LONDON - rain, tourism

BCN - more people watching

lomography - hello LOMO

BCN - people watching

A few snaps taken recently around and about Barcelona. 

flores viejitas

Everything beautiful dies in the end.
The effect of five days on my beautiful dahlias.

“And therein lies the whole of man’s plight. Human time does not turn in a circle; it runs ahead in a straight line. That is why man cannot be happy: happiness is the longing for repetition.” 

(Milan Kundera - The unbearable lightness of being).

Lomography

This is one of my favourite photos ever, taken with my dearly beloved lomo.

This was taken way back at uni in falmouth of three of the most beautiful souls I have ever known....rachel arguile, libby grace freshwater and adam boon. gorges.

“The surrealists advocated the transformation of human perception and experience through greater contact with the inner world of imagination” (Warner Marien: 2002: 257).

The second photo for some reason came out alot darker and clearer than the first, and that to me is the beauty of lomography...each photo has a beautiful and surreal quality caused by the light-leaks.., one of the many inevitabilities and joys of using a toy camera made mainly of pastic!

CROATIA

LONDON - speakers' corner

Colour - free the imagination

Antique colour wheel.....lush.

“…colour is an integral part of freeing the human imagination from earthly bondage and is attached to a flight of fantasy…interlocking the marvellous and the mystical”. 


Raghubir Singh, River of Colour, Phaidon press

THROUGH LABYRINTHS - exhibition at the CCCB

.....Sooo. Barcelona seems to be always either protesting over ["having to"...] work, or taking a national holiday because someone has the same name as a saint, so i decided to take advantage of their puente (that's bridge, or Bank Holiday to you and I) for the Virgin Pilar and treated myself to a nice cup of tea and a sit-down at one of my favourite cafés in town, the CCCB terrace

It also turned into a rigorous doodling session which coincidentally turned out very similarly to the mazes features in the exhibition. Subliminal advertising must have been at work somewhere along the line. (Doodle: above left).

I digress. The tea was followed by a very casual stroll around an exhibition on the history of mazes at the CCCB in Barcelona - one of my favourite museums in the city.

The idea of the exhibition is to "[...]review the concept and representation of the labyrinth throughout history, making a clear distinction between single-path labyrinths and mazes, labyrinths with a choice of paths, and reflecting on the relevance of this element and different practices and uses today."

I can't say it was the most exhilarating exhibition I've ever been to - I came away with many "but why....?" questions left unanswered, but some of the ideas explored - how maze and labyrinth aesthetics have been used throughout almost every culture as symbols of the human condition....how often the situations we find ourselves in can be very easy to get into, but very difficult to get out of...rings a bell, doesn't it? Still, it left me very dry and I had to return to the café for another cup of tea afterwards.

And what do you do in the grand labyrinth of life without a memory? Get pretty bloody lost, that's what. It reminds me of the excruciatingly tacky catch-phrase I brewed up for an A-Level Textiles exam-piece based on the contours of my mother's face - "My life is a journey.....I need a map". Cringe.

Some of the artwork on display was also beautiful...loved the old line drawings that were reminiscent of the Magnificent Maps exhibition I visited in London a few months ago.

Here is a snippet I wrote as a review for www.la-boca.com:

"The idea of losing yourself in a walled garden of grass, of leaving the free, open space to become immersed in a closed, impenetrable world of endless networks and confusing paths can be both thrilling and terrifying. An account of our timeless fascination with Labyrinths will be hosted by the CCCB until the beginning of January, exploring both the Labyrinth as ancient symbol for the journey of the soul and questioning its validity in the context of today’s vast networks. An exciting journey not to be missed."

Exposició 'Per laberints'

From 28/07/2010 to 09/01/2011

Centre de Cultura Contemporània de Barcelona

C/Montalegre, 5

Ciutat Vella

old family photos

Some of my all-time favourite family photos, taken a really long time ago.

My older (then younger) brother trying to overcome gravity through the medium of the polaroid.

flores

A snap of some beautiful dahlias given to me yesterday by a very special boy. Everything about them is so delicate and pretty, they remind me of russian folkloric prints and the flowers painted on their matroyshka dolls. i'm sure he was aware of that too...he's very clever. x

RUSSIA - big melt

A visit to St Petersburg and Moscow at Easter-time, during the big winter melt-down of ice and snow. Chilly.