Modern Ophelia – Millais and Tom Hunter’s Life and Death in Hackney

“O, woe is me, To have seen what I have seen, see what I see!”

(William Shakespeare, Hamlet)

Tom Hunter, The Way Home, 2000

John Everett Millais’ painting “Ophelia” is a beautiful Pre-Raphaelite painting, perhaps even the most beautiful painting that Millais has painted, but it is also a haunting image that keeps inspiring artists even nowadays. It is a blueprint of sorts that allows for further interpretations and reworkings of a seemingly simple theme; a girl drowning. The scene of Millais’ Ophelia drowning slowly with her gown spread out wide amid the enchanting greenery is unbearably dreamy, but the intricate details of natural elements such as grass, flowers and trees betray the Pre-Raphaelites’ philosophy of portraying nature with honesty. Millais painted Ophelia along the banks of the Hogsmill River in Surrey, near Tolworth, Greater London. Nature surrounding Ophelia in Hunter’s photograph is similarly intricate and it allows the eye to observe and indulge in all the details, but the background is not an idyllic English countryside with flowers and butterflies but instead an abandoned urban area, a “dark slippery, industrial motorway of a bygone era”. Nature is claiming back what is rightfully hers. The model for Millais’ Ophelia was Elizabeth Siddal, a moody redhead, the muse and lover of a fellow Pre-Raphaelite artist Dante Gabriel Rossetti. Hunter’s Ophelia is a nameless, pale and rosy-lipped party girl coming home after a night out. Whereas Miss Sidall was trippin’ on laudanum, Hunter’s Ophelia must be coming down from an ecstasy trip. Millais’ Ophelia is beautifully dressed in a soft, silvery tulle gown which looks as if it could have been made from silver dandelion seeds and moonlight. On the other hand, Hunter’s Ophelia is a modern gal and there is nothing romantic about her black shirt and baggy dark blue cargo trousers which are spreading out on the water surface in the similiar way in which the dress of Millais’ Ophelia is spreading out as she is drowning slowly.

The photographs is only a fragment of a series of photographs called “Life and Death in Hackney” taken by Tom Hunter from 1991 to 2001. All the photographs depict a scene from contemporary life but bear resemblance to one or another Pre-Raphaelite painting. Here is an explanation of the series from the artist’s page:

“Life and Death in Hackney’ paints a landscape, creating a melancholic beauty out of the post-industrial decay where the wild buddleia and sub-cultural inhabitants took root and bloomed. This maligned and somewhat abandoned area became the epicentre of the new warehouse rave scene of the early 90’s. During this time the old print factories, warehouses and workshops became the playground of a disenchanted generation, taking the DIY culture from the free festival scene and adapting it to the urban wastelands. This Venice of the East End, with its canals, rivers and waterways, made a labyrinth of pleasure gardens and pavilions in which thousands of explorers travelled through a heady mixture of music and drug induced trances.

All the images draw upon these influences combining the beauty and the degradation with everyday tales of abandonment and loss to music and hedonism. The reworking of John Millais’s ‘Ophelia’ shows a young girl whose journey home from one such rave was curtailed by falling into the canal and losing herself to the dark slippery, industrial motorway of a bygone era.”

John Everett Millais, Ophelia, 1851

Elaine the Lily Maid of Astolat Guarded the Sacred Shield of Lancelot

“Elaine the fair, Elaine the loveable,
Elaine, the lily maid of Astolat,
High in her chamber up a tower to the east
Guarded the sacred shield of Lancelot;
Which first she placed where the morning’s earliest ray
Might strike it, and awake her with the gleam;
Then fearing rust or soilure fashioned for it
A case of silk… (…)
Nor rested thus content, but day by day,
Leaving her household and good father, climbed
That eastern tower, and entering barred her door,
Stript off the case, and read the naked shield,
Now guessed a hidden meaning in his arms,
Now made a pretty history to herself
Of every dint a sword had beaten in it,
And every scratch a lance had made upon it…
(…) … so she lived in fantasy.”

