Vintage in Russia

These are amazing photographs that I found on Flickr and are taken by one Sergey Prokudin-Gorsky in the 1800 in Russia. I believe the Flickr account belongs to @nokato. The pictures are fabulous and here is a slideshow to feast your eyes!

Street Art and the MOP

Ernest Pignon-Ernest is French. He is an artist who photographs and creates street art. I think he is fabulous and just gotten to know him recently. I especially adore this work in Naples, one of my favorite cities. I love the way he has combined the street songs of the old women with the sounds of daily life - brings me back to Naples in a heartbeat, one of the most beautiful gritty, dirty, holy places in Europe.

Ernest Pignon-Ernest

EpE says this about his work,  'The aim of the insertion (picture) is both to make the place into a visual space and to work on it's memories, to reveal, disrupt and heighten it's symbolism'. Beautiful words.

With the Month of Photography coming up and specifically The Big Picture these words are very appropriate. MOP is when Mark Sink and his glorious gang wheat paste up not only Denver walls and streets but also connect all over the world with a devious plan to beautify it all. Gorgeous images in black and white will start to appear in Europe, Russia, who knows where else...Exciting stuff.

Mark Sink 

I think it's really interesting to look at this French artist, relatively unknown in the English speaking world, who has been doing this type of street art for decades. I like to imagine the progression of artists he might have inspired all these years. In fact there is a book out with the title "Before Banksy: Ernest Pignon-Ernest".

It's fascinating to read the concept, politics, history behind the art form.

What I know: This is what art can do and does. Inspire.

Personally, I am equally inspired by our Denver scene.

Coming soon. MOP

Nesting with Flowers

Osmia Avosetta. What an extraordinary name. It shines with mystery and beauty. Ani is lucky I hadn't heard the name at the time of her birth, I would have probably fit it in her litany of names somehow. Can you imagine being born into a 'womb' of flower petals? When I started reading about them last month I became so excited at my discovery. Bees are a  part of my project at the Pezic farm in BiH but I had never heard of these before.

environmentalgrafitti

The American Museum of Natural History research site says that they were just recently discovered, strangely enough on the same day by two different researchers in Turkey and Iran. Bees that nest in PETALS. Facinating.

I promptly revised history and told my children that when they were born it was from a womb of beautiful, colored petals.

They nodded and then looked at each other.

'Pretty soon she will be wearing lamp shades with her pearls' they telepathically said to each other.
Darlings that they are however, they allowed me my moment of extravagance and shut up.

Solitary bees that build nests with flower petals.

Female, solitary and extravagantly colorful.

Et voila - as soon as I heard it a path emerged in front of me and I knew I had my New Years' theme.  Specifically with my Muse I've been working on an ongoing photo project in tune with bee moms' channel of love, her magical birthing canals. The results are unusual and stunning.

Because of their nesting habits  National Geographic calls them Flower-Mud Sandwiches. Which is funny but translates into interesting ideas for decoration.
At the jewelry bench then, the SilvanaMondo Osmia™ Collection has it's first marvelous ring in the works in fine Silver and Enamel.

I'm crazy about them.

Coffee Clouds

Zira's Cup

Talking talking talking with the wind in our faces, our hair swirling along with the smoke. A moment of still. Clouds now gliding by painting mirror messages on our coffee.

Just the right light. I love this picture.

Twelve ii

Everywhere I look faces are illuminated by the screen of an iPad, iPhone, computer or some other lighted screen. The portal to the rest of the world.  It has a kind of balayage effect that's focused on the chin, nose and eyes that are bathed in it's weird artificial light- the head and hair left out like a darkened halo...

My favorite subject, my daughter, positively glows in it. It's not unusual that I brought out the old Android to capture the screen glow reflecting on her face from the ever present iPad.
Screen Shots.
Her skin and face are a thousand times more glorious in Nature of course but this has it's own reward..

 

In this artifice her vulnerabilities translate onto the camera just as strongly as in natural light and I am interested in that consistency, the heart of which is the skin.  She has a slight greenish tint to her white skin that makes me wild for photographing her. I have been recording since birth. And here is even Mr. Sink's version.
Although she is a most unwilling subject on occasion she gives me a break and indulges my vision.

What fascinates me the most is how light falls on objects and on skin to form contours.  The radiance emanating from skin is not so easy to 'get right' mood-wise. There are props ... Photoshop, digital, hand coloring and other techniques that I don't yet know enough about. Love recording the beauty that surrounds me.  Phone camera's often do the trick  and it's spontaneous   

Twelve

splendid radiance...

