benhästen

Creature

Ambrotype by Stephen Berkman

Mine Rescuer

(photographer unknown)

nookphotos:

Photographer unknown. c. 1910. A Contortionist.

Source: (2007), The Art of the American Snapshot 1888-1978, Princeton University Press.

Bob Dylan, during his 1966 tour of England

Photo by Barry Feinstein

Human Skeleton, 1999

Jayne Hinds Bidaut

Dryplate tintype photogram
Twelve plates, each 11 x 14 inches

“The difference between an insane person and an artist is that an insane person can’t come back from that other perception, that other reality. An artist can go to the other side and actually bring back something, bring back proof - I go there often.

A piece of art to me is an actual souvenir, which says, See - I was in this special place, and I brought this back, this is the proof… And guess what. Our conscious and perceived world is not the only reality out there. That is what I have come to know I do with my work. I didn’t realize this years ago. But now I do.

It seems most people are scared to find the answers to their questions. But if you have your art, you can deal with these questions and things deep inside that you do not even have words for, things you do not recognize in your conscious state. But you can use your art as your stepping-stone, and stepping-back stone… I’ve kept a direct dialogue with my subconscious through my art. This tracking of my past allows me to grow. All my art is actually my little breadcrumb path back to the way I was before… before the shedding of all my skins.”

via Satya

Jayne is also the director of the Kageno Kids Art and Cultural Exchange.

Bela Lugosi

(photographer unknown)

“Bela believed in drinking vegetable juices. ‘One night,’ said Bela in an interview, ‘we had a guest.’ When he drank a glass of beet juice, ‘Our guest turned white and fell ill. Questioned, she laughed rather foolishly, said it had fantastically occured to her that I might be drinking a cocktail of blood!’”

The Immortal Count - The Life and Films of Bela Lugosi

by Arthur Lenning (p. 185)

Alice Liddell as a young woman

by Julia Margaret Cameron

“Her (Cameron’s) involvement in photography came about as a result of the kindness of her eldest daughter. Julia Margaret, by this time was aged forty-nine, her children had grown up, and her husband was often abroad on business. As a result she suffered from loneliness, and her daughter, to make her life more fulfilling, bought her a camera. From this simple beginning a new hobby began, which was to turn into an obsession.

The comments in her book give a delightful glimpse of this lady:

‘I longed to arrest all beauty that came before me, and at length the longing has been satisfied. Its difficulty enhanced the value of the pursuit. I began with no knowledge of the art. I did not know where to place my dark box, how to focus my sitter, and my first picture I effaced to my consternation by rubbing my hand over the filmy side of the glass…

I turned my coal-house into my dark room, and a glazed fowl-house I had given to my children became my glass house! The hens were liberated, I hope and believe not eaten. The profit of my boys upon new laid eggs was stopped, and all hands and hearts sympathised in my new labour, since the society of hens and chickens was soon changed for that of poets, prophets, painters and lovely maidens….’ “

Via Robert Leggat

nookphotos:

Photographer: unknown. Dayton, Ohio. Halloween. 1913.

Source: (2007), The Art of the American Snapshot 1888-1978, Princeton University Press.

Elementi di anatomia fisiologica applicata alle belle arti figurative

Turin, 1837-39. Lithograph. National Library of Medicine

Francesco Bertinatti
[anatomist]

Mecco Leone
[artist]

“Courage is very important.

Like a muscle, it is strengthened by use.” - Ruth Gordon

still from Harold and Maude

Still from the fantastic documentary about Henry Marsh -

The English Surgeon

“Shot in an Ukrainian hospital full of desperate patients and makeshift equipment, ‘The English Surgeon’ is an intimate portrait of brain surgeon Henry Marsh as he wrestles with the dilemmas of the doctor patient relationship.

‘It’s like selling your soul to the devil, but what can you do? My son had a brain tumour as a baby and I was desperate for someone to help me. I simply can’t walk away from that need in others.’

With an original soundtrack by Nick Cave and Warren Ellis, ‘The English Surgeon’ openly confronts moral and ethical issues which touch every one of us. And all in a country called Ukraine which is struggling to do the same thing.”

“Lars Eriksson from Heljesgården and Tussie the dog, the snowy winter of 1951”

(photographer unknown)

Archive image from Västergötlands museum

“A boy and a girl sharing a drink, each with their own straw in the bottle”

(photographer unknown)

via Old Pictures

Girl in a White Dress, 1971 - photo by Arthur Tress

“Arthur Tress’ first subjects were circus freaks and dilapidated buildings around Coney Island where he grew up. The youngest of three children in a divorced family, Arthur spent time in his early life with both of his parents: his father who re-married and lived in an upper class neighbourhood, and his mother, who remained single after the divorce and whose life was not nearly so luxurious. In high school, he also studied the art of painting.”