Henri de Haiphong

Wonderful old image from Indochine--another of those mythic postcard places.  The way the tie seems to be imitating the beard is a piece of charming preciosity.

This fellow is not identified on the back--it's a very beautiful mauve-tinted cabinet card---but he's always made me think of the diplomat from M. Butterfly.  Costume-wise at least.  He looks a bit too wily, perhaps, to play the gullible Bernard Boursicot....  

The White Stag

Mysterious old illustration I found in a junk store in Prague last year.  I especially like the secondary characters here: the alert yet wary dogs (one a Great Dane?); the doe and the Baby Deer.  I also like the stag's balletic pose--hooves marvelous, jeune premier-like.

Propped Baby

The weird thing about 19th-century photographs is that everybody in them looks post mortem, even when--as in this painted tintype--the image is  purportedly that of a living (?) person.

What Is To Be Done?

The dialectic tells me--after a lovely few days in NYC--that I need to lose some weight.

"Yellow wrapper for animal, and white for human flesh."

Eight Men Wearing The Same Hat

Exemplary modernist emblem: Chaplin, Magritte, Laurel and Hardy, Hitchcock, et al. 

But don't forget John Steed, Alex in A Clockwork Orange, Liza in Cabaret, und so weiter.  

I want one.

The Carnivalesque

Compare and contrast with previous post.  Another pairing, but in somewhat more festive costume.   Peacock feathers and blue feathery ruffles.  The taller one seems to have a little grey tail, but maybe that's simply the fringe at the bottom of her frock.

Venuses in Their Furs

No, I don't own a fur coat.  Did once though---a ratty muskrat (??) affair, with no lining and one sleeve ripped up and hanging by a thread.

Didn't get the point of it until one night in Minneapolis in the 1970s.  Temperature in the 50-60 below zero zone.  Esther D. and I were at a bus stop and I had never been so cold in my life.  And suddenly one got it: without the fur--and only the fur--one would be a goner.