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#floral #flowers #orchid

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#orchid #ghost orchid #florida #moth

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#orchid #timelapse #flowertimelapse

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Gillian Rose, “Looking at Landscape: The Uneasy Pleasures of Power" (1993)

Traditional cultural geography conceives ‘landscape’ to mean the scene that falls within the range of an observer’s vision. In an essay from her book Feminism and Geography, Gillian Rose critiques this ostensibly objective understanding. Landscape, she argues, implies a specific visual ideology. It denotes not a passive, disinterested gaze, but an active one, “a gaze which itself helps to make sense of a particular relationship between society and land” (87). That gaze is charged with two central ideological characteristics.

First, it is gendered masculine. “Landscapes are often seen in terms of the female body and the beauty of Nature,” Rose explains (87). Thomas Gainsborough’s celebrated mid-eighteenth century landscape painting Mr. and Mrs. Andrews is a case in point. Whereas art historians have conventionally described the central eponymous figures as the proud proprietors of their lush fields, Rose shows how the female Andrews is actually depicted as part of the land, thus property of the male Andrews (93).

Rose draws liberally from Lacanian psychoanalysis to reveal the second characteristic of landscape’s visual ideology: it is contradictory, nearly bursting with internal tensions. Though cultural geographers (at least those who are masculine, in the Lacanian sense, or else simply biologically male) insist on scientistic looking practices, they persistently engage in scopophilia—the pleasure of looking. Their gaze is always tinted by erotic desire.

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From 1870: an illustration depicting a Will-o’-the-Wisp sighting.

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"Posse" (1993) is a western film directed by Mario Van Peebles and written by Sy Richardson and Dario Scardapane. The movie stars a large cast, with many notable actors and actresses. It saw success at the box office, grossing $20 million on a $3.5 million budget. The soundtrack was a mixture of blues, funk, soul, and hip-hop, but it could have done better on the charts. This film was the first black cowboy movie since the late 70s.

Director: Mario Van Peebles Writers: Sy Richardson, Dario Scardapane

Starring Mario Van Peebles, Stephen Baldwin, Charles Lane, Tommy 'Tiny' Lister, Big Daddy Kane, Billy Zane, Blair Underwood, Melvin Van Peebles, Richard Jordan, Salli Richardson-Whitfield, Tone Loc, Pam Grier, Isaac Hayes, Vesta Williams, Nipsey Russell, Reginald VelJohnson, Woody Strode, Lawrence Cook, Robert Hooks, Reginald Hudlin, Warrington Hudlin, Christopher Michael, Bob Minor.

Storyline In Cuba, a band of Buffalo Soldiers, led by the fearless Jesse Lee (Mario Van Peebles) and joined by a gambling white soldier (Stephen Baldwin), is sent on a suicide mission to intercept a shipment of gold from enemy troops during the Spanish-American War. When they discover that the racist white officer who sent them, Col. Graham (Billy Zane), meant to betray them, they are forced to shoot their way to freedom. Upon escaping, they embark on a dangerous quest across the American frontier, one which leads Lee back to his hometown, where the KKK killed his father.

Available on Blu-ray and streaming services

#posse #cinema #mario van peebles

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The single greatest picture ever taken in my life. We threw Yu-gi-oh cards at the ceiling fan to watch them scatter, and just happened to take a picture right at this exact moment. To this day, this is the only time I’ve ever heard of anyone breaking a ceiling fan blade with cards.

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Notice the large monochromatic white space at the top of the photograph. I’ve outlined it in red

The contrast between the still white and the dynamic, multicolored chaos below makes the action pop. We’re viewing this image on Tumblr, which makes the juxtaposition even more jarring – we scroll downwards, which means we see the blank white space first, and only then do we see the party.

Look at the two visible expressions.

These people have completely different reactions. Brown Shorts’ open mouth makes it seem they are shouting in excitement. Notice that their face is pointed away from the ceiling fan. While it’s impossible to tell for sure, I think it’s likely that they suddenly turned away from the fan to protect their eyes from the falling card. Their whole body makes the movement of the Yu-gi-oh feel fast and unpredictable.

Red Shorts is clearly mid-fall when the picture was taken – you can tell by the position of their arms, and their raised foot only partially covered by the other person’s head. Yet Red Shorts’ face is calm, even serene. It is weirdly out of place, but I think it adds the sense that this picture has an almost spiritual dimension. I feel as if this person is having an ecstatic experience so powerful that it brings them a sense of peace.

We can barely see this person’s face. All we know is that their eyes are likely shut, probably to protect themself against the falling cards. But we don’t see their mouth – are the smiling? Are they, too, shouting? The fact that their arm obscures their face adds mystery to the photo – it leaves an important part of the scene to our imagination.

Every single person in this photo is shirtless. Two of them are barefoot, and at least one, maybe two have their underwear exposed.

All their bare skin makes me think these people are extremely comfortable with each other, which adds to the sense that they’re friends who decided to do an extremely spontaneous, kind of dumb (affectionate) choice and it led to chaos.

I can’t tell, but I’m pretty sure that’s a glass door.