. But with the help of his former apprentice, Obi-Wan was able to look beyond his past failures to the future. Both he and Anakin would bring Grievous to justice in the name of the former chancellor.
The spearhead campaign would take both Jedi to the edges of the Outer-Rim, culminating in a skirmish on the sinkhole world of Utapau where Grievous would gravely wound Obi-Wan by stabbing the blade of a lightsaber through his stomach. As his former apprentice fought the droid general one on one, Obi-Wan was able to use the force to briefly numb his pain.
As he delved deep into the force to grant him the power he needs for one last strike, Obi-Wan heard a familiar voice calling to him.
"I am proud of you, Obi-Wan."
At first Obi-Wan was taken aback. Hearing the voice of his deceased master distracted him for a moment, but calling on the force allowed him to lunge forward with his lightsaber. Before Grievous could react, Obi-Wan decapitated the Separatist commander. Neutralising the threat.
Collapsing from blood loss, the Jedi master was rushed to the nearest medical bay onboard a Republic cruiser. Despite a near brush with death, Obi-Wan survived and told Anakin about how he'd heard the voice of Qui-Gon Jinn speak to him. It was at that point that Anakin confessed something he'd hidden from his master since the beginning of the Clone War. Following the first battle of Geonosis, he had married Senator Padme Amidala of Naboo.
Whilst he was taken aback by this revelation, deep down Obi-Wan had always suspected that his feelings for Senator Amidala were more than he cared to admit. Though hesitant, Obi-Wan voiced his support for his former padawan, and promised to keep his secret. In a jokey remark, Obi-Wan then asked if Anakin knew who the father of Padme's future child would be, much to the Jedi Knight's horror.
With the elimination of General Grievous, it was believed the Clone Wars would come to an end with the capture of Count Dooku, the recently ascended Sith Lord. Though keen to finally bring peace to the galaxy, Obi-Wan and Anakin were ordered back to Coruscant for a much needed reprieve from the conflict. As they left Utapau, Grievous' final trap would reveal itself. Every sinkhole on the surface of Utapau had been layered with explosives designed to detonate two days after activation. The explosions would destroy every city on Utapau and destroy a sizeable portion of the occupying force.
The devastation would leave the surface of Utapau inhospitable. Realising the horrors that the Separatists were capable of, the Republic vowed never to end the war until their enemy was wiped from existence.
As both Anakin and Obi-Wan returned to Coruscant, Padme went into labour resulting in an unexpected surprise.
Anakin became the father of twins.
As his closest friend, the young Jedi asked Obi-Wan to be godfather to his children. Obi-Wan graciously accepted.
Though he was happy for his former padawan having the family he'd always wanted, deep down Obi-Wan felt more isolated than ever. Having lost the love of his life the Duchess Satine of Mandalore to the hands of Darth Maul, just under a year ago he couldn't help but feel heartbroken every time he saw Anakin's new family.
To distract himself, Obi-Wan would take on a new apprentice by the name of Jaylam Duos. Despite his reluctance in the past to take on a new apprentice, having wanted to not teach a pupil during a time of war, Obi-Wan decided that his declining physical condition meant it was unlikely he'd make past the war thus his choice to take on his new apprentice now.
As both master and apprentice began to move into the unknown regions of space, they'd encounter Count Dooku's newest agents. Sith acolytes, all vying for the position as Dooku's apprentice. Though Kenobi and Duos were able to defend themselves against the acolytes, the Jedi Master lost the closest friend he had during the Clone War. Clone Commander Cody was killed saving Duos' life from one of Dooku's acolytes.
In a moment of rage, Obi-Wan was able to disarm all four of Dooku's acolytes by severing their hands, only to allow them to leave. A perplexed Duos would be met by one of the first lessons Kenobi was taught by his own master.
'Revenge is not the Jedi way.'
In honour of their fallen comrade, Duos would take the former clone commander's blaster pistol and continue to use it in conjuncture with his lightsaber much to Kenobi's dismay. He considered blasters to be a crude and inelegant weapon compared to a lightsaber.
As time would progress and the recently deceased Commander Cody was replaced by Clone Captain Sendro, Kenobi's former apprentice would achieve the rank of Master before being named Grand Master of the Jedi Order as Master Yoda passed the reigns to young Skywalker. Though the transfer of power was questioned by some council members, Kenobi would openly endorse his former Padawan, claiming there was no-one more suited for the role than the Chosen One himself.
