New Update!
posted by Alana at
10:14 PM
0 Comments
Times they are a changin
check out a new design for the plastic gallon jug of milk. its supposed to bring down cost of packaging and transportation and be more fridge friendly. interesting. im not sure i like the look of it but the evolution of milk packaging is very interesting to me. we haven't seen a change since the introduction of the plastic jug form cardboard carton in the 50s, and then previous to that the glass bottle of the 1800's. i still favor the cardboard carton, its the best design i think.
an article from the Dieline.com
and an article from the NY Times
an article from the Dieline.com
and an article from the NY Times
posted by Andy Sir at
1:41 PM
1 Comments
Picking up the Camera Again.
Once school ended, I put my Mamiya down and never looked back. I had, had enough and wanted nothing to do with it. Now eight months later I find myself missing what was once my entire life. I was always "looking" hard. Although I still look, it's definitely not with the least amount of intensity that I once had. So last night at sunset (as should be expected) I loaded my film and began shooting. Alone. I want to continue where I left off so many months ago, but with different eyes this time.
Totally enamoured with Lena Corwin's photos (&book) of Printing By Hand.
Labels: Photography
posted by Alana at
12:05 PM
1 Comments
Annie Leibowitz for Louis Vuitton
Annie Leibowitz has done a beautiful shoot with the Coppola's for Louis Vuitton. You can watch an interesting behind the scenes video and other stories at louisvuitton.com.
Labels: Art, Fashion, Photographer, Photography
posted by Alana at
11:07 AM
0 Comments
Still Lovers
What a beautiful photo essay on such an interesting topic.
Elena Dorfman Photography
A fascinating, serious, and shocking glimpse into an alien realm, these are art photos of the complex relationships between sex dolls and their owners. These are not kitschy inflatables, but life-sized expensive, highly realistic dolls, customized to the smallest detail. Dorfman’s deft treatment of the subject and neutral color palette keep the images grounded in documentary tradition, neither prurient nor fantastic. Viewers can believe in the owners’ vision of these dolls as free objects of relation from this candid and non-judgmental approach. The dolls become sculptural beauties, sex kittens, companions, and family members. A woman owns several dolls representing different aspects of her personality. A military officer dreams of marrying his Rebecca. A family goes about their morning routine as Valentine sits at the table in a demure cardigan and straw hat. These photos are as riveting and culture-shifting as those of Diane Arbus.
Elena Dorfman Photography
A fascinating, serious, and shocking glimpse into an alien realm, these are art photos of the complex relationships between sex dolls and their owners. These are not kitschy inflatables, but life-sized expensive, highly realistic dolls, customized to the smallest detail. Dorfman’s deft treatment of the subject and neutral color palette keep the images grounded in documentary tradition, neither prurient nor fantastic. Viewers can believe in the owners’ vision of these dolls as free objects of relation from this candid and non-judgmental approach. The dolls become sculptural beauties, sex kittens, companions, and family members. A woman owns several dolls representing different aspects of her personality. A military officer dreams of marrying his Rebecca. A family goes about their morning routine as Valentine sits at the table in a demure cardigan and straw hat. These photos are as riveting and culture-shifting as those of Diane Arbus.
Labels: Art, Dolls, Photography, Sex
posted by Alana at
2:41 PM
0 Comments
DEXTER!
This is my new tv show obsession. Its a great show, great story, beautifully shot, it manages to be be dark like its premise but colorful and garish like its miami setting. Its opening credits is THE COOLEST THING I'VE SEEN IN A LONG TIME. It shows him (dexter) going through his morning ritual of getting ready for the day, but shows it in a way that parallels the rituals he does when hes murdered someone. check it out, and watch the show!
Labels: Shows
posted by Andy Sir at
11:45 AM
0 Comments
Blue Book
In college anytime we had to take an exam, they made us use "Blue Books", i'm not sure if this is true for other schools, but I found this website : kioskkiosk.com that sells similar books. I'd like to attempt making some with my own design.
posted by Alana at
4:59 PM
1 Comments
Photos and Story
Photographer Philip Toledano documents the last days with his father. beautiful pictures and a beautiful story.
dayswithmyfather.com
Labels: Photography
posted by Andy Sir at
7:49 PM
1 Comments
Check out this site!
