Gold Braid and Buttons

Sometimes there is nothing for it but an Enchanting Man in a Uniform. The contrast between the 'photographic' look of the face and background and the meticulously 'painted' look of the tunic only adds to the charm of this late 19th-century military portrait from Stuttgart.

Celebrating Gay Pride

The Tact of the Sitter

An image, to my mind, of extraordinary composure and dignity. This is a turn of the century carte de visite ('visiting card'), i.e., a small, beautifully produced studio portrait, about 2" by 3" in size. (Similar photographs in a larger format were called cabinet cards.)

One wonders how the subject came to be looking away from the camera. The fact that she does so results, I think, in the image's overall impression of tenderness and calm. The sitter seems unselfconscious, free of perturbation--as if she were looking toward someone on one side who loves her and protects her. She thereby helps the viewer--helps us--to look at her. She accepts our curiosity with mildness and grace.

Point Loma Dreemin

I twaddled; BV scuba'd. With great success--in a kelp bed, 70 feet down.

Fish tacos in Old Town amid cornfed visitors from the heartland and Father's Day dads in polo shirts. And yes, you can see Lindbergh Field in this postcard--and my father's old aeronautics company --that is, if either had existed then.

Dranem Smiling, 1910

One of many postcards featuring 'Dranem,' French music hall, operetta, and cinema star (1869-1935). His real name was Armand Ménard; his stage name being an anagram of this last. His film career began in 1902, in the Gaumont silent film, "Bonsoir m'sieurs dames," directed by Alice Guy, and lasted through the early thirties. His specialty was comic songs. You can see him lip-syncing one of them, 'Five O'Clock Tea,' in this 1905 YouTube clip: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HyQkmo9fUpM&feature=related

The 'high water' pants and peculiar too-small suiting Dranem favored were a trademark: one imagines a sort of Francophone Peewee Herman.

When Dreams Come True

Continuing yester- day's Outsider theme... A piece of what might be called super-sized Tramp Art, made with logs instead of match sticks. Something about the shape of the thing-- the odd look of the towers-- bring to mind those large Buddhist temples along the river in Bangkok. The wats. And wherefores.

Childhood Had Things to Offer

---I suppose. Puzzled briefly by this glossy (1950s?) item: it looked as if Goldilocks and Baby Bear were running along on lily pads. (Mental mix-up with Thumbellina, moles, stag-beetles, et al.)

Mama Bear definitely scary--rather like the hungry and irritable Ursino or Ursina who dismembered Timothy Treadwell and his girlfriend in Grizzly (and in life). At the same time, lots of Borgesian visual paradoxes, especially in frantic in-flight posture of Goldilocks. The artist here might seem to be influenced by Henry Darger, only Darger's sublime Outsider works weren't discovered until the early seventies.

En Patufet

En Patufet: an influential children's magazine in Catalan published from 1904 to 1938.

And, just for you, an extra piece of wiki-erudition: 'Today patufet is a familiar word in Catalan for a very little kid or for a children's publication. Pitufos, the Spanish name for the Smurfs, comes from Patufet.'

Flapper Child

I have to deliver an address tonight to the graduating Phi Beta Kappa initiates this year. Intend to emulate the 'look' you see here. Former Secretary of State George Schultz is apparently going to be in the audience.

What I can't explain--the jagged missing pieces of emulsion. But I like them. Likewise the muted colors here.

Hat, Striped Pants

A nice tintype I bought at the show the other week, in part because the fellow posing reminded me a little bit in looks of the wonderful Irish writer Colm Toibin. The same sort of strong-featured phizz. Hard to know which are better: Colm's novels or his literary essays.

The Egg Family

Then Felt I

--you can fill in the rest. A Keatsian, wild-eyed baby, for whom all is first-look. Yes: those realms of gold. But also, if you can believe it: Yankees Win on Chapman's Homer.

The Wrestling Match

Two fighters: strangely bulbous. The one with huge rubbery nose appears to be wearing the bottom half of a wetsuit.

An Armful of Warm Girl

A delicious double exposure: pure Amateur Snapshot Heaven. If you look at the horizontal version, you can see the large woman (man?) whose thick arm appears to rise up out of the bosom of the seated woman. Not to mention several Christmas trees and little white picket fences.

Femme Mauresque

An attractive hand-colored pc from the seemingly inexhaustible paper-world of Orientalism. Where was that damned Orient exactly? As a visual field, it lives on in old postcards--in the illusory sphere, one might say, of Postcard Reality. Indeed, after Niagara Falls and the Grand Canyon, this 'Orient'--land of camels and bangles and kif--may in fact be the perfect postcard place.

Photographic Art from Newcastle

I often find the backs of so-called cabinet cards--formal studio portraits, from the late 19th century, mounted on heavy cardboard --more interesting than the people on the front. Stunning here: the wildly mixed type styles. The striped tights. But it all works.

I'd Say the Seventies

Oh, dear. One lived through all of it. Fern bars and macramé . The Bee Gees. Big rings. Futons. The Vegetarian Epicure. The Stone Age of Anti-Depressant Drugs. Somehow.

The Models Are Truly Charming

A pretty spectacular advertising pamphlet from the early 1900s. The ad copy is, might one say, a bit on the fey side? How many men's suits would be marketed today as being 'fair'--fair, that is, in the 'fair sex' sense? Or indeed as 'charming' and 'beautiful'? It's all quite massively girly.