Under Skywalker's leadership, the Jedi would undertake an intensive search throughout the galaxy to locate the final piece of the puzzle needed to end the Clone War. Reigning Sith Lord, Count Dooku known by this point as the nefarious Darth Tyranus. After two weeks scouring the galaxy, Kenobi and Duos would come face to face with the Sith Lord.
The duel between the three of them would culminate in the Sith Lord besting Kenobi in lightsaber combat, but not before the Jedi Master could sever one of Dooku's hands. Even in his weakened state, the old man was able to easily best Duos in lightsaber combat and would use his blade to decapitate the young boy. Distraught, Obi-Wan declared how horrifically Dooku disgraced Qui-Gon Jinn's legacy.
In a moment of what appeared to be regret, the Sith Lord chose to leave the duel without taking Kenobi's life. This would prove to be the Count's undoing, as Kenobi was able to place a tracker on the Sith Lord's cape allowing Republic intelligence to track the Count back to his last refuge.
A moon sized battle station known as the 'Death Star'. Reunited with Skywalker, both Master and former apprentice would lead the Republic fleet into battle against the Separatists one last time, with the fate of the galaxy in their hands....
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One thing I hate about myself is that I am not good at telling people how I really feel about things. I keep things bottled up and hidden underneath a smile. I am insecure and afraid to show my emotions because I am scared that people won't know how to react to them, and I will make a fool out of myself. I feel as if I cannot cry in front of other people because I hate being vulnerable and weak.
Hopefully one day, these bottles will be empty and I will be comfortable with sharing my true feelings.
+ color in comments
Being a transvestite is not always an easy thing to live with but does have pleasing aspects such as joy, exhilaration and adventure to counter the more fearful and troublesome concerns that inevitably accompany the desire to dress up and appear as one’s opposite gender.
For many of us who engage in transvestism we place ourselves in a difficult position which usually results in having a secret life or as many people have accused me of ‘living a lie’. Many partners, family members and friends can react negatively to the discovery of one’s transvestism and the phrases such as ‘liar’ and ‘breaking trust’ are expressed. It can be devastating for all concerned not just transvestites.
There is a popular perception that transvestites are involved in a sordid activity or we are seen as freaks and perverts and are rarely respected for who we are. We are more likely to be ridiculed or labelled as mentally ill. The most common response is we are homosexual and just want sex with men.
Ii think so called normal life has more sordid activities and real perversions occurring which should be far more unpalatable by wider society than a transvestite enjoying a gentle pastime such as cross-dressing. We are vilified for our liking to appear as the opposite gender, it is almost more acceptable to be a wife beater or a violent alcoholic but to dress up as the opposite gender…’Outrageous! Disgusting! Perverts!’ One can almost here the sniggers and sly looks ‘He likes to wear a dress and put on make-up, likes to think he’s a woman…snigger…’
I feel transvestism has a long way to go before any kind of widespread acceptance becomes the norm. I also feel maybe we don’t help such perceptions by our own actions and responses as we are in the majority very secretive about our desire to cross-dress. I hold myself guilty of such unhelpful attitudes to wider acceptance. I admit I am fearful, indeed terrified that people will find out I am a transvestite and that it will bring upset and disturbance upon my family and friends. I maybe active as Helene on-line but I try my best to make sure nobody in my real life knows I am a transvestite. I actually feel queasy at the prospect they may find out. I’m not good at all for trying to bring acceptance, I’m frightened in a selfish way. So much for my commitment to the cause.
I can still recall how as a teenager I would shake with nerves at the prospect of anyone finding out I wanted to dress as a girl and to act like one. This became worse as I grew older. I did endeavour to suppress and ignore my transvestite nature and for over twenty years I had no involvement with it at all physically. I say physically because in my head it never diminished, I would be consumed at times with the desire to dress as a woman, I badly wanted to do it. I would force myself to squash such thoughts and try and get on with being a man.
I now realise I wasted a lot of my life by these actions and I have huge regret at the fact I squandered so many experiences and self fulfilment. Having said that , I did end up with a life I really enjoyed as a man. Not because I was a man per se, but because I was sharing my life with a person I adored and we had a family I love dearly. I also ended up in a career I really enjoy. All was perfect apart from transvestite side which was locked away inside a personal jail desperate to break free. I began to fear I may destroy my entire life if I gave into the desire to cross-dress so suppressed them as fast as they surfaced.
