Art Conditioning Life

Two years ago and late at night, we were in a bar in the provinces in the Philippines - looking out over the deserted road below ...


... and - gradually- I became mesmerized by the scenes opposite ...


... though I wasn't sure exactly why ...


... beyond, partly, the obvious fascination of being aware of my seeing life conditioned through art ...

Edward Hooper 'Nighthawks' (1942)

... but it was also that the scene provoked a whole raft of comfortably uncomfortable emotions that I didn't want to examine - just indulge!

BTW, the photos are enormous files and explode up if you click on them - and their haunting qualities are even more intense.

Flowers Flowers Flowers - And It's Still Winter, Well, Just

After a reasonable amount of smugness over recent-ish post about winter flowers in our garden, we decided today to go a bit more public ... and so trotted off to the Botanical Gardens for a bigger canvass.

Actually we had to bolt for the exit gate after our thousandth wildly burgeoning flower bed - the little floras were just blooming and busting out all over the place - but these are some of the photos we did take before we fled - with flowers which practically jump out (VERY BIG INDEED) into your living room/office/sling room/wherever if you click on the image ...























'You likey?'

Reversing Empathy Fatigue

We all know it's easy enough to fall into empathy fatigue with respect to world poverty - but every now and then you see something that re-sensitizes you - perhaps through a specific situation.

Like this set of photos of school buses - with the initial three in first world Asia ...




... and the last in New Delhi, India ...


Of course it easy enough to respond to the lack of opportunities for kids but such re-sensitizing can be the way into something more general.

In fact, I had a double exposure this week.

Pressing my dentist for an explanation for the difficulty in getting an appointment with him, he confessed he spent part of each year in Central America giving free dental care to those who could not other-wise afford it.

Mmm ... .

Thomas Edison - The Universal Exposition, Paris 1900

Paris - Highlighting the Pavilions and Sites of the Universal Exposition of 1900

Rummaging round my computer I found I had quite a lot more Thomas Edison footage of Paris in 1900 at the time of the Universal Exposition ...


So I thought I indulge myself - and try your patience - and put together another small video of some of the various bits I have.

Each of the titled photos below is for a section of the film ...

Eiffel Tower from the Trocadero Palace

La Place de l'Opera

L'Esplanade des Invalides

Les Champs de Mars and the Eiffel Tower 1

Les Champs de Mars and the Eiffel Tower 2

Dancing in Les Champs de Mars

Ascending the Eiffel Tower

So - again - sit back ... you know the drill by now!

Okay?

London 1903 - Thomas Edison Film Footage

Thomas Edison was (among many other things) traveling and filming in various parts of the world round the turn of last century.

He was in Paris for the Universal Exposition of 1900, catching a myriad of angles on the city, such as the carriages, buses and pedestrians at the Place de L'Opera ...

Paris 1900 - Thomas Edison Film Footage

... and in London in 1903 - again catching the life of the streets, though now in much clearer film footage due to the technological advances in film stock over the three years. Though - curiously - the camera is much more static.

Both these productions are (for me at least) like serious time traveling - you get up close and personal with ordinary people going about their daily business, like taking a taxi at one of the entrances to Hyde Park ...


... and catching boats at the Embankment on the Thames - perhaps to work ...


There's the general bustle of the traffic, with individuals occasionally moving into the middle or into the foreground to make a more human connection ...




There are familiar landmarks, such as the Law Courts ...


... James Gibbs's St Mary-Le-Strand ...


... and St. Margaret's Westminster and Big Ben ...


Familiar brand names flash up every so often, like old friends - just to bring this world a little closer to our own - such as Nestles ...


... and Lipton's Tea ...


And there's the (perhaps unexpected) chaos of the traffic in often dust-clogged streets ...




So sit back, relax and enjoy the show ...

London 1903 - Thomas Edison Film Footage

Any of the landscape familiar to you who know or visit London?

I remember more than I thought I would from my time there in my teens and early twenties.