(Lord Tennyson, Idyll of the Kings: Elaine and Lancelot, 1859)

Henry Peach Robinson, Elaine Watching the Shield of Lancelot, 1859

Lady of Shalott, also known as Elaine, the Lily Maid of Astolat, is by far my favourite and most relatable character from the Arthurian legends. In the poem Lord Tennyson refers to her sweetly also as Elaine the fair, Elaine the loveable. The Pre-Raphaelite artists seem to have had a particular penchant for portraying Elaine as well, inspired partly by her rather different depictions in Lord Tennyson’s poetry as well as by Sir Thomas Malory’s “Le Mort D’Arthur”. Still, not only Victorian painters but photographers such as Henry Peach Robinson were inspired to portray the loneliness of Elaine’s life in the tower and her exceeding yearning for a knight. Elaine “hath no loyal knight and true”, as Lord Tennyson wrote in another poem about her. The poet also writes that she “lived in fantasy”, and that she is “half-sick of shadows”; hers is a lonely, lovelorn life filled with yearning and pining, and a lot of free time which she uses, it seems, to gaze day and night at Sir Lancelot’s shield. She not only gazes at it and traces its decorations with her pale fingers, but she also tends to it as if it were, and indeed it is in Elaine’s eyes, the most precious object in the world. It is something that belongs to the man she loves oh so desperately. These verses from Delmira Augustini’s poem “From Far Away” made me think of poor Elaine:

“Ah! When you are far away my whole life cries
And to the murmor of your steps even in dreams I smile.
I know you will return, that another dawn will shine.”

The basis for Robinson’s photograph seems to have been the Lord Tennyson’s description of Elaine’s obsession with Sir Lancelot’s shield. The poet writes that Elaine had placed the “sacred shield” in her chamber up a tower to the east where it can be bathed by the first rays of sun, and how she made a silk case for the shield so it doesn’t get rusty, and how she would leave her household all the time to climb the tower and gaze at the shield for hours, tracing every dint and scratch on it completely entranced, imagining all the battles and tournaments that Sir Lancelot had been in, and shivering at the thought that he may almost have died in some of them.

In Sir Thomas Malory’s telling of the events Elaine’s father, the Lord of Astolat, had organised a tournament to which King Arthur and his knights came. Sir Lancelot, who had not originally planned to attend, was persuaded to come and, upon seeing him, Elaine becamse enamoured of him and she begged him to wear her token at the torunament. Sir Lancelot, knowing how jealous Guinevere would be, decided to wear Elaine’s token and compete in the tournament but only under disguise so he takes a different shield, that of Elaine’s brother, and leaves his own shield to Elaine to keep. Here is what Lord Tennyson writes about that moment:

“(…) ’True, my child.
Well, I will wear it: fetch it out to me:
What is it?’ and she told him ’A red sleeve
Broidered with pearls,’ and brought it: then he bound
Her token on his helmet, with a smile
Saying, ’I never yet have done so much
For any maiden living,’ and the blood
Sprang to her face and filled her with delight”.

And then Lancelot tells Elaine:
’Do me this grace, my child, to have my shield
In keeping till I come.’ ’A grace to me,’
She answered.’”

Sir Lancelot gets injured in the tournament and Elaine tends to him in her chambers. When he gets better, he thanks Elaine and she returns the shield to him. Now he is aware of her affections for him but he departs nevertheless and Elain dies from a broken heart ten days later. Sir Lancelot later pays for a lavish funeral – as if that is a reparation enough for a broken heart. Hm!

Monet’s Water Lilies and Auggie’s Pictures from Smoke (1995): They’re all the same, but each one is different from every other one

“They’re all the same, but each one is different from every other one. You’ve got your bright mornings; your fog mornings; you’ve got your summer light and your autumn light; you’ve got your week days and your weekends; you’ve got your people in overcoats and galoshes and you’ve got your ;people in t-shirts and shorts. Sometimes same people, sometimes different ones. Sometimes different ones become the same, and the same ones disappear. The earth revolves around the sun and every day the light from the sun hits the earth from a different angle.”