In the mid 1990s I was covering the war in the Balkans and ended up, through stupidity, in a situation that looked like the end would not be too long in coming. I was stuck on a hillside in the freezing winter cold as an intense firefight between the opposing forces had broken out. My colleagues and myself became introspective as we contemplated our last hours. This was it, I was going to depart the world age 35. I found myself, somewhat surprisingly as I became aware of it, smiling wryly. I was actually thinking I would die and would never know what it was like as an adult male to have dressed up as a woman and set free my inner dream of spending time as a (part time) female. I had only my few teenage efforts at cross-dressing to cling to.
At some point someone in the group started to admit to their big life secret and this was followed by another colleague admitting to his. The admissions began to pour out and some were quite heavy indeed, things people had feared to admit previously. Inevitably all eyes turned to me to confess my secret. I admitted openly amongst the noise of the ongoing battle that I was desperate to spend time dressing up and acting as a woman, I really wanted to be a female now and again that I was a transvestite and in my head adored the idea of casting off my masculine self and taking on a female persona for a few hours.
I can recall there was no reaction to my confession, in fact one colleague said in a disappointed tone ’Is that it?’ That’s you big secret?’, they were totally underwhelmed and thought it was not even worth the grief I had given myself over the years. There was no judgement shown at all by my admission was a transvestite. We were rescued in the end by a UN patrol to whom I will be forever grateful as they took a big risk to save us. Before they arrived I resolved if I survived I would become a practicing transvestite and actually cross-dress for real rather in my head.
My problem, which has two sides to it, is I am a person who loves debate, analysing things and discussing things as I am curious by nature. I am frequently accused of over analysing my transvestism but those who say that fail to understand me and interpret my narratives in the wrong way. I thrive on all of this discussion and questioning, I enjoy it and I am aware now that it has on occasion generated some quite hostile attitudes towards me. Mainly because I like to talk about sexuality and how one should act like a woman towards men to sell the illusion they are female. It’s a long way from sexual intimacy, just performing in the persona is how I see it. I have stated many times I am a frustrated actor and enjoy it and I do like female impersonation when it is done well. I am attracted to the acting side of creating a female illusion. I love the whole prospect that no-one thinks I am a man when they see Helene. If they think I am a woman then that is such a reward. I am thrilled if a man desires me as a woman, I find it exciting. It’s not a sexual excitement, it’s a vanity and ego response. I love the thrill my illusion may have worked.
For example if I was kissed by a man when I am portraying myself as a woman then that is not me being homosexual, that is me acting the part of a woman, it’s about making my female alter-ego seem real as a woman by playing her as a woman not a a man, it’s not about wanting a kiss from a man as I am not attracted to men. I think many transvestites wrestle with this but if you are keen to enjoy being a woman and have people believe you are female you need to act the part convincingly rather than highlight you may not be how you appear to be.
So…back on track, I returned to the UK, and vowed I would not cross-dress before I told my wife and family I was a transvestite. This was a bit of an issue for me because I knew if I was going to cross-dress as a woman I wanted to do it properly and go the whole way. This meant would need to shave my legs, chest and arms, reshape and thin out my eyebrows into more feminine shape. I wanted to wear make-up properly, I wanted a good wig and I wanted to paint my nails, wear nice dresses and skirts and high heel shoes, I wanted the whole one hundred percent male to female transformation. I could not possibly hide such physical changes from my wife. She would see it as I am very hairy all over my body (very dismaying to me) and my family would notice my new eyebrow shape as I had thick bushy shapeless eyebrows.
I’ve said it before I am not a brave person. I am weak and lack confidence so it was easier said than done telling my wife I was a closeted transvestite. It me over five years to finally summon up the nerve to tell her and when I did I wish I had not. The upset I caused her by my admission nearly broke my heart, her world collapsed and I was accused of not being who I said I was and I was living a lie. There was a lot of dismay and hurt followed by anger. What kept me going was by now it was too late, I had confessed my transvestite side existed but I deeply believed we had a strong enough relationship to survive my admission.
Fortunately we did. Having caused such upset to those I cherish dearly and realising they did not like the idea of me dressing as a woman at all I decided I would try to minimise it’s effects upon them. Selfishly though, I was now more determined to go through with my cross-dressing. I have however severely restricted the number of times I cross-dress so it never causes them further upset and I feel truly fortunate they tolerate my need.
