July, 2010
Maria MuteBox
A photographer I like, Maria MuteBox, has contributed her photography to a Spanish film called Ingrid, which looks interesting, and a trailer for it can be seen here.
Beauty is nothing but the beginning of terror
which we are barely able to endure and are awed
because it serenely disdains to annihilate us.
Each single angel is terrifying.
- Rainier Maria RilkeA Kiss for Rotting Summer
Summer’s really over now, isn’t it?
It started feeling chilly and autumny a few days ago. Now it’s going through a last burst of dying warmth.
And summer vacation (which is ages long) is almost over for me. I go back to school on the 30th. My classes this quarter are Greek and Roman Classics in English, English Critical Practice (oh, boy!), and Sociology of Sexuality. I love Greek mythology; I know many, many myths. In fact, my cats are named Pandora and Persephone. Persephone is the most beautiful cat I’ve ever known, and all skin, being a hairless cat, a sphynx.
Emilie Autumn’s thirtieth birthday was yesterday! So sending out a belated happy birthday into the ether. She is so dedicated to her fans, she deserves it. I mean, I like Trent Reznor, but I’m not going to comment on the passing of his birthday, you know? Because most people just don’t have that kind of connection with their fans that she does.
Also, I got Google Analytics for this blog so I can check up on all you creepy Internet people. Hehe, just kidding. It’s nice that people other than me and folks who have some kind of emotional investment in me visit my site. Thanks, guys.
Tags: cats!, emilie autumn, greek mythology, waning of summer
Trypanophobia
I’m not much of a fan of the Saw series (okay, a little bit), but this is an awesome promotional poster for their annual Halloween blood drive this year!
Tags: blood drive, nurse, saw, syringes, trypanophobia
The Self-Portraits of Elizabeth May
Elizabeth May is a 22-year-old fashion photographer from California and soon to be living in Scotland. Her photographs have beautifully delightful coloring. They “depict strong women of myth or fragile dolls or dark romances,” and are divided into the categories of “Nightmares,” “Reveries,” “Fairytales,” “Abandoned Places,” and “Dark Romance.” She started out with self-portraits and has since moved on to other subjects for her photos, but I like her self-portraits best. Not because her photos with other models aren’t as good, but because I think she is somehow the best model for her own photographs. She has an arresting gaze that makes her self-portraits the most striking. She has a real talent for bringing out beauty through color.
Tags: colorful, elizabeth may, modern fairy tales, otherworldly photography, self-portraits
Poetry: “Tulips” by Sylvia Plath
This is one of my favorite poems ever.
The tulips are too excitable, it is winter here.
Look how white everything is, how quiet, how snowed-in.
I am learning peacefulness, lying by myself quietly
As the light lies on these white walls, this bed, these hands.
I am nobody; I have nothing to do with explosions.
I have given my name and my day-clothes up to the nurses
And my history to the anesthetist and my body to surgeons.Tags: emptiness, hospitals, poetry, self-awareness, sylvia plath
Phantasmagoria: The Visions of Lewis Carroll
Here’s the trailer for Marilyn Manson’s upcoming movie Phantasmagoria: The Visions of Lewis Carroll, which is scheduled to be released sometime in 2010. Alice is played by Lily Cole, who also stars in The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus.
It looks interesting. I have no idea if it’s any good or not, but I’d still see it.
“I want to take the children’s story that we all know, and discover the horrifying roots that grow beneath every one of its childish metaphors. The characters may be absurd and wrapped in puzzles, but the author himself is the story that I find painfully close to me. Lewis Carroll is far more complex than the world’s narrow perception of him as a quiet deacon, a mathematician, and a loner, simply obsessed with photographing young girls. He was possibly one of the most divided souls living in his own hell that the world has overlooked.”
—Marilyn MansonTags: alice in wonderland, lily cole
9/9/09
“I never saw a worse paper in my life.
One of those sprawling flamboyant patterns committing every artistic sin.
It is dull enough to confuse the eye in following, pronounced enough to constantly irritate, and provoke study, and when you follow the lame, uncertain curves for a little distance they suddenly commit suicide – plunge off at outrageous angles, destroy themselves in unheard-of contradictions.”
- Charlotte Perkins Gilman, “The Yellow Wall Paper”I’m reading The Haunted Omnibus, a compilation of “Great Ghost Stories of the World” that was first published in 1937. It includes “ghost” stories by M. R. James, Charlotte Perkins Gilman, Algernon Blackwood, Guy de Maupassant, Pliny the Younger, Robert Louis Stevenson, Ambrose Bierce, Poe, and others. This is a 1941 copy. I love old books, and old things in general. I look at this book and I think, This is 68 years old. Isn’t that cool? And I have it right here, it’s so far and so close at the same time. I also like it when I find things left in books, tucked away and forgotten, like lovely cloth bookmarks, slips of paper with quotes on them, tickets to the ballet, or a decade-old article about Virginia Woolf in a Woolf book.
