domingo, 30 de octubre de 2011

La Maison K




Martino Zegwaard's set of La Maison K, words and pictures from source.
"First visit; i'd seen some pictures of a old farm somewhere in a small village in Luxembourg, but never had i expected the time capsule i walked in that april morning just before sunset.
Nobody's awake yet when Ransom and me sneak into the house. We have to wait inside for the sun to rise and light the inside up. The more light comes in, the more secrets are revealed. This place is a goldmine, everything is here and everything is authentic.
What grabs me most about this old house is the claustrophobic feel it has. It has been build a long time ago and all the ceiling are relatively very low. One can touch the lamps hanging from the ceiling without standing on your toes. This "smallness" combined with the fact that the house is packed with all sort of (personal) stuff makes it a unique experience.
During my 2nd visit i'm feeling pissed about most of the stuff that has been stolen."

Here the "claustrophobic" feel I referred to is most clear.






Living room with on the table a very old half gone bottle of whisky.




Small room, man sitting at the table, women in the bed/couch against the wall. Wood blocks in the stofe to keep 'em both warm.




Unlogical hallway, think about it; back in the days houses and the way they are build and mapped out was efficient, every detail had its reason. This hallway leads from the front door all the way to the back of the house.




By now, this is a famous alarm clock and a n even more famous shot of it, but it's a part of the experience.
                   
he cellar full of jars with fruit and vegetables on the shelfs, and all kind of baskets, boxes and such underneath a blanket of cobwebs.
                               


                           

sábado, 29 de octubre de 2011

Happy Halloween!


This year my costume is a tribute to the great tattooed women of the 1920s sideshows, I modeled myself specifically after the lovely Betty Broadbent.





My companion, the Mentalist



miércoles, 26 de octubre de 2011

A is for Akrid






By PumpkinROt

martes, 25 de octubre de 2011

The Spirit World





In honour of Samhain fast approaching, here are some examples of the Victorian trend of spirit photography, in which people would pay a specialty photographer to take their portrait while "capturing" the image of their dead loved one who would supposedly visit them during the sitting. 


It had been discovered that during the extremely long exposure duration of early cameras, an actor dressed as a spirit could enter the frame and be captured. 


Photographers charged extremely high sums for these photos, and those posing in them were convinced that their real dead relatives were materializing in front of  them. 


Spiritualism in America--and more specifically, spirit photography-- was taken to court in New York City in 1869. The case: a preliminary hearing for William H. Mumler, who was charged with fraud for selling photographs that he claimed included images of ghosts or spirits. Testimony and arguments lasted for seven days. 


On Mumler's side, witnesses included a prominent former judge who was also a spiritualist. Among the opposing witnesses were several photographers who explained how the same effects could be achieved by darkroom tricks, and P. T. Barnum--who said he purchased some of Mumler's photographs to exhibit them in his museum as specimens of humbug.
Mumler was eventually released free of charge, and went on to continue his work. While some believed him a fraud, others continued to believe. Mumler destroyed all his negatives shortly before his death. 


Frederick A. Hudson (England)Mr. Raby with the Spirits "Countess," "James Lombard," "Tommy," and the Spirit of Mr. Wootton's Mother. circa 1875


F. M. Parkes (England)
"Mrs. Collins & Her Husband's Father, Recognized by Several."
1875




Edouard Isidore Buguet (France, b. 1840)
Mons. Leymarie and Mons. C. with Spirit of Edouard Poiret
circa 1874
Leymarie was the editor of La Revue Spirite, which circulated this image. Buguet and Leymarie were both sentenced to prison for fraud in 1875.




Phillips Bros. (Pontiac, Michigan)
Man Reading with Female Spirit Behind
circa 1870













William H. Mumler ( 1832-1884; active Boston & New York)




Moses A. Dow, Editor of Waverley Magazine, with the Spirit of Mabel Warren.Albumen print carte de visite, circa 1871.


William H. Mumler ( 1832-1884; active Boston & New York)
Mrs. French of Boston with Spirit Son
Albumen print carte de visite, circa 1868















Haunted Air: Halloween Photos 1875-1955



Ossian Brown was a member of the dark, magical electronic music group Coil and is currently in Cyclobe, a duo with his partner Stephen Thrower. Ossian is a strange attractor. Weird things find him. Like his exquisite collection of antique vernacular photographs of Halloweens past. Brown compiled his favorites of the freaky found photos, all dating between 1875 and 1955, into a lovely new book titled Haunted Air. David Lynch wrote the introduction and Geoff Cox the afterword. Here is a glimpse of how the old, weird America celebrated All-Hallows Eve.
— David Pescovitz


"I like to experience each photograph as a magical event, frozen in front of me. I'm drawn to pictures with a mood that 'oozes' into the normality of the moment, and changes it. It's important to me that there's nothing to disturb this, no detail in the composition or in the models posture that could interfere with that magic."
— Ossian Brown



"I'm excited by pictures where I can see a natural mutation has occurred, not just in the condition of the photograph, with mould spots and tears creating new and unimagined landscapes, but also from the passing down and inheritance of a costume, perhaps over many years."
— Ossian Brown