Five months after my confession I bought a dress, a pair of high heel court shoes, a pair of knickers, a bra, silicone breast forms and a blonde wig and bottle of nail varnish. I took a long bath and completely shaved off all my body hair. I then plucked my eyebrows, covered myself in moisturiser and immediately got the shakes and my head started to spin. I knew I was at a point in my life where for me it was all about to change, I felt emotional in away I don’t usually feel. For me I had reached a point of no return.
And so it was. On a cold November afternoon in the year 2000 I stood in front of the mirror in a warm bathroom and began to apply foundation make-up to my face. I had no idea how this was going to work out, the woman within me was about to break free.
Credit : @greywolf.blackfox (instagram)
always happy when they smell coffee - it usually means hooman attention, nomz, and walkies ❤️☕️ ⠀
➖⠀
do your pups recognize particular smells and react to them? Let us know in the comments!⠀.
Amedeo Modigliani
Italian, 1884 - 1920
Woman with a Necklace, 1917
Oil on canvas
(closeup)
Amedeo Clemente Modigliani (July 12, 1884 – January 24, 1920) was a Jewish-Italian painter and sculptor who pursued his career for the most part in France. Modigliani was born in Livorno, Italy and began his artistic studies in Italy before moving to Paris in 1906. Influenced by the artists in his circle of friends and associates, by a range of genres and movements, and by primitive art, Modigliani's oeuvre was nonetheless unique and idiosyncratic. He died in Paris of tubercular meningitis—exacerbated by a lifestyle of excess—at the age of 35.
Early life
Modigliani was born into a Jewish family in Livorno, Italy.
Livorno was still a relatively new city, by Italian standards, in the late nineteenth century. The city on the Tyrrhenian coast dates from around 1600, when it was transformed from a swampy village into a seaport. The Livorno that Modigliani knew was a bustling centre of commerce focused upon seafaring and shipwrighting, but its cultural history lay in being a refuge for those persecuted for their religion. His own maternal great-great-grandfather was one Solomon Garsin, a Jew who had immigrated to Livorno in the eighteenth century as a religious refugee.
Modigliani was the fourth child of Flaminio Modigliani and his wife, Eugenia Garsin. His father was in the money-changing business, but when the business went bankrupt, the family lived in dire poverty. In fact, Amedeo's birth saved the family from certain ruin, as, according to an ancient law, creditors could not seize the bed of a pregnant woman or a mother with a newborn child. When bailiffs entered the family home, just as Eugenia went into labour, the family protected their most valuable assets by piling them on top of the expectant mother.
Modigliani had a particularly close relationship with his mother, who taught her son at home until he was ten. Beset with health problems after a bout of typhoid at the age of fourteen, two years later he contracted the tuberculosis which would affect him for the rest of his life. To help him recover from his many childhood illnesses, she took him to Naples in Southern Italy, where the warmer weather was conducive to his convalescence.
His mother was, in many ways, instrumental in his ability to pursue art as a vocation. When he was eleven years of age, she had noted in her diary that:
“The child's character is still so unformed that I cannot say what I think of it. He behaves like a spoiled child, but he does not lack intelligence. We shall have to wait and see what is inside this chrysalis. Perhaps an artist?"
Art student years
Modigliani is known to have drawn and painted from a very early age, and thought himself "already a painter", his mother wrote, even before beginning formal studies. Despite her misgivings that launching him on a course of studying art would impinge upon his other studies, his mother indulged the young Modigliani's passion for the subject.
At the age of fourteen, while sick with the typhoid fever, he raved in his delirium that he wanted, above all else, to see the paintings in the Palazzo Pitti and the Uffizi in Florence. As Livorno's local museum only housed a sparse few paintings by the Italian Renaissance masters, the tales he had heard about the great works held in Florence intrigued him, and it was a source of considerable despair to him, in his sickened state, that he might never get the chance to view them in person. His mother promised that she would take him to Florence herself, the moment he was recovered. Not only did she fulfil this promise, but she also undertook to enroll him with the best painting master in Livorno, Guglielmo Micheli.
Micheli and the Macchiaioli
Modigliani worked in the studio of Micheli from 1898 to 1900. Here his earliest formal artistic instruction took place in an atmosphere deeply steeped in a study of the styles and themes of nineteenth-century Italian art. In his earliest Parisian work, traces of this influence, and that of his studies of Renaissance art, can still be seen: artists such as Giovanni Boldini figure just as much in this nascent work as do those of Toulouse-Lautrec.
Modigliani showed great promise while with Micheli, and only ceased his studies when he was forced to, by the onset of tuberculosis.
