Not Justin

No, this is not Justin Bieber's mugshot.  Criminals wearing glasses in these old fifties/sixties mugshot cards often seem to have some extra modicum of turpitude--their own special bad vibe.  This fellah, for example, looks capable of untrammeled In Cold Blood-style mayhem.

Beauty, Thy Name is Borzoi

Dear Bev,

I feel so light and airy....and decadent.

Remember rowing on the lake in the Englischer Garten? 

Let's Hear It For--

       

---BANDAGES!   For some reason can't get comments to go higher up, next to first image, but astute reader will have perhaps grasped the day's theme nonetheless.  Recuperation! --a good thing even for a graffiti bear who appears to be missing his lower half.  May we all experience it.

First image: archival newspaper image, c. 1910; second: photo by moi, taken in Mission.  The final image is from an artist's zine I bought at Printed Matter in NYC and though I have the scan, I can't seem to locate the Ding itself, so am unable--at the moment alas--to credit the zine-maker.

And Still My Pants Don't Fit

Have been doing fairly major re-org of postcard and ephemera collections: one immediate result has been to fall in love with trade cards all over again.  I tend *not* to fetishize them--or at least not as much--as p-cards, anonymous photos, tintypes, etc.  Perhaps because trade cards seem so 'American,' for the most part.

Yes, these *might* be my pants--or those of Chris Christie: you decide.

What Story....

...is being told here?Anonymous photo, cabinet-card size, so ravishingly mysterious it goes immediately--I found it on eBay last month--onto my list of 5 or 6 Most Extraordinary Photographs I Own.  The magnificently wasted space above the heads of this startling trio cinched it---so much potential narrative here it spreads up and out of the frame, toward infinity. 

Let's Kiss and Make Up

Endless computer problems have sorely affected my ability to upload me blog posts this New Year!   Hoping to have them fixed soon.  (Tomorrow?).  My iPad has been noble in role of temporary substitute but not always able to oblige with complex requests.   But let's all concentrate on Atlantica kissing Pacifica and how great that is---like something Jane Bowles might have written about.