 "The perishing of fabrics and the rotting of early rubber, due to chemical instabilities and damp conditions, create new and sinister, puzzling abnormalities. Time and repeated wear have caused a beautiful metamorphosis, never intended or imagined by the maker."
— Ossian Brown


 "All the clocks had stopped. A void out of time. And here they are - looking out and holding themselves still - holding still at that point where two worlds join - the familiar - and the other."
— David Lynch


 "These are pictures of the dead: family portraits, mementoes of the treasured, the held-dear-in-heart, now unrecognisable, other. Torn from album pages, sold piecemeal for pennies and scattered, abandoned to melancholy chance and the hands of strangers."
— Geoff Cox


 "Death masks reanimate, the once-living frozen whilst aping the ravages of their own demise. Life and death is clowned and puppeted, conjoined in the conjured bodies and faces of carnival mannequins..."
— Geoff Cox

 "Wolf-Man, child-wraith, witch-wife, ghoul. Playful monsters. Familiar familiars, all strangely innocent, they caper, amuse, reassure. But as the eye is drawn closer, as the eye is set to wander - thorns in the cloth; ticks in the fur; weevils in the flour. A child's frantic distress."
— Geoff Cox


"Human creatures with the feeling of being turned strange and open to falling. And glee -- they seemed to have a glee for somehow stitching a laugh to darkness."
—— David Lynch




 "I was somewhere else. I thought I was someplace but now I didn't know what place. I seemed to be inside foreign worlds where there was some kind of troubling camaraderie -- as if a haunting joke was known to everyone but me and yet faintly I knew it too."
—— David Lynch


"Seance pictures wound round in a mad cat's cradle of knotted light, each sitter wearing the simulacrum of his own end."
— Geoff Cox

domingo, 23 de octubre de 2011

Those Slimy Things

viernes, 21 de octubre de 2011

Skele Love

Two skeletons found in central-northern Italy reveal the couple was buried holding hands some 1,500 years ago.

The skeletal remains of a Roman-era couple reveal the pair has been holding hands for 1,500 years.
Italian archaeologists say the man and woman were buried at the same time between the 5th and 6th century A.D. in central-northern Italy. Wearing a bronze ring, the woman is positioned so she appears to be gazing at her male partner.
"We believe that they were originally buried with their faces staring into each other. The position of the man's vertebrae suggests that his head rolled after death," Donato Labate, the director of the excavation at the archaeological superintendency of Emilia-Romagna, told Discovery News.
The tender discovery was made during ordinary construction work in Modena and was announced this week. Labate explained the dig revealed three layers of scientific interest.

The deeper layer, some 23 feet below the surface, contained the remains of Roman-era structures, including a calcara where mortar was produced. The ruins belonged to the suburbs of Modena, then called Mutina.
"A middle layer, at a depth of about 10 feet, featured 11 burials, while a third stratification on top of the necropolis, revealed seven empty tombs," Labate said. 

Excavated by archaeologist Licia Diamanti, the skeleton couple belonged to the 11 tomb necropolis. According to Labate, the simple fossa (trench) tombs suggest that the people buried there were not particularly rich.
"They were possibly the inhabitants of a farm," Labate said. 

The area was subjected to several floods from the nearby river Tiepido -- which may have caused the male skeleton's skull to roll away from the female skeleton after burial. The necropolis was covered by alluvial deposits, and on top of them, another seven tombs were built.
"These burials were empty. Most likely, they were covered by another flood just after their construction. We think it was a catastrophic flood which occurred in 589, as reported by the historian Paul the Deacon," Labate said.
The two skeletons, which are poorly preserved, will be now studied by Giorgio Gruppioni, an anthropologist at the University of Bologna. The research includes establishing the couple's age, their relationship and the possible cause of death.
"In antiquity, it is not surprising to learn of spouses or members of a family dying at the same time: whenever epidemics such as the Black Plague ravaged Europe, one member of the family would often die while the family was trying to bury another member," Kristina Killgrove, a biological anthropologist at the University of North Carolina, told Discovery News.
In 2007 another skeleton couple, buried between 5,000 and 6,000 years ago, was found at a neolithic site near Mantua, just 25 miles south of Verona, where Shakespeare set the romantic story of Romeo and Juliet.
Locked in a tender embrace, they also looked at one another in apparent defiance of time and decay.
"The two couples are separated in time by five millennia, and both evoke an uplifting tenderness. I have been involved in many digs, but I've never felt so moved," Labate said. 

According to Killgrove, the positioning of the Modena skeletons, looking at one another and holding hands, indeed suggests they may have been a couple.
"Whoever buried these people likely felt that communicating their relationship was just as important in death as it was in life," Killgrove said. 

Source

miércoles, 19 de octubre de 2011

New Addition



New Halloween tattoo

martes, 18 de octubre de 2011

MILK




These are the work of mysterious and incredible artist MILK (a.k.a Chiara). I love this woman's work!! Enjoy!