In 1901, whilst in Rome, Modigliani admired the work of Domenico Morelli, a painter of melodramatic Biblical studies and scenes from great literature. It is ironic that he should be so struck by Morelli, as this painter had served as an inspiration for a group of iconoclasts who went by the title, the Macchiaioli (from macchia—"dash of colour", or, more derogatively, "stain"), and Modigliani had already been exposed to the influences of the Macchiaioli. This minor, localised art movement was possessed of a need to react against the bourgeois stylings of the academic genre painters. While sympathetically connected to (and actually pre-dating) the French Impressionists, the Macchiaioli did not make the same impact upon international art culture as did the followers of Monet, and are today largely forgotten outside of Italy.
Modigliani's connection with the movement was through Micheli, his first art teacher. Micheli was not only a Macchiaioli himself, but had been a pupil of the famous Giovanni Fattori, a founder of the movement. Micheli's work, however, was so fashionable and the genre so commonplace that the young Modigliani reacted against it, preferring to ignore the obsession with landscape that, as with French Impressionism, characterised the movement. Micheli also tried to encourage his pupils to paint en plein air, but Modigliani never really got a taste for this style of working, sketching in cafes, but preferring to paint indoors, and especially in his own studio. Even when compelled to paint landscapes (three are known to exist), Modigliani chose a proto-Cubist palette more akin to Cézanne than to the Macchiaioli.
While with Micheli, Modigliani not only studied landscape, but also portraiture, still-life, and the nude. His fellow students recall that the latter was where he displayed his greatest talent, and apparently this was not an entirely academic pursuit for the teenager: when not painting nudes, he was occupied with seducing the household maid.
Despite his rejection of the Macchiaioli approach, Modigliani nonetheless found favour with his teacher, who referred to him as "Superman", a pet name reflecting the fact that Modigliani was not only quite adept at his art, but also that he regularly quoted from Nietzsche's Thus Spake Zarathustra. Fattori himself would often visit the studio, and approved of the young artist's innovations.
In 1902, Modigliani continued what was to be a life-long infatuation with life drawing, enrolling in the Accademia di Belle Arti (Scuola Libera di Nudo, or "Free School of Nude Studies") in Florence. A year later while still suffering from tuberculosis, he moved to Venice, where he registered to study at the Istituto di Belle Arti.
It is in Venice that he first smoked hashish and, rather than studying, began to spend time frequenting disreputable parts of the city. The impact of these lifestyle choices upon his developing artistic style is open to conjecture, although these choices do seem to be more than simple teenage rebellion, or the cliched hedonism and bohemianism that was almost expected of artists of the time; his pursuit of the seedier side of life appears to have roots in his appreciation of radical philosophies, such as those of Nietzsche.
Early literary influences
Having been exposed to erudite philosophical literature as a young boy under the tutelage of Isaco Garsin, his maternal grandfather, he continued to read and be influenced through his art studies by the writings of Nietzsche, Baudelaire, Carduzzi, Comte de Lautréamont, and others, and developed the belief that the only route to true creativity was through defiance and disorder.
Letters that he wrote from his 'sabbatical' in Capri in 1901 clearly indicate that he is being more and more influenced by the thinking of Nietzsche. In these letters, he advised friend Oscar Ghiglia,
“(hold sacred all) which can exalt and excite your intelligence... (and) ... seek to provoke ... and to perpetuate ... these fertile stimuli, because they can push the intelligence to its maximum creative power.”
The work of Lautréamont was equally influential at this time. This doomed poet's Les Chants de Maldoror became the seminal work for the Parisian Surrealists of Modigliani's generation, and the book became Modigliani's favourite to the extent that he learnt it by heart. The poetry of Lautréamont is characterised by the juxtaposition of fantastical elements, and by sadistic imagery; the fact that Modigliani was so taken by this text in his early teens gives a good indication of his developing tastes. Baudelaire and D'Annunzio similarly appealed to the young artist, with their interest in corrupted beauty, and the expression of that insight through Symbolist imagery.
Modigliani wrote to Ghiglia extensively from Capri, where his mother had taken him to assist in his recovery from the tuberculosis. These letters are a sounding board for the developing ideas brewing in Modigliani's mind. Ghiglia was seven years Modigliani's senior, and it is likely that it was he who showed the young man the limits of his horizons in Livorno. Like all precocious teenagers, Modigliani preferred the company of older companions, and Ghiglia's role in his adolescence was to be a sympathetic ear as he worked himself out, principally in the convoluted letters that he regularly sent, and which survive today.