Oh, God, I was on the bus today, and I smelled something, like baking bread, as we went over the bridge to the U-District, and it plunged me into a memory of my childhood. Isn’t it weird how smell can carry you back to the past? It’s almost like deja vu, the strongest throwback of all your senses, to the actual experience of life. It’s beyond words. I’m not even sure what that scent is, or if I’ve ever really smelled it before or not, or my brain is just glitching, but that momentary sensation of actually being in the past that it triggers is so real. Smell has the strongest ability to get you back to the past, more than anything else.
I just got back from seeing 9. It was pretty good, not much worse or better than I was expecting it to be. If you haven’t heard about it for some reason, it’s a Tim Burton-produced (of course he always gets the credit!) CGI-animated film that takes place in a post-apocalyptic world. A scientist who unintentionally created a great evil through his technology invests nine cute little burlap figures with life and human souls, giving up his own life in the process, and leaving them to protect the future. The movie kind of presents an alternate history, in which the world seemed to end in the ’30s or so, but the technology is advanced in ways beyond our own – it’s as if we’re seeing the technology of the future FROM no later than the ’40s, so instead of camcorders there’s a little wooden box, like a music box, that projects a recorded image of the speaker when you open it, etc. It’s very steampunk/dustpunk. It’s visually very innovative. Each of these little “stitchpunks” has its own look and personality. I think I’m most like a combination of 7 (voiced by Jennifer Connelly), 3 and 4 (speechless twins who catalog things and have flickering eyes that act as film projectors), and 6 (the vague, crazy kind of guy who’s always drawing pictures of the “Source,” voiced by Crispin Glover).
Chad Michael Ward: Digital Apocalypse
I love Chad Michael Ward. He is a horror, fetish, and fashion photographer and digital artist. His personal work is beautiful, macabre, shocking, edgy, and tender all at once. The atmosphere of his images is very recognizable, and they’re part of a growing pool of fashion photography geared towards scenes from the post-apocalyptic world – a fusion of pinup, fashion-forward, and cyber aesthetics, with strange stories to tell of the future seen through the imaginative lens of the alternative subcultures of the present. He also does commercial work for bands like Collide and The Cruxshadows.
You can see more of his work over on his site.
Tags: chad michael ward, digital apocalypse, fetish photography
Clothing Designer: Louise Black
Louise Black, also known as candycain, is probably my favorite fashion designer. When I first saw the pieces in her Dollflesh and Eye-Spy Eclectics lines, several years ago now, I thought she was the perfect designer for me. Never had I seen such splendid, wonderful taste and quality. Her designs are instantly recognizable for their distinctive style and superb craftsmanship. Anyway, here are some examples of her work that I just love incredibly.
Louise Black’s designs are heavily influenced by 1920s fashion, but unlike a lot of “flapper-style” clothing around, her garments are no flimsy, sloppy, simplified affairs with just tiers of fringe or something and barely any actual feel of the ’20s; she really pushes beyond the typical in a true fusion of past and present. The solid craftsmanship, intricate hand-beading, and elaborate trims on her work are her signature. She uses many antique trims, textiles, and other elements (such as buttons) in her clothing, and often revamps vintage clothing but goes way above and beyond what this usually entails. She makes accessories, beaded wrist cuffs, headpieces, necklaces, and neck cuffs, etc., with queen, Victorian, and flapper themes.
Opium Noir Set
Midnight’s Mesmerism Frock
Sapphire Venom Dress (reminds me so much of my idol Louise Brooks)
Tags: 1920s, beaded trim, dollflesh, flapper, louise black, revamped vintage
The Whimsical Photography of Darla Teagarden
Darla Teagarden is a wonderful surreal and whimsical fashion photographer based in Austin, Texas. Her dreamy photography combines influences from the ’20s and the Victorian era, and takes place in a beautifully pastel-colored, wonderfully artificial landscape with a radiant glow around everything. This world is populated by tender and strangely lovely denizens created with the aid of makeup and styling. Her images tell stories of the never-existent past brought to life in the bizarre and twisted present, of bow-lipped lovers, enchanted maidens, and dignified personages in a magical fairy-tale land. Her photographs are beautifully manipulated, with a distinctive style all their own. They are both vividly and softly colored. Soft, hazy photography with an edge.
Tags: 1920s, artificial landscape, hazy, pastel, victorian, whimsical
