Fragile Beauty
A few of my favourites from the collection of Sir Elton John and David Furnish at The V&A South Kensington.
Dakota Hair, 2004, by Ryan McGinley
Alec Soth, The Farm, Angola State Prison, LA, 2002
Bruce Davidson, Black Americans, New York City, 1962
Robert Frank, Tolly, 1955
Sally Mann, Deep South
Automatic Collage
Madge Gill’s automatic writing and Myrninerest.
Base: The Flatiron, Edward J. Steichen
Overlay: Madge Gill’s automatic writing
Spooky Lady: Madge Gill’s Myrninerest
(Fear of) Choice
There isn’t a right answer.
There just isn’t. The game show
where the bells ring and the points
go up and the confetti falls
because you got the answer
is a lie. The preacher who would assure you
of how to attain salvation
is making it all up. The doctor
who knows just how to fix
what ails you will be sure
of something else tomorrow.
Every choice will
wound someone, heal someone,
build a wall and open a conversation.
Things will always happen
that you can’t foresee.
But you have to choose.
It’s all we have—that little rudder
that we employ in the midst
of all the eddies and rapids,
the current that pulls us
inexorably toward the sea.
The fact that you are swept along
by the river is no excuse.
Watch where you are going.
Lean in toward what you love.
When in doubt, tell the truth.
–Lynn Ungar
KwangHo Shin on Behance
Madge Gill
Excerpt from The Story of Art Without Men by Katy Hessel:
Madge Gill (1882-1961) began her hypnotic drawings and embroideries after experiencing astonishing visions. As haunting as they are mesmerising (she felt her work was guided by her spirit, “Myrninerest,” each work leaves me captivated, musing over who this figure (or figures) is, how it came to be, and waht visions Gill experienced to feel such compulsion to create it.
Born illegitimately in Walthamstow, London, Gill was raised in an orphanage and later forcibly sent to Canada to work as a labourer. On her return to the UK,, she took work as a nurse at Whipps Cross Hospital but continued to face hardships. Suffering from life-threatening illnesses, the loss of an eye and a whole set of teeth, Gill gave birth to a stillborn child, then lost a son to the Spanish flu epidemic.
In March 1920, though, her life suddenly changed. Controlled by higher powers, in a ‘trance-like state’, Gill began embroidering and producing ink drawings at aggressive speed. Later admitted to hospital where she was put under the care of Mr Helen Boyle, a progressive doctor who encouraged her automatic drawings and writings, Gill’s artistic practice thrived and was championed by her son, Laurie. (…)
While the figures in her work remain unresolved, scholars have suggested they might be self-portraits, or images of her Myrinerest, her dead children of the family she never knew. All we know is that in a letter to a friend, Gill once wrote, “My pictures take my min off the worries.”
In Praise of Mystery
Arching under the night sky inky
with black expansiveness, we point
to the planets we know, we
pin quick wishes on stars. From earth,
we read the sky as if it is an unerring book
of the universe, expert and evident.
Still, there are mysteries below our sky:
the whale song, the songbird singing
its call in the bough of a wind-shaken tree.
We are creatures of constant awe,
curious at beauty, at leaf and blossom,
at grief and pleasure, sun and shadow.
And it is not darkness that unites us,
not the cold distance of space, but
the offering of water, each drop of rain,
each rivulet, each pulse, each vein.
O second moon, we, too, are made
of water, of vast and beckoning seas.
We, too, are made of wonders, of great
and ordinary loves, of small invisible worlds,
of a need to call out through the dark.
- Ada Limón
Lee Miller in Hitler's Bathtub
From The Story of Art Without Men by Katy Hessel:
When covering the liberation of Dachau, Miller wrote “I implore you to believe this is true” in a note to British Vogue, accompanying one of her most significant articles, titled “Believe it”, featuring a devastating image of deceased, fragmented, skeletal and starved bodies pile up on one another, their bare bones made visible by her night-time flash.
Never afraid to enter into terrifying places, on the same day she left Dachau, Miller - along with her friend the Jewish photojournalist David E. Scherman - broke into Hitler’s Munich apartment. It was here that they famously photographed Miller sitting in Hitler’s bath, his muddied bathmat evidently stained by her military boots.
You Wake Up in the Morning
You wake up in the morning, and lo! your purse is magically filled with twenty-four hours of the magic tissue of the universe of your life. No one can take it from you. No one receives either more or less than you receive. Waste your infinitely precious commodity as much as you will, and the supply will never be withheld from you. Moreover, you cannot draw on the future. Impossible to get into debt. You can only waste the passing moment. You cannot waste tomorrow; it is kept for you.