Its a blog of medium format photography. The pics in the begining are cool but towards the back they become lame party pics. but its a cool site for killing time, which i have a lot of these days.
amediumformat.tumblr.com
Labels: Photography
posted by Andy Sir at
11:33 AM
0 Comments
I'M BACK! yay! here is a online store i found that has a lot of nicely design things for your home or office with a vintage feel.
http://www.baileyshomeandgarden.com
http://www.baileyshomeandgarden.com
posted by Andy Sir at
12:14 PM
0 Comments
Maps
Found this at Stories Divinations's etsy shop. I enjoy searching around that place for interesting stuff.
posted by Alana at
7:34 PM
0 Comments
Letters
I began reading a new book the a few days back. Little did Cisco know that I found this book [Letters to a Young Poet by Rainer Maria Rilke] in his belonging and swiped it for my subway ride into the city a few days ago. It is a compilation of letters written from 1903 - 1908. I love hand writing letters, and receiving them. My father writes me nearly everyday. Here is the first letter in the book. I'm interested to read more . . . .
1.
Paris
February 17, 1903
Dear Sir,
Your letter arrived just a few days ago. I want to thank you for the great confidence you have placed in me. That is all I can do. I cannot discuss your verses; for any attempt at criticism would be foreign to me. Nothing touches a work of art so little as words of criticism: they always result in more or less fortunate misunderstandings. Things aren't all so tangible and sayable as people would usually have us believe; most experiences are unsayable, they happen in a space that no word has ever entered, and more unsay able than all other things are works of art, those mysterious existences, whose life endures beside our own small, transitory life.
With this note as a preface, may I just tell you that your verses have no style of their own, although they do have silent and hidden beginnings of something personal. I feel this most clearly in the last poem, "My Soul." There, some thing of your own is trying to become word and melody. And in the lovely poem "To Leopardi" a kind of kinship with that great, solitary figure does perhaps appear. Nevertheless, the poems are not yet anything in themselves, not yet any thing independent, even the last one and the one to Leopardi. Your kind letter, which accompanied them managed to make clear to me various faults that I felt in reading your verses, though I am not able to name them specifically.
You ask whether your verses are any good. You ask me. You have asked others before this. You send them to magazines. You compare them with other poems, and you are upset when certain editors reject your work. Now (since you have said you want my advice) I beg you to stop doing that sort of thing. You are looking outside, and that is what you should most avoid right now. No one can advise or help you - no one. There is only one thing you should do. Go into yourself. Find out the reason that commands you to write; see whether it has spread its roots into the very depths of your heart; confess to yourself whether you would have to die if you were forbidden to write. This most of all: ask yourself in the most silent hour of your night: must I write? Dig into yourself for a deep answer. And if this answer rings out in assent, if you meet this solemn question with a strong, simple "I must", then build your life in accordance with this necessity; your whole life, even into its humblest and most indifferent hour, must become a sign and witness to this impulse. Then come close to Nature. Then, as if no one had ever tried before, try to say what you see and feel and love and lose. Don't write love poems; avoid those forms that are too facile and ordinary: they are the hardest to work with, and it takes a great, fully ripened power to create something individual where good, even glorious, traditions exist in abundance. So rescue yourself from these general themes and write about what your everyday life offers you; describe your sorrows and desires, the thoughts that pass through your mind and your belief in some kind of beauty Describe all these with heartfelt, silent, humble sincerity and, when you express yourself, use the Things around you, the images from your dreams, and the objects that you remember. If your everyday life seems poor, don't blame it; blame yourself; admit to yourself that you are not enough of a poet to call forth its riches; because for the creator there is no poverty and no poor, indifferent place. And even if you found yourself in some prison, whose walls let in none of the world's sound - wouldn't you still have your childhood, that jewel beyond all price, that treasure house of memories? Turn your attention to it. Try to raise up the sunken feelings of this enormous past; your personality will grow stronger, your solitude will expand and become a place where you can live in the twilight, where the noise of other people passes by, far in the distance. And if out of , this turning within, out of this immersion in your own world, poems come, then you will not think of asking anyone whether they are good or not. Nor will you try to interest magazines in these works: for you will see them as your dear natural possession, a piece of your life, a voice from it. A work of art is good if it has arisen out of necessity. That is the only way one can judge it. So, dear Sir, I can't give you any advice but this: to go into yourself and see how deep the place is from which your life flows; at its source you will find the answer to, the question of whether you must create. Accept that answer, just as it is given to you, without trying to interpret it. Perhaps you will discover that you are called to be an artist. Then take that destiny upon yourself, and bear it, its burden and its greatness, without ever asking what reward might come from outside. For the creator must be a world for himself and must find everything in himself and in Nature, to whom his whole life is devoted.
