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The crossover between virtual worlds and tangible world (especially the virtual and tangible artworlds) is not easy. With funding you can make something quite spectacular, but still not easy… read more
the old gent's place was silent as always, but with the second knock he didn't emerge as usual, declaring he was frightfully busy and can't linger to talk, and it was completely unnecessary we give him anything... but he didn't appear this time - his crusty, lean, learned self perhaps engrossed in some literary work out the back verandah, trying to warm his brittle bones in some meagre winter sun - but we left our gift anyway, as we generally do, though it is both sad and amusing to hear his slightly annoyed tone on receiving such bouquets in exchange for his unwanted grapefruits, lying strewn under the old trees in his front yard - for we wonder is there any other living soul he sees, or must his eclectic hermit spirit be bothered only for that citrus season once a year as winter arrives - and yet when he protested at yet another bunch of blooms, saying to take the fruit as we please for his has no liking of them - so I gently asked once: 'So you don't want them>!' - and of course, with the well-bred manners of a chilly Scottish upbringing, he swiftly and politely corrected himself and thanked us for the gift, and since then he has been at least more gracious, but one wonders if he even remembers such tangible items in his bachelor abode filled with the busy and pressing life of taking in ideas and percolating them around his ex lawyer mind.. ! :)
Two years ago, I wrote a short caption to one of my photographs containing some thoughts on being half-Chinese. It ended up becoming one of the most-read things I’ve written on my Flickr, and - thanks to Flickr Stats - I know that it continues to receive dozens of views each day as a direct result of people Googling terms like “half-chinese”, "half-asian girls" and even “what will a half-chinese baby look like.” (one example of an answer to this question can be seen in this photograph: my little cousin Lewis.)
Last month Ankur, a Glasgow-based production company which nurtures Minority Ethnic talent in Scotland, invited me to give a talk and be a part of a panel discussion at their festival Where Are You Really From? The following is a transcript of the talk I gave there, with additions to what I had prepared added as best I can remember. (The bullet points denote a moment where I moved the slideshow along: disregard these.)
—
Researching and writing this talk has been a revelatory experience for me in many ways. I started with the title I had been given - "From Ethnography to Intercultural Practice" - and imagined I should prepare something quite scholarly. I looked out my old university notes, I scanned my bookcases for all I could find on cultural studies, art history, critical theory. I was getting excited because, since I graduated, I don't very often have reasons to engage that kind of deep, rigorous study, and I realised I had missed it.
But then it occurred to me that I've been invited here as an artist and not as an academic. I thought then that I should give a more personal response to the theme. "Is your own cultural heritage an influence on your work as an artist?" Whether I think of "cultural heritage" as artefacts, objects and places, or a collection of less tangible properties like language, lore and traditions, it seems that the ways in which I understand or interpret that heritage has everything to do with family. Add to that my "work as an artist" and it doesn't get much more personal. Thinking along these lines had me looking through old family photographs and retracing lots of my childhood in my mind, and in the end I thought 'this isn't right either. This isn't for an a public talk, it's for my psychoanalyst!'
So I struggled to find the right voice, wavering between the academic and the personal, the scholarly and the confessional. I think what would be best is if I explain the dry facts about my cultural heritage, about the work I do as an "artist", and then examine and analyse the points at which they intersect.
My Dad left Hong Kong in 1982 and came to Scotland to study • . His sister had arrived here a few years prior to that, and Dad worked nights in the Chinese takeaway she had set up in Ayr. A couple of years later, that's where he met my mother, who would pop in at the end of a night out for some food. •
Fifteen years after that, my parents gave me my first camera, and I took it everywhere with me, photographing everything and everyone that interested me. When I was seventeen I went to Glasgow University to study English Literature, and by then I had a fully manual camera, but I had never taken a course in or read a book about photography. I hadn't even read the instruction manual for the camera. I learned how to use it through practise, through trial and error. I knew that if this number was higher then this would happen, but it meant that this other number had to be lower, and if that number was lower than I had to do so and so.
In my second year I entered an essay competition and won a place on a student exchange to Pakistan. • When I returned and the university saw the photographs I'd taken there, I started to work for them, but it wasn't until I was in my final year that I'd developed the confidence to consider a career in it. When I graduated, I turned down the offer of a traineeship at a law firm to pursue photography, scraping by by working part-time as an administrator in the law firm and doing photography jobs of any kind whenever they came up. In my social life I was making friends with lots of people in the arts, and through an actor friend I met the theatre maker Stewart Laing, who commissioned me to photograph one of his shows. • I'll be eternally grateful to Stewart for that, for the leap of faith involved in asking me, at that time so young and inexperienced, to photograph something I'd never photographed before, because it turned out to be my first real break. When other theatre companies saw what I'd done for Stewart, I began to get a lot more emails from people in theatre and, now, I work regularly for almost every Scottish theatre company I've heard of. • • •
So that's more or less where I came from and where I am, but I've never really been comfortable with describing myself as an "artist". In my professional life I mostly document the art that other people have made - actors, directors, set designers and lighting designers. But I think the closest thing to art I make comes from my personal work, which is contained in my Flickr stream • - www.flickr.com/tgkw - a collection of 3000 images which I add to most days and which comprises a document of my life over the past seven years: all the friends I've ever made, all the interesting things and people I've ever seen as I passed them in the street, all the different cities I've ever visited. • • • The reason for my hesitation to call myself an artist - the reason that I've never held an artist residency, the reason I rarely exhibit - is that this work doesn't directly or intentionally question or challenge anything: it's documentary, it's portraiture, its only thematic link being that I saw it: it says nothing more than "Here is a person, in a place, doing what they're doing. Make of it what you will." Despite my background in literary studies, I've never been comfortable deconstructing or intellectualising my work. The photographs I like best stand on their own as images, and don't need an essay of text to explain what they're "really" "about". Susan Sontag writes in her collection of essays about photography that "The ultimate wisdom of the photographic image is to say: There is the surface. Now think - or rather feel, intuit what is beyond it, what the reality must be like if it looks this way." This is the only text that should accompany my work. •
So to return to the theme, I ask myself how these two aspects - my photography, such as it is, and my family, my upbringing, my culture, my heritage - are related. This involves quite a lot of self-analysis and family background, which I hope I can make interesting and not too self-indulgent, but I'm going to go ahead with it and see where it takes us.
