Collages by Tony Fitzpatrick, quite good…..
The Moghul and the Madam …..
Whatever could they be talking about?
Madam my minaret stands at attention when I see your lovely boots!
Oh Sir! I’m hardly familiar with minarets…. but your own shoes are ever so pointy and quite becoming….
To see more
“Prom Night ’62: Alone with Mr. McNamara” should have been the name of this photo. It’s not just the kitschy aspect of the photo that is interesting, but the oddly symmetrical nature of it in general; the brick pattern on the wall in relation to the well, the conical ruffled dress and the upward sweep of the pine trees.
There’s a few elements going on; the staged setting is at once congruous and incongruous to each of its props, she’s standing at a well, (why?!) made of a brick-patterned cardboard within another brick enclosure, a river of grey crepe paper draped over more brick and just beyond the door opening is yet another brick ensemble, brick leading into more brick– an Ikea display gone wrong?It’s hard to tell if it’s really a set of stairs or another background, did she come through there? Or was she always there?
Not an uncommon prom photo, perhaps of the time, but it’s somewhat sinister, the inharmonious confluence of artificial materials and the girl–smack in the middle, dressed to kill, not a hair out of place, perfect pink with white gloves and a tiara. Why would anyone stand at a well in a ball gown?
It’s as if her geometry teacher had wandered in the room and said “Hey let’s have a photo!” The girl looks caught in the headlights–somehow she ended up alone with Mr. McNamara. “Beautiful, beautiful, you’re a perfect inverted Isosceles triangle”, he sighs and runs his hands over the ruffles of her dress. We need to get her out of there quickly! A mad rush from stale colors and pencil crimped fingers! She steps back and falls into the well, pink taffeta slips over the edge and she is gone, the teacher is alone now, he looks over inside the well, it’s empty, a slew of old paper cups, popcorn and corsets litter the bottom.
London’s Metropolitan police has launched a new counter-terrorism campaign complete with anti-photography propaganda.
It’s very interesting, considering the following;
Within 200 yards of George Orwell’s flat 27B overlooking Canonbury Square in Islington, North London, there are thirty-two CCTV (closed circuit television) cameras.
Orwell’s view of the tree-filled gardens outside the flat is under 24-hour surveillance from two cameras perched on traffic lights.
The flat’s rear windows are constantly viewed from two more security cameras outside a conference centre in Canonbury Place.
Britain now has over 4.2 million cameras – that’s one for every fourteen people. A typical citizen is caught on camera an average of 300 times per day.
It was quite simple. All that was needed was an unending series of victories over your own memory. “Reality control,” they called it: in Newspeak, “doublethink.” – George Orwell (Nineteen Eighty Four)
Via BoingBoing & Technovelgy
Incredible Greek photographer…To see more
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Eighteen years later, Nikos Economopoulos is a law student in Greece headed for a lucrative career when a wave of numbness overcomes him in a classroom. He rises from his desk, walks out the door, and leaves jurisprudence forever for the precarious existence of a wandering photographer. “I wanted to stop thinking and begin to feel,” he says. Quote from 1998 Mother Jones Article.