“Dear friend
I write to pour myself out to you and to affirm myself to myself. I am the prey of great powers that surge forth and then disintegrate... A bourgeois told me today - insulted me - that I or at least my brain was lazy. It did me good. I should like such a warning every morning upon awakening: but they cannot understand us nor can they understand life...”
Paris
Arrival
In 1906 Modigliani moved to Paris, then the focal point of the avant-garde. In fact, his arrival at the epicentre of artistic experimentation coincided with the arrival of two other foreigners who were also to leave their marks upon the art world: Gino Severini and Juan Gris.
He settled in Le Bateau-Lavoir, a commune for penniless artists in Montmartre, renting himself a studio in Rue Caulaincourt. Even though this artists' quarter of Montmartre was characterised by generalised poverty, Modigliani himself presented - initially, at least - as one would expect the son of a family trying to maintain the appearances of its lost financial standing to present: his wardrobe was dapper without ostentation, and the studio he rented was appointed in a style appropriate to someone with a finely attuned taste in plush drapery and Renaissance reproductions. He soon made efforts to assume the guise of the bohemian artist, but, even in his brown corduroys, scarlet scarf and large black hat, he continued to appear as if he were slumming it, having fallen upon harder times.
When he first arrived in Paris, he wrote home regularly to his mother, he sketched his nudes at the Colarossi school, and he drank wine in moderation. He was at that time considered by those who knew him as a bit reserved, verging on the asocial. He is noted to have commented, upon meeting Picasso who, at the time, was wearing his trademark workmen's clothes, that even though the man was a genius, that did not excuse his uncouth appearance.
Transformation
Within a year of arriving in Paris, however, his demeanour and reputation had changed dramatically. He transformed himself from a dapper academician artist into a sort of prince of vagabonds.
The poet and journalist Louis Latourette, upon visiting the artist's previously well-appointed studio after his transformation, discovered the place in upheaval, the Renaissance reproductions discarded from the walls, the plush drapes in disarray. Modigliani was already an alcoholic and a drug addict by this time, and his studio reflected this. Modigliani's behaviour at this time sheds some light upon his developing style as an artist, in that the studio had become almost a sacrificial effigy for all that he resented about the academic art that had marked his life and his training up to that point.
Not only did he remove all the trappings of his bourgeois heritage from his studio, but he also set about destroying practically all of his own early work. He explained this extraordinary course of actions to his astonished neighbours thus:
“Childish baubles, done when I was a dirty bourgeois."
The motivation for this violent rejection of his earlier self is the subject of considerable speculation. The self-destructive tendencies may have stemmed from his tuberculosis and the knowledge (or presumption) that the disease had essentially marked him for an early death; within the artists' quarter, many faced the same sentence, and the typical response was to set about enjoying life while it lasted, principally by indulging in self-destructive actions. For Modigliani such behavior may have been a response to a lack of recognition; it is known that he sought the company of other alcoholic artists such as Utrillo and Soutine, seeking acceptance and validation for his work from his colleagues.
Modigliani's behavior stood out even in these Bohemian surroundings: he carried on frequent affairs, drank heavily, and used absinthe and hashish. While drunk he would sometimes strip himself naked at social gatherings. He became the epitome of the tragic artist, creating a posthumous legend almost as well-known as that of Vincent van Gogh.
During the 1920s, in the wake of Modigliani's career and spurred on by comments by Andre Salmon crediting hashish and absinthe with the genesis of Modigliani's style, many hopefuls tried to emulate his 'success' by embarking on a path of substance abuse and bohemian excess. Salmon claimed—erroneously—that whereas Modigliani was a totally pedestrian artist when sober,
“...from the day that he abandoned himself to certain forms of debauchery, an unexpected light came upon him, transforming his art. From that day on, he became one who must be counted among the masters of living art.”
While this propaganda served as a rallying cry to those with a romantic longing to be a tragic, doomed artist, these strategies did not produce unique artistic insights or techniques in those who did not already have them.
In fact, art historians suggest that it is entirely possible for Modigliani to have achieved even greater artistic heights had he not been immured in, and destroyed by, his own self-indulgences. We can only speculate what he might have accomplished had he emerged intact from his self-destructive explorations.
