Tuesday, May 17, 2005

Beauty


Lorina and Alice Liddell
Originally uploaded by Trilby.
I continue to completely abuse my flickr account by grabbing images from where ever the hell I want and uploading them.

Today I was feeling inspired from a visit I made to Tania's blog. She has a little place over on the right side, under links and archives and such for displaying images. At the time it was Beardsley's The Peacock Skirt from Oscar Wilde's Salomé.

So because I copy all the great ideas I come across (isn't that what the internet is for? At least in part?) I figured I'd look for an image to upload. Because we all need more beauty in our lives.

So I decided to upload a Lewis Carroll photograph for a bunch of reasons:

1. Carroll's photographs are beautiful. Last fall I went to an exhibit of them at the Art Institute of Chicago, and they're incredible.
2. They're technically amazing--creating albumen prints was arduous. Even posing for them was difficult.
3. They represent a side of Carroll that most people know nothing about.
4. The pretty little girl on the right is Alice Liddell, for whom Carroll wrote Alice in Wonderland.
4. The very Victorian subject matter, particularly the chinoiserie aspects makes me think deep thoughts about imperialism, race, and cultural appropriation.
5. The Michael Jackson trial has me thinking other deep thoughts about the place of children in society. As in when does appreciation become exploitation?

Whatever else a photograph represents, it represents our attempt to capture a moment, which is of course, the one thing we actually can't do. So in that sense, every photograph is about loss--whether of the moment, youth, a certain innocence, what you were thinking when you snapped the shutter--what you were when you snapped the shutter. But in every photograph, we do manage to capture at least some aspect of life's fullness, and the fact that someone, somewhere appreciated it.

So--please find this photograph beautiful; personally, I think we owe it to Charles Dodgson/Lewis Carroll, not to mention the Liddell sisters.

--P.

9 comments:

  1. I love Tania's blog. Lewis Carroll, not so much.

    However, I am all impressed with the profundity of ... um, whatever it was you just said.

    ReplyDelete
  2. The answer to your question #5 (The Michael Jackson trial has me thinking other deep thoughts about the place of children in society. As in when does appreciation become exploitation?) : When you touch a child's private bits or have that child touch yours.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Badj: That's over-education for you. Since I went to the University of Chicago, I've eschewed discourse for meta-discourse. In fact, "the Meta the Bettah" has become my motto.

    Joke: Big sigh of relief ovah heah; I don't think Carroll ever got particularly close to anyone's naughty bits. Not even his own.

    --P.

    ReplyDelete
  4. This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.

    ReplyDelete
  5. (previous comment deleted for egregious typing errors...egregious, even for me.)

    Poppy,

    He may not have gotten close to anyone's naughty bits, but he certainly committed to film Miss Alice's form en deshabille' which is enough to give me some measure of pause. Still, in honor of you, O Most Tasteful One, I shall start in on The Annotated Alice.

    P.S. The way your font does italics blows dead marmots.

    ReplyDelete
  6. Yeah, well, you'll notice I didn't post any of the nudie pix. I didn't want Michael J. to start stalking my blog.

    Only kidding. Michael only likes boys.

    And--just so we're all clear on the matter--it's not my font, nor are they my dead marmots.

    --P.

    ReplyDelete
  7. Literalist swine! Let's try this again...the italics of the font you (Poppy) have chosen for this blog, blows dead marmots.

    I endeavor to give satisfaction.

    ReplyDelete
  8. I don't know why you bother, though. I mean, the marmots are dead. It's not as though they can feel what you're doing.

    --P.

    ReplyDelete
  9. Poppy,

    You know full well marmots play possum.

    ReplyDelete

Gentle Readers:

For the time being, I have turned off comment moderation. Please don't spam; it's not nice.

xxx, Poppy.