My day-to-day upbringing wasn't much different from that of most children brought up in working-class Scottish families. • Mum took care of the house and raised the children, Dad worked. The main difference may be that, like many Chinese fathers, Dad really worked. Fourteen to sixteen hours a day, six days a week. He never took holidays - we went on family holidays without him - and he never took sick days, even when he was very ill. •
My Chinese name is Ga-Ken. It's quite common for the first part of a Chinese man's name to be Ga - it can translate as "most" - followed by an adjective. For example, Li Ka-Shing, the name of Asia's richest man: sing means honest, so whoever named him "most honest" believed that honesty was the most important quality, the quality they wanted him to have. When I was 11, I got my first report card from secondary school and it described me as "an industrious pupil". Dad didn't know what industrious meant, so he looked out his English-Chinese dictionary, and was overjoyed to discover that I had been described by the name he had given me: "most industrious, most hard-working." •
Another school report card leads me to my point. By the time I was fifteen, my reports reached the consensus that "Tommy excels only in those subjects in which he is interested. If he is not interested, he will not work hard." I've read that children often don't take after their parents with regard to attitudes to money. If a child sees her parents arguing or worrying about money, she may resolve never to be like that herself, to be careful and sensible with her money. Conversely, if her parents are constantly telling her "no, we can't have that, it costs too much" she may resolve never to be like that herself, to be liberal and carefree with her money. I can relate to that when I think about Dad's work ethic. I'm not saying I can't be hardworking, but, as my teachers noted, only if it's something I care about. Dad's kind of hard work - on his feet for fourteen hours a day in a small, overheated kitchen doing repetitive tasks to cook takeaway food - is not something anyone is interested in. He did it to provide for his family. Now, as an adult, I see that, and have so much respect for it - I think it's heroic - but I hated it as a child, simply because I missed him. Dad's weekly day off was something I would get excited about two days beforehand, like a mini-Christmas every week. Although he retired when I was seventeen - he wasn't even forty - his absence throughout my childhood resulted in a tense relationship between us throughout my teenage years and for much of my adult life. It was only three years ago that I began to get to know him as a person - to understand his likes, his dislikes, his hopes and fears. And perhaps that explains why I felt I had to do something I loved: I didn't want to be like him. Because, when I do work and work hard, it doesn't feel like work because I love it. I went to university to study something I love, and ended up making a career of something that began as a hobby and became a passion, even an obsession. •
I studied English Literature because I found that I could learn more about life and about what it means to be a human being by reading fiction than by studying psychology or history or philosophy directly. This aspect of my personality was encouraged by Mum from the youngest age. Although she herself had left school at sixteen with hardly any qualifications, she taught me to read, and bought me novels so I'd keep doing it; she bought me pencils and paper to draw with. While she watched her soaps, I would lie on the living room carpet filling out pages of paper with stories that came out of my head, and when she saw this she bought me a typewriter. My love of stories began with playing video games with strong characters and storylines before moving to novels and, eventually, to a degree in Literature. They also paved the way for a love of photography. • When I tell people I studied literature and that I'm a photographer, they typically say "oh, completely different, then!" but I don't believe that. I was once in an interview with a graphic designer, and when I told him about my studies he asked "do you take photographs in an English literature kind of way?" At first I didn't know what he meant, but the more I thought about it, the more I realised that I do. I'm interested in stories, and in the work I do I'm interested in how we tell a story by capturing the light and colour of a single moment and placing it in that space.
My Mum told me a story about a time when I was four years old, and the two of us were walking down Ayr High Street to meet my Dad as he finished work. When I saw him outside the takeaway, I screamed "Daddy!" and ran towards him. Two passing women observed this and one said to the other "That's no a chinky's wean." I'm not sure if I just constructed a false memory around the story as my Mum told it, but I feel like I remember that, like I remember not knowing what it meant. But before I was even old enough to realise I was mixed race, I believe it had begun to influence the creative work I do now. I first visited Hong Kong when I was two years old, but I don't remember anything of it and wouldn't have understood where we were going and why. • But by the time I was in my first year of primary school, Hong Kong had become very important to me. One of my earliest and happiest memories - a memory I know I really do possess - is the day Dad returned from a trip to Hong Kong. From that day on, I spent my childhood trying to understand where he had been - what Hong Kong was - but I didn't look at informational books or documentaries; I experienced Hong Kong through the sweets • and toys • and comics • and films he brought back with him. They were so exciting to me, so unlike anything I'd seen before, and I couldn't get enough. I spent hours looking through comics that I couldn't understand, drawing the characters in stories of my own. While my friends wanted to be Power Rangers, I wanted to be a vampire-fighting Taoist priest. • I wanted to speak the language, and would imitate the lines spoken by my favourite characters in Chinese films, whether I knew what they meant or not. I wanted to eat with chopsticks all the time, and they were the first items I took in to "Show and Tell"; the same day that one of my classmates pulled his eyes into slits and imitated the sounds of Chinese dialiects at me. This first encounter with playground racism wasn't enough to dampen my enthusiasm for my Chinese heritage, or to "play it down", an option which my Mum's red hair and fair skin has sometimes left open to me. • Some people I meet are surprised to find out I'm anything but “white", whereas to others it's obvious from the start that I'm half-Chinese. But I remember as a child wishing to look, if not be, fully Chinese. I remember being jealous of my cousins, also half-Chinese, who were and are darker-skinned and more obviously Chinese. I've always been surprised that my sister never shared an interest in Chinese culture, language, food, thought, art: she is, I think, largely indifferent to the fact of her mixed race.
But, for me, Hong Kong pervaded my imagination and almost every aspect of my inner life long before I ever went there as anything but a baby. In my mind, it was a magical and lively place filled with colour, excitement and happiness. The reality, which I discovered when I was sixteen and have returned to almost every year since, was, for me, exactly that. Hong Kong is where I have taken most of the photographs I consider to be my best, whether these are portraits • , street scenes • or professional commissions • . But could it have been anything else? Even if I had found it a dull, drab and boring place, would I have taken everything I'd imagined for so long and projected it there? Have I? Do I still?