Output
During his early years in Paris, Modigliani worked at a furious pace. He was constantly sketching, making as many as a hundred drawings a day. However, many of his works were lost - destroyed by him as inferior, left behind in his frequent changes of address, or given to girlfriends who did not keep them.
He was first influenced by Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, but around 1907 he became fascinated with the work of Paul Cézanne. Eventually he developed his own unique style, one that cannot be adequately categorized with other artists.
He met the first serious love of his life, Russian poet Anna Akhmatova, in 1910, when he was 26. They had studios in the same building, and although 21-year-old Anna was recently married, they began an affair. Tall (Modigliani was only 5 foot 5 inches) with dark hair (like Modigliani's), pale skin and grey-green eyes, she embodied Modigliani's aesthetic ideal and the pair became engrossed in each other. After a year, however, Anna returned to her husband.
Experiments with sculpture
In 1909, Modigliani returned home to Livorno, sickly and tired from his wild lifestyle. Soon he was back in Paris, this time renting a studio in Montparnasse. He originally saw himself as a sculptor rather than a painter, and was encouraged to continue after Paul Guillaume, an ambitious young art dealer, took an interest in his work and introduced him to sculptor Constantin Brancusi.
Although a series of Modigliani's sculptures were exhibited in the Salon d'Automne of 1912, he abruptly abandoned sculpting and focused solely on his painting.
Question of influences
In Modigliani's art, there is evidence of the influence of primitive art from Africa and Cambodia which he may have seen in the Musée de l'Homme, but his stylisations are just as likely to have been the result of his being surrounded by Mediaeval sculpture during his studies in Northern Italy (there is no recorded information from Modigliani himself, as there is with Picasso and others, to confirm the contention that he was influenced by either ethnic or any other kind of sculpture). A possible interest in African tribal masks seems to be evident in his portraits. In both his painting and sculpture, the sitters' faces resemble ancient Egyptian painting in their flat and masklike appearance, with distinctive almond eyes, pursed mouths, twisted noses, and elongated necks. However these same chacteristics are shared by Medieval European sculpture and painting.
Modigliani painted a series of portraits of contemporary artists and friends in Montparnasse: Chaim Soutine, Moise Kisling, Pablo Picasso, Diego Rivera, Marie "Marevna" Vorobyev-Stebeslka, Juan Gris, Max Jacob, Blaise Cendrars, and Jean Cocteau, all sat for stylized renditions.
At the outset of World War I, Modigliani tried to enlist in the army but was refused because of his poor health.
The war years
Known as Modì, which roughly translates as 'morbid' or 'moribund', by many Parisians, but as Dedo to his family and friends, Modigliani was a handsome man, and attracted much female attention.
Women came and went until Beatrice Hastings entered his life. She stayed with him for almost two years, was the subject for several of his portraits, including Madame Pompadour, and the object of much of his drunken wrath.
When the British painter Nina Hamnett arrived in Montparnasse in 1914, on her first evening there the smiling man at the next table in the café introduced himself as Modigliani; painter and Jew. They became great friends.
In 1916, Modigliani befriended the Polish poet and art dealer Leopold Zborovski and his wife Anna.
Jeanne Hébuterne
The following summer, the Russian sculptor Chana Orloff introduced him to a beautiful 19-year-old art student named Jeanne Hébuterne who had posed for Foujita. From a conservative bourgeois background, Hébuterne was renounced by her devout Roman Catholic family for her liaison with the painter, whom they saw as little more than a debauched derelict, and, worse yet, a Jew. Despite her family's objections, soon they were living together, and although Hébuterne was the love of his life, their public scenes became more renowned than Modigliani's individual drunken exhibitions.
On December 3, 1917, Modigliani's first one-man exhibition opened at the Berthe Weill Gallery. The chief of the Paris police was scandalized by Modigliani's nudes and forced him to close the exhibition within a few hours after its opening.
After he and Hébuterne moved to Nice, she became pregnant and on November 29, 1918 gave birth to a daughter whom they named Jeanne (1918-1984).
Nice
During a trip to Nice, conceived and organized by Leopold Zborovski, Modigliani, Tsuguharu Foujita and other artists tried to sell their works to rich tourists. Modigliani managed to sell a few pictures but only for a few francs each. Despite this, during this time he produced most of the paintings that later became his most popular and valued works.
During his lifetime he sold a number of his works, but never for any great amount of money. What funds he did receive soon vanished for his habits.
