“ It’s a lie. It’s a bunch of sad strangers photographed beautifully and all the glittering assholes who appreciate art say it’s beautiful because that’s what they want to see. But the people in the photos are sad. And alone. But the pictures make the world seem beautiful so the exhibition’s reassuring, which makes it a lie, and everyone loves a big fat lie. ”

Alice, Closer

[And I feel guilty as charged. You Will Be Assimilated]

Untitled? Photograph By Leonard Nimoy

Photo by Leonard Nimoy, discovered via yay!everyday.

Thanks to: You Will Be Assimilated

Okay. The Last Of William Gedney In The Coal Fields. I SWEAR.

6 images that could not be denied. They have digitized only 10% of his work, which amounts to 50,000 pieces. Mouse over the lower edge to start.

William Gedney, Eastern Kentucky Coal Fields, 1964. Duke University Library, Special Collections

Boy Smoker-Eastern Kentucky 1964 Photo By William Gedney

Boy covered by dirt smoking cigarette with one hand, holding can of tobacco in other.

Collection: William Gedney Photographs and Writings
Category: Photographs
Category: Kentucky, 1964 and 1971
Type: Photographs
Box Number: 76
Negative Number: 1245-12-28
Exposure: 1964
Year: 1964
Print: Unknown
Photographer: Gedney, William Gale, 1932-1989
Mark: Stamp
Subject: Cornett Family
Item Number: KY0178

Duke University Library, Special Collections

Three Cups Of Tea: Greg Mortenson's Simple Lesson For Everyone

Torghu Balla Schoolgirls, Paskistan (Image courtesy of Central Asia Institute)

I read this book a year ago at the urging of my mother. There are many things that humble me and cause my jaw to drop everyday, but I think Greg Mortenson's story stays very near the top.  You will thank yourself if you give this dude a few minutes of your time.

So my Mum attends a lecture by Greg Mortenson about a week ago, where among other profundities, Sahib Greg said that top military and State Department officials have been seeking his help after reading Three Cups Of Tea:  One Man's Mission To Promote Peace...  One School At a time. In addition, he has been receiving emails from CENTCOMM Commander General Dave Petraeus. DUH. How do you improve people's lives while at the same time counteracting the poverty and ignorance that feeds extremism and violence? Why, build schools in the hinterlands of Pakistan and Afghanistan, of course.  Special emphasis on education for girls.

Wikipedia:

Greg Mortenson (born December 27, 1957) is a humanitarian, international peace-maker, and former mountaineer from Bozeman, Montana. Mortenson is the co-founder (with Dr. Jean Hoerni) and director of the non-profit Central Asia Institute, and founder of the educational charity, Pennies For Peace. He is the protagonist and co-author of the # 1 New York Times bestseller, Three Cups of Tea: One Man's Mission To Promote Peace... One School At A Time.

(...) In 1993, to honor his deceased sister's memory, Mortenson went to climb K2, the world's second highest mountain, in the Karakoram range of northern Pakistan. After more than 70 days on the mountain, Mortenson and three other climbers completed a life-saving rescue of a fifth climber that took more than 75 hours. The time and energy devoted to this rescue prevented him from attempting to reach the summit. After the rescue, he began his descent of the mountain and became weak and exhausted. One local Balti porter took Mortenson to the nearest city, but he took a wrong turn along the way and ended up in Korphe, a small village, where he recovered...  (via Wikipedia)

Greg Mortenson'sBlogspot Blog 

Central Asia Institute

Pennies For Peace

A Girl Of Voss, Hardanger Fjord, Norway Photochrom Print, ca. 1890

[A girl of Voss, Hardanger Fjord, Norway] Library Of Congress Flickr Stream

[between ca. 1890 and ca. 1900].

1 photomechanical print : photochrom, color.

