Our Strange World Part 2

This guy has his sports mixed up:

Found photography

Taking the 'found' image one step further, there's a certain delight and mystery surrounding found photographs. Often they are ripped up, and this adds an edge of both discard and new proportion. I bought a book of found photo booth photographs in the seventies, put together by Derek Jewell, which I'll post later. Since then I have collected any publications I can find with found photo collections. here's one from Buenos Aires:


The Starn Twins portray a sense of found image, with their scotch taped or scrunched photos. Bit pretentious when you think they are intentionally scrunching them to look old, as opposed to finding them in an alley, (more like the real thing), but their imagery is superb. Here's a rare one:

Our strange world

That eyeless pink whalebone eating worm, Osedax mucofloris, is giving me the creeps: "A further mystery surrounding the worm is that only females have been found, but in similar Pacific varieties the male actually lives inside the female existing only to fertilise eggs. " (Thanks to Bill for finding of this article: http://deepseanews.blogspot.com/2005/10/bone-eating-snot-flower.html).
So, my blog has revealed something already: upon hearing about this, friend Saad from Paris sent me his blogsite, and kaboom... there's Saad in mid gig on keyboards (and bass too?). I'd forgotten you played, Saad. And now everyone's coming out of the closet with their own established blogs that few have ever seen (Alan!). Well, great.
Time for a picture. Here's another of Ed Burtynsky's, from China:

Kicking the habit

This is what happened within a couple of years of getting hooked on military watches! My goal is to keep seven of these. Meanwhile I'm buying more. "My name is Tony"

On photography

Here's Ed Burtynsky's amazing image of a wrecker's yard in India:
There's so much of extraordinary aura in the world, and I prefer that photography frames what exists out there. In comparison, staging a set up as with Jeff Wall's work just doesn't do it for me. It has its place in the art world, for sure, as a logical extension of a thousand years of painting, but that's about it. I find it very conservative and far closer to Caravaggio than Cartier Bresson.

The insides

of the Lemania, that is. When other watch collectors started sending me pictures of the insides of watches I thought they were nuts. Now I do it. Not much of the design of these watches is driven by aesthetics. It is like a violin, in that the beauty comes from it being perfectly functional. Bill gave me a book of amazing drawings of these. It was some kind of catalogue, but each coloured rendering is worthy of framing. I'll scan them.

The 1952 Lemania Chronograph

Friends hear about my interest in military watches and wonder what the heck. It does sound like an odd choice for one who has as little to do with anything military as possible, until you see the watches themselves. I see them as 50 year old little engines, powered by wrist movement, constructed with almost microscopic precision, and life savingly functional. So here is one of my favourites, a Lemania, exclusively once issued to a British Naval pilot. This design was never for sale commercially. It has a unique issue number engraved in the caseback, and the little arrow on the dial is a British 'broadarrow' that was applied to almost everything the Crown owned, from prisoners' overalls to a rock I once saw at a sentry post on London's Tower Bridge. Lemania supplied the mechanism (called the movement) for many famous brands such as Omega, but did some truly gorgoeus watches under their own flag for the military.

Floating town

Jamie, our elder son, is travelling through Asia. This week he is staying on a floating town somewhere inVietnam. There are, of course, no street addresses, and apparently it occassionally glides to a new location altogether. It reminds me of the now defunct walled city of Kowloon. Both are aberrant pieces of urbanity, with no design, no larger thought than a huddlng of lives and the resultant binding fabric.

I landed a new project today, or rather the go ahead to investigate one, for a new house up the Sunshine Coast. My new plan is to do one house project per year, and this came along almost precisely on time. I'm going up to the coast next week, for an Englishman living in Bolivia with his American wife.

Lonely out there

I met someone yesterday, Mrs. Farris, who is heading off to Antarctica to be as alone as she believes is possible on this planet. She'll be there for two weeks, thousands of miles from anyone. I thought it odd that she was sitting with her husband, and I knew she wouldn't get even remotely as close to loneliness as she could find in the nearest Starbucks across the street.
So, with no one knowing yet about this blog, my words are out there like Mrs. Farris, and like the woman with her laptop and yearning eyes in Starbucks. Millions of miles of darkness all around, until someone finds the site..... a distant call from across Mrs. Farris' snowscape.

I just heard Exile on Main Street with fresh ears. What an amazing 18 songs, none dud. And, in a mood to source influences, I listened to Gun Club. White Stripes have a lot to thank them for.

Staking a piece of virtual real estate

Well, it's time to claim my seat in the elounge. Nobody else in the world has named their blog 'Blog?' Hmm.