Gender Trouble

....or maybe just some Radical Faeries?  Some of the cavemen seem to be wearing prehistoric gym socks and bunny-scuffs.

Long and Short of It, Plus Blimp

Two versions of the same sight gag, separated by twenty or thirty years-- English and Spanish.


Put them side by side (not possible with this blog template) and you get an Art Nouveau "M".

Speak, Memory

Attractive anon- ymous photo of parents (presumably) and three daughters: certainly the four females here look very much alike.  Impossible to tell, though, about the dad.  As one's eyes move from right side of image to left--present to past, as it were--the figures fade out (via overexposure).  By the time we reach the father he is a mere clownish blur, with only suspenders, legs, and freakish gigantic hands in focus.

If the photograph is an allegory, I'm not quite sure what it's an allegory of.  The historic (and apparently irreversible) feminization of the modern human subject? 

Lettuce Be Married

"But the week’s big US story is the legalization of gay marriage. We’re seriously thrilled. It’s a real new world order. The cat is finally out of the bag. (Has in fact come out of the bag as a transgendered feline-American with eight small, dialectically engineered digital nipples.) The horses, tails swishing up a storm, have finally left the barn. The cow’s jumped over the moon and is getting an awesome mani-pedi before hitting the clubs. The pigs – always fabulous – are redecorating their poke in bright orange and pink mid-century modern. (Let’s get rid of that awful greasy entrails-and-slop-covered sofa, shall we?)"  ---"Rah, Rah, Cheers, Queers,"  London Review of Books, 29 August 2013

1950s Curtain Fabric Also Great

In the third snap, that is.  As you can see: in a spirit of acquisitive solidarity I feel compelled to celebrate fellow happy collectors the world over. 

A Classic

Very Clockwork

A nice touch here: the 'period' copy of Joy of Cooking on the left.

The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie

Most remarkable about the classic Polaroid: how the the format makes the world look at once exquisite and exhilarating, but also penetrated somehow with a kind of sinister 'burn'.   Some subliminal color/mood incoherence.

What happened after this was taken?  Note tiny fellows in corner, on another pole, practicing for the mass electrocution of innocents.

Petites Déesses

No wonder I was bewildered by the card I posted on July 10 under the title 'Child Goddess.'  I was confusing that card with this one.  (In my addle-pated defense: the two tiny models do look alike.)  What had happened, I wondered aloud, to all of Baby Artemis/Diana's accoutrements? etc. etc.  Very maundering and unsatisfactory and pointless (my post).

I still don't know who the little girl in the other card was meant to represent.  In the card to the left, which turned up in a pile of pc's I was organizing a few days ago, however, it's impossible to mistake the subject.  As in a Renaissance emblem book, all of the identifying motifs are here--to the point of allegorical overkill.  Ah, semiosis: it's flooding out my circuits. 

Behold the Wrestling Team

Two well-muscled choices from Saturday's Vintage Paper fair:

The top card here a Tuck 'Oilette' (hand- tinted card) showing two German wrestlers--ahem-- deep in the throes.  (Tuck was a renowned British postcard publisher, best-known for photo portraits of royal family and views of historic English beauty spots.   But they seem to have had a side business going in Germany too.  In kink.)

Given the subject, I find the image strangely beautiful and arresting---the delicate hand coloring of the knee braces quite extraordinary, likewise the peculiar (watchful? suspicious?) gaze of the fellow in green shorts.
As for the group photo: cheesiness rules.  (Someone has penciled 'the wrestling team' on the back.)  For some reason these flabby fellows do not inspire confidence.  Did they ever win a match?   One wonders.  Second guy in on the right has a disconcerting resemblance to Anthony Weiner.

Note suspenders in both images.  How on earth, while wrestling, to keep everything up?  Socks, prehistoric sweat pants, pecker, etc.

Yours Till Butterflies

Total gorgeousness!  As promised, went to Vintage Postcard /Photo Fair yesterday, and found a cache of things worth looking at many times.
I'll post some more of the best this week.   For some reason RPPCs stood out at this fair.  To be continued ....

Child With Lace and Father

Tomorrow is the day!  Vintage Paper & Postcard Fair at Golden Gate Park.

One will be plunging in on the early side.  And this picture?  Talk about eye contact.  The man has those dark rings under his eyes one sees in photos of Peter Lorre, Sal Mineo, Paul Auster....

...sometimes Raymond Burr, too.

I'm Coming 2 C U

Nice contrast here between poorly but agreeably printed background and the embossed tin (?) used for the rail car.

Just don't go any faster.

Pittsburgh Cowboy

Came in the mail this week, and shoots up to the top of the list of my favorite late 19th-c. cabinet cards.  He's from Pittsburgh and a dandy of quite remarkable composure.  So much to like--hat, coat, and mustache, obviously --but also the light sharp eyes, and seeming lack of eyebrows. 

He's now on top of the gym locker file cabinet in my office--so I can keep on looking at him.

The Efficacious Word

Another 'not exactly a postcard' offering --- but an interesting souvenir picked up in Lewes, Sussex, the other week when we were staying in Brighton. Talked to the man who runs the Tom Paine Printing Press (it's on the High Street): he'd devised this broadsheet.  Just before he decamped for the 13 Colonies, Tom Paine lived and wrote in the house across the street.

For typophiles especially.   Click to enlarge.

Clarence

A boy named Clarence--feigning annoyance, among other things.

Crepuscular Fancy

Not old, not vintage, just a fabulous postcard on a fabulous theme.

The Royal Pavilion (Brighton) by dusk.  Took BV there last week: my third visit, her first.  Delightful, diverting--as always.

Postcards from the 15th Century

Four lovely faces from the rood screen at Binham Priory, Norfolk.  The painted figures were covered over by Protestant fanatics during the Dissolution of the Monasteries, who also inscribed passages on the screen from the Cranmer (English) Bible.  The whitewash has gradually begun to flake off, revealing the pictures once again.

The mash-up of imagery and text seems utterly contemporary, despite the age of the screen.  Could be a postered wall in the Mission.