SOMEWHERE SOMETIME

Every time I ride a train, I think of this photo.

MY 21st CENTURY

 

The so called kissing couple of the Vancouver riots last week affirmed a few things (forgive my recent inclination for list making):

1. Despite their proliferation, a single photograph most certainly retains the power to arrest people's attention.
2. Still moments provide a somewhat porous vessel for the imagination to seep through. Looking at the still image, information is limited, and so we must fill in the gaps ourselves, making the experience of viewing the photograph quite about us, as well as about them.
3. And perhaps it ends there. It took from 1950 until a 1992 lawsuit for Robert Doisneau to admit that he staged the famous, Le basier de l'hotel de ville. Prior