But after this descent into yourself and into your solitude, perhaps you will have to renounce becoming a poet (if, as I have said, one feels one could live without writing, then one shouldn't write at all). Nevertheless, even then, this self searching that I ask of you will not have been for nothing. Your life will still find its own paths from there, and that they may be good, rich, and wide is what I wish for you, more than I can say.
What else can I tell you? It seems to me that everything has its proper emphasis; and finally I want to add just one more bit of advice: to keep growing, silently and earnestly, through your whole development; you couldn't disturb it any more violently than by looking outside and waiting for outside answers to questions that only your innermost feeling, in your quietest hour, can perhaps answer.
It was a pleasure for me to find in your letter the name of Professor Horacek; I have great reverence for that kind, learned man, and a gratitude that has lasted through the years. Will you please tell him how I feel; it is very good of him to still think of me, and I appreciate it.
The poem that you entrusted me with, I am sending back to you. And I thank you once more for your questions and sincere trust, of which, by answering as honestly as I can, I have tried to make myself a little worthier than I, as a stranger, really am.
Yours very truly,
Rainer Maria Rilke
1.
Paris
February 17, 1903
Dear Sir,
Your letter arrived just a few days ago. I want to thank you for the great confidence you have placed in me. That is all I can do. I cannot discuss your verses; for any attempt at criticism would be foreign to me. Nothing touches a work of art so little as words of criticism: they always result in more or less fortunate misunderstandings. Things aren't all so tangible and sayable as people would usually have us believe; most experiences are unsayable, they happen in a space that no word has ever entered, and more unsay able than all other things are works of art, those mysterious existences, whose life endures beside our own small, transitory life.
With this note as a preface, may I just tell you that your verses have no style of their own, although they do have silent and hidden beginnings of something personal. I feel this most clearly in the last poem, "My Soul." There, some thing of your own is trying to become word and melody. And in the lovely poem "To Leopardi" a kind of kinship with that great, solitary figure does perhaps appear. Nevertheless, the poems are not yet anything in themselves, not yet any thing independent, even the last one and the one to Leopardi. Your kind letter, which accompanied them managed to make clear to me various faults that I felt in reading your verses, though I am not able to name them specifically.
You ask whether your verses are any good. You ask me. You have asked others before this. You send them to magazines. You compare them with other poems, and you are upset when certain editors reject your work. Now (since you have said you want my advice) I beg you to stop doing that sort of thing. You are looking outside, and that is what you should most avoid right now. No one can advise or help you - no one. There is only one thing you should do. Go into yourself. Find out the reason that commands you to write; see whether it has spread its roots into the very depths of your heart; confess to yourself whether you would have to die if you were forbidden to write. This most of all: ask yourself in the most silent hour of your night: must I write? Dig into yourself for a deep answer. And if this answer rings out in assent, if you meet this solemn question with a strong, simple "I must", then build your life in accordance with this necessity; your whole life, even into its humblest and most indifferent hour, must become a sign and witness to this impulse. Then come close to Nature. Then, as if no one had ever tried before, try to say what you see and feel and love and lose. Don't write love poems; avoid those forms that are too facile and ordinary: they are the hardest to work with, and it takes a great, fully ripened power to create something individual where good, even glorious, traditions exist in abundance. So rescue yourself from these general themes and write about what your everyday life offers you; describe your sorrows and desires, the thoughts that pass through your mind and your belief in some kind of beauty Describe all these with heartfelt, silent, humble sincerity and, when you express yourself, use the Things around you, the images from your dreams, and the objects that you remember. If your everyday life seems poor, don't blame it; blame yourself; admit to yourself that you are not enough of a poet to call forth its riches; because for the creator there is no poverty and no poor, indifferent place. And even if you found yourself in some prison, whose walls let in none of the world's sound - wouldn't you still have your childhood, that jewel beyond all price, that treasure house of memories? Turn your attention to it. Try to raise up the sunken feelings of this enormous past; your personality will grow stronger, your solitude will expand and become a place where you can live in the twilight, where the noise of other people passes by, far in the distance. And if out of , this turning within, out of this immersion in your own world, poems come, then you will not think of asking anyone whether they are good or not. Nor will you try to interest magazines in these works: for you will see them as your dear natural possession, a piece of your life, a voice from it. A work of art is good if it has arisen out of necessity. That is the only way one can judge it. So, dear Sir, I can't give you any advice but this: to go into yourself and see how deep the place is from which your life flows; at its source you will find the answer to, the question of whether you must create. Accept that answer, just as it is given to you, without trying to interpret it. Perhaps you will discover that you are called to be an artist. Then take that destiny upon yourself, and bear it, its burden and its greatness, without ever asking what reward might come from outside. For the creator must be a world for himself and must find everything in himself and in Nature, to whom his whole life is devoted.
