Queer Theorist

Something at once twee and delightful here, no?  Maybe the waffle-pattern ear?

Wish Aretha would issue the copy-edited version one of these days: Who's Zoomin' Whom....

British Needles

A rough cardstock folder, front and back, full of needles, once shiny, now degraded.   World War I, one guesses.

The Beautiful Man

One of a number of anonymous photos I picked up the other day--and yes, he is beautiful.  (I think.)  One imagines an interracial element--something in his appearance evokes those now-quaint-sounding taxonomic terms of the later nineteenth century: quadroon, octoroon, terceron, mustee, and the like.  See Dion Boucicault's plays, or Uncle Tom's Cabin.

Everybody Must Get Stoned

Po-Faced

Ah, several rapt hours yesterday at the SF Vintage Paper show: the place was mobbed; a lot of heavy duty collecting going on. The potato-faced man one of one's more comic finds of the day--but some strange quarks of beauty were also to be had, and will no doubt appear here henceforth.

One Was Blind

One of my favorite cyanotypes in my whole collection: the usual questions --who? when? where? why?-- so indelible, so permanently unanswerable.

Homme de Lettres

Feigning Sleep

---for reasons unknown. One tousle-headed boy (girl?) in front is peeking, babyishly, at the camera. But the girl behind him, alone and to the left, might as well be a grande dame of stage and screen. A regal, jaunty, half-leaning pose--one knee bent, one hand on hip. Even with eyes shut, she's confident and serene, full of method: the aristocrat of the group, ready to do Rosalind or Portia or even Lady Macbeth. (Click image to see her better.)

A Puff of Cheroot and Thou

Pera, Istanbul, a periscope of smoke.

The Human Form Divine

I had a nightmare and. . . . .