I was approached a couple of years ago by a directing and writing team who were in the development stages of a television production. My role was to be a visual consultant, but I ended up working as a cinematographer for the first time when we produced a trailer. • • • When the trailer was shown for the first time at a development weekend run by The Playwright's Studio, the visuals were described as showing Glasgow in a new way: not its usual portrayal as a dark, gray place, but colourful and vibrant: it evokes Bladerunner, they said. It doesn't take a great leap of the imagination to see in Ridley Scott's futuristic imagining of LA, Hong Kong in the present day. • And so it occurred to me that the image, the myth of Hong Kong I had created in my mind as a child: I took that and projected it not only onto the real Hong Kong, but to my home in Glasgow, and to everywhere. I photograph the night, whether in Glasgow or Lisbon, in shades of blue with flashes of neon; I photograph the sky and the grass in the same cartoonish, vivid hues as I had seen in Japanese animation. •
I have rarely been influenced by photographers. Frank O'Hara once remarked that, other than his own, he didn't really like poetry unless it was so good it forced him to admire it. I feel more or less the same about photography: photography books take up only a small corner of my bookcase, and I don't make much effort to go to photography exhibitions. I do however, spend lots of time watching films, and analysing and appreciating their cinematography taught me much more about light and colour and composition and feeling and storytelling than any photography has. The single biggest influence on my work and my visual taste has been the films of the Hong Kong auteur Wong Kar-Wai and his cinematographer Chris Doyle. • I was lucky enough to meet and work - and mostly drink -with Chris Doyle while he was in Glasgow earlier this year, and again some months later when I visited Hong Kong. • I watched many of Wong and Doyle's films in my early teens, during my quest to create Hong Kong in my mind, and it was then that I first fell in love with the image, first realised its power. • Wong's films often deal with urban alienation, • with protagonists who inhabit a city with an identity crisis, a city which moves and changes so quickly that they turn inward; they daydream, they sleepwalk. And, in my portrait work, I am attracted to these same qualities: • whether a candid portrait I've taken on the underground or through the window of a bar, or whether someone is sitting for me, I am looking for an arrangement of elements: light, lines, colour and most of all an expression which suggests an inner world. • In my photographs, people tend not to be doing anything: they're thinking, reflecting. The films of Michael Mann have appealed to me for the same reason: they tend to be about deep and lonely men in dark and lonely places. I'm often told that what is most distinctive aspect my style is my colour palette, and it's no surprise that Wong's and Mann's films, Doyle's cinematography, are notable for the same reasons, using washes of colour to reflect an emotional state. • •
The identity crisis that afflicts modern Hong Kong comes largely from its history as a British colony and then a transfer of power to Beijing, under which Hong Kong exists as a "Special Administrative Region" with its own devolved government. • Dad told me that, growing up, he felt confused and unsure about where he was really from. Was he British? Chinese? Which flag should he wave, which national anthem should he sing? There is in Hong Kong now a growing tension between Hong Kongers and Mainlanders, and a growing movement for the city's independence. • The parallels with Scotland's situation are obvious: "Hong Kongese, not Chinese", "Scottish, not British." I support both Scottish independence and Hong Kong independence, but for pragmatic, political reasons: reasons of governance, and nothing to do with flagwaving or patriotism. I think that to be mixed race predisposes one to being a "world citizen": I'm reminded of Thomas Paine's remark that "The world is my country: my religion, to do good."
My conclusion was to summarise the ways in which I consider being mixed race to have been a blessing - and I’ll still read it, because it’s still true - but having seen the short films Arpita has shown us, I see how much it relates only to my own experience. As one of the characters in the second film said: “It isn’t even about being from Britain or not: it’s about the colour of your skin.” I’m a big fan of the X-Men comics, which tell the story of people with genetic mutations which grant them superhuman abilities or gifts, and who are consequently ostracised and persecuted. They are an excellent allegory for all kinds of minorities. In one storyline, a cure for these mutations is developed, and many mutants want to take it, to be “normal”. In one scene where some of the X-Men are questioning how people could betray their beings, their natures, in this way, an X-Man called Beast, who as one consequence of his mutation is covered in blue fur, says “that’s easy for you to say”, or something to that effect. And I realise that it may be easy for me to say, to call it a blessing to be mixed race. Because, unlike the Nigerian girl we saw in the first of Arpita’s films - who doesn’t feel at home either in Scotland or in Nigeria, who doesn’t feel fully accepted in either culture - I have often “passed” for being Scottish, for being white, without comment or question.
My case, then, is a happy one. I hope it is clear from everything I've talked about that being mixed race is a huge part of who I am: it has, if subtly, affected every aspect of my life. I don't say I'm proud of it - I think it's foolish to be proud of something that was merely an accident of birth - but I consider it to have been a blessing: to have been exposed to an entirely different culture, language, cuisine, philosophy; to have had my imagination stimulated by knowing that my origins were as much in a distant land as here where I was born and raised. The mixed race person can travel without travelling, and if Mark Twain is right when he says that "Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry and narrow-mindedness", then to mix races and cultures is to spread tolerance, understanding and open-mindedness.
Thank you.
Glasgow, 2013.
It was believed that music was a tangible force that had the power to magnify and enhance your emotions: it was quite literally “food for the soul”.
shakespeare.org.uk
The Dulcimer is listed as one of the instruments in Shakepeare's plays
shakespearestudyguide.com/Shake2/ShakespeareMusic.html
Created for: Photoshop Contest week 918
Thanks for the Mountain dulcimer from
: Amba
plus my photos for background and guitars.
www.flickr.com/photos/gilleverett/46808024371/
www.flickr.com/photos/gilleverett/36300555924/
www.flickr.com/photos/gilleverett/34909321484/
Editors: GIMP, Fotor, Picasa
The Appalachian dulcimer is a fretted string instrument of the zither family, typically with three or four strings, originally played in the Appalachian region of the United States. Wikipedia
A silent street where the night stretches, where the artificial glow of a streetlight flickers like a dying breath. The building stands, a cage of illuminated glass, a beacon of shadows where the interior light struggles against the surrounding darkness. The structure, both mundane and unsettling, seems to harbor a secret that only the eye dares to touch.
Around it, the air is saturated with anomalies. Black, flat, drifting forms move through space, defying gravity itself. They are mute presences, specters of an elusive matter, or perhaps reflections of another place infiltrating this nocturnal scene. Their absurd and silent dance challenges the logic of space, as if the city itself wavered between two realities, oscillating between mundane routine and an impending cosmic rupture.
The shadows stretch and expand, devouring the contours of the buildings. The eye loses itself in this play of illusions, trying to discern the tangible from the unreal, presence from absence. A deaf tension radiates from the composition, a vague premonition, a suspended anticipation. Is this an invasion? A collective hallucination? A fracture in time that no one dares to name?
Silence weighs heavy, suffocating. Something has broken in the linearity of the world. Here, in this night where the inexplicable has taken root, reality wavers on its own threshold.
beautiful, snowy Gullfoss, back in January.
all of the polaroids taken in Iceland were so very 'hit-and-miss' (mainly 'miss') as the film was basically frozen and I couldn't warm it up enough, but I still managed to get a few tangible, though faint, momentos from my trip in this beautiful country with my sister, like this one right here :) ♥
Abby: "Hey, Barkley, come and get your treat. You can eat it out of my hand even though your tongue will make my fingers sloppy. You deserve this; you've been so good. I think the fact that we got you as our pet was good karma; Mom or one of us must have done something very good and maybe that's why you found your way to us, rather than being adopted by another family. Think of everything we'd be missing out on! Barkley, you just might be Tangible Karma!"
A Kleinian Group tiling created using the Fractal Science Kit fractal generator - www.fractalsciencekit.com/
So excited to announce my first ever fashion collection with MISSGUIDED, launching 12th November. I’ve been secretly working on this project since the beginning of the year & can’t believe it’s now about to drop! This is a MAJOR moment for me, as I’ve been dreaming to put out a collection of tangible clothing since forever & now it’s happening! Huge thank you to the CEO of MISSGUIDED Nitin Passi for believing in me & giving me this opportunity. I hope you all love the collection
#HAYDENWILLIAMSxMISSGUIDED #babesofmissguided
Commentary.
Late in autumn, upper Strathfarrar provides us with a pot pourri of colour as the sun starts to decline towards the south-west.
The unclassified, private road snakes its way past Braulen Lodge towards the dammed Loch Monar and Monar Lodge.
Copper bracken, grasses and heathers.
Green pine and flaming larch
oppose the bluey-grey skies
and blueberry blue of distant “Munros.”