But after this descent into yourself and into your solitude, perhaps you will have to renounce becoming a poet (if, as I have said, one feels one could live without writing, then one shouldn't write at all). Nevertheless, even then, this self searching that I ask of you will not have been for nothing. Your life will still find its own paths from there, and that they may be good, rich, and wide is what I wish for you, more than I can say.
What else can I tell you? It seems to me that everything has its proper emphasis; and finally I want to add just one more bit of advice: to keep growing, silently and earnestly, through your whole development; you couldn't disturb it any more violently than by looking outside and waiting for outside answers to questions that only your innermost feeling, in your quietest hour, can perhaps answer.
It was a pleasure for me to find in your letter the name of Professor Horacek; I have great reverence for that kind, learned man, and a gratitude that has lasted through the years. Will you please tell him how I feel; it is very good of him to still think of me, and I appreciate it.
The poem that you entrusted me with, I am sending back to you. And I thank you once more for your questions and sincere trust, of which, by answering as honestly as I can, I have tried to make myself a little worthier than I, as a stranger, really am.
Yours very truly,
Rainer Maria Rilke
posted by Alana at
4:47 PM
0 Comments
For The Love of Light
For the Love of Light looks like an amazing book that I want to purchase . . . :)
Labels: Books, LIght, Photography
posted by Alana at
7:35 AM
0 Comments
Pinhole Cameras!!
Corbis is an amazing site that lets you download free pinhold cameras, I actually found the link from Summer. I thought this was so neat! Please try it and let me know how it turns out!
Labels: Camera, Film, Photography
posted by Alana at
5:53 PM
0 Comments
Sodafine
Sodafine used to be right next to Tilly's on Dekalb, when I first moved to Brooklyn. Now it seems they have relocated to the burg. It was really a wonderful store of handmade and vintage goodies.
posted by Alana at
5:11 PM
0 Comments
The Bell Jar
I saw my life branching out before me like the green fig tree in the story. From the tip of every branch, like a fat purple fig, a wonderful future beckoned and winked. One fig was a husband and a happy home and children, and another fig was a famous poet and another fig was a brilliant professor, and another fig was Ee Gee, the amazing editor, and another fig was Europe and Africa and South America, and another fig was Constantin and Socrates and Attila and a pack of other lovers with queer names and offbeat professions, and another fig was an Olympic lady crew champion, and beyond and above these figs were many more figs I couldn't quite make out. I saw myself sitting in the crotch of this fig tree, starving to death, just because I couldn't make up my mind which of the figs I would choose. I wanted each and every one of them, but choosing one meant losing all the rest, and, as I sat there, unable to decide, the figs began to wrinkle and go black, and, one by one, they plopped to the ground at my feet. ~Sylvia Plath, The Bell Jar
A sad and beautiful book. Old but classic. One of my favorite books. And there are so many variations of interesting covers. It's a must read for everyone.
A sad and beautiful book. Old but classic. One of my favorite books. And there are so many variations of interesting covers. It's a must read for everyone.
Labels: Book, Sylvia Plath, The Bell Jar
posted by Alana at
7:33 AM
0 Comments
Sewing . . .
I have become completely enamored by all of the beautiful fabrics and textiles available. I'm beginning to love sewing. This dress made by yorktownroad has beautiful details and I aspire to create lovely things like this.
posted by Alana at
8:11 AM
0 Comments
