Natural beauty

Free of costumes, cosmetics and studio lights,
the beauty of being comfortable in the skin you're in.

Love and science

Falling in love in the laboratory: the collaborative partnership of Marie and Pierre Curie is told with gorgeous pictures in Radioactive.

Faraway

The remarkable marriage of Georgia O'Keeffe and Alfred Stieglitz included long periods of separation. The two exchanged some 5000 cards and letters, 650 of which have been carefully selected for My Faraway One, published by Yale University Press . The images shown are from the extensive collection within Yale University's Beinecke Library archive, well worth a visit.

That's How!

Christoph Niemann explains how things work:

Mistaken identity

A few Americans commonly thought to be British.

Edward Gorey. Chicago, Illinois (1925)

Edgar Allan Poe, Boston, Massachusetts (1809)

James Abbott McNeill Whistler, Lowell Massachusetts (1834)

Projected image

The magic lantern was an early forerunner for moving pictures, projecting images from glass slides, sometimes using a candle as a light source. The lantern increased awareness and appreciation for the new art of photography, while also revealing images of far away/exotic locales to students and arm chair travelers.

Fall in love with the future

I'm thinking about a few young souls, new graduates taking their

first steps into the big territory of what-now?

Ray Bradbury's simple and sage advise;

love what YOU love, feels just right.

Cookery

I want to order this book:

Big relationships change you. G. and his family introduced the value of sharing a thoughtfully prepared meal, enlivened with conversation and the occasional rich dessert. This was a galaxy far, far away from my childhood home of Swanson dinners and Chef Boyardee on the shelf. Exploring the culture, quality and character of food has forever expanded and enriched my experience.

Recently, L. baked a tasty cake for her little sister. Responding to the guest who was surprised to hear she had made it 'from scratch' she said, "Oh, cake mixes aren't allowed in this family." It's not a law of course. It just happens to be the case.

Battery not included

Here's a novel idea: a trailer for a book.

I'm a big fan of Lane Smith.

Fear less

Failure may be an essential component for innovation, and fear of failure the universal phobia. The videos of successful creatives musing on the subject are part of Stockholm's Berghs School of Communication exhibition, the chosen theme of this year's graduates.

Michael Wolff – on the fear of failure. from Berghs' Exhibition '11 on Vimeo.

Paulo Coelho – on the fear of failure. from Berghs' Exhibition '11 on Vimeo.

Cheap and available

Max Beckmann

Vincent van Gogh

Edvard Munch

Marie-Denise Villers

Gustave Courbet

Francis Bacon

No model? No problem (provided there's a mirror on hand).

Artist self-portraits fascinate me.

At work

Dorothy Parker

John Cheever

Philip Roth

Patricia Highsmith

Harlan Ellison

Fragment

And did you get what

you wanted for this life, even so?

I did.

And what did you want?

To call myself beloved, to feel myself

beloved on this earth.

--Late Fragment, Raymond Carver

Reflecting on time and memory, Jonathan Harris took on the project

of archiving each day over the course of one year with a single photo.

In his thoughtful voiceover he observes,

"...your greatest creation is always going to be your life story."

Perception

Three of thirty-eight plates of Shinobu Ishihara's

pseudo isochromatic charts used to determine quickly

and accurately congenital color-blindness.

Thank you, thank you very much.

Before Elvis, there was nothing.

--John Lennon

He helped to kill off the influence of me and my contemporaries, but I respect him for that. Because music always has to progress, and no one could have opened the door to the future like he did.

-- Bing Crosby

When I first heard Elvis' voice, I just knew I wasn't going to work for anybody, and nobody was going to be my boss. He is the deity supreme of rock and roll religion as it exists in today's form. Hearing him for the first time was like busting out of jail.

I thank God for Elvis Presley.

--Bob Dylan

That's my idol, Elvis Presley. If you went to my house, you'd see pictures all over of Elvis. He's just the greatest entertainer that ever lived. And I think it's because he had such presence. When Elvis walked into the room, Elvis Presley was in the fucking room.

-- Eddie Murphy

This boy had everything. He had the looks, the moves,

the manager and the talent. And he didn't look like Mr. Ed

like a lot of the rest of us did.

--Carl Perkins

He was the firstest with the mostest.

--Roy Orbison

Recording

Frank Sinatra

Johnny Cash

Keith Richards and Mick Jagger

Jimi Hendrix

Aretha Franklin

Elvis Presley

Kurt Cobain