Category: gay photography

The Blue Vision

Photographer Unknown, (The Blue Vision of the Mystic Madu, Scribe of the People, Servent of Min)

“Throughout the centuries there were men who took first steps down new roads armed with nothing but their own vision. Their goals differed, but they all had this in common: that the step was first, the road new, the vision unborrowed, and the response they received — hatred. The great creators — the thinkers, the artists, the scientists, the inventors — stood alone against the men of their time. Every great new thought was opposed.  . .But the men of unborrowed vision went ahead. They fought, they suffered and they paid. But they won.”
― Ayn Rand, The Fountainhead

Two Feet

Photographer Unknown, (Two Feet)

“It so happened I was barefoot, as was often the case, and had pants on which had grown too short over time. Suddenly he looked up at me from his work and said: “Would you like to have your feet greased?” I had always held the man to be a great marvel and felt honoured by his familiarity and so stretched both my feet out to him. He dipped his spoon into the bung-hole, brought it over and drew a long streak down each of my feet. The liquid spread out nicely over the skin, had an exceptionally clear, golden brown colour and wafted its pleasent resinous odour up to me. It gradually spread across and down the curves of my feet.”
― Adalbert Stifter, Tales of Old Vienna and Other Prose

Slumber

Photographer Unknown, (Slumber and Dream)

“Endings are abstruse, mystic and unreal. They are but depleted beginnings purposed to be substituted with newer ones.A transition of outlook and time, similar to our differing moods before and after slumber. Before the act we witness an exhaustion, a sulkiness but on gaining consciousness, we’re rejuvenated and good humored. The wakefulness is the new beginning whereas the tension the disturbance we perceive each night is the weariness of the beginnings, of each day.

So there never really is an end, all that there are are beginnings.Beginnings which are promising, which offer hope, which have a new leash on life, which neither denounce nor belittle rather soothe and console by reconstructing the broken pieces of yesterday, mending them and reinforcing them with courage and beauty like never before.”
― Chirag Tulsiani

Reblogged with thanks to http://irishenko.tumblr.com

Calendar: September 2

A Year: Day to Day Men: 2nd of September

Watermelon

September 2, 1929 was the birthdate of American film director and editor Hal Ashby.

Hal Ashby’s career gained momentum when he served as the lead editor of the 1965 “The Loved One”, a black and white comedy film about a funeral business in Los Angeles, based on a satirical novel by Evelyn Waugh. He was nominated for the 1967 Academy Award for Film Editing for his work on “The Russians Are Coming, The Russians Are Coming”,  a  Carl Reiner / Alan Arkin comedy spoof depicting the chaos following the grounding of a Soviet submarine off a small New England island during the Cold War.

Hal Ashby’s big break in his career was his winning the Academy Award for Best Editing for the Norman Jewison mystery drama film “In the Heat of the Night” starring Sidney Poitier and Rod Steiger. This tough, edgy major Hollywood film was nominated for seven Academy Awards, winning five, including Best Picture, Best Actor, and Best Editing. At the urging of Norman Jewison, Ashby directed his first film, “The Landlord” in 1970. The film was an comedy drama starring Beau Bridges as a privileged and ignorant landlord of an inner-city tenement.

Hal Ashby directed his next film “Harold and Maude” in 1971, followed by “The Last Detail”, a comedy drama starring Jack Nicholson and Otis Young, assigned to the Navy Shore Patrol. escorting Randy Quaid to the Naval prison. Ashby directed the 1979 social satire cult film “Being There”, starring Peter Sellers. However, his greatest commercial success in films was the 1975 satire “Shampoo”, made on a budget of four million dollars and grossing worldwide over sixty million dollars, making it the fourth most successful film of 1975.

