Climax Tin Tag Plug...

...Tobacco. Don't ask me to explain.

Just Put Your Lips Together and Pull

An anonymous photograph from who knows where--one of two I have featuring these inquisitive girl-tots.

Have to say I'm a little bit tired of the general idea: over the past 10 years lots of photographers have used miniature figures like these in set-up tableaus. David Levinthal's Hitler Moves to the East 1941-43 was one of the earliest and most successful of these projects, but he's been much copied.

For some reason I keep wondering if the (I think much older) photo posted here comes from somewhere in Eastern Europe. Has a 'Czech' quality to it. Or possibly Hungarian.

Benson's Colour Chart

Just what it says on the can. Says what it just can. Can just say on what it says.

Mysterious Dredging

An enigmatic scene in a stream in a forest. (Click to enlarge.) Four men--variously, and oddly, dressed--seem to be searching for something underwater with poles and a rake. Why does one think (as if by default) it must be a body?

Though the men don't have a net, the image reminds me somehow of Eudora Welty's 'The Wide Net'--one of her brilliant bucolic tragicomedies.

Nessun Dorma

Louis Wain cats in what appears to be a bloodcurdling scene from Turandot.
Wain went mad later in life, of course, and was institutionalized. But even in his pre-madness cat pictures one can often detect an air of psychic menace.

Well, Not Every Frenchwoman...

...is unbelievably hot, it turns out. How could I leave the City of Lights--demain--without posting Mme Delait and her dog? Two hairy angels. There are other Mme Delait postcards in existence--a set in fact-- but so far this is the only one I have. As you can imagine, they're quite expensive. One has to ask (oneself) what makes them so desirable.

In strange Parisian convenience store tonight, buying a three-pack of Toblerone bars. The man in front of me was a shoplifter, who had just been dragged back into shop by beefy guard. (I watched it happen.) He'd apparently had a tall can of '1664' beer in his pocket for which he had failed to offer remuneration. They didn't reprimand him or arrest him, just led him back to the cash register like a horse. We had to wait while he fumbled through pockets for predictably nonexistent cash.

Au revoir, Paris.

Séverine, Potinated

One of the very few women (other than female royals) in the Felix Potin photo-card series from around 1900. The series is devoted mainly to French 'great men' (scientists, writers, generals, politicians) of the late 19th century. The cards themselves are the size of cigarette cards, but I can't recall at the moment if they were indeed packaged with cigarettes. Felix Potin was a fantastically successful French department store magnate of the 19th c. The cards--over 400 in the series-- were a promotional gambit.

And la belle Séverine? (Real name: Caroline Rémy de Guebhard.) *Not* to be confused with the winner of the 1971 Eurovision Song Contest. Rather: one of the great French feminists--journalist, anarchist, Dreyfusard (e?), supporter of Russian Revolution, etc. etc. A snappy dresser too, in a certain dykey-Belle Epoque mode.

Gaby En Route

....for the casino at Deauville! A strange French card from times past: I can't tell if it's handmade or printed. Someone's written on it, obviously; the subject would seem to be fashion. A splotchy postmark on the skirt hem.

I walked all the way up the Boulevard Raspail today to the Cimetière Montparnasse. Sunny, golden, crisp late, late autumnal day. I had a rendezvous with myself.

In Paris France

. . . . so it seemed the right thing to do. The little deco designs have been painted on balsa wood and the tinted photobooth picture is inset.

Cream Scissors

For when your cream is simply too clotted....

I've been dreadfully erratic about posting. Chalk it up to the day job. My dear kittens, it's true: these Clarendons are kicking my arse. No 3 tonight.

Two Rather Fine Dogs

Plus I like the cockeyed angles, intersecting deck beams and sensuous Polaroid color. Extraordinary movement in these seemingly accidental experiments with blueness, greenness, dog-ness, sunlight, zigzags.