one hundred and twenty-two

I love Paris in the springtime

one hundred and eight

Stratford-upon-Avon

Outside Shakespeare's birthplace. We walked past just as the sun was setting, making the windows glitter and gleam.

We sat by the river Avon and drank strawberry cider (well, I tried some of Jen's and made a face something like this. I am not a cider fan).

Not Stratford-upon-Avon

There is a very small clump of woodland roundabout where I live, so we wondered there one lazy, sleep-deprived Sunday (after staying up the night before watching Neverwhere until silly hours).

Victorian explorers; it felt especially appropriate as our walk took us to the old house of W. S. Gilbert.

I was held up for half an hour when my train was cancelled (lack of a driver). Fast trains often rush through this station, not-stopping, on their way to the north, creating waves of turbulent air and a slight ringing as the wheels speed on the metal of the tracks. I was so scared of them as a child, and I still automatically stick my fingers in my ears and tense up when one passes.

ninety-one

The moon was nice tonight, a proper Cheshire Cat grin. I love the way the stages of the lunar cycle are named: we are currently on waxing crescent.

I stumbled across these photos by a man called Jim Olive in my meanderings round Flickr (nice surname, Jim).

 

I can't quite get over the first photo. Those colours. There really aren't enough places like this near where I live. You can see more from the same assignment here.

eighty-nine

Turner, Margate (?), from the Sea

Sarah

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Ben Cranke, Storm riders

Why go home when you'd rather see me?
Feels like all my heart can do now is bleed
We should go down to the sea

eighty-six

Iron men (one by the Thames, one in Camden)

The red light around the edges is a lesson in why never to open your camera before you are sure the film has wound itself all away.

eighty-five

that day it was almost like summer.

seventy-eight

little moments of closeness:


State Library of New South Wales




David Herasimtschuk




Vivian Maier


Eadward Muybridge

seventy-seven

Music Visualizations, Synchoric Orchestra dancing Schubert's Unfinished Symphony, first performed in 1919 at Shawn's Grand Ave.

I spent a good couple of hours searching The Commons on Flickr. If you haven't yet, I suggest you go and take a look: it's a collection of the world's public photography archive, and contains pictures from galleries, museums and libraries around the world.

Ruth St. Denis in 'Rhada'. (This is not from The Commons, but the New York Public Library's stream).

As I seem to be on a dancey theme: I have just watched the most stunning pas de deux, and will have to watch it at least four more times before I get over this feeling of heartsqueezedness, breathlessness. It's Marianela Nunez and Edward Watson, in Wayne McGregor's Infra:

seventy-three

Yangtze, The Long River

Saturday's Guardian Weekend magazine featured Nadav Kander's latest work following the Yangtze river in China.

Yangtze, The Long River documents the people and landscape along the banks of the river, and captures the changes that are happening in China at the moment: the large scale development, the tearing down and building up, migration, the way that history and progression is seen.

In Kander's own words:

“After several trips to different parts of the river, it became clear that what I was responding to and how I felt whilst being in china was permeating into my pictures; a formalness and unease, a country that feels both at the beginning of a new era and at odds with itself. China is a nation that appears to be severing its roots by destroying its past in the wake of the sheer force of its moving “forward” at such an astounding and unnatural pace. A people scarring their country and a country scarring its people.

Although it was never my intention to make documentary pictures, the sociological context of this project is very important and ever-present. Do we have to destroy to develop? The scale of development in China has left most places unrecognisable. Many Chinese will never be able to visit the places where they grew up, because they no longer exist. China is progressing rapidly, and the landscape—both economically and physically—is changing daily. These are the photographs that can never be taken again.”

Many, many more pictures can be found on his website, and they are well worth a look.