I sometimes find myself wishing I had studied Art History in college (or that I had read up on it a bit more on my own, at a tenderer age than this), but then I think, no, being an autodidact of art right now is too much fun. Everything is new and exciting, even when it's old hat to everyone else.
My friend Georges has turned me on to Tumblr blogs (they're not really all Tumblrs, but all in that same style--photocentric, completely visual, few, if any, words, and running the gamut from the beautiful and sublime, to the sexual and exquisitely base, to the horrific and strange). I have become completely addicted to these photo blogs. Utter candy for the eye (and visual bracers/shockers, sometimes, too), all the blogs, no matter the theme, follow the same rule: these are collections of images that for some reason, the creator of the blog found aesthetically interesting/pleasing--whether safely beautiful, strange, or completely taboo. Here are some of my recent favorite finds, and the source links so you can start following some of these wonderful blogs yourself.
(For some reason I can't link to it properly, but the photo is actually from Jane Aldridge's other blog, linked on Sea of Shoes.)
As you can see from the above, my natural tastes run squarely in the safely beautiful to pleasantly strange range ... what I find to be a challenge in some of these blogs is that right after a string of beautiful/comfortingly interesting pictures there will be a shockingly grotesque one. When a photo of a homicide or bomb scene, or something equally horrible, is given the same weight and space as the sublimely beautiful picture that preceded it (and none of them are given any context or judged in any way), I am challenged to look at its subject matter differently, to not analyze content or create a backstory, but to look at it in a purely visual fashion--hotel room, crimson pools underneath matted hair, staring mouths and eyes, awkwardly spread legs, messy bed, dim light, the overflowing ashtray--and find beauty in that. It feels wrong and though I instinctively recoil, I also learn to stare this gore, this death, straight in its raw face and think, "ah, there's the horrible beauty, right there." As one of those people who not only cannot watch horror movies, but who can't watch commercials for horror movies or even hear people talk about horror movies, this has been a darkly thrilling experience for me.
(Please note that the sources I give you for the three photos above do not have grotesquely violent images in them... they are what you might call PG-13 blogs ... sources given in those blogs, however, might lead to others with much more graphic imagery.)
Oh, wait... this is a Second Life blog, isn't it? I almost forgot, well ... hmmmm, here's Marisol, camouflaging herself into a magnolia tree with her whimsical Sugar Magnolia dress from Vita's Boudoir:
In my list of things that keep me coming back to SL, painfully wistful sunsets and sunrises take third and fourth place respectively, after Art and Friends. I love when I'm at my virtual home and the sunset or sunrise happens naturally (and not because I'm taking photos and manipulating the lighting). It feels special every time.
The sky was bluer when I was young
ReplyDeleteVibrant and clear as it cycled from yellow to brilliant gold
The deep reds and purples flaring before the night took over
But now it is pale and the dark nights come sooner
The transition no longer consoles me, and still I watch it.
~ Imaginos
Eyes on the horizon my friend. Excellent blog as always.