Bears Bear Bearing

consumed with Bears today. must have dreamt something..

Sartola Ban, artist

marbleheadllc.com

from dogandogs.com

all these pictures of real people with real bears make me cringe of course and am liebsten I would turn the tables on the situation. but it is what it is. for more depressing pics look up gypsies, russians, circus animals and so on in relationship to bears. people make a living. sometimes only on the backs of their bears. I get it but it makes me sad

and from the Germans

our Bulgarian friends

Russia

Blogger Dumneazu writing about the end of the Dancing Bear culture in Romania, Bulgaria and elsewhere in the Balkans and wonders what happens to the families that rely on the money made from the spectacle. In another article the EU people rejoice over saving bears from a certainly horrible fate (graphic) and at the same time contribute to the homogenization of cultures. What is right and wrong? Hmmmm

Eve

Eve and the Snake

A beautiful foto of street art in Naples by Rebecca Price Butler on her Tumbler blog

Wall Pictures

Liana

Photo acs hoitt-ramadani 

Virgin by the Sea

Virgin by the Sea

11/07/1995

A video/photography by Tarik Samarah

Stars in her Hair

Stars in her Hair

Dancing became my very Reason

                                             (image from Kurdish Globe article)


I found a beautiful site akaKurdistan  while researching 1930's Persia late one night and was charmed by the adventure: cross-culture multi-culture overlapping stories - these that are so deeply embedded in my imagination.

'When, after the tragic death of my father, the Emir,
I fled from my revolt-stricken country,
dancing became my very reason for living, my life's aim.'
 Leila Bedirkhan.

Kurdish Globe has another view into the life of artist/dancer Leila Bedirkhan.

The Wall

Hanging out with Mrs. Peel late one night.What else could we have done but....

 Passed from terribly funny conversations with goofy Persian looking boys inside to momentary art shock once back on the streets: the beautifully decorated west side wall right outside the door at Z Cuisine, {courtesy of the MoP mob} (Redline, the amazing Mark Sink).

Tantalizing backdrop, just like the Boulevard St. Germaine cup inside. Groovy moods show.

 The gorgeous Mrs. Peel and I will be hanging out at the wall, our new love object, for the next week, watching the paint dry and kissing passers by.

Playing with Light

To me this looks like a scene from a ancient Roman dinner

but it also has something very mystical almost spiritual about it, I see the 'flames' hovering on top of the head and the various shades and spirits all around the bodies

In reality, I suppose it is just a set of two pictures taken in the mirror of a cavernous space but I like this playing with possibilities of different planes exisiting simultaneously around us. How about you? Do you ever 'see' things in pictures or paintings that are not obvious at first?

True Women

Here is a short story about Taryn Andreatta  and  L Anne Enke. Both women are, for different and similar reasons, very special to me and why I mention them on my own blog today. This article is Anne's discovery of Taryn a few months ago. In the blog post, my name was featured prominently as the stylist on the photo shoot (by Meghan Savage) and it is precisely this kind of generosity of spirit that makes me feel proud to be a friend to both women. Taryn is a beauty and she is a decent human being. Intelligent and kind. She is genuine in her simplicity and yet in her art, her modeling and dancing, she is fierce and daring, something that no ingenue can pull off by mistake. I love that as a young woman she is as together as many women twice her age sometimes only wish to be.
Sensuality News's recent interview where Taryn expreses her ideas on her art and motivation is clearly an homage to Taryn by Anne who strikes me as a  wildly intelligent and thankfully, sensual person. I believe in Anne, who like Taryn and myself, is fiercely dedicated to freedom, the feminine and the exploration of what it means to be a woman in this world.

Eclipse Babies

Tito Tito Tito

Oh, brilliant pics from Milomir Kovacevic, called Strasni - that I found through the Vebahood website. Pictures of Tito's photographs that obviously everyone had in their kitchens, living rooms, where ever. Pictures of pictures, lost and humiliated during the war.
I had one myself - a picture of Tito that I hung on the wall when the Bosnian and I had our short lived enterprise together. Tito with a monocle and a bullet hole through his cheek. I was so proud of myself for putting him up. Americans, you know. The Bosnian was beside himself, what would people say? But with that one shred of humor that he did have, he finally capitulated and decided that he had come up with the idea in the first place.
The cult of Tito still going strong. I particularly love this one , the gypsy woman smoking a cigarette carrying a bag and a pic of the old man under her arm, like a loaf of bread. Tito is bread.