Zhytomyr, School 25

That's what left of my mom's school. She spent 40 years working there. She met my dad there. I've spent a lot of time in this school. Now I'm cleaning the rubble. 

 

Found around the city

That's the stuff russians use to navigate. Found these stickers around the city in hidden places like garbage cans. 

 

KIMBO slice

It's KIMBO slice, y'all. For real.

 

BOO!

 

Great moments in history: Toulouse-Letrec pooing on the beach (1898)

Temporal distance and reverence dehumanize historical figures. It makes them seem beholding some kind of higher standard than everybody else. Which is not true. We're all human after all. Henri Marie Raymond de Toulouse-Lautrec Montfa (commonly known simply as Toulouse-Lautrec) was a great painter with unique sensibility. As a trailblazer of post-impressionist age, he further explored the mundane moments in exquisite detail. But that's not what this post is about.

Toulouse-Lautrec was also quite an eccentric as confirmed by this infamous series of photos. The images document Toulouse-Lautrec in the act of defecating on the nondescript beachside. It is like one of those post-Fluxus performance documents except a 70 or so years earlier so it is way cooler. 

And it would have been great to leave these image as they are barren of context. But you would like to know how they came around - so here it is.

The year is 1898. It was a tumultuous year for Toulouse-Lautrec. For the last fifteen years he was to trying to break out in the Paris art scene. The results were middling, he had an occasional showings here and there but he was far from a bonafide success. But now it seemed like he was going to make it. 

Around this time, his lifelong friend Maurice Joyant, a gallery owner, had arranged an his exhibition in Goupil and Cie. It was supposed to be something crowning moment for Henri. But it ended up being a whimper. It definitely wasn't a success. Mostly because Toulouse-Lautrec wasn't considered a serious artist by Goupil and Cie crowd. Look at Henri from their perspective - that guy was a joke. He did posters for Moulin Rouge, that red scarf poster was garish, he was painting prostitutes and his nude stuff looked either ugly or weird. It didn't worked out. 

Remember that Van Gogh's big retrospective that put him on the map and started a chain reaction of reappraisal of various post-impressionist artists from 1880s-90s took place in 1901. Toulouse-Lautrec's show was too soon and the surrounding narrative had no drama to engage the snobbish crowd. 

The exhibition's lack of success spelled the end of Toulouse-Lautrec's life in Paris. Henri was sick and tired - lifelong alcohol abuse and syphilis took its tool. He was forced to move back to his parents, who also didn't happened to be fans of his works. But Joyant tried to cheer up Henri so that he would fade away completely.

One of the things they used to do was walking on the beaches of Le Crotoy in Picardie. It was a popular vacation place amongst French artists. One day Toulouse-Lautrec and Maurice Joyant were walking on the beach just like any other day. Joyant took a couple of photos of Toulouse-Lautrec fooling around, including defecation. 

At the time these photos went unnoticed. It wasn't until much later, after Henri passed away and became recognized as one of the greats that these photos came into prominence. So that's that. 

A bit later in 1898, Toulouse-Lautrec was sent to an asylum which perpetuated every singly distress and misery he had and added a couple of new ones in the process. Eventually, in 1901 the long-term effects of alcoholism and syphilis had a better of him and he passed away age 36. 

In a way, these defecating on the beach photos are his LAST HURRAH. Just think about for a bit. Let it sink in. Feels right, huh? 

Chicken Image on the Wall

 Last December we had a little trip to Chernihiv. It was great through and through. But that's not why I'm writing this post. 

The story goes - we were going through local churches and during one of the breaks - my wife was looking around and noticed something strange on one of the churches towers. Part of the wall's cover had fallen off (it was under restoration and there were numerous bits either peeled off or crumbled away). But it wasn't just a piece of the wall exposed - the exposed part of the wall had a very particular shape. It looked like a chicken.

Here's the photo:

I think this is quite fascinating piece of found art.

Stephen Berkman - Woman Hand-Knitting a Condom

This is a photography of a woman hand-knitting a condom. Ok. If you wonder whether it is practical or not - try not to think too hard about it. The dating is presumably late 19th century. People loved to photograph stupid things then.

The photo was made by Stephen Berkman for his book Predicting the Past—Zohar Studios: The Lost Years. It is a collection of stylized photographs that tells the story and shows the ouevre of Zohar Studios. The story goes - its founder Shimmel Zohar immigrated to United States in the 1850s and opened his photo studio on Lower East Side. He intended to capture the gist of the time he lived in. The studio was popular among the locals and managed to capture the weirder side of its clients.