Imperceptibly, the track steadily climbs,
50, 100, 150, 200, 250, 300 metres.
At ground-level land around Monar
is well over a thousand foot up.
This is high land and feels high land.
But the colours warm the scene and the peace and
the isolation is tangible and therapeutic.
Here, you can walk with God, in God’s country.
In my digital studio, AI breathes life into scenes and characters, all imagined, never having graced the tangible world.
A polymorphic virus begins its infection in an executable file designed to convert image files to different formats, which will create many new versions of the virus before it is completely corrupted.
Going for some techno-abstract concept. Also, The Journey will be continued soon, but I hope you enjoy this. Please C&C! :)
Well, well! Isn't it exciting! The very Begonia grandis Dryand. that Carl Peter Thunberg (1743-1828) collected during his stay at Dejima, Nagasaki, in Japan 1775-1776, can still today be seen, touched, admired in his Herbarium preserved in Uppsala University, Sweden. Earlier it had been seen and drawn by another intrepid explorer and naturalist Engelbert Kaempfer (1651-1716) during his Japanese sojourn 1690-1691. Both men traveled to Japan as surgeons in the service of the Dutch East Indies Trading Company VOC. Our Begonia's first scientific description was by Jonas Carlsson Dryander (1748-1810) who worked first in Sweden but longer in England.
The name 'Begonia' was given this plant by Charles Plumier (1636-1704) in 1690 to honor his patron in the West-Indian Antilles, Michel Bégon (1638-1710) - also called 'Le Grand Bégon' -, who besides being the highest French administrative official there was also an untiring amateur naturalist.
Returning to that Herbarium: just think how hard it actually is to make a good dry herbarium specimen of Begonia with its fleshy, wet leaves and petals. And yet, after almost 250 years there it still is in Uppsala!
Onuku Road, The Kaik, Akaroa
This small church on the Onuku Maori reserve near Akaroa is the only tangible reminder of a once-thriving Maori community. Completed in 1876, the church was planned to accommodate 60 people and, though primarily for local Maori, European settlers were also welcome.
A plain timber building with steeply pitched shingle roof, its religious purpose is denoted by the tiny bell turret and surmounting crosses. It is picturesquely set in the bay on Akaroa Harbour and is enclosed by a delightfully unregimented picket fence.
By the time of Akaroa's Centenary in 1940, the church had fallen into disrepair. With Government support, Maori groups initiated a project to restore it and decorate the porch with traditional carved panels as a centennial memorial to the early Maori. The interior was refurnished and donations of a carved alter and baptismal font gave a distinctive character to the otherwise austere building.
Regular services ceased in 1963 but, despite infrequent use now, the church is carefully maintained and is in excellent order. It is important as a memorial to the Onuku Maori and as the only Maori Church remaining on Banks Peninsula.
It carries a Heritage NZ Historic Place Category 1 listing No.265.
Immersing myself in the veiled mysteries of the Serra do Corvo Branco, the largest rock-cut in Brazil nestled in Serra Catarinense, I found a world beyond the tangible. The fog enveloped everything, casting a spell of mystique over the landscape. Towering trees stood shrouded in mist, their enormity humbled. The vegetation came alive, every leaf and twig adorned with dew drops like glittering ornaments. Pines bore the weight of the water, their resilience echoing in the silence.
Vehicles appeared like phantom ships drifting down the foggy slopes, dwarfed by the majesty of the Serra. Small figures wandered, engulfed in the ethereal landscape – their insignificance amidst nature's grandeur was a lovely sight. Amid them, a woman, a fellow photographer, seeking to capture the elusive beauty of this world, just as I was.
The scene before my eyes was a testament to nature's unending surprises. The fog would surrender to the snow the next day, but I couldn't witness that transformation. What I did capture, however, were these fleeting moments before the snowfall, the calm before the storm.
This was one of Brazil's coldest days, but the chill in the air did not dampen my spirits. Instead, it amplified the experience, etching it in my memory. I hope these photographs do justice to that unforgettable day at Serra do Corvo Branco – a day that will always resonate in my heart.
Third in this series
Series blurb : I was trying to take photos of sunflowers. At dusk. In a breeze. What was I thinking!?
And even though I didn't expect anything to turn out, I couldn't stop myself from trying.
Unexpectedly, I found the results surprisingly good/interesting!
[These shots are straight from the camera - mostly unprocessed - just slight contrast adjustment]
Lakeside images of Japan
I set a goal this year to make real, tangible things that you can hold in your hands. Of course, prints can be held in hand too but in most cases they end up behind glass and on a wall. Eight is a folio. A folio is an adaptation of the Japanese "shiho chitsu" or 四方帙. Originally these were used to protect precious books and other documents. In this case, the folio includes a signed title page, an introduction, eight images, an afterword with episodic accounts of the images, and a colophon which can be seen here.
The prints are exactly the same as the ones I sell individually but you get eight A4-sized prints for the price of three plus everything else. It's your proverbial good deal.
Head to my website for more details and ordering.
"The way to be happy," said Winston Churchill, "is to find something that requires the kind of perfection that's impossible to achieve and spend the rest of your life trying to achieve it."
I seldom 'take' the opportunity to horse around with my camera, and given my backyard is virtually flatlander "cowboy country", I usually just admire these powerful and often wild creatures, and then commit the entire experience to memory. Horses posses a certain perfection I find communicative, tangible and hard to transcribe within natural surroundings. Refined and poised.
This image has a connectedness to my previous image, it's just a few hundred metres from that same location, our final Sunday shoot/hike before leaving the Ranch and scenic Cypress Hills. My positive memories remain perfectly adequate, and visual recreations help my mind remain in a full artistic gallop.
[Tucked away in a scenic valley on the North slope of the Cypress Hills stands the Historic Reesor Ranch, an all season year round tourism destination.]
*Please view LARGE for best rural Saskatchewan detail
**Textures courtesy of various sources on Flickr
***Thank You for your generous support, visits, comments, favourites, and galleries.
... an "entrance" can be considered an object, as it refers to a specific place or point that allows entry to somewhere, like a door or doorway, which is a tangible thing you can interact with; essentially, it's the "thing" that provides access to a location.
Red Herrings :
The Final Act
Act Five - The Pygmalion Ring
At 10:10 am the Phone rang on the Chief Inspectors desk. It was the sergeant, whom had gone to the town house with the director to search for clues. It appeared that a rather nosey older neighbor lady had been keeping a detailed track for the townhouse owner of all the comings and goings in a small notebook.
Including all of the license plate numbers with descriptions of all the vehicles that had been coming and going. Included in the lot was the red Mercedes of a rather nice looking lady with red hair who had been there the previous morning!
So it was that the first real tangible clue of the troupe of pickpockets/kidnappers, whom had run amuck like wolves amongst the easily distracted sheep that were the wealthy guests in attendance that fateful evening at St. Davids Chambre, was discovered.
