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it’s always amazing to see what nature is up to when we aren’t there
up there in the wildest places, the farthest places from our small lives, that’s where you’ll see what can happen without us. it is always original, never trivial, never trending.
Even when these farthest places change because of the accumulated effects of our daily lives. the result is all nature’s own–spectacularly un-human, beautifully bereft of our precious cliches.
We can’t help but drop our jaws and shed some tears of admiration before we go back to our day job. But some have chosen to find work, put down roots and raise families right up against the raw originality (and harshness) of remote places.
This is upper Peru. Life unplugged from everything except life. It isn’t easy of course, but the miracle is that it exists at all. Found here
And this village is on Greenland in the upper middle of nowhere looking bright, cheerful, remarkably at ease. Part of a collection here
The only rival to the remoteness of the highest and coldest places on earth are the oceans where, we are told, you might sail for weeks without seeing any land at all
The only mark on this part of the Pacific is an air pocket…
The remotest places have many lessons to teach us, if we will only listen and look, lessons about beauty, humility, responsibility…
Just look .
Image by hiroshi sugimoto (seascape-north-atlantic-cape-breton)
Originally posted May 2016
Painters, photographers, and law enforcement officers have shown a lot of interest in capturing just one side of us, a side of us we don’t usually see.
Italian artists working 500 years ago and more gave us some of the most arresting one-sided portraits we will ever see. Up top, that’s Federico da Montefeltro giving his wife Battista Sforza the eye, courtesy of Piero della Francesca. And that beautiful face in the round frame belongs to an unnamed Florentina painted by Paolo Uccello (1397-1475). More here
Here’s a lady caught at the window by Fra Filippo Lippi (c 1406–1469). Her eyes don’t quite meet his, and maybe that’s the story here. From this nicely gathered collection of side portraits.
Moving up the road to France and a bit closer to our time, we found this lovely drawing by Jean-Joseph Bernard, 1785, at Vanderbilt University. Just pen and ink with watercolor on paper.
Staying in France for a moment, here is a carved profile of an homme who from this angle seems both aristocratic and capable of beating somebody up. Image found here
This group called Portraits of Lawgivers lives in the House Chamber of the U.S. Capitol Building. Each of the men depicted is a person who, some say, contributed to the laws that now underlie the US justice system. We think that’s Hammurabi up there.
Madame X, as she came to be called, was an American in Paris in the 1880’s who did well in marriage, generated much gossip, and attracted the attention of painter John Singer Sargent who asked if he could paint her. She said yes and the resulting portrait of her, with her gaze averted stage left, was judged just s bit too, you know. Despite the averted gaze and the “X” everyone recognized the woman in black as “that woman”. See her here now, at your leisure.
Jumping ahead to modern scandalous celebrity, getting your “mug” shot shortly after an arrest, profile on one side and full face on the other, is almost a rite of passage for film stars and musicians of the last 70 years or so. Mr Hendrix got out of the Toronto jail soon after and went on to play another day.
20th century artists like Man Ray rediscovered the power of the sidelong view even when no crime had preceded the shot. This is Lee Miller in his Paris studio. Some of course thought it a crime that a woman this beautiful could also be a talented, brave, and prolific photographer.
Isn’t she lovely, actress Billie Dove. We don’t care what she’s done.
Audrey Hepburn photographed by Yousaf Karsh and, bless her, she turned just a little toward us. From Boston.com
The silhouette was not just a fad, it was an obsession at a certain point. If you hadn’t been caught from the side on black paper with scissors well you just hadn’t arrived. This nice example from England found here
Many got the whole damned family scissored and pasted. This is the Sturge Family, ca. 1820 presented in the collection of the Library of the Society of Friends (The Quakers)
Some silhouettists snipped black images of everyone they met, apparently. Here’s a book of hundreds of them at the Smithsonian Institute
Back to where we started, in Italy, this must be counted among the most beautiful portraits ever produced, and it is amazing how much it conveys while only showing us one side of this woman’s story. Her name is Giovanna Tornabuoni, and she died in childbirth. Painted posthumously by Domenico Ghirlandaio about 1490. She now lives in a museum in Madrid and was recently the star of an exhibition there reported here.