-Arnold Bennett
Luc Lavenseau. Rêve de voyage
What My Mother Says
My mother says kissing a man without a mustache is like eating eggs without salt.
Which is a better way of saying — take the scenic route. Say I love you when it’s true. Drive 12 hours just to touch. Buy kumquats because they’re called kumquats. Call someone you love a little kumquat. Write letters. Recite poems. Be verklempt. Rise early to hunt the moon. Eat pastries whose names you can’t pronounce. Astonish everyone. Haunt everything. Sing, even if poorly. Press the peel for zest. We’re nothing but brief bodies. Hearts, fragile as parakeets. Spit, lips, and longing. All we’ve got is this skin. This necessary salt.
- Joy Sullivan
Why I Am Magic by Nikita Gill
There are days
I have been the thirst
and days
when I have been the water
but the days
I love myself most
are the days I am both.
A Day at The Met
1 - The Eternally Obvious, René Margritte
2 - Family admiring Jackson Pollock, taken by Sophia Mucha
3 - The Guiding Light, Harold Ancart
4 - Reflecting pool, Temple of Dendur
5 - The Roof Garden, Petrit Halilaj
Letter to N.Y.
In your next letter I wish you'd say
where you are going and what you are doing;
how are the plays and after the plays
what other pleasures you're pursuing:
taking cabs in the middle of the night,
driving as if to save your soul
where the road goes round and round the park
and the meter glares like a moral owl,
and the trees look so queer and green
standing alone in big black caves
and suddenly you're in a different place
where everything seems to happen in waves,
and most of the jokes you just can't catch,
like dirty words rubbed off a slate,
and the songs are loud but somehow dim
and it gets so terribly late,
and coming out of the brownstone house
to the gray sidewalk, the watered street,
one side of the buildings rises with the sun
like a glistening field of wheat.
—Wheat, not oats, dear. I'm afraid
if it's wheat it's none of your sowing,
nevertheless I'd like to know
what you are doing and where you are going.
- Elizabeth Bishop
The Journey by Mary Oliver
One day you finally knew
what you had to do, and began,
though the voices around you
kept shouting
their bad advice—
though the whole house
began to tremble
and you felt the old tug
at your ankles.
"Mend my life!"
each voice cried.
But you didn't stop.
You knew what you had to do,
though the wind pried
with its stiff fingers
at the very foundations,
though their melancholy
was terrible.
It was already late
enough, and a wild night,
and the road full of fallen
branches and stones.
But little by little,
as you left their voices behind,
the stars began to burn
through the sheets of clouds,
and there was a new voice
which you slowly
recognized as your own,
that kept you company
as you strode deeper and deeper
into the world,
determined to do
the only thing you could do—
determined to save
the only life you could save.
Fun for the sake of fun.
Carol Burnett photographed by YELENA YEMCHUK
“So much of comedy today is about making the audience cringe. Carol Burnett still believes it should make you feel good.” This is such a great article about a living legend!
Which sent me down a YouTube rabbit hole. Remember this episode?
Joan Didion Won a Free Trip to Paris
circa 1956. Her essay was on San Francisco architect William Wurster.
5 fun things
Iris A[fel, 1921 - 2024
A lovely tribute to Iris Apfel, the 102-year old style icon.
This is so beautiful: A Love Letter to all the mothers in the Children’s Hospital ER.
I loved this podcast: How to develop your own taste.
The inspirational moodboard for my upcoming headshot photoshoot.
Keanu Reeves in Paris. You’re welcome.
"Interpretation is the revenge of the intellect upon art."
Betye Saar, Amid Hallucinatory Moons1962
Lately I’ve been thinking about personal taste - knowing it, changing it and the extent to which we care about how others view it. In her 1966 essay Against Interpretation, Susan Sontag advocates for a more sensual and immediate appreciation of art rather than an overly analytical and interpretive approach. She argues that the intellectualization of art acts as a sort of violence against the artwork’s intrinsic qualities.
I agree, but what of appreciating, but disliking? Or not appreciating but wanting to?
July Waterfall, Pat Steir 1991
A weekend in Devon
I’m getting to the age where I’m starting to think that someday I might be interested in learning to identify types of trees, flowers and birds.
Not yet though. Mostly I just tried not to step in poop as we walked through the countryside where rolling hills and small farms went on and on for as far as the eye can see… It was truly a gorgeous walk - but the American in me will never get used to wandering through fields and farms without worrying about getting shot.
The Right to Roam is an ancient custom that allows anyone to wander in open countryside, whether the land is privately or publicly owned.
Americans, can you even imagine???
We also took a long walk along the beach where we collected seashells and traded stories…