It took less than 2 hours to trace the Mercedes to an airport rental. A group of officers swarmed the rental agency demanding to see its records. The Mercedes had been rented out late Thursday evening, by a visiting priest who gave the address and phone number of the Cathedral of Eastminster as his place of residence during his stay.
The auto had been dropped off Sunday afternoon. The office had been closed, the key dropped off in a box. No idea really by whom..
The Mercedes, was still parked out back, just now being cleaned for an afternoon pickup.
The detective dispatched men to locate and impound the rental, while he went into the airport.
All outgoing flights made on the previous Thursday and Sunday afternoon were noted, most of them had been to and from the states.
Names of the fight attendant’s were taken down, and perpetrations made to have them all interviewed.
The detectives who had been sent for the car, found it with all the doors open, as well as the trunk, while a man was bust vacuuming out the interior.
He was stopped and asked questions about the vehicle.
The condition of the interior had been pristine, the outside however had been caked with mud at one time, and the auto had been run through a wash before being returned.
There was no real garbage, inside, he answered a bit awkwardly. The detective pounced on him, what garbage was there then sir? He shrugged, and going to a waste bin, pulled out a small film canister.
The detective could not believe his eyes! You were going to toss this mate? He asked quite sharply.. the cleaner shrugged, less trouble ain’t it, than trying to find an owner, who probably was a thousand miles away now?
The detective clucked his tongue in disbelief. Called the tow yard to have the vehicle impounded, and took the film canister, now bagged as evidence, to the officer in charge.
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The film canister was handed over to the chief Inspector who carefully had the bomb disposal squad open it. It only contained a single reel of film.
The director and the cameramen were pulled into a conference room, where all three identified the canister as belonging to them, however the film spool inside was not!
Confused, the film was taken in and examined. It was old footage of a ballroom, but indeed not that of of St. Davids Chambre. Mysteriously it was the 3rd reel of an old b/w move, titled Pygmalion, the original movie version made from the Bernard Shaw play.
The reel depicted the ballroom scene, referring to a street girl being passed off as a member of royal society, fooling all the experts in such matters. What this actually had to do with the case was one of many mysteries never solved, but it gave the absconded gang their name.
The Pygmalion Ring
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So ends our tale.
At least for those of you who have seen through the Red Herrings and have discovered the clues pointing to what had happened to the 3 missing Ladies that fateful Saturday Evening. You already know the answer to the mystery and may not even have had to read this far…. SO HERES TO A JOB RATHER WELL DONE!
However, for those of us who have not possibly had the time to play detective, and wish to know what had happened… Please by all means read on below………………..
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As the Chief inspector, his detectives, and a quite exasperated Superior, were watching the contents of the Mysterious reel of film..
The Chief Inspector thought to himself, what could have happened to the thieves and their captives? He watched the movie for a few seconds… someone not as she seems, playing a role, fooling the experts, all by appearing to be one thing, and at the same time….! Oh my God he exclaimed, and all eyes turned upon him….. I know where they are being held, the girls who disappeared.
And he started to bark out orders, for the first time feeling he was in control of the situation.
Meanwhile, as the Chief Inspector was having his Epiphany, the afternoon post arrived.
And 30 minutes before that, the afternoon post had also arrived at the office of the Bishop of the Eastminster Diocese...
Now amongst the bundles of his excellency’s mail was a letter , an envelope with the Bishop’s name and address, but instead of handwriting or typing out the address, it had been pasted upon the envelope with cut out letters from a magazine.
The Bishops assistant opened the rather puzzling envelope and extracted an equally puzzling missive.
Inside was a note made on the stationary paper with the heading of the Eastminster Catholic Diocese. Using the same letters cut from the same magazine, it said simply
Time to Aire out the basement of St Davids green door stone cottage
The Bishop’s sassistant rang the Chief Inspector, catching him just as he had entered his office to grab his jacket.
Already on our way there he said almost cheerfully ( pieces of the puzzle were starting to come together)
As the police arrived at the cottage, they met and elderly nun coming out, face an ashen white. She mumble something about knocking and scratching about on the basement door , rats methinks, or worse !?
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The good officers and constables of Eastminister CID quickly went inside.
The cottage had been used for small gatherings with tables and chairs stacked neatly up against the walls, a small kitchen was set up in one corner.
At the far end was a small, thick wooden door with old wrought iron hinges and a bolt that was thrown shut and locked with an ancient key padlock. The skeleton key dangled from a peg next to the door. Said door was the source of the rather weak knocking.
Upon opening the basement door, three rather disheveled, long hair loose and tangled, ladies tumbled out. All three wearing nothing but their thin silken underclothes.
The three ladies, of course, were the missing twin daughters of the Baroness and the multi- Millionaires young wife. The three were given jackets, and hot tea was made in the small kitchen.
The Chief Inspector, with the blessings of his superior, held off notifying their families so that proper statement could be gathered without interferences.
It appeared that the women had been rather keen upon meeting the handsome actor in person, along with probably a few dozen other ladies in attendance
Apparently the group of pickpockets, in addition to lifting their jewels, were also gathering information on those ladies with the desire to personally meet with the rather charming actor. These three had been weeded out for selection and approached, obviously not just because of their overwhelming interest in a private meeting, but also because they were wearing an overwhelmingly pricy collection of jewels.
The priest had been talking to the Millionaire’s wife at the back of the crowd, and had managed to steer the conversation to meeting the actor, whom, he implied, personally knew. The wife had seen him talking and coming in with the film crew and assumed he was quite right.
He had told her that he would arrange the meeting at the stone cottage just outside the gardens. The two went off together.
Meanwhile the dark skinned Romeo had come across one of the twins watching the autograph hounds in action ( red satin gown), and had found out she was also interested in meeting the actor. He had taken the pretty lady over to the cameraman to see if it could be arranged. A blind ruse to lure his victim ever closer into his confidence.
After being turned away by the cameraman, her friend in the fancy tux “happened” to spy the priest walking with a lady in green. He had led her over and asked the good father that since he knew the film crew, could a meeting of the actor be arranged.
The “good priest balked for a minute… than smiled cheerfully in the heavily made up eyes of the lovely twin…
As it so happened he was actually in the process of arranging a meeting. The Priest felt that one more would be okay, but not to say anything to anyone else. The twin asked if her sister could come along. The priest had given her a quite long, thoughtful look, and after much ponderonce , reluctantly said ok.
He had told the gentleman wearing the fancy tux to collect the girl’s sister, and take the 3 to the cottage while he collected the actor. And again advised them not to utter a single word to anyone.
The four arrived at the cottage and waited in the shadows off to one side.
They had heard a whistling, and the Romeo had told them to wait and went around the corner. The girls had heard a thunk, then something hitting the ground. The next thing they knew a pair of black clothed, figures wearing black cat masques , appeared on either side , surrounded them , and had told them to be quiet and no one else would be hurt. They then herded the 3 terrified ladies around to the front, where Romeo laid out cold upon the ground.
They were led past him, to the now open green door and told to get inside quick.