Much as we love the profile portaits we found, we are very very glad that Jan Vermeer (go here) coaxed this lady to turn toward his canvas and to us. Perhaps the gift of her gaze is all the more powerful because we have been deprived of it. Maybe that’s the power of the profile–to increase the appetite for more of her face.
originally posted June 2014
The art of the line is ancient. It is often instant and permanent. It is seductive. It is everywhere. It is drawings, it is maps, it is documents, it is cartoons, it is a record of our heartbeat, of our brain activity, of earthquakes. It is tattoos. At its sharpest, and at its best, we think, it is ink and pen..
This extraordinary drawing in pen and ink was made by a scientist trying to understand the complexity of the brain. Spanish neuroanatomist Santiago Ramón y Cajal (1852-1934) left more than 2900 drawings mostly of brain cells mostly in pen and ink of what he saw through his microscope. The process of drawing what he saw through the lens led to new theories about how the cells of the brain worked. He earned a Nobel prize. His theories have held up well under he scrutiny of much more complex instruments developed in the last 85 years.
1904 drawing by Santiago Ramón y Cajal of cells in the cerebral cortex of a child. New York Times Article has this and more
PENS, Real Pens >>Dip Pens
Just a few of the metal pen nibs available today. These found at Pendamonium
If you want to make impressive lines in pen and ink sometime this week, you have two good choices– pens with nibs that are dipped ink (dip pens) and fountain pens that carry their ink inside. This is somewhat equivalent to an acoustic guitar versus a synthesizer for making music, and beautiful though they often are (we have a few), we will leave fountain pens for another time. (As for ballpoints and felt tips, we will leave them alone entirely. Iif you are a genius you might make something agreeable and lasting with them, but for the rest of us, these are best reserved for jotting down grocery lists or “notes to self”, etc.)
Metal nibs have been manufactured on a commercial scale in a wonderful variety of styles for at least 200 years. Once you have one or two, find yourself just the right holder (consider weight /shape /material, as if you were selecting a tennis racquet or pool cue) to hold the nib securely and a bottle of ink, most often brown or black. Those of us who care about the quality of the lines we produce in pictures or prose will at some point find themselves in possession of nibs, many nibs, several comfortable holders, and a bottle or two of real ink.
Making your mark. It’s quite addictive. A nice presentation can be found here
And if you spill some ink, it often makes its own magic.
Whatever your pen, whatever your ink, whatever your goal, this combination of sharp instrument and strong dark fluid will serve you like no other combination.
For a very long time these simple materials and methods were all that was available.
Now there are dozens (hundreds!) of possibilities for making words and images visible to each other. Yet many artists in our time still rely on pen and ink to make their mark. One artist working right here in the 21st century has been drawing maps. Of cities. With pen(s) and ink.
This is a hand-drawn ink map of a section of Inverness Scotland, 6 and a half feet wide, completed by artist Carl Lavia and photographer Lorna Le Bredonchel found here Their goal is to render 68 cities in the UK in this meticulous beautiful fashion. You have to admire not only the outcome but the determination and effort.
OK back to work. If you want to make the most out of your dip pens and your collection of metal nibs, you will need to do some thinking about INK, about Drawing inks.
Fortunately, as with the nibs themselves, we still have available INKS that are essentially the same as what were used by artists and scribes an calligraphers of the past. The packaging has changed a little as have a few ingredients, but their quality and qualities remain high. Some will make marks that will outlast their makers. These and more to be found at My Modern Met.
We’d like to finish this exploration/lovesong about Pen and Ink with the reason we started it in the first place: our deep and lasting love for the images generated in this medium by a few of our favourite pen-and-ink artists.
JJSempe 
Ronald Searle 
Aubrey Beardsley 
Len Norris 
Ronald Searle
Arthur Rackham R Crumb
Mitsumasa Anno 
Mitsumasa Anno
James Thurber 
James Thurber
We hope some of those above are already familiar to you. If so, treat yourself to a reunion with one or two. And if some are new and unknown, do check them out. Making so much happen with simple lines is, we think, one of the miracles of our species. Here are some links to those above to get you hooked.