Claude Monet, Water Lilies, 1922

In 1883 Monet had left the bustle of Paris and moved to the village of Giverny where he spent decades, all until his death in 1926, creating, planting, growing and portraying his wonderful garden. As an Impressionist Monet was concerned with painting that what is changeable; the different effects of weather, the dawn and the dusk, the seasons, the wind, the sunshine, the snow and the rain, painting the same motif and exloring it under all these various circumstances. Monet had studies many motifs under different influences and has creates many series of paintings, stacks of hay, poplars, the cathedral, to name a few, but my favourite of his series and perhaps the most fitting for these spring days is his series of water lilies that were blooming in a pond in his estate in Giverny. Monet painted about two-hundred and fifty paintings of water lilies alone. Now that is a dedication indeed. And I really see how that may be possible, I mean, just gaze at these painting and see how beautiful and seductive the water lilies are. The blues and greens of these paintings are soothing for the soul. All of these water lily paintings are very similar, all painted in blues and greens with white or pink for the lotus flower, but at the same time they are all different one from another, all unique and special. Interestingly, the pond with the water lilies takes up the entire space of the canvas, there is no space left for the sky or the clouds. And when are also immersed in this water lily world by gazing at them.

Claude Monet, Nympheas, 1915

Claude Monet, Water Lilies, 1916

In the eighth episode of the first season of the show “Disenchantment”, which I love, a hermit called Malfus who lives in cave and who took an immortality potion says: “When life is endless, so is everything else! The monotony! The repetition! The monotony! The repetition! The monotony!…” Point taken. As hillarious as his moaning and complaning about immortality is, there is some wisdom to his claims. Without a sense of impermanance to our lives, from whence would a sense of magic arise? The clock of our lives is always ticking off our minutes and we don’t know when it will stop thicking. When you look at life from this perspective everything becomes more precious and you realise that indeed “every day the light from the sun hits the earth from a different angle.”

In the film “Smoke” (1995) the life of multiple characters revolve around the same tobacco shop, ran by Auggie Wren (played by Harvey Keitel), which they all frequent, not for the cigarettes alone but also for Auggie’s wisdom and advice. The life of Auggie Wren, who just runs a Brooklyn tobacco shop, may seem totally mundane and uneventful at first glance, but even in this banality of the day to day life, this ‘monotony and repetition’ of days suceeding one another, being all the ‘same’, Auggie manages to find some strange urban beauty. And here you can see a clip from the film where he is showing his photo album to one of his customers, a writer called Benjamin. At first Benjamin is flipping through it uninterested, not understanding the concept, but Auggie tells him: “You’ll never get it unless you slow down, my friend”, urging him to be patient in order to grasp the rhythm and meaning of the pictures, which all show the same view from the street corner of Auggie’s shop, and are all taken at 8 am every morning.

Auggie’s pictures of the street corner, and the last picture is of Auggie himself, all clips from the film.

This is how their dialogue goes:

Benjamin: They’re all the same.

Auggie: That’s right. More than four thousand pictures of the corner of Third Street and Seventh Avenue at eight o’clock in the morning, four thousand straight days in all kinds of weather. That’s why I can never take a vacation.  I got to be in my spot every morning at the same time … every morning in the same spot at the same time.

Benjamin: I’ve never seen anything like this.

Auggie: It’s my project. What you’d call: my life’s work.

Benjamin: Amazing. I’m not sure I get it though… What was it that gave you the idea to do this… project?

Auggie: I don’t know. It just came to me. It’s my corner after all. I mean, it’s just one little part of the world but things take place there too just like everywhere else. It’s a record of my little spot.

Benjamin: It’s kinda overwhelming.

Auggie: You’ll never get it unless you slow down, my friend.

Benjamin: What do you mean?

Auggie: I mean, you’re going too fast, you’re hardly even looking at the pictures.

Benjamin: They’re all the same.

Auggie: They’re all the same, but each one is different from every other one. You’ve got your bright mornings; your fog mornings; you’ve got your summer light and your autumn light; you’ve got your week days and your weekends; you’ve got your people in overcoats and galoshes and you’ve got your; people in t-shirts and shorts. Sometimes same people, sometimes different ones. Sometimes different ones become the same, and the same ones disappear. The earth revolves around the sun and every day the light from the sun hits the earth from a different angle.

Benjamin: Slow down, huh?

Auggie: That’s what I recommend. You know how it is. Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow. Time creeps in its petty pace.

