Mitfordian

Maidstone Man

One of the British Neanderthals.  Something about him--I don't know what---makes me think he's not French.  

Incommunicative Subaltern Department

A page from a feature a few years ago in World of Interiors--one's favorite magazine, after all--showing fashionable new textiles of the season.  The photos were taken in Mongolia with help (as one can see) of locals.  I believe these two are circus performers.  Have never been able to throw picture away.  Archaic animal hide booties have a certain allure.  Guy on the left: Mongolian pudge of the highest order.    

And World of Interiors: utterly blithe and undismayed, as always, on issues of global capitalism, exploitation of underclass, Orientalism, etc., etc.

Bipolar Workwear of the 1950s

  

Mid century Modern at its finest.  This model's somewhat perverse energy reminds me of the inimitable Randy Newman song, "You Can Keep Your Hat On".                                       

A Grande Dame

That touchstone of solo portrait photography: has the sitter 'defeated' the camera, or has he or she been defeated by it?   Here one sees, in my view, a clear-cut example of the former.  The dress is fine and ferocious, and the quite luxuriant curls piled up likewise, but best of all, the wry/sly expression: one of watchful, yet utter, equanimity.   Victory.

An RPPC, of course, and one in charmingly good condition.  The woman's desire to connect with us emotionally is palpable across, what? 120 or 130 years?

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

Kittiwake Cogitating

Here: simply an altogether delightful example of 1930s graphic simplicity.  The lettering (to my eye) looks hand-drawn--especially the vertical words and "waterline length."

First Prize, Concours de Beauté

A 7-day holiday hiatus with no wireless or cell phone service, and numerous margueritas has left me with large-scale mental impairments.  I believe this to be an image of current Speaker of the House of Representatives, John Boehner, though others tell me it is not.

Mrs Mealhouse in Your Wheelhouse

Caption says it all: Mrs Lurlyne Mealhouse, star of US Women's Basketball team at the Pan-American Games, 1955.  I was two.  "Her cool competence on the court led to a comparison with [Ben] Hogan, golfdom's "man with the ice in his veins."   Which would you rather have as your name---Mrs. Lurlyne Mealhouse or Mrs. Carmen Smotherman?   (On the fatal Mrs. S. see post from 10/11/13.)

Ladies With Pugil Sticks

Awfully sluggish lately about keeping up the posts---but it's a holiday!  Here's one to knock some sense into me.

Painkiller

Something strange here about the baby's expression--not quite as insipid as everything else....   A certain vehemence.

L'Hystérie

Very strange French postcard from around 1900: comico-serious image of bourgeois lady in the throes of hysteria, being attended by (?) flummoxed husband.  The concept of hysteria was not a new one in the late 19th century, of course, but had really come into its own, medically speaking--and in the popular imagination--with the famous clinical studies by Charcot and others in the 1870s.  

In its own tacky way, the image makes explicit the idea advanced in Freud and Breuer's case study of "Anna O.":  that so-called hysterical symptoms originated in--indeed were a displaced representation of--unconscious sexual fantasies and desires.