Once inside, the three ultra-wealthy victims were told to hand over their jeweled designer purses , their purses all together were worth nearly £100,000 alone !….
Then they were, in turn cordially, but sternly, asked to remove all their valuables. Each in turn places the extremely valuable jewels they had been wearing, into the purse held opened by one of the thieves…. The purses were then placed in a black travelling satchel, along with the diamond Tiara, which had been gently pulled from the wife’s head. ( the total of their jewels came to just shy of £550,000) !
The 3 now dejeweled Ladies were than instructed to strip off their, expensive personally tailored, designer gowns, and these also were stuffed inside the satchel, along with their pricey spiked heels ( these items totaled £85,000)
Then, stripped down to their knickers, they were told to march barefoot inside, then down to the dank, dirt floored basement below ground.
It hadn’t been a bad time imprisioned down there, nor good either, after the door had been shut and bolted home on them.
The windowless basement had a few wooden chairs, a small work bench ( no tools) with a small candle for light with a book of matches ( from St Davids). There was a jug of water, two bottles of wine and some liver pate with sour dough brea also placed upon that bench. A small service loo with rusty water was located at one end, with the basements lone, long ago bricked up, window.
Aside from being freaked out when hearing a scurry of mice now and then, the three were certainly no worse for wear… despite never in their lives ever coming close to such squalid living conditions!
They had had no way of telling time, and had thought it been about 4 days that they had been held down there. All three had been surprised that it had only been less than 2 days….
They was really , nothing more to their story.
The one twin who had been wearing the red gown, and the millionaire’s wife who had worn the luxurious green taffeta gown, both recalled dancing with the Romeo in the fancy tux, though neither could remember his name, there had been so many they had danced with after all. Nor did they recall, aside from him complementing them on their dresses, that he had taken any special interest in their jewels, nor anyone else for that matter.
The Detective Chief Inspector surmised that these lambs had been left alone from any trimming, instead saved as proper candidates to be lured away for a bit of wolfish shearing down to the silken flesh.
The three were then released, and returned to their grateful families, the constables dismissed from any further surveillance. There would of course, never be a ransom demand, for that was not in the Pygmalion Rings card deck…
Once a tally had been made of all the missing, and known stolen items, the rather staggering total came to over £ 1,350,000 pounds in jewels and other pricey valuables that had been lifted and acquired by the gang. Which made one think about what the grand total of all the jewels worn that evening would have been! And most of it ripe for the plucking by such nimble fingered thieves! Ones who had had such a bloody cheek to plan and pull of such a well-planned endeavor.
The producer, his camera crew and the actors were all cleared and released, the authorities soon realizing that they had been the patsy’s for a for more organized ring of thieves. It is believed the stolen gems never left the country, but whomever eventually fenced them was not amongst the ones known to the authorities.
The flight attendants days later were interviewed, none of them=m could clearly remember any passengers fitting the descriptions of the priest, the smarmy Romeo, or the two mysterious ladies…
Composite Pictures drawn from witness accounts had by now had been made and circulated, none ever coming close to being identified. Though one of the twins thought a lady looked a bit like one of their temporary parlor maids.. But no one could remember the lass’s name, or even how long or when the time she had been employed was.
Servants should be seen and not heard after all!
The police were at a standstill, a standoff with an unknown enemy. But in the Easminster’s CID’s defense, Thr Pygmilion ring’s heist had been at least 2 years in the making, considering that at least one of its suspected members had been in attendance the year before at the same function.
They area around the Stone Cottage was scoured far more thoroughly.
A small path that had been noted earlier , leading, but not walked, which led into the woods from the backside of the stone cottage.
It was now followed for some distance and at one point a branch path led off it and onto the road.
Crossing the road the searches found a driveway that led to a small rubbish area. Two sets of tyre tracks were found. One was never matched, but believed to belong to a small sports type car, possibly a jaguar coupe, about 20 years old. the other set matched the airport rental that had contained the film canister….the mud found on the rental auto also matched the area…..
Further investigation revealed that the magazine used was an Eastminster Diocesan magazine, and the article the letters were cut out from was one that told about the annual charity ball held at St . Davids? So they Pygmalion Ring had a bit of a sense of humour.
There was also discovered, a thumbprint on the letter. , which for a time greatly excited the local authorities… Until it was discovered that the thumbprint belonged to The Bishop of the Diocese of Eastminister!
Another unexplained mystery, or one last red herring ( The Bishop had never seen the letter, his secretary had called the police, his fingerprints were also found)
With their daughters and wife safely returned, the pressure was let off by the families. The insurance companies squawked a bit, but then there is no ever pleasing that lot!
It has now been three years since the heist, and Interpol feels that the time is quite ripe for the gang to strike again, somewhere in the world where large gatherings of the wealthy and privileged will be taking place. A formal event where copious displays of jewels will be worn by the female guests, like so many shimmering lures to attract the like of them !
But even though most of the leads in the original case proved to be so many red herrings left by the Pygmalion Ring , the police still maintain confidence that justice will prevail, even though the reality of the matter is that the original trail is growing ever colder…….like ice!
Quand on rencontre un mystère, on croit généralement être scélérats cachés
“When one encounters a mystery, one generally believes to be hidden scoundrels”
Author Unknown
The End (Fini)
This photograph, it's like a still from a classic horror film, where the opulence of the past meets the mystery of the unknown. The lavish decay of this grand foyer whispers of a time when it buzzed with the anticipation of opening nights and the rustling of silk gowns. Now, it seems to stand as an eerie mausoleum to those glittering nights, the silence as heavy as the velvet curtains that once hung there.
The celestial mural on the ceiling, a darkened sky punctuated by ghostly clouds, gazes down upon the empty space with a celestial melancholy. The light, casting long, spectral fingers across the carpet, seems to beckon one towards the doors, as if urging you to step through a portal to another time, another existence.
The ornate patterns on the carpet, now trodden by the invisible footfalls of phantoms, add to the atmosphere of gothic grandeur. The playbills, like ancient relics, hint at the tales of drama and intrigue that once unfolded beyond those wooden doors. And yet, there's an uneasy tranquility, as if the air itself is holding its breath, waiting for the phantom applause to fill the void once more.
This is no mere lobby; it's a crossroads between the tangible and the spectral, where every shadow and every echo tells a story. It's a photograph that perfectly captures the eerie beauty of forgotten splendor, a reminder that even in abandonment, there lies a haunting elegance.
A place where the past lingers, reluctant to fade away, where every grain of the wood and every faded stroke of paint holds the essence of a bygone era, desperate to be remembered. A truly captivating capture, where the silence speaks volumes. Keep on framing these forgotten stories, for they are the echoes of history that refuse to be silenced.
"The fog is an illusion,
A master of disguise,
Which hides the tangible
Before our very eyes...
It gives an air of mystery
That has long prevailed.
Dangerously intriguing
Is the fog's foggy veil."
.:: Poem (Partial) © Walterrean Salley ::.
A foggy morning in Upper Normandy.
