As if awakened, she turns her face to yours;
and with a shock, you see…
York Cat Trail, York, YO1
…yourself, tiny,
inside the golden amber of her eyeballs…
York Cat Trail, York, YO1
…suspended, like a
prehistoric fly.
From Rainer Maria Rilke’s Black Cat
The sixth grade seemed to please him from the beginning: he went through a brief Egyptian Period that baffled me…
British Museum, Great Russell Street, Bloomsbury, Camden, WC1B
…he tried to walk flat a great deal, sticking one arm in front of him and one in back of him, putting one foot behind the other…
Detail of dancing girls from Nebamun's tomb-chapel, Luxor, British Museum, Great Russell Street, Bloomsbury, Camden, WC1B
He declared Egyptians walked that way; I said if they did I didn’t see how they got anything done…
British Museum, Great Russell Street, Bloomsbury, Camden, WC1B
…but Jem said they accomplished more than the Americans ever did, they invented toilet paper and perpetual embalming, and asked where would we be today if they hadn’t?
British Museum, Great Russell Street, Bloomsbury, Camden, WC1B
Atticus told me to delete the adjectives and I’d have the facts.
From Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird (1960)
Filed under Maps, Photographs, Postcards
It’s painful and very exhausting.
Irving Penn's Rudolf Nureyev, National Portrait Gallery, St Martin's Place, Westminster, WC2H
It’s a kind of surgery…
Irving Penn's Al Pacino, National Portrait Gallery, St Martin's Place, Westminster, WC2H
…you cut an incision into their lives, you move into their circumstances…
Irving Penn's Duchess of Windsor, National Portrait Gallery, St Martin's Place, Westminster, WC2H
…and then you pin them down while you penetrate even further into their personalities.
National Portrait Gallery, St Martin's Place, Westminster, WCH2
It’s the most painful kind of photography and after almost every sitting I wish I hadn’t gotten into that kind of thing.
David Hockney's Self Portrait, National Gallery, St Martin's Place, Westminster, WC2H
It’s a matter of controlling a person and yet wanting not to control him too much so that he can still reveal something that is true of himself.
Ronald Traeger's Twiggy, National Portrait Gallery, St Martin's Place, Westminster, WC2H
By Irving Penn
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