Notes:
Title from the Detroit Publishing Co., Catalogue J--foreign section. Detroit, Mich. : Detroit Publishing Company, 1905.
Print no. 7010.
Forms part of: Landscape and marine views of Norway in the Photochrom print collection.
Subjects:
Norway--Hardangerfjord.
Format: Photochrom prints--Color--1890-1900.
Rights Info: No known restrictions on publication.
Repository: Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division, Washington, D.C. 20540 USA, hdl.loc.gov/loc.pnp/pp.print
Part Of: Landscape and marine views of Norway (DLC) 2001699563
More information about the Photochrom Print Collection is available at hdl.loc.gov/loc.pnp/pp.pgz
Persistent URL: hdl.loc.gov/loc.pnp/ppmsc.06130
Call Number: LOT 13432, no. 028 [item]

The Terror (1963) Boris Karloff, Jack Nicholson andFrancis Ford Coppola

Another high-quality Blackberry image through glass

The Terror-Boris Karloff, Jack Nicholson, w/uncredited direction by Francis Ford Coppola imdb

But then, you already knew all of that, didn't you? Of course, it's new to me. :)

LUCKY STRIKE, Girl In Red-Photo By Nickolas Muray, 1936

Accession Number: 1971:0034:0015

Maker: Nickolas Muray (American 1892-1965)

Title: "LUCKY STRIKE, GIRL IN RED"

Date: 1936

Medium: "color print, assembly (Carbro) process"

Dimensions: Dimensions Unknown

George Eastman House Collection

General – information about the George Eastman House Photography Collection is available at http://www.eastmanhouse.org/inc/collections/photography.php.

Leave Me A Note: Lookout Mountain Museum (TN) Souvenir

Leave A Note.

Lookout Mountain Museum (Chattanooga, TN)

The previous owner has taken this from the trash heap and given it new life, (and a home on my door), with an old Westclox face. 

Is it just Me? Little things like this make me very happy.

Update when I get it fixed-up on my door.



SEE ROCK CITY.

                     THAT IS ALL.

Fireman posed with his broom

Fireman posed with his broom
Originally uploaded by State Archives of Florida

This is how they put out fires during the Victorian era. Do what you have to do, I suppose.


The state archives of Florida has just joined Flickr. I reckon it will take some time for them to get more uploaded. I am particularly waiting to see more of the 2,000+ glass negs from Alvan Harper. The selection so far is pretty puny.

Darwin: Tenacious Scientist, A Pragmatic Lover, And A Man Pained By Losing His Religion

Mockingbirds: among the menagerie of animal specimens that inspired Charles Darwin’s thoughts on evolution. Photograph: Anna Gordon/Guardian

The significance of the two birds lying side by side on a purple cushion with tags dangling from their feet is easy to miss. But the subtle differences - a strip of white on the wing, a smudge of dark on the breast - set Charles Darwin on course to develop the most important scientific theory ever conceived: the evolution of species through natural selection.

The mockingbirds are perhaps the most important specimens Darwin collected from the Galapagos during his five-year voyage aboard HMS Beagle in the 1830s, and today they go on show as part of a major exhibition at the Natural History Museum in London. It reveals Darwin as a tenacious scientist, a pragmatic lover, and a man pained by losing his religion.

The Guardian, 11 November, 2008

It's rare that I will do birthdays, cuz 90 kabillion people blog and reblog "Born On This Date" every morning. The most ubiquitous daily blog topic across the web? I dunno. Gets bunches of traffic, though.

These two birthdays, though, are pretty damn important to me.

Andrew Bird, Imitosis

PLEASE. If You Never Visit Here Again... If Only You Will Watch Jeffrey Sachs Speak I'm Begging You

If you can get through the nonsense in the intro, please listen to Jeffrey Sachs, (arguably the world's top economist, and adviser to the UN), speak the truth about what we face, and literally SHOUT his outrage over what we are doing to the world and it's poor.

"I Have Been Driven Many Times Upon My Knees By The Overwhelming Conviction..."

"I have been driven many times upon my knees by the overwhelming conviction that I had nowhere else to go. My own wisdom, and that of all about me, seemed insufficient for the day." (Written by Lincoln to a friend after the Second Battle of Manassas.)