Claude Monet, Water lilies, 1915

Claude Monet, Water Lilies, 1916-19

What better way to show your love and appreciation for something than to give it focus, give it time? Auggie Wren loved the city he lived in and in particular his neighbourhood of Brooklyn, and likewise Monet loved his gardens and especially his delicate and dazzling water lilies. Is it monotony to painting something beautiful for the two-hundredth time, to capture the mundane for the five-hunredth time?

Claude Monet, Water-Lilies, Reflection of a Weeping Willow, 1916-1919

Dreamy Pictures of Ingrid Boulting, Vogue UK, July 1970

“…the rose is full blown,
And the riches of Flora are lavishly strown;
The air is all softness, and chrystal the streams,
And the west is resplendently cloathed in beams.

We will hasten, my fair, to the opening glades,
The quaintly carv’d seats, and the freshening shades;
Where the fairies are chaunting their evening hymns,
And in the last sun-beam the sylph lightly swims.

And when thou art weary, I’ll find thee a bed,
Of mosses, and flowers, to pillow thy head…”

(John Keats, To Emma, 1815)Model Ingrid Boulting photographed at Lacock Abbey, “Summer at Source”, by Norman Parkinson for Vogue UK, July 1970

This photograph taken by Norman Parkinson for the July edition of Vogue UK in 1970 is just one picture from a series of pictures taken at the Lacock Abbey. The lovely girl in the picture that looks like Botticelli’s angel is a model Ingrid Boulting. She might not be as well-remembered today as Twiggy is, but in the 1960s and 1970s Ingrid, with her delicate figure and a pale face doll-like face with big blue eyes, was posing for photographers such as David Bailey and Richard Avedon, and she modelled for the Biba fashion boutique. Ingrid was not a Mod girl with pixie haircut and sharp eyeliner, but rather her looks embodied the soft, rose-tinted aesthetic of the early 1970s. Delicate, ethereal, with silky hair and a quiet, mysterious aura around her, Ingrid is the embodiment of a Pre-Raphaelite muse. That is why I think she was just perfect for this series of pictures taken at the Lacock Abbey, a mansion in Wiltshire, England, built in the Gothic style of the thirteenth century. Pre-Raphaelites, after all, looked back at the Medieval times as times of truth and idealism.

What I like about this photograph, apart from Ingrid’s gorgeous face, is the continual interplay of contrasting elements. The picture appears both static, controlled and carefully arranged, but at the same time there is an undeniable dreamy, carefree quality to it. The girl’s hands are arranged in a pose we might see in a medieval painting, and her hair is dancing freely in the wind. In the background the old, wise, worn-out, poetry-filled stone of the abbey meets the fragile and transient summer flowers. This scene looks to me like a place where “the riches of Flora are lavishly strown” and “the air is all softness”, as Keats wrote in his poem “To Emma”. Ingrid’s attire makes me imagine her as a lady who once may have lived in that abbey, holding flowers in her hands and awaiting the return of her knight from a battle. The scene oozes a mood that is archaic and sweet, soft, delicate, laden with poetry and dreams. It’s almost a painful sweetness that I feel whilst gazing at this picture because I wish that could be the life itself; a long summer afternoon filled with flowers and poetry.

The square shape and the grey tones of the picture may at first seem constricting it because our eyes are used to wandering freely over the picture, in a horizontal or vertical direction, as is the usual shape of the pictures. The black and white picture doesn’t reveal to us the delicate summer shades of the scene, but in this case the black and white is perfect because it allows our imagination to fill the space with colours, and not just colours, but the scents and sounds too. Even though I usually love vibrant colours, in this case I don’t want to see the colours, I want to feel them. Just as it is in a dream; you might not see everything clearly, or hear it, but you know it is there, you feel it in a way which is superior to only seeing it. As I already said, this is one of a few pictures taken for the 1970 July Vogue UK so I will put some others bellow. They are also very beautiful but this one is my favourite.