Because of his critical success and dependable profitability, Ashby was able to form a production company, Northstar, under the auspices of Lorimar Productions. After directing “Being There”, Ashby became more reclusive, often retreating to his home in Malibu Colony, a gated enclave in the city. Later, it was widely rumored in a whisper campaign that Ashby, a habitual marijuana smoker since the 1950s, had become dependent upon cocaine. As a consequence of these rumors, he slowly became unemployable.

Hal Ashby worked on several more productions; but the strained relationship between him and the Lorimar company increased. During this period, Lorimar executives grew less tolerant of his increasingly perfectionist production and editing techniques; a montage in the  film “Lookin’ to Get Out” took six months to perfect but ultimately proved to be logistically unusable. After several commercial failures of his next films, Ashby’s post-production process was considered to be such a liability that he was fired by the production company.

Longtime friend Warren Beatty advised Hal Ashby to seek medical care after he complained of various ailments, including undiagnosed phlebitis; he was soon diagnosed with pancreatic cancer that rapidly spread to his lungs, colon, and liver. Hal Ashby died on December 27, 1988 at his home in Malibu, California.

Calendar: September 1

A Year: Day to Day Men: 1st of September

Vacation Spot

September 1, 1954 marks the release of Alfred Hitchcock’s “Rear Window”.

Alfred Hitchcock’s 1954 ‘Rear Window’ is a film full of symbolism, narratives, voyeurism and characterization. Hitchcock, a strong filmmaker, used similiar themes and specific signature motifs, such as character parallels and heavy use of vertical lines, as well as a strong protagonist. Hitchcock made a career out of indulging our voyeuristic tendencies. “Rear Window” is perhaps his most skillful and gleefully self-aware production.

“Rear Window” focuses around the main protagonist Jefferies, a photographer who recently broke his leg and is restricted to a wheelchair. In the opening scene where the credits are shown, the forthcoming storyline is presented and Hitchcock has created an opportunity to set the tone of the film. He also creates a great ambience, as a bamboo curtain is raised and the courtyard is shown, around which the whole film revolves.

The audience is shown life through Jefferies’ eyes. His window looks out onto a courtyard and displays a number of different windows representative of different lives in America in the 1950s.  Each window represents a different style of living; and snippets of these characters lives with their different backgrounds are presented to Jefferies’ viewing.

These characters of “Rear Window”, although living so close to each other, barely interact or ever meet. All the actions of these different people through the windows and their stories flow together seamlessly:  the music proceeding each scene leads the viewer to what will happen next. The noises and sounds in the film are a narrative device: a radio blaring or playing music, an alarm clock ringing, which shift the attention of the viewer from one apartment to another. Shots of panning and zooming by the cameramen make it more realistic as Jefferies shifts his binoculars from each apartment scene to another.

“Rear Window”s audience is constantly shown natural framing, which is a well-known theme in Hitchcocks films and truly represents him as a master filmmaker. There are constantly shots which are framed by openings such as; window frames, door frames and hallways. The use of binoculars by Hitchcock is symbolic; they intensify what Jefferies is seeing and isolate him from the actions that he observes. The setting in the film is also symbolic; Jefferies’ apartment, the courtyard, and the small alleyway are the only areas he can see, ultimately confining and trapping him.

The whole film was shot inside a Hollywood studio: yet the sense of the city’s atmosphere, noisy and breathless with its humid air, still is conveyed strongly to the viewer. The everyday domestic dramas unfold and James Stewart is their captive audience. The intensity of Stewart’s helplessness is subtly shown in one small ominous film scene unfolding before his eyes: the tip of the wife-killer Lars Thorwald’s cigar glowing red in the darkness of his living room after the neighbors’ strangled dog is found in the garden.

Sweatshirt

Photographer Unknown, (The Raised Sweatshirt)

“He lifted his shirt, and on his back was the White Rabbit, wearing his waistcoat and looking at his watch. It was just like the illustration from the book. Only standing next to him, back-to-back, was another White Rabbit wearing a leather motercycle jacket and boots and smoking a cigar.”
― Michael Thomas Ford