Caption: "The man of the hour, the new President, Abraham Lincoln"

CREDIT: Gardner, Alexander, photographer. "Abraham Lincoln, Head-and-Shoulders Portrait, Facing Front." November 8, 1863. M.P. Rice, copyright 1900. By Popular Demand: Portraits of the Presidents and First Ladies, 1789-Present, American Memory collections, Library of Congress.

This is how the poor chap really looked at the time of his inauguration. This this has been retouched so many times...

More William Gedney-Two Girls Holding Hands, Eastern Kentucky, 1964

Two girls with dirty clothes holding hands.
Eastern Kentucky coal fields, 1964

Archive of Documentary Arts
919-660-5822
Item Details
Item Number:
KY0168
Photographer:
Gedney, William Gale, 1932-1989
Year:
1964


More: William Gedney
Photographs And Writings

From the mid 1950s through the early 1980s, William Gedney (1932-1989) photographed throughout the United States, in India, and in Europe. From street scenes outside his Brooklyn apartment to the daily chores of unemployed coal miners, from the indolent lifestyle of hippies in Haight-Ashbury to the sacred rituals of Hindu worshippers, Gedney recorded the lives of others with remarkable clarity and poignancy. These photographs, along with his notebooks and writings, illuminate the vision of an intensely private man who, as a writer and photographer, revealed the lives of others with striking sensitivity. Included here are selections from Gedney's finished prints, work prints, contact sheets, notes, notebooks, handmade photographic books, book dummies, and correspondence.

50,000 item collection, Duke University Libraries Rare Book, Manuscript, and Special Collections Library Duke University

Weekend Salvation Army And Anti-Saloon League Bric-A-Brac Quiz

Today's quiz:

While at the Salvation Army junk store today communing with my Great-Grandfather the Captain and trying my best not to be knocked over by assorted bargain fiends that are, (always), utterly Convinced you are going to steal their treasures... *sigh*

Three choices:

a) A caricature-ish air-brush style print of Johnny Depp

b) A signed photograph of George W. and Laura Bush (*cough*)

c) A very nicely matted and framed Dean by the Snapdragon

I thought of taking Crackberries of the other two and making it a REAL visual extravaganza, but I was lazy.

Time for my nap.

Everything Was Beautiful, And Nothing Hurt

"Scanned from Slaughter-House Five and pasted in my jrnl."

Funny how these things turn up, just at the right moment. Now all is centered and serene in Bloggy-Land. Srsly.

You Will Be Assimilated, via flying kites

ca. Nineteen-Hundred And Sixty-Seven

Please Respond To My Enquiries, Thank You

"One Thousand Postcards is a short radio piece by René Gutel, about how her father, a bus driver, finding his job sometimes dull, decided to write her a postcard every day while she was away at college. I like the fact that after a while the whole campus became fascinated by the postcards, and she found herself having to read that day's instalment to student after envious student. Funny and sweet."

Ah. A father's love.  Suck-It,  Post Secret.--That is all.

via: Fed By Birds, thanks to Legacy Matters --(Beware of the ulterior motive of this last one as well).

Wes Anderson Photographed By Serge Leblon

Wes Anderson photographed by Serge Leblon, via:  You Will Be Assimilated via: Kitsune Noir

Two Things:

The Found Photo

Two things:

One: I really don't want to give these people too much pub, because I am a little conflicted about the "vintage" equivalent of selling pictures found during a Google search, or maybe a friends cell phone, or discards.

And two: I am very conflicted about having been a teenager in the decade that the above object was taken.

Melbourne's Chinatown-Little Bourke Street area (Victoria) ca. 1900

Chinese figures in a doorway, including two children c. 1900

Australia - Victoria - Melbourne - Little Bourke Street

Taken outside 193-195 Little Bourke Street. Some of the children photographed might belong to the Poon family who lived at this address and had eleven children. One child looks part European (far left).

Image from Chinese Museum (Australia)

Via: The Vapour Trail