JJ Sempe Ronald Searle Aubrey Beardsley Len Norris Len Norris_2 Arthur Rackham R Crumb
The final line, rightly so, to Mr Steinberg,
Maybe I’m not using the right pen….
Sometimes the best discoveries don’t require meticulous planning, a long journey, or special shoes. Sometimes you just have to see what’s in front of you.
This is some of what Belgian photographer Harry Gruyaert has been seeing and recording for the rest of us over the last 40 years.
He is credited with helping to prove the point that European photographs could be in colour and still be taken seriously. Not that there is anything wrong with black and white.
Mr Gruyaert claims that he doesn’t think much about all this, and he avoids talking about it if at all possible.
The British Journal of Photography did manage to get a few words out of him, which can be read here
All images © 2015 Harry Gruyaert / Magnum Photos
Living by the sea can be a swell thing. Where we live, the breezes are mostly mild and scented with salt, sea shells, and mermaids.
People, lots of people, choose to live in coastal cities, and they always have. And those who don’t or can’t, come for holidays. Many of the benefits are obvious. Lovely pic of a coastal guy on his lunch break from here. Experts from all over (e.g.) say that just breathing sea air allows us to sleep better, and that can have real benefits to how happy and healthy we are.
But of course we can’t be blind to the other side of living with the sea as your neighbour. Our salty benefactor that serves up so much pleasure and good health can also serve up destruction and death. The truth is, sometimes, the bountiful sea doesn’t stay put. Sometimes, it comes calling.
Venice is the most famous and photogenic example. And though Venetians are justly famous for just carrying on and wading about their business, the government is spending a fortune (even by Venetian standards) to try and keep the Mediterranean out of the piazzas and palazzos. One story here
New Yorkers got a taste of life with the Atlantic ocean too close for comfort during and after Hurricane Sandy Oct 2012. Since then, the city has been re-thinking the way Manhattan works in order to prevent similar damage from future, inevitable storms. Here is one of many reports on the plans.
It is not just New York’s problem. This is something all great and small coastal cities should have on their agenda. Because there is more water in all the seas than there once was, and the only place it has to go is up, where we are, by the sea. Why?
The ice at the top and bottom of our planet is melting fast enough to cause measurable changes in sea level around the world. Whether you think the reason is man-made climate change (we do), natural cycles, socialists, or alien misbehavior, the melting of arctic and antarctic ice is real. It is not a theory or a political platform. It happens daily, sometimes in dramatic fashion.
This berg is about to shed a wedge of ice the size of warehouse. Beautifully photographed in Alaska by Betty Sederquist. More here.
At the other end of the earth, this is a giant iceberg in Antarctica about to leave the mother ship. It was deemed separated in April of 2014 and weighed in at “the size of Chicago” or “as big as Singapore”, depending on your source. Lots of video coverage via this site
What this event means for those of us who live by the sea now is not much, in terms of our day at the beach. Even if it drifts into warm waters and melts completely, even when Chicago melts, you’d need more than an eagle eye to spot the rise in sea level. But there are lots more city size ice cubes breaking away and melting. This is a recent summary report from the NY Times
This beautiful object (wonderful photo by Camille Seaman) may not be much of a threat to modern ships or tomorrow’s day at the beach, but it and its kin are slowly raising the tideline around the world. Choice property will be lost–some quickly in murderous storms, some slowly over generations.
We can’t stop it, but we can do what we do when we are at our best: we can start thinking differently about how we respond to this force of nature. We in coastal cities can start planning–as New York is doing–for dealing with higher water when it comes, taking preventative action, reducing the destruction. Instead of pure admiration or pure fear of the ocean, we need to get more realistic and show more respect for the ocean we love. As sailors always have.
It’s time to move the carousel. Pic from Brooklyn Oct 2012.
the republic of less 