Étretat is a very picturesque town surrounded by steep chalk cliffs (falaises), including 3 stunning natural arches. Despite the reduced visibility, the most famous of the arches (La Porte d'Aval) and the pointed "needle" were breath-taking. The Falaise d’Aval looks as an elephant dipping his trunk into the sea. Standing next to it is l'Aiguille Creuse (Hollow Needle), made famous by Maurice Leblanc. The French novelist created the character of Arsène Lupin, the Gentleman Thief and set his legendary refuge inside the Needle.
Postcard texture with thanks to Kim Klassen
View Large On Black and have a fabulous day.
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No usage allowed in any form without our written explicit permission.
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I spend a lot of time helping people with sight loss to improve their lives with the right technology. There's always the reward of observing them making progress and realising how much they can achieve; occasionally there are additional, tangible rewards. Margaret, the wife of one of my trainees, has a lovely houseplant which caught my eye with its distinctive leaf shape. Next visit, she had divided her plant and I went home with my own. It just flowered, so a photograph simply had to be taken. It's oxalis triangularis. Thanks, Margaret!
My other half is a doctor, which means the effects and consequences of his work are tangible. It's a bad day when someone in his charge dies; it's a better day when, given limited time and resources, he's able to give his patients something approaching decent care. This palpability, this definiteness, was among the factors which led me to have a mini existential crisis about the value of my own career and work to the wider world.
I've written before that the educational choices I've made in my life were driven by the literally selfish desire to understand who I am and what it means to be me. This led me to interests and studies in psychology, philosophy and - the subject of my degree - literature. I discovered that I learned much more about myself by reading stories about other people. These choices disappointed my teachers in mathematics and the sciences, and my career in photography has surprised old schoolmates who assumed I would become a lawyer or else justify their designation of me as 'most likely to be elected to parliament.'
When I was around eleven I saw Dead Poets Society, and was so moved by a monologue delivered by Robin Williams' character that it imprinted on me a love and appreciation for the value of art. "We don't read and write poetry because it's cute. We read and write poetry because we are members of the human race, and the human race is filled with passion. And medicine, law, business, engineering: these are noble pursuits and necessary to sustain life. But poetry, beauty, romance, love: these are what we stay alive for."
It's easy to forget art's value, difficult to feel it day to day, even for - perhaps especially for - those who work in the arts. The first moment of doubt that I remember with any vividness was in a literature tutorial at university when, as we sat round a table discussing a novel by C.S. Lewis, the thought struck me: "What are we doing? Why the fuck are we sitting here talking about a children's book like this!?" And although I consider some small parts of my studies to have been pseudo-intellectual nonsense, I knew on a deeper level that what we were doing was important.
I don't even consider my work to be 'art': it certainly doesn't set out to challenge anyone or anything, or even to convey any deep meaning or message. Like this little essay, it's self-indulgent. I photograph the things that move me, surprise me and interest me, and if that can make someone think or discover something new - or even if they just enjoy looking at it - then that makes me happy. I'm encouraged by the occasional emails I receive from people I don't know which tell me of how my work has inspired their own, or of how it has made them realise the beauty of a city they've lived in for years; or, very occasionally - and most surprising and even frightening of all - of how it has affected the decisions they've made about their own lives.
And this is what art is for: to teach us how to be human beings, to teach us how to be here. In Other Colours, Orhan Pamuk writes about the importance of reading novels, but his words can be applied to other arts: "Reading was central to my efforts to make something of myself, elevate my consciousness, and thereby give shape to my soul. What sort of man should I be? What was the meaning of the world?…With the knowledge I gathered from my reading, I would chart my path to adulthood."
Glasgow, 2012.
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resurrection
part of the tangible project
for snacky.
modified polaroid SX-70
the impossible project PX-70 COLOR SHADE Test Film
double exposure
join us at the tangible project
The greatest things in life are not tangible. They are the things that elude us, like a spark we try to freeze as it explodes through its brief existence. Just as we try to grasp it, dazzled by its energy, it dissolves in a wisp of smoke. But life only exists in the movement and change. It is precisely the intangible, the moments of indescribable quality slipping through our fingers, that give us the greatest meaning. Like the knowing smile of a friend or the squeeze of your lover's hand. Like the soothing sound of raindrops above you, or misty layers of mountains surrounding you. We know it can't last, but in that second, it is everything.
A life well lived is not tangible. It is not defined by the things we purchase and hoard. It is not the biggest house you can buy. Or the money in the bank. Or the status of your job. A life well lived can never be measured, or bought, or won, or competed with.
A life worth living is one of moments, appreciated and embraced, and relationships, nurtured and loved. The special moments move quickly. Slow down to see them go by.
Sunrise with the bison in Yellowstone National Park.
Poem.
Island on the edge of the world.
Iona…… amazing jewel in the vast, azure, Atlantic.
Last land for 3,500 miles.
And so it appears.
If the world was flat,
and had a precipitous edge,
it would probably be not far from here.
As far west as the Scilly Isles
and even further west than the Ardnamurchan Peninsula.
Its special qualities are tangible.
Pure.
Beautiful.
Unspoiled.
A magical rock set in a silver sea.
A meeting place between Heaven and Earth.
I can only confess, I'm afraid. Of what, I don't know; of whom, or why, seems foreign to me. All the explanations in my mind have solutions. I have nothing tangible to fear - the future is looming but it will be okay, no matter what. The downs in life will be followed by ups. I'll carve my own path in the concrete and alter what is set in stone and I will be different, just like everybody else.
So why is the dread in the pit of my stomach so inescapable? Why does it consume me some nights and reduce me to tears at the foot of my bed and break down all honesty until even I don't know why I'm there? What am I scared of facing? I have not lied, nor stolen, nor broken. I have not taken anything that was not mine to take. There is no dues I owe or penance to be paid and yet I feel like something is coming for me, to collect a debt I cannot gather. It cannot be love, I'm sure. I've already paid the cost of that happiness when it took a piece of me and claimed it for its own. I have nothing left to give that repoman, should he come knocking at my door. It would require immeasurable happiness first, before I could have enough to lose. And even then, I'd have to muster courage to allow that happiness in. I don't want to be wary of footsteps on my bedroom floor yet isn't that inevitable? They can only be followed by the swift footsteps of another; the heavy pounding of the debt collector knocking for his price.
That cannot be what I'm afraid of, not today.
And yet,
maybe.
Yesterday, with Hannah, was the first time I've ever been caught tresspassing. "Quick! Should we just... jump the fence?!"
and today I was in a slightly public area, so I saw like, four people. A little couple walked up to me, possibly in their sixties, and the man said, "clearly a girl after our own hearts!" I laughed and asked if they were photographers, they said yes but they didn't have their cameras on them today. I explained my 365 etc and they were charming and then they left.
Hm. Struggling with a few things. Predominantly, right now, french. My exam's tomorrow. Perhaps a little late to begin revision.
