FLAME MONGER!

We're all in the gutter, but some of us are looking up at the stars!

[flamemonger]

It's my 14 year anniversary on Tumblr 🥳

[matyas-ss]

Ashes of Time (1994)

Directed by Wong Kar-wai

Cinematography by Christopher Doyle

[chriscolfer]

“She removes her wig, her eyelashes, her makeup, never breaking eye contact with the reflection of her natural self. It’s an intimate, powerful moment television doesn’t often show: A black woman removing all the elements white supremacy tells her she has to wear to be beautiful, successful, powerful.” (x)

[undr]

W. Robert Moore. Vendors and pedestrians along a steep staircase. Hong Kong. 1934.

[portraitsofmiddleeast]

Gaza: Odai Couldn’t Hear the Bombs Coming

Odai Ali, 21, had a difficult childhood. As a baby, he was struck by a fever that left him unable to hear, and affected both his physical and intellectual development. Around the age of four, his condition slowly started to improve and he began to walk.He started learning sign language at a special school in Gaza. But he didn’t get far—at the age of 10, he developed severe epilepsy. The young boy dropped out of school, and began working on the family farm. He enjoyed the work, and with treatment, his epilepsy improved.

Last July, during the 2014 Gaza-Israel Conflict, tragedy again struck Odai’s life. The family’s neighborhood was being bombed, due to his hearing impairment, Odai didn’t know that he was in danger.

His father Abu Abdullah describes what happened: “When the bombing happened, Odai was in the yard watering the cows. The explosion flung him 15 feet in the air and he fell back down on the ground. He didn’t get up.”

“We took Odai to the hospital. At first they only saw a head injury and provided him with first aid. But before it was time to go we realized that he couldn’t stand or walk. He was immediately transferred him to intensive care.”

A spinal cord injury had left Odai paralyzed from the waist down and in desperate need of more advanced care. But, with the conflict escalating, it was difficult and dangerous to access health services.

Read Odai’s full story.

Odai was helped by an organization called Handicap International - they send mobile rehabilitation teams into areas to find and treat people with injuries and disabilities. They provide wheelchairs, rehabilitation sessions and psychological support.

Learn more about this organization and how you can donate HERE

[tamarrud]

Illustrated poetry: ‘Oh rascal children of Gaza’

Rafah-born author and poet Khaled Juma wrote a heartbreaking tribute to the children of the Gaza Strip amidst the missiles striking his hometown. At least 506 Palestinian children have been killed since Israel commenced its latest invasion of Gaza on July 8, 2014

Photograph #1: A Palestinian boy, who fled with his family from their home during Israeli air strikes, bathes his brother at a United Nations-run school in the Jabalya Refugee Camp in the northern Gaza Strip on July 31, 2014. The school is a designated shelter for Palestinians who were displaced by Israel’s offensive. Photo credit: Mohammed Salem

Photograph #2: A Palestinian girl reacts at the scene of an explosion carried out by the Israeli military that killed at least eight children and wounded 40 more in a public garden in Gaza City on July 28, 2014. Photo credit: Finbarr O’Reilly

Photograph #3: A traumatized Palestinian child is comforted by a man arranging care for him in a hospital in Gaza City following an Israeli air strike on July 9, 2014. Photo credit: Momen Faiz

Photograph #4: A Palestinian child pulls out toys from a box at a local market in Gaza City during a temporary ceasefire on August 6, 2014. Palestinian and Israeli delegations met in Cairo with Hamas demanding an end to the siege on Gaza and Israel demanding a demilitarization of the territory. Photo credit: Lefteris Pitarakis

Photograph #5: A Palestinian boy sleeps at a United Nations-run school in Gaza City on July 14, 2014, after fleeing with his family from their home in Beit Lahya. Photo credit: Mohammed Salem

Photograph #6: Doctors tend to injured children while a young girl sitting on her mother’s lap cries at a hospital in Rafah in the southern Gaza Strip on August 4, 2014. Photo credit: Eyad El Baba

Photograph #7: A Palestinian girl cries while being treated at a hospital in Beit Lahya following after sustaining injuries from an Israeli air strike on a United Nations school in the Jabalya Refugee Camp on July 30, 2014. Photo credit: Khalil Hamra

Photograph #8: Two Palestinians girls celebrate the first day of Eid Al-Fitr on the grounds of a United Nations school in the Jabalya Refugee Camp in the northern Gaza Strip on July 28, 2014. Their families are among the dozens that have fled their homes and sought refuge in the school. Normally, Muslim families in Palestine celebrate Eid Al-Fitr by visiting one another and gifting children with new clothes and shoes. Photo credit: Khalil Hamra

Photograph #9: One-and-a-half year old Razel Netzlream was killed after she was fatally hit by shrapnel from an Israeli air strike on an adjacent home the previous day. Her father carries her body to the funeral in Khan Younis on July 18, 2014. Photo credit: Alessio Romenzi

Photograph 10: A portrait of Shahed Quishta, 8, is fixed to a pillar in her home in Beit Lahya on August 16, 2014, after an Israeli tank fired a shell into the living room. She was killed on July 22, 2014. Photo credit: Khalil Hamra

[portraitsofmiddleeast]

Healing in post-war Gaza photos by: Heidi Levine

[65eatonplace-deactivated2025110]

Rare unpublished outtakes of Sharon Tate by Jerry Schatzberg taken in 1966 and generously released by their Russian owner this week

[transpondster]

[hirokazukoreeda]

Desert Hearts (1985), dir. Donna Deitch.

[sartorialadventure]

Himba women of Namibia cover their braids in otijize, a mixture of butterfat and ochre pigment, which gives their hair and skin a deep orange or reddish tint. The paste is often perfumed with the aromatic resin of Commiphora multijuga (omuzumba). The color of otijize symbolizes earth’s rich red color and blood, the essence of life, and is the Himba ideal of beauty. Otjize is also used for hygienic purposes due to water scarcity. Over time, otjize flakes off, removing dirt and dead skin. Wood ash is used to wash the hair.

[barcarole]

Couple in Paris, 1970, by Bruno Barbey.

[dolm]

Japan. Kyoto. 1994. Hanamachi district. Jodi Cobb.  

[global-musings]

Cecilia, a fishwife  

Cape Coast, Ghana 

Photographer: Francis Kokoroko

[twixnmix]

Sade photographed by Jean-Claude Deutsch at home in London, 1985. 

[sonofaodh]

From deep in LIFE.com’s archives, some of the earliest photos of Egypt…

Pictured: An Egyptian man leans through a small ornate window to hold his wife’s hand.   Nubians (?)

[twixnmix]

The Vibrant Life of Harlem in the Summer of 1970 

Photographer Jack Garofalo captured a series of striking photos of Harlem, New York for Paris Match magazine during a period of six weeks in the summer of 1970.