Julie Ducamion

Game card from a late 19th-century French card game--depictions of various social "types"  Among sights we saw today on our way back from brunch in the Mission: a small group of people standing at top of "Gay Beach" in Dolores Park, all with little easels and painting plein air style. 

Unfortunately Julie seems to have a 5 o'clock shadow.

Nor Is Summer Over Yet

Calling all Amazons!  Still time left to practice those archer-huntress- moon goddess skills!  And so far beyond rad--those slouchy and elegant leather belts with the quivers attached!  (Love that word slung.)  They are really slung.

There were some smooth shooters here, to judge by the well-riddled target.  (The image here is a  newspaper archive photo from August 28, 1916.  By happenstance, the scene documented took  place almost exactly 98 years ago.)  "Altho' the ancient sport of Archery is regarded as almost extinct," the caption reads, "there is lively interest in the National Tournament held at Jersey City, N.J.  Keen eyed women made new records.  Contestants looking over the results of their shots."

Let's Go Very Far Away

One of my first cyanotypes.  Love the tissue-like paper it's printed on.  I also love the elegant turbaned man in the group on the right--the way his left heel is lifting off the ground.  The white tunic, also, falling open as he leans to the side....

News from around the world this week--just about as vile as it could be.

A Loving Chimp

....or not.  ("Nature red in tooth and claw!")  Archival newspaper photo from the 1960s or 1970s.  Where are they now?

A phrase I thoroughly dislike: when somebody declares  that a person or creature (often a baby) has an "old soul."  Everyone adopts a simpery-sententious look while uttering the phrase, but the goal is an aggressive one: to transmit said "sensitive affect" to one's listeners, who are expected to simper likewise and nod their heads.  It's an irritating form of coercive New Age moral self-congratulation.  

I'm sure I don't have an "old soul"---more likely, it's a non-recyclable brand-new styrofoam one, or else one that's like a distorted xerox image--the kind of thing that eventuates when you accidently move whatever it is you're copying or drag your arm across the scan surface, etc etc etc.  Black and smeary, wot?

From Mexico Till Now

A purchase from a nice used bookshop in Condesa in Mexico City.  After peering at it intently--so much pointless rubble to sift through!--one sees the weathered face, Sphinx-like, on which the lady rather awkwardly rests her left hand.

Aztec ruin--or colonial?   I've just discovered the Florentine Codex.  You should too.

I Sat On the Mod Box

Believe this to be an anonymous Czech photo--1940s?  It interests me not only on account of the all-fuzz-all-the- time blue mohair outfit, but also because of the groovy studio prop: the modernistic cube on top of which the subject is posing.  I've got another studio portrait with similar post-Constructivist stylings, though can't lay my mitts on it at the moment.  Will post later when I come across it.

Note here also the curiously cruel (if fleeting) look on His Majesty the Baby's face.  One can see that when he grows up he will drive women crazy--with his refusal to commit, his brusque, away-facing sexual authority.

An Eerie Lady