I'm apart of creative team in my youth group to help teens get tangible ways of seeing things different and remembering a night a youth group about the sermon instead of it being just words, so I personal thought of this idea for what was talked about...
balloons..at my youth group
we talked about healing of the heart and letting go of pain, or resentment or whatever else that keeps us from moving forward in life or hinders us and giving it to God. Because in truth, sometimes we hold on to things that only hurt ourselves, and we don't even realize it.
We wrote down whatever we personal wanted on a little piece of paper, tied it to the balloons then we went outside and let them go.
"Let us throw off everything that hinders and the sin that so easily entangles, and let us run with perseverance the race marked out for us." Hebrews 12:1
Afterward [God] added: “I want to show you something of my power.” And immediately the eyes of my soul were opened, and in a vision I beheld the fullness of God in which I beheld and comprehended the whole of creation, that is, what is on this side and what is beyond the sea, the abyss, the sea itself, and everything else. And in everything that I saw, I could perceive nothing except the presence and the power of God, and in a manner totally indescribable. And my soul in an excess of wonder cried out: “This world is pregnant with God!” Wherefore I understood how small is the whole of creation—that is, what is on this side and what is beyond the sea, the abyss, the sea itself, and everything else—but the power of God fills it all to overflowing.
-Angela of Foligno, “The Memorial: The Stages of Angela’s Inner Journey,” in Angela of Foligno: Complete Works, ed. Paul Lachance (New York: Paulist Press, 1993), 169–70
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. This is the problem in a nutshell. To use another image: bare “facts” swirl chaotically through the universe in their billions. If no one organizes or interprets them they remain garbage, pure informational garbage. This informational trash has nothing to do with “history,” not in the least. The so-called fact is a prior level, a partial element, but it is not yet history. Thousands of facts, in and of themselves, are not history. History is interpreted event. Historical knowledge organizes and interprets the infinite chaos of facts.
-Jesus of Nazareth Gerhard Lohfink Jesus of Nazareth What He Wanted, Who He Was Translated by Linda M. Maloney
Actually, we called him Daddy .....never "Father, Dad, or Pops." Those names did not seem to fit him. He was our leader, our example, our provider--definitely the man of the house. I have few tangible reminders of Daddy, but many great memories and life lessons learned. I recently picked up this old booklet entitled simply "Time". He used this and similar books to record his hours worked (primarily in construction) and to calculate his weekly wages. Times were hard back then, but Daddy managed to raise 7 children on meager wages. We never seemed to lack necessities. What we lacked in "extras" was made up many times over with love and nurturing.
Happy Fathers Day, Daddy.
(Viewed Large, you might be able to see that the drawing on the cover of a sundial. It has a small inscription "Tempest Fugit" or "time flies". Indeed, it does.)
On my way to run a few errands after work today, I decided I needed to walk beneath sculptor Alexander Calder's "Flamingo" in the John Kluczynski Federal Plaza.
This Chicago icon was one of the landmarks I had first wanted to see upon my relocation to this wonderful city.
Standing beneath its curving forms, I reached out both of my hands to touch this magnificent work of art - and in that moment, I felt connected to this city I have adopted and have called my own for over a decade.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flamingo_(sculpture)
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexander_Calder
Downtown, The Loop, Chicago, Illinois.
Friday, May 3, 2019.
Light on Shell Study #03378, single non-direct window light from right, no reflectors, WB in CS6 only with no color correction, preservatives or additives
Keystone 60 Second Everflash
669 Film (exp. 1995)
This was my take on the Tangible Project's "Resurrection" theme for March. Dan (abdukted1456) was the recipient of this original polaroid and I encourage everyone to check out the Tangible Project and consider joining so you too, can receive original polaroids in the mail!
The sea resurrects itself over and over again in each and every wave that surges up upon the shore.
Jupiter Inlet Light
Taken on May 2/2010
Jupiter, Florida, USA
Nikon D5000
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When Jesus spoke again to the people, he said, "I am the light of the world. Whoever follows me will never walk in darkness, but will have the light of life."
─John 8:12
The Crabb Family ~ The Light House
History:
The Jupiter Inlet Lighthouse was completed and first lit on July 10, 1860. It is the oldest existing structure in Palm Beach County. The Lighthouse stands on an ancient Indian shell mound, dated around 700 AD, and is 156 feet tall with 105 steps from the base to the top. The Lighthouse itself is 108 feet high while the mound is 48 feet high. The light was produced by a first order Fresnel lens made by the Henry-Lepaute Company in Paris. The rotating lens flashes (burst of light when bulls-eye passes viewer's line of vision) is 1.2 seconds, eclipses (darkens) 6.6 seconds, flashes 1.2 seconds, eclipses 21 seconds, and then repeats the cycle. The light can be viewed approximately 20 miles out at sea.
George Gordon Meade, a Lieutenant at the Bureau of Topographical Engineers and later the general who defeated Robert E. Lee at Gettysburg, designed the Jupiter Inlet Lighthouse. Work began on the mound in 1853, but slowed when the inlet filled with silt, the Third Seminole War erupted from 1855 to 1858, and the purgatory of heat, humidity, and insects bore on the workmen.
After the light was lit in 1860, a group of Confederate sympathizers, including some of the Lighthouse Keepers, sneaked into the tower and removed enough of the lamp and revolving mechanism to make it unserviceable. Throughout the war, the light remained dark.
After the war, sections of the lens assembly were returned, and the light once again beamed on June 28, 1866. Captain James Armour became the lighthouse keeper and would serve for forty-two years.
A telegraph signal station was added to the lighthouse grounds in 1898. The original keeper's dwelling burned down in 1927. The light station was electrified in 1928 and damaged by a hurricane later that year. During the storm, the top of the tower was reported to have swayed up to 17 inches. Several windowpanes were broken at the top of the tower and one of the bulls-eyes sections of the lens was shattered.
During World War II, the lighthouse was dimmed through the use of a low-wattage bulb. Several ships were sunk offshore, and the sad duty of recovering the bodies as they washed ashore fell to the Lighthouse Keepers.
In 1959, the two-story Lighthouse Keeper's dwelling was torn down and new quarters were built. In 1973, the Jupiter Inlet Lighthouse was put on the National Register of Historic Places. For a number of years, the Jupiter Inlet Lighthouse was painted a "firehouse" red, but during the 1999 restoration, the tower's color was returned to the natural red brick. The work on the tower took 8 months and cost $850,000.
The Loxahatchee River Historical Society administers the Jupiter Inlet Lighthouse. The lighthouse is owned and maintained as an active maritime aid to navigation by the U.S. Coast Guard.
Source: Loxahatchee River Historical Society
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Textures by:SkeletalMess: Square-63, Biblical Clouds & woodplanks. Thank you very much Jerry!!
PLEASE: Do not add your picture (even a miniature) or Flickr river link with your comment, it will be removed.
back after a long time. in the meantime i moved, had no internet, no tv, no camera (out of order an now fixed again). the picture has been taken in february, experimenting with long exposure obviously. the title is a quotation by marguerite duras, a french author who describes time in a unique tangible way. i look forward to seeing your achievments of the last few months and will catch up slowly with comments...