Discover Top Posts Tagged with #olympusbcl

KOBH #0068 — Sydney Sandstone Series •

Gazing at a different face of the city •

A selection of the images from the completed “Sydney Sandstone” series on architectural/psychogeographical wanderings through Sydney.

My aim was to link the present built-up shiny towering city to a time when sandstone quarries were once a short walk from the city centre.

All of the architecture photographed were built with stone quarried from Pyrmont.

To see the entire series, follow the links below:

#Sydney Sandstone #color photography #photographers on tumblr #Psychogeography #olympusbcl #body cap lens

Pretty bikes all in a row…

#olympusbcl #submission

KOBH #0047 — Powder Gate and Municipal House, Prague

Three years and 33 years on

1475: Construction began on the Powder Tower/Gate. It was one of the 13 original city gates of Prague. In the 17th century gunpowder was stored there, hence the name.

1912: The Municipal House opens. It was designed in the Art Nouveau style, earlier known as the “Mucha style” such was the influence of Alphonse Mucha whose work can be seen inside. Seen here above the main entrance is the mosaic “Homage to Prague” by Karel Spiller.

1984: A Czech writer named Milan Kundera was interviewed by fellow writer, Ian McEwan in Paris — Kundera’s adopted home. At the time, Kundera’s writings were banned in Czechoslovakia and his novel “The Unbearable Lightness of Being” had recently been published — one of this writer’s favourite novels and definitely the spark for wanting to visit Prague.

One of the topics explored in the interview was kitsch (and politics):

McEwan: You have written: “Kitsch is the aesthetic ideal of all politicians and all political parties and movements.” According to you the function of kitsch is to conceal death. Does this mean that there is no conceivable politics without kitsch? Kundera: In my view, politics — in the sense of political parties, elections, modern politics — is unthinkable without kitsch. It is inevitable. The function of the successful politician is to please. — from “Greetings from Prague” Granta No.11, 1984.

True that.

#Blue Hour Photography #olympusbcl #prague #milan kundera #photographers on tumblr #color #czech republic #urban landscape #body cap lens #municipal house #powder tower

KOBH #0046 — Moon Rise over the Pacific, North Coogee

We cannot think of a time that is oceanless — TS Eliot

David Foster Wallace was a writer of non-fiction and novels who favoured exposition and specificity. To me, his style is dialectical, analytical, near-syllogistic and witty. Even the surprises in his prose are matter-of-fact. He once gave a commencement speech which started with the following anecdote:

There are these two young fish swimming along and they happen to meet an older fish swimming the other way, who nods at them and says “Morning, boys. How’s the water?” And the two young fish swim on for a bit, and then eventually one of them looks over at the other and goes “What the hell is water?

What followed was an exegesis on perspective, compassion and the quotidian. Later the speech was published as a piece entitled “This is Water”, worth a detailed read: [PDF]

Following an utterly divergent path, novelist and poet Jack Kerouac writing about time spent in Big Sur, California reconstellated the ocean in words:

Shoo — Shaw — Shish — from “Sea: Sounds of the Pacific Ocean at Big Sur”

Both evoke that oceanic feeling.

#olympusbcl #Blue Hour Photography #full moon #original photography #Coogee #photographers on tumblr #david foster wallace #jack kerouac #body cap lens #australia #pacific ocean #ts eliot

KOBH #0045 — Prater Park, Vienna

Truth and Art

Said Pablo Picasso:

We all know that Art is not truth. Art is a lie that makes us realise truth.

For further context to Picasso’s quote: [link].

Seen here is the Great Ferris Wheel of Vienna (Wiener Riesenrad), where Orson Welles playing Harry Lime in the film “The Third Man” said:

Don’t be so gloomy, after all it’s not that awful. You know what the fellow said: “In Italy for thirty years under the Borgias, they had warfare, terror, murder, bloodshed. They produced Michelangelo, da Vinci, and the Renaissance. In Switzerland, they had brotherly love, five hundred years of democracy and peace, and what did they produce? The cuckoo clock.”

The film was set in post-WWII Vienna; the observation is apposite now — aside from the quote’s loose grasp of the history of Switzerland. (Refer to Picasso above).

Incidentally, an essay published in 2012 on the BBC website includes an account of the real-life political intrigue connected to the creation of “The Third Man” involving its writer Graham Greene, a Soviet mole and George Orwell. It’s part of a broader discussion…

Title of the essay: “Are tyrants good for Art?”: [link]