The winter of 2013

Click image for full size

The tree in my backyard

From the front window

I like the way the snow looks sitting on the fence

As much as I dislike snow, at times like this I can't deny its beauty.

Images of men - William Gale Gedney (1932 - 1989)

William Gedney made two trips to eastern Kentucky. In the summer of 1964, he traveled to the Blue Diamond Mining Camp in Leatherwood, Kentucky and stayed for awhile at the home of Boyd Couch, head of the local United Mine Workers Union. Then Gedney met Willie Cornett, who was recently laid off from the mines, his wife Vivian, and their twelve children. He soon moved in with the Cornett family, staying with them for eleven days. Twenty-two of the photographs from Gedney's 1964 visit to Kentucky were included in his one-man exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art in New York (December 1968 through March 1969). Gedney corresponded with the Cornetts over many years, and finally returned to Kentucky to visit and photograph the family again in 1972. In his notebooks Gedney writes about these lives he witnessed and photographed, the complicated relationships within such large families, the importance of the automobile. Gedney made notes about a creating a book dummy of the Kentucky work, but no completed dummy exists in the archive. With the exception of one image, the Kentucky photographs were never published during William Gedney's lifetime. From the Duke University web site

Gedney sold the one photo in 1977, apparently for $70.00 since he sent $35.00 to the Cornetts indicating, "I made myself a promise that if I ever sold any of the pictures I took of your family I would split any money with you."

Gedney's photography reveals the poverty in which the Cornetts and their neighours lived, but that was not his primary aim. He was chronicling people of a time and place. Poverty was part of that and most definitely helped to shape their lives, but Gedney's photography did not make it the focus, rather content and structure were.

Christmas past

All images have full size views. Just click on any one

A soldier carrying a Christmas tree, 1915

A woman returns home from the market with a Christmas tree, 1895

A Christmas tree in an Edwardian parlour, 1905

A young sailor buys a Christmas tree at a greengrocer's and a young boy
waits in a queue of children to buy some mistletoe, 1918

Source: Vintagephoto on Livejournal

In the midst of chaos

you may find unexpected kindness

A centre of stillness

Click the photo for a larger one

Snow Drawings - Sonja Hinrichsen

We all have within us a center of stillness surrounded by silence.

---

Dag Hammarskjold 1905 - 1961

Konrad Helbig (1917 - 1986)

All images have full size views. Just click on any one

 

Attila Richard Lukacs

These are some Lukacs' earlier (the paintings, but not the Polaroid), homoerotic works. For more recent paintings, including some interesting abstracts labelled as "New Work", visit his site which is linked below.

Attila Richard Lukacs official site

Builders: Canadian Biennial 2012

"Artists are 'builders.' Making things is at the core of what they do. Visual artists are those individuals who combine ideas, materials and technologies with the view to modelling an original way of seeing and interpreting the world. Curators working with the art of today are tasked with discovering, following, understanding and processing a varied range of production.

"This diversity is reflected in Builders: Canadian Biennial 2012, a survey of more than 100 paintings, sculptures, prints, drawings, video and multimedia installations created by 45 artists and acquired by the National Gallery of Canada over the past two years."

At the National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa. Nov 2, 2012 to Jan 20, 2013

Melanie Authier

Marcel Dzama

Dil Hildebrand

Vikky Alexander

Will Gorlitz

Qavavau Manumie

More about the exhibition here