It is a simple yet effective premise to showcase some inventive retrophotography while avoiding being mid-2000s hipster pretentious. It is also a good way to smoothly immerse the viewer into the world. Having a narrative behind a collection of images is much more engaging than just dumping a bunch of oddball images with no context.

The book is a great example of hauntology done right. From the aesthetic standpoint, you have a combination of early photography quirks (after all, one of the most prominent photos of the early years was an autoportrait as a drown man) with 20th century subversive explorations of psyche as seen in the works of Joel-Peter Witkin with an oddity grounded by the way of Diane Arbus. 

Things get weird, but not weird as a statement or weird for the sake of weird - the scenarios fit the narrative "oh yeah, this thing would be fun". And it is a tough balancing act because of temptation of going overboard. 

The other great photo from the book is classic bodypart substitution called "Obscura Object" in the head of a woman in a strict dress is replaced with a train whistle. While it is closer to things Man Ray was doing in 1910s-1920s

Robert Giard - Sliced American

This is a photograph of something folded. I don't even know what exactly. And i don't want to know. It just looks curious. And nothing more. 

I like looking at it. And then not looking at it. There is this indistinct milquetoast sense of mystery that is not exactly thrilling nor peculiar - it is just there. 

MFT: Four stills of Christie Levin in Snakewoman

These are four stills from Jesse Franco's latter "klassik" titled "Snakewoman". It was released in 2005 and stars one and only Christie Levin, who was something of a muse for Mr. Franco at that time.

The stills depict her character at her most perplexed state. It is a turning point for her character. She goes through a lot during that short episode. Her character goes from being dumbfoundead and experiencing utter embafflement in the first still to slight perplexion and solemn thoughtfullness in the second still. The shift is drastic, it is an u-turn. It goes like a "wham". Then Christie takes a deep dive into pleasant musing and also some memories and gets really sentimental for a moment in the third still. And finally, in still number four, she settles down on a vicious dreamy scheming of things to come calculating the possibilities and assessing the opportunities.



It is incredible journey told solely through expressions on the actress' face. The way they morph into one another is astounding. It tells an incredible story of its own - the one about getting knocked off feet by a nondescript foggy notion, going through the things of past, deciding to shrug them off and then gracefully moving on to the unknown of the tomorrow. All in span of just a few seconds. How Christie Levin had managed to pull this off in such masterful manner? It is a mystery. Mostly because it is nothing more than an extreme bout of severe overthinking.

In reality, these are just four random stills from a movie titled "Snakewoman". Which has absolutely nothing to do with the arcane craft of acting. And that is absolutely OK.




The thing is - "Snakewoman" is what you expect from a film titled "Snakewoman" directed by a man with an ouevre ranging from "Vampyros Lesbos",  to reconstruction of Orson Welles unfinished "Don Quixote" - it is uneven in a wild rollercoaster ride manner. In one episode it is going for something mystic and atmospheric. And then, all of a sudden, it is bizarre exploitation of predator woman tropes, and then we get a little bit of latino melodrama, and then comes a moment of horror that is actually funny and then comes a moment of horror from a realization that you are actually watching this demented piece of ferocious atrocity instead doing literally anything else.



In other words, it is a film that brings you a full spectrum of thrills. Overthinking is one of them. These four stills are perfect fodder for such manipulations. Due to actual context of the stills being extremely lacking, it is fun to come up with various explanations for the nature of the content presented in these stills. Which is more than one can ask from such kind of stuff.

Bullshit: Bullfight in 75 photos

David Plowden Random Photo #2

Rolling stand, 84 inch hot strip mill, former Jones & Laughlin (LTV Corp), Indiana Harbor Works

David Plowden Random Photo #1

Detail of rolling stand, 80 inch hot strip mill, steel mill

David Plowden is one of those photographers who can make you feel startled by the monumental glory of the stricly utilitarian things like barns, locomotives and even streets. He finds beauty in things devoid of it in orthodox terms. He tells you "Hey! Discover this!". 

By photographing things he's able to defamiliarize them to the point we can actually appreciate them on a completely different level. 

Take a look at this photo. You've probably have a very distant idea of what it is. But you are almost subconsciously impressed by its look, by the way the photo captures the dynamics of the mechanism. And that's all you really need. The rest comes up in your mind in some bizarre manner.