Skeleton Lover

These dreamy photographs I recently discovered are exactly my cup of the tea. I have already written about the fascinating and macabre yet very popular motif in art, the Death and the Maiden, and these pictures seem to be continuing with the same theme. Something that always comes to mind in connection to young girl’s beauty and mortality is a short story “Edward Fane’s Rosebud” by Nathaniel Hawthorne where the beautiful young maiden Rose is faced with mortality for the first time and Hawthorne describes it very poetically:

“She shuddered at the fantasy, that, in grasping the child’s cold fingers, her virgin hand had exchanged a first greeting with mortality, and could never lose the earthly taint. How many a greeting since! But as yet, she was a fair young girl, with the dewdrops of fresh feeling in her bosom; and instead of Rose, which seemed too mature a name for her half-opened beauty, her lover called her Rosebud.”

The young, rosy-cheeked girl dressed in white and the skeleton lover who adores her; they are such a lovely couple, wouldn’t you concur? I must say that this skeleton looks more charming and … shall I say handsome than the ones painted by Hans Baldung Grien.

Pictures found here.

Jean-Vincent Simonet – Under Neon Loneliness

“Under neon loneliness, everlasting nothingness.”

(Manic Street Preachers, Motorcycle Empintess.)

I recently stumbled upon these groovy photographs by a young French photographer Jean-Vincent Simonet and they instantly captivated me! This series of photographs, named “In Bloom” and indeed it is blooming with all sorts of vibrant colours, is a product of nocturnal wanderings through the busy streets of Tokyo and Osaka. But these photographs show the cities in a rather different view than most people walking the streets in those same evenings saw it. Vibrant colours melting into one another, slightly distorted shapes of buildings and streets, neon signs, purple skies and pink streets look like something out of a Sailor Moon anime, and also, for some reason, they remind me of the line “Under neon loneliness, everlasting nothingness” from the song “Motorcycle Emptiness” by the Welsh rock band Manic Street Preachers; the video for that song was also, coincidentally, filmed in Tokyo where the band is seen walking the streets, under the garish neon signs and shining promises of fun that the city has to offer, but their faces show alienation from all that garish world. Therefore, I see these photographs not only as psychedelic, bubbly and wild in colours, but also as a garishly coloured fantasy world of chaos and excitement which offers cheap dreams but nonetheless leaves one lonely and lost; I have never felt more lonely than when wondering the streets in the evening, seeing the glitter and neon lights and feeling complete emptiness and detachment from it all. But they can also be seen as presenting the magic of the night when anything seems possible and one can be whoever one wants; the dream is pulsating and alive until the faint grey light of dawn kills it. Simonet made prints of the photographs onto plastic paper then washed the photograph with chemicals and that is how he succeeded in creating images with such a psychedelic mood to portray his experience of Tokyo at night.

The photographer’s page: https://www.jeanvincentsimonet.com/about

Dreamy Autochromes – A Girl in Red On the Beach

“And from then on I bathed in the Poem

Of the Sea, infused with stars and lactescent,

Devouring the azure verses; where, like a pale elated

Piece of flotsam, a pensive drowned figure sometimes sinks;

 

Where, suddenly dyeing the blueness, delirium

And slow rhythms under the streaking of daylight,

Stronger than alcohol, vaster than our lyres,

The bitter redness of love ferments!

(Rimbaud, Drunken Boat)

These wonderful dreamy autochrome photographs of a girl in a red bathing suit at a rocky beach were taken by Mervyn O’Gorman (1871-1958). Similar to the Belgian artist Alfonse van Besten whose autochrome photographs I wrote about before, O’Gorman wasn’t a professional photographer, but rather an engineer with an interest in photography. Alongside knowing the autochrome technique, he clearly had a knack for aesthetic and beauty as well and that is what makes these photographs so timeless and captivating. The thin, pale and pretty strawberry-haired girl was O’Gorman’s daughter Christina and these photographs were taken on a rocky beach in Dorset in 1913. The pictures have a dreamy, nostalgic air which makes them belong to a world of the past, but they also seem modern in some way, maybe it’s because Christina’s poses, setting and even clothes seem modern. Naturally, the kind of bathing suit she is seen wearing is nothing like those she would be wearing today, but when we think of the Edwardian times, an image of a girl on the beach, with bare knees and barefoot certainly isn’t the first thing which comes to mind. There’s a dreamy veil over these photographs, and a tinge of sweet sensuality as well; Christina in her red bathing suit is like a shy poppy flower which starts blooming and, raising its head toward the blue sky, starts being aware of its own beauty and charm. Every time I see the boat in the background of the autochrome above, it makes me think of Arthur Rimbaud’s poem “Drunken Boat”:

“But, in truth, I have wept too much! Dawns are heartbreaking.

