The essence of the discipline is the comprehension of the underlying reasons for a thing's absurdity

[sovay]

I have just discovered the worst cough drops in the world. They taste exactly like bath salts. Now I need new cough drops.

Google Blog Search is the devil's playground.

Pace Ernest Thesiger, I think this is my new favorite image: Louis Daguerre's "Boulevard du Temple" (1838 / 1839). It looks so much less like the early photograph it is than some silver-etched Boschian take on Paris, with ghosts and deserted streets and the buildings blurring off into the sky . . .





palecast, this is Paradys.

Comments

[nineweaving.livejournal.com]

Write this poem, please.

Nine

[palecast.livejournal.com]

Oh yes! Paradys indeed - what a find! A strange and glorious picture.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

It's like a still from Murnau's Nosferatu.

[setsuled.livejournal.com]

It even seems to have the unreal, flat perspective of a Bosch painting. And the sky almost looks like it's in front of the buildings. Very cool.

[clarionj.livejournal.com]

This makes me want to get out my sketching pencils--all that shadow and texture, I need to feel it through the nerves when my hand moves.

And I love your subject line.

[cucumberseed.livejournal.com]

Oh yes, one could work with that image.

[seajules]

Wow. That's an image that makes you hold your breath, so you catch it all.

[sovay]

Oh yes, one could work with that image.

Go for it!

[sovay]

all that shadow and texture, I need to feel it through the nerves when my hand moves.

I didn't know you drew. That's wonderful. I'd love to see what this picture looks like through your hands.

And I love your subject line.

I don't love Foucault's Pendulum, but I love the School of Comparative Irrelevance.

[sovay]

And the sky almost looks like it's in front of the buildings.

And nothing quite casts the right shadows.

[sovay]

It's like a still from Murnau's Nosferatu.

I hadn't even thought of that—yes.

[sovay]

Paradys indeed - what a find!

"The places of the night they trod were filigreed with weirdness . . ."
—Tanith Lee, The Book of the Dead (1991)

[sovay]

Write this poem, please.

I will have to. If I can do this city justice.

[sovay]

That's an image that makes you hold your breath, so you catch it all.

I want to know how it looked to people at the time—or if it's only in retrospect, when we expect photographs to be exact and realistic, that it looks so fantastic and beautiful.

[movingfinger.livejournal.com]

It seems to turn from a woodcut (or crudish etching) to a photograph, left to right. Be careful where you cross the street; you could end up in 1780 with no way to get home.

[sovay]

Be careful where you cross the street; you could end up in 1780 with no way to get home.

May I steal this sometime?

[seajules]

I'd think it must have had some of that same otherworldly effect for them, but I do think our expectation of something different in photographs adds an extra level.