Month: April 2015

Anthony Pomes, “Romain Coupry”

Anthony Pomes, “Romain Coupry”, Photo Shoot for L’Homme Invisible Underwear

Anthony Pomes, the Paris based photographer. worked with model Romain Coupry for a series of photos featuring underwear designs by French luxury label L’Homme Invisible. The photo shoot was done in Paris in 2018, showing some of the most recent designs of the French brand.

Alexander Liberman

Alexander Liberman, “Olympic Illiad”. Steel Sculpture, 1984, Seattle, Washington

“Olympic Iliad” is a 1984 steel sculpture by Alexander Liberman, located in the lawn surrounding the Space Needle at Seattle Center in Seattle, Washington, United States. Liberman, known for his use of industrially manufactured materials, cut giant steel cylinders at varying angles and lengths, painted them an industrial red, and assembled them to form an immense structure that one can walk around and underneath.

Tintinnabulum

Photographer Unknown, A Tintinnabulum

In ancient Rome, a tintinnabulum was a wind chime or assemblage of bells. It often took the form of a bronze phallic figure with wings, known as a fascinum, which warded off evil and brought good fortune and prosperity. Hung outdoors in locations such as gardens, porticos, houses and shops, the wind would cause the bells to ring. This was believed to be a deterrent against evil spirits. 

Giovanni Stradano

Giovanni Stradano, “The Fifth Circle of Hell”, 1587, Etching, Illustration for Dante’s “Divine Comedy”

Through me you go into a city of weeping; through me you go into eternal pain; through me you go amongst the lost people

― Dante Alighieri, The Inferno

“Inferno” is the first part of Dante Alighieri’s long narrative poem, “The Divine Comedy”, a work which he began in 1308 and completed in 1320, one year before his death. Composed of over fourteen-thousand lines, the work is divided into three cantiche: the first of which is “Inferno”, followed by “Purgatory”, and lastly by “Paradise”. 

“Inferno” describes the nine circles of Hell, which Dante and his companion, the Roman poet Virgil, explore on their jouney to contemplate the recognition and rejection of sin. In the fifth circle of Hell, Phlegyas, King of the Lapiths in Greek mythology, ferries Dante and Virgil across the swampy waters of the river Styx, which is the site of punishment for the wrathful. There the wrathful are punished and condemned to fight each other on the river’s surface.

Considered one of his best known works, The illustration of them fifth circle was brilliantly captured by the Flanders-born Mannerist artist Giovanni Stradanus. Many of his other works, both etchings and paintings, depicted other scenes from Dante’s “Inferno”.

The Gray Barrier by the Sea

Photographer Unknown, (The Gray Barrier by the Sea)

“He loved the sea for deep-seated reasons: the hardworking artist’s need for repose, the desire to take shelter from the demanding diversity of phenomena in the bosom of boundless simplicity, a propensity—proscribed and diametrically opposed to his mission in life and for that very reason seductive—a propensity for the unarticulated, the immoderate, the eternal, for nothingness. To repose in perfection is the desire of all those who strive for excellence, and is not nothingness a form of perfection?”
― Thomas Mann, Death in Venice

A Note from Michael Stokes

A Not from Michael Stokes

I appreciate all the love and support through this challenging time. I am not an activist, I am a photographer. It was not my choice to fight a battle of freedom of speech and expression on my Facebook photography page, but certain hate groups have singled me out. Their harassment continues, and I have still not heard from Facebook.

When I was banned last week, Alex Minsky immediately put up his photo in a show of support. Alex and I have been through this before when Facebook “accidentally” removed his photo several times in 2013 – on the far left. Christopher van Etten texted me asking if I needed anything, and BT Urruela tweeted the photo – on the far right. I will never know what it is like to be a soldier who sacrificed for his country, but you three have given me a glimpse of the tenacity, camaraderie and loyalty soldiers must feel for each other while serving.

—Michael Stokes