Every moon is atrocious and every sun bitter.

Acrid love has swollen me with intoxicating torpor

O let my keel burst! O let me go into the sea!

 

If I want a water of Europe, it is the black

Cold puddle where in the sweet-smelling twilight

A squatting child full of sadness releases

A boat as fragile as a May butterfly.”

Autochromes from the beach are certainly the most striking, but O’Gorman took many more pictures of his daughter Christina and she is always seen in this lovely, vibrant red which instantly captivates the viewer and brings the attention to Christina. In the last picture you can also see O’Gorman’s wife and other daughter, also on the beach.

Sepulchral Cover of Joy Division’s Closer (1980)

Ian Curtis, the singer, songwriter and the front man of British post-punk band Joy Division took his life on the 18th May 1980, two months shy of his twenty-forth birthday. The second and last album of Joy Division, conveniently named “Closer” because it truly brought a sense of closure, an ending, was released on 18 July 1980; three days after Ian Curtis would have usually celebrate his birthday. In a way, for Curtis at least (other band members were still alive), this album was release posthumously. Since today is the 40th anniversary of Curtis’ death, I decided the explore the art behind the album cover of “Closer”.

Joy Division, Closer, 1980, album cover designed by Peter Saville (Factory Records)

Existence well what does it matter?
I exist on the best terms I can
The past is now part of my future,
The present is well out of hand
The present is well out of hand…

(Heart and Soul)

Life goes on, music scene goes on, even the other band members went on with their music and formed a new band, New Order, but for Joy Division the “Closer” marks an ending and the album cover is eerily appropriate. The black and white design of the album features the title “Closer” and under it there’s a sombre and gloomy photograph of a tomb. The photograph of the tomb used for the album cover was taken in 1978 by Bernard Pierre Wolff. The tomb was sculpted by Demetrio Paernio in 1910 for the Appiani family tomb in the Monumental Cemetery of Staglieno in Genoa, Italy. Paernio (1851-1914) was an Italian sculptor who designed and carved a plethora of tombs for the Staglieno cemetery, but the Appiani family tomb seems especially eerie and gloomy, and therefore fitting for the album of “Closer”.

The tomb shows a man lying on a catafalque, surrounded by his grieving family members. The gestures of the figures presented truly bring the mood of melancholy and anguish; one woman has thrown herself on the ground, from agony and pain of the loss, while the other two are kneeling down, the one in the middle covered her face in her hand, unable to face sad reality of the situation. Looking at the actual, less-artistic photograph of the tomb bellow, it seems to me that the person deceased could be Giovanni who died in 1907. The tomb was designed in 1910, but I am sure that the artist’s commission takes time, especially if it’s a sculpture which requires time and effort. Paernio beautifully depicted the tragedy of the grieving family through the gestures and poses, but also through the clothes; the creases and fluid lines of their robes appear so vivid and alive. This is definitely not a stiff looking tomb, it’s full of emotions, tragedy and passion. I can imagine how morbidly beautiful and magical it would look surrounded by candles and flowers, in autumnal dusk when distant sky is a greyish with a tinge of pink.

Appiani family tomb. Picture found here.

This is a crisis I knew had to come,
Destroying the balance I’d kept.
Doubting, unsettling and turning around,
Wondering what will come next.
Is this the role that you wanted to live?
I was foolish to ask for so much.
Without the protection and infancy’s guard,
It all falls apart at first touch.

(Passover)

This is what the designer Peter Saville had to say about the process of choosing a picture for the cover: “(Saville) revealed that the photos came from a very trendy art magazine called Zoom that had been lying around his studio in London. He later told Mojo magazine: “Bernard Pierre Wolff had done a series of photographs in a cemetery in Italy. I don’t know to this day whether they were real or not – some of them you thought, he’s set that up – that’s just models, covered in dust.” Well, the image wasn’t staged, it was in fact a beautifully carved tombstone, situated in the Staglieno cemetery in Genova, Northern Italy. The tomb belongs to the Appiani family and the incredible marble work was created by sculptor Demetrio Paernio in 1910. Saville explained that Joy Division manager Rob Gretton brought the band to see him to discuss the artwork while they were making the LP: “I hadn’t heard anything they’d recorded so I said ‘I’ll show you what I’ve seen recently that has thrilled me’.” He then showed the band the spread of photos by Wolff that covered several pages in the magazine: “I thought the band would laugh, but they were enthralled. They said ‘We’ – that’s ‘we’ – ‘like that one’.” (quote found here)

All in all, I think the choice of the black and white photograph of this beautiful Appiani tomb was perfect for the album cover, sepulchral, melancholy and Gothic it fits the mood of the music, the lyrics and the overall mood surrounding the band, not to mention the coincidence that the front man of the band also committed suicide two months after the album was recorded and two months prior to its release. It’s almost like the veil of death and gloom lay over the making of “Closer”, like the fingers from another world, the ghostly world, participated in its making. Bernard Sumner, the guitarist of Joy Division and later New Order, spoke in October 2007 about the mindset of Ian Curtis during the recording sessions for “Closer”: “While we were working on Closer, Ian said to me that doing this album felt very strange, because he felt that all his words were writing themselves. He also said that he had this terrible claustrophobic feeling that he was in a whirlpool and being pulled down, drowning.“

So this is permanent, love’s shattered pride.
What once was innocence, turned on its side.
A cloud hangs over me, marks every move,
Deep in the memory, of what once was love.

Oh how I realized how I wanted time,
Put into perspective, tried so hard to find,
Just for one moment, thought I’d found my way.
Destiny unfolded, I watched it slip away…

(Twenty Four Hours)

Alfonse van Besten: Two Girls Picking Cornflowers

Today I wanted to share a few of these wonderful, dreamy photographs by a Belgian painter Alfonse Van Besten (1865-1926) whose curious, inventive spirit prompted him to experiment with photography as well. In one of these photographs, you can see Van Besten painting in his beautiful garden full of flowers and greenery. Painting in one’s garden is the kind of idyll that Claude Monet knew all too well. These autochrome photographs are a real delight to gaze at, they are like nostalgic windows to a secret lost world of eternal spring, meadows with cornflowers and gardens in bloom, the kind of place that I often daydream about. “Two girls picking flowers” is my favourite photograph out of all these, there’s just something so innocent about it and I can imagine the mood of a warm, fragrant summer day, bees buzzing, crickets chirping, long thin stems of the cornflowers swaying in the soft southern breeze, the girls pick flowers oblivious to everything else. Only the cornflowers exist, nothing else matters.

“Spring comes quickly: overnight
the plum tree blossoms,
the warm air fills with bird calls.”

(Louise Gluck, Primavera)

Alfonse van Besten, Two girls picking cornflowers, c 1912

Alfonse van Besten, Young girl amidst marguerites, c 1912

Alfonse van Besten, Van Besten painting in his garden, 1912

Alfonse van Besten, Children at play, c 1912

Alfonse van Besten, Youth Idyll, 1914

Autochrome photograph by Alfonse Van Besten, “Modesty”, 1912

Alphonse van Besten, Mime in love, c 1912

Alphonse van Besten, Mime in love, c 1912

Lonely Birthday Pictures – A Pretty Doll in a Victorian House

I recently discovered these fashion pictures taken by Louis Park for Vogue Korea, March 2006 called “Lonely Birthday”. The model is Sophie Buxton. The mood and the aesthetic of these photographs is fun, whimsical and dreamy and fills my mind with ideas and fragments of stories. I wonder who this doll-like girl is and what is she like? I imagine she lives all alone in that strange brick Victorian house with a grand entrance and decaying flaking walls. I imagine this girl lives in her own strange Alice in Wonderland kind of world with porcelain dolls, old floral wallpapers, fallen chairs, cake and tea, and no intruders. I imagine her as a childlike creature who feeds birds with cake-crumbs, listens to murmur of the trees and befriends mice from the attic of her lonely Victorian mansion, I imagine that she lives in a perpetual tea party to which none but her porcelain dolls are invited. I also imagine that I would like to be her.

“Lonely Birthday”, Vogue Girl Korea, Photographer: Louis Park, Model: Sophie Buxton