benhästen
I am a photographer.
I like lurchers.
horseofbone.com
maudkristina at gmail dot com
Photo by Mandy Lamb
From the series Oregon Hill
“MK: So how do you choose the one moment that has the weight that deserves a Polaroid? Is it that precious to you? I guess I mean what makes you take a picture of a girl leaning down to pet a dog? Because when you do it becomes this holy moment to the rest of the world.
ML: It doesn’t really matter if Polaroids are precious or not, if I have film I’ll use it. I like girls and dogs, if they are doing the right sort of thing and I can get them in the frame how I want them. It’s not a matter of the perfect moment.”
where
Mikael Kennedy interviews Mandy Lamb
Photo by Jerry Bauer
“Somebody who has helped me a lot in recovery from my addictive illness said to me very early on ‘allow yourself the luxury of doubt’. No closed minds. I found that a very, very interesting statement. It was interesting because it was recasting the idea of being an agnostic. Agnosticism is very very seldom correctly treated as a form of conviction in itself. But that phrase, ‘the luxury of doubt’ points to the idea that clinging fast to doubt is an extremely viable form of conviction.
(…)
I do have the view that a godless existence, an atheist existence, an existence which excludes the possibility of God, which doesn’t allow the ‘luxury of doubt’, does usher in all sorts of spiritual malaise. I really feel that a lot of contemporary society is venal and prostituted, debauched on pornography, and subject to a banalisation of feeling, and what JG Ballard has called ‘the death of affect’. I really find all that abhorrent and amoral. What my recovery programme forced upon me was the need to seriously consider the existence of some kind of higher power and its imminence in the world, some sort of transcendence. It asked me to seriously consider the limitations of ego, the old Socratic formulation that ‘reason is that that knows its own limit’.
The Luxury of Doubt - Laurie Taylor interviews Will Self
The Mermaid (1910)
Oil on canvas, by Howard Pyle
“Delaware Art Museum, Gift of the children of Howard Pyle in memory of their mother, Anne Poole Pyle, 1940
Beneath the deepening sky and rising moon, the juncture of opposing forces anchors this work: land vs. water - human vs. mermaid - strong vs. weak. The mythic mermaid rises from the briny foam and rescues a shipwrecked man who was descending into the deep.
When Howard Pyle set off on his extended European travels in November 1910, The Mermaid was still on the easel in his studio, unfinished. Despite the later addition of fish and a crab by Pyle’s student Frank Schoonover, what we see today is incomplete, and Pyle’s intentions for this work remain unknown.”
Via Wikipedia
Thank you, exclamationmark
Photo by TetsuRo Hamada
“IMAGINE PEACE TOWER is an outdoor work of art conceived by Yoko Ono in memory of John Lennon. It is situated on Viðey Island in Reykjavík, Iceland. The artwork was dedicated to John by Yoko at its unveiling on October 9th 2007, John Lennon’s 67th birthday.
IMAGINE PEACE TOWER symbolizes Lennon’s and Ono’s continuing campaign for world peace - which began in the sixties, was sealed by their marriage in 1969 and will continue forever. The words IMAGINE PEACE are inscribed on the Well in 24 different languages. IMAGINE PEACE TOWER is composed of a tall shimmering tower of light that will appear every year and be visible from October 9th (John’s birthday) until December 8th (the anniversary of his death). In addition, the Tower will illuminate from Winter Solstice (December 21st – 28th), on New Year’s Eve (December 31st) and the first week of spring (March 21st -28th). It is lit from 2 hours after sunset until midnight, and until dawn on New Year’s Day.
One of the mesmerising features of the IMAGINE PEACE TOWER is that the strength, intensity and brilliance of its light continually changes with the prevailing weather and atmospheric conditions unique to Iceland - creating a clear pillar of light on a cloudless night, beams irridescing with rainbow refractions in rain or snowfall, and brilliantly reflecting off and through any moving layers of cloud. The electricity for the light is generated entirely naturally - geothermally, from hot water – at the Hellisheiði Geothermal Power Plant. This was one of the reasons for situating the artwork in Iceland.
IMAGINE PEACE TOWER is closely connected to Yoko’s interactive artwork WISH TREE (1981). The Wish Tree has been integral to many of Yoko’s exhibitions around the world in museums and cultural centers where people have been invited to write their personal wishes for peace and tie them to a tree branch. Yoko has collected all the wishes – currently totalling over 750 thousand. They are to be housed at the site of the IMAGINE PEACE TOWER.
You can send your wishes to the IMAGINE PEACE TOWER:
by email: wish@IMAGINEPEACE.com
or by post: IMAGINE PEACE TOWER, PO Box 1009, 121 Reykjavík, Iceland.
or you can Tweet your wishes on Twitter to @IPTower
You can send as many wishes as you like, as often as you like.
‘Imagine all the people living life in peace’
John Lennon
‘A dream you dream alone is only a dream.
A dream you dream together is reality.’
Yoko Ono”
Via IMAGINE PEACE
Photo by Mikael Kennedy
AB: I’ve always though that the book is where photographs have the most impact, rather than a single image or even a show. What is it about presenting your work in a book that inspires you to make them?
MK: I never really thought of it much in terms of the power of the piece, it was more about accessibility, but I can see what you mean. I love physical objects that I can hold and carry with me and think about in different ways the more I look at it. I always want someone to be able to take something with them when they come to an art show. That’s another thing I loved about the books, that you may come to a show and like the work but not be able to spend several hundred or thousand dollars on one of the pieces, but being able to buy a book of the work that is 20 bucks is really important to me.
(…)
The Polaroid question is something that I have tried to explain many times. There are always a few points I come back to as the basics of shooting Polaroids. I started doing it cause it was just really fun and there is not much else that compares to a Polaroid in terms of quality. Not many things look like they do. Also there is the act of taking a picture and then holding that picture in your hands as it develops. There is something very scientific about Polaroids to me, sometimes it feels like I am just collecting specimens while I am out traveling and then when I get home I sort through them. Now as I have been doing this for so long my ideas about the process have grown.
I think in a world of digital photography Polaroids become so much more important and powerful. A one of a kind photograph doesn’t happen all that often, even before digital you could make as many prints off the negatives as you wanted, with a Polaroid there is just that image, it’s one of a kind. To me they are like little paintings. Also it’s interesting to think about that Police and Insurance companies used to use them for evidence because they were unmanipulatable, what you shot was considered to be a representation of the truth, which I don’t think can be said for much photography the way it is used today. We constantly question whether the images we see are real or if they have been altered somehow digitally. With a Polaroid that isn’t really a question, it just is.
Anthony Blasko interviews Mikael Kennedy
Jars of paint used in Disney cartoons
Photo by Noah Berger for The New York Times
“As the decades passed since Disney’s death in 1966, his daughter Diane Disney Miller discovered that fewer and fewer children had any idea that her father was more than a corporate logo. Some recent biographies, she said in a recent interview in The New York Times, also portrayed him and his marriage in an unflattering light. So the Walt Disney Family Foundation, a nonprofit organization independent from the company, decided to create a museum entirely devoted to Disney.”
NY Times - Exploring the Man Behind the Animation
Capt. John Weller, between ca. 1910 - and ca.1915
(photographer unknown)
Forms part of: George Grantham Bain Collection, Library of Congress.
Found thanks to The Selvedge Yard