In May of 1919 he returned to Paris, where, with Hébuterne and their daughter, he rented an apartment in the rue de la Grande Chaumière. While there, both Jeanne Hébuterne and Amedeo Modigliani painted portraits of each other, and of themselves.
Last days
Although he continued to paint, Modigliani's health was deteriorating rapidly, and his alcohol-induced blackouts became more frequent.
In 1920, after not hearing from him for several days, his downstairs neighbor checked on the family and found Modigliani in bed delirious and holding onto Hébuterne who was nearly nine months pregnant. They summoned a doctor, but little could be done because Modigliani was dying of the then-incurable disease tubercular meningitis.
Modigliani died on January 24, 1920. There was an enormous funeral, attended by many from the artistic communities in Montmartre and Montparnasse.
Hébuterne was taken to her parents' home, where, inconsolable, she threw herself out of a fifth-floor window two days after Modigliani's death, killing herself and her unborn child. Modigliani was interred in Père Lachaise Cemetery. Hébuterne was buried at the Cimetière de Bagneux near Paris, and it was not until 1930 that her embittered family allowed her body to be moved to rest beside Modigliani.
Modigliani died penniless and destitute—managing only one solo exhibition in his life and giving his work away in exchange for meals in restaurants. Had he lived through the 1920s when American buyers flooded Paris, his fortunes might well have changed. Since his death his reputation has soared. Nine novels, a play, a documentary and three feature films have been devoted to his life.
Busch gardens Tampa Bay and its tallest roller coaster appr 205ft highest level. People reacting when the coaster stood still for 5 seconds before its drop.
Quelle für Prozess: de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cyanotypie#Urspr%C3%BCngliches_Verf...
Cyanotype, 2-Bad-Verfahren.
Beschichten des Papiers: Das Papier wird mit einer lichtempfindlichen Lösung aus Ammoniumeisen(III)-citrat beschichtet.
Belichtung: Blaues oder violettes Licht regt ein Elektron des Citrat-Ions an, wodurch Eisen(III)-Ionen zu Eisen(II)-Ionen reduziert werden.
Entwicklung: Die Eisen(II)-Ionen reagieren mit Kaliumhexacyanidoferrat(II) (rotes Blutlaugensalz) und bilden zunächst wasserunlösliches Berliner Weiss, das dann durch Luftsauerstoff oder Wasserstoffperoxid in unlösliches Berliner Blau umgewandelt wird
Cyanotype, a 2-bath process.
Paper coating: The paper is coated with a light-sensitive solution of ammonium iron(III) citrate.
Exposure: Blue or violet light excites the electron of the citrate ion, which reduces iron(III) ions to iron(II) ions.
Development: Iron(II) ions react with potassium hexacyanidoferrate(II) (red blood salt) to first form water insoluble Prussian white, which is then converted to insoluble Prussian blue by the action of atmospheric oxygen or hydrogen peroxide.
Источник для процесса: de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cyanotypie#Urspr%C3%BCngliches_Verf...
Цианотипия, процесс в 2 ванны.
Покрытие бумаги: бумага покрывается светочувствительным раствором цитрата железа аммония(III).
Экспозиция: Синий или фиолетовый свет возбуждает электрон цитрат-иона, который восстанавливает ионы железа(III) до ионов железа(II).
Развитие: Ионы железа(II) реагируют с гексацианидоферратом(II) калия (красная кровяная соль) и сначала образуют нерастворимый в воде берлинский белый, который затем превращается в нерастворимую берлинскую лазурь под действием атмосферного кислорода или перекиси водорода.
Heidi and Sierra are my mother/daughter german sheps who go with me everywhere I go. They seem to act in unison in their movements and I often marvel at how they really seem to enjoy the beauty of nature, beyond just reacting to squirrel chirps and bear poop.
Shot with a Canon Elan 7; Fuji Velvia 50 film; Canon 17-40mm lens; 81B warming filter.
Civil war reactment group during the High Wycombe 'weighing in of the Mayor' cememony.
The Mayor of High Wycombe is 'weighed in' upon taking up office, and again a year later when the next incumbent takes on the annual role. The Mayor will be seated on special brass scales – if weight loss has occured during their term of office the crowd will cheer as it’s assumed they have been working hard but if weight has been gained expect good-humoured booing. The custom dates from at least the nineteenth century and has plenty of ceremony including a Town Crier; all the officials and dignitaries are weighed, not just the Mayor. The Scales are now set up a short distance away from the Guildhall rather than right outside as on Saturdays a market is held in town.