photograph by Liz Fitch via Unsplash
O, step between her and her fighting soul.
Conceit in weakest bodies strongest works.
Speak to her, Hamlet.
“O, step between her and her fighting soul”
Tag: portrait
“Yet see in the uncertain sky above your uncertain station– the sign she left you…”
Eastman Kodak Company, “How to make good movies…” (1938)
The many faces of defeat
Invite you home:
They offer you such silence
As has no truck with time.
The face of horrid purpose,
The train of circumstance
There, the door is closed upon;
They shall no more advance.
Yet see in the uncertain sky
Above your uncertain station–
The sign she left you, passing,
Persists in affirmation.
— Ray Smith, “The Sign”
The Stranger
photograph by Johnny Cohen via Unsplash
For the first time in a long time I thought about Maman. I felt as if I understood why at the end of her life she had taken a “fiancé,” why she had played at beginning again…
— Albert Camus
“tempest in my mind”
photograph by cottonbro via Pexels
O, that way madness lies.
Let me shun that;
No more of that.
— King Lear
She’s My Ex
Even It Up
Wheels, stay under me
So tonight gotta leave that nine to five upon the shelf…
A Cautionary Tale
from the Toni Frissell collection, Library of Congress (1946)
She didn’t tell me there were rocks
Under the waves
Right off the shore…
“Love’s Philosophy”
cf. from the Toni Frissell Collection, Library of Congress, (detail) (1946)
THE fountains mingle with the river
And the rivers with the ocean,
The winds of heaven mix for ever
With a sweet emotion;
Nothing in the world is single,
All things by a law divine
In one another’s being mingle—
Why not I with thine?See the mountains kiss high heaven,
And the waves clasp one another;
No sister-flower would be forgiven
If it disdain’d its brother;
And the sunlight clasps the earth,
And the moonbeams kiss the sea—
What are all these kissings worth,
If thou kiss not me?
— Shelley, “Love’s Philosophy”
Could It Be I’m Falling in Love
I never saw that you did painting need
Toni Frissell, “Woman wearing headscarf seated at table with drink” (detail) (ca. 1940)
I NEVER saw that you did painting need…
— Sonnet LXXXIII
Neck On Up
Thomas J. O’Halloran, “Medlars – new computer to keep medical information” (1964)
Now I’ve found my heaven
From the neck on up
You’re a perfect eleven
From the neck on up…
alter ego
cf. Richard Avedon, “Carmen, Homage To Munkacsi, Coat By Cardin, Place François-Premier, Paris” (ca. 1957) and Horst Ehricht, “All the rage in Paris” (Maclean’s Magazine, 1977)
Until You Come Back To Me (That’s What I’m Gonna Do)
cf. photographs of Frances Benjamin Johnston by Frances Benjamin Johnston (ca. 1888)
Until You Come Back To Me (That’s What I’m Gonna Do)
L.A. proved too much for the man
Mrs. W. M. Gatch, “Waiting for the train” (ca. 1893)
Midnight Train To Georgia by Gladys Knight & The Pips
I met her on the strip. It was another lost weekend.
cf. The Denison Limner, “Miss Denison of Stonington, Connecticut” (ca. 1790)
“Talk To Ya Later” – The Tubes
Watermark
cf. Antoine-Émile Bourdelle, “Irene Millet” (1917) and Edouard Manet, A Bar at the Folies-Bergère (1882)
Yet diaries do, indirectly, lay claim to a certain kind of immortality, projecting a voice beyond the grave. Alice James’s diary was her dialogue with the future. It gave form to her sense of ironic detachment. And it created a communion in her lonely life…
—Jean Strouse, Alice James: A Biography
Portrait Of A Woman Painting
cf. Marie Denise Villers, “Marie Joséphine Charlotte du Val d’Ognes” (1801) and
video by Electric_Cat via Pixabay
At The Food Fair
cf. The Finnish Museum of Photography, “Osuustukkukaupan osasto Elintarvikemessuilla Messuhallissa.” (1950) (edited detail)
Higher Education
cf. unidentified photographer, “Head-and-shoulders profile portrait of young woman…” (ca. 1900)
“Don’t Know Much” (with Aaron Neville) by Linda Ronstadt
“Mixing memory and desire…”
Photograph by Les Anderson via Unsplash
April is the cruellest month, breeding
Lilacs out of the dead land, mixing
Memory and desire…
—T.S. Eliot, The Waste Land
Cleopatra
Cincinnati Magazine, 1971
The barge she sat in, like a burnish’d throne,
Burn’d on the water: the poop was beaten gold;
Purple the sails, and so perfumed that
The winds were love-sick with them; the oars were silver,
Which to the tune of flutes kept stroke, and made
The water which they beat to follow faster,
As amorous of their strokes. For her own person,
It beggar’d all description: she did lie
In her pavilion–cloth-of-gold of tissue–
O’er-picturing that Venus where we see
The fancy outwork nature: on each side her
Stood pretty dimpled boys, like smiling Cupids,
With divers-colour’d fans, whose wind did seem
To glow the delicate cheeks which they did cool,
And what they undid did.
—Antony and Cleopatra
“VENUS” :: Shocking Blue by MARVEN Feat Sarah-jane
“Ah, dear father, graybeard, lonely old courage-teacher…”
Arkhip Kuindzhi, “Moonlight Night. Meditation”
What thoughts I have of you tonight Walt Whitman, for I walked down the sidestreets under the trees with a headache self-conscious looking at the full moon…
Will we walk all night through solitary streets? The trees add shade to shade, lights out in the houses, we’ll both be lonely.
Will we stroll dreaming of the lost America of love past blue automobiles in driveways, home to our silent cottage?
Ah, dear father, graybeard, lonely old courage-teacher, what America did you have when Charon quit poling his ferry and you got out on a smoking bank and stood watching the boat disappear on the black waters of Lethe?
–Allen Ginsberg, A Supermarket in California (excerpt)
“Back out of all this now too much for us”
cf. Harry W. Watrous, The Passing of Summer (1912)
Back out of all this now too much for us,
Back in a time made simple by the loss
Of detail, burned, dissolved, and broken off…
–Robert Frost, Directive
Take A Letter Maria
Walk right in, sit right down. Daddy, let your mind roll on.
cf. John Smibert, “Francis Brinley” (1729)
Let’s move before they raise the parking rate
Wil Blanche, “Springtime Scene…” (1973)
“Wild nights – Wild nights!”
Childe Hassam, “The Colonial Table” (1915)
Wild nights – Wild nights!
Were I with thee
Wild nights should be
Our luxury!Futile – the winds –
To a Heart in port –
Done with the Compass –
Done with the Chart!Rowing in Eden –
Ah – the Sea!
Might I but moor – tonight –
In thee!
–Emily Dickinson
My baby takes the morning train
William B., “Interborough Rapid Transit (IRT) Construction…” (detail) (1900)
“Between midnight and dawn, when the past is all deception…”
cf. Home Movie PA 000111 and photograph by Kevin Lee via Unsplash
Between midnight and dawn, when the past is all deception,
The future futureless, before the morning watch
When time stops and time is never ending…
–T.S. Eliot, The Dry Salvages
“Yet see in the uncertain sky above your uncertain station– the sign she left you…”
Eastman Kodak Company, “How to make good movies…” (1938)
The many faces of defeat
Invite you home:
They offer you such silence
As has no truck with time.
The face of horrid purpose,
The train of circumstance
There, the door is closed upon;
They shall no more advance.
Yet see in the uncertain sky
Above your uncertain station–
The sign she left you, passing,
Persists in affirmation.
—Ray Smith, The Sign
I hear laughter in the rain
Deep is the light in her eyes
cf. Cincinnati Magazine, 1990
“…awaiting the birth of a grandson capable of understanding him.”
Cervantes—a patient gentleman who wrote a book—has been sitting in the Elysian fields for three centuries and gazing sadly around, awaiting the birth of a grandson capable of understanding him.
—José Ortega y Gasset, Meditations on Quixote
Who could it be?
Believe it or not it’s just me…
Library and Information Services Metropolitan State University, Star Wars Party (2015)
M-O-N-E-Y never did a thing for L-O-V-I-N
Tom Rogowski, “Springing Out All Over” (Cincinnati Magazine, 1978)
Who’s tripping down the streets of the city?
LIFE, 1966
I’ve got your picture of me and you…
cf. Esther Bubley, “After school…” (detail) (1943) and photo by Jakob Owens via Unsplash
“Young John” (Painting By Arris Grace Hodge)
Source: Young John – arrisgracehodge / Saatchi Art: Young John Painting by Arris Grace Hodge
Artist: Arris Grace Hodge
Arris Grace Hodge | Saatchi Art
Arris Grace Hodge, “Young John” (Oil on Canvas, 18 H x 24 W x 2 in)
Jackie Blue
cf. Unidentified photographer (Frances Benjamin Johnston Collection), “Woman sitting on window seat…” (between 1900 and 1920)
Keep your feet on the ground and keep reaching for the stars
Tom Hubbard, At the Tyler Davidson Fountain, in Fountain Square Downtown Cincinnati’s Popular Public Plaza, a Young Man Listens to the Radio with One Ear, Play of the Water with the Other (August, 1973)
Unified Field Theory
Courtesy of Michael Kravitz
Just when you think you got a good thing it seems to slip away
cf. Georges Seurat: A Sunday on La Grande Jatte — 1884 (detail) (1884/86),
Study for “A Sunday on La Grande Jatte” (1884)
and Gustave Caillebotte: Paris Street; Rainy Day, 1877 (detail) (1877)
Barracuda
cf. Gerard ter Borch the Younger, A Woman Playing the Theorbo-Lute and a Cavalier (ca. 1658)
Whenever I see your smiling face I have to smile myself…
cf. from William Mortensen, “Portrait Procedure” (ca. 1941)
She Blinded Me With Science
cf. Jacques Louis David, Antoine-Laurent Lavoisier and His Wife Marie-Anne-Pierrette Paulze (1788)
Two divided by love can only be one and one is a lonely number
cf. Giuseppe De Nittis, Elegant Young Woman Seen From Behind (ca. 1875)
If You Could Read My Mind
I don’t know where we went wrong
But the feeling’s gone
And I just can’t get it back…
cf. R. Dührkoop, “The Difficult Letter” (ca. 1908)
As Kingfishers Catch Fire
A. L. Hitchin, “The Little Artist” (ca. 1919) and G. W. Harting, “Sketching” (ca. 1917)
As kingfishers catch fire, dragonflies draw flame;
As tumbled over rim in roundy wells
Stones ring; like each tucked string tells, each hung bell’s
Bow swung finds tongue to fling out broad its name;
Each mortal thing does one thing and the same:
Deals out that being indoors each one dwells;
Selves — goes itself; myself it speaks and spells,
Crying What I do is me: for that I came.
–Gerard Manley Hopkins, As Kingfishers Catch Fire (excerpt)
I don’t know why sometimes I get frightened
cf. from “The Book Of Photography, Practical, Theoretic And Applied”, Paul N. Hasluck, Ed. (1907)
Time heals the wounds that no one can see
But if your heart,
Your heart has been broken
And you don’t wear it on your sleeve
No one can tell,
Your hell goes unspoken
But there’s one thing you must believe…
Untitled photograph by R. E. Scaife (ca. 1919)
Waking Up Is Hard To Do
You slept all night now it’s morning time
That’s the time to rise and shine
Don’t you cry and don’t be blue
Wakin’ up is hard to do!
A. L. Hitchin, “You’ve Waked Me Too Soon” (ca. 1914)
Love Of The Common Man
cf. Maximilien Luce: Man Washing (1887), Morning, Interior (ca. 1890) and Coffee (1892)
“His life was gentle, and the elements so mix’d in him…”
Börje Gallén, Fisherman and boy in Smygehuk (detail) (1954)
His life was gentle, and the elements
So mix’d in him that Nature might stand up
And say to all the world “This was a man!”
—Shakespeare, Julius Caesar
Nowhere Man
cf. Eadweard Muybridge, Animal locomotion (ca. 1887)
“In the midway of this our mortal life, I found me in a gloomy wood…”
In the midway of this our mortal life,
I found me in a gloomy wood, astray
Gone from the path direct…
— Dante Alighieri, Inferno
David Falconer, from the DOCUMERICA collection (1973)
Some Guys Have All The Luck
cf. LIFE (1968)
So This Is Love
cf. Burk Uzzle, Broad Street, Philadelphia (1981)
I’m saving my prime time for you
LIFE (1966)
Aspens
Imagine a young man, alone, without anyone.
The moment a few raindrops streaked his glass
he began to scribble.
He lived in a tenement with mice for company.
I loved his bravery.Someone else a few doors down
played Segovia records all day.
He never left his room, and no one could blame him.
At night he could hear the other’s
typewriter going, and feel comforted.Literature and music.
Everyone dreaming of Spanish horsemen
and courtyards.
Processions. Ceremony, and
resplendence.Aspen trees.
Days of rain and high water.
Leaves hammered into the ground finally.
In my heart, this plot of earth
that the storm lights.
–Raymond Carver, “Aspens” from All of Us: Collected Poems (Alfred A. Knopf)
Northeastern University Course Catalog (1982-83)
“Listen, you can say anything you want now. Here is the instrument.”
Music—the world that might be,
and yet the world as it is. The heart
comes out of hiding, saying to us:
“Listen, you can say anything you want now.
Here is the instrument.”
–Robert Winner, The Instrument (excerpt) from The Sanity of Earth and Grass (Tilbury House)
John Vachon, Daughter of FSA rehabilitation borrower listening to phonograph (detail) (1940)
When I come home feeling tired and beat…
At night the stars, they put on a show for free
And, darling, you can share it all with me…
And if this old world starts getting you down,
There’s room enough for two…
Cincinnati Magazine (1972)
Green-Tinted Sixties Mind
cf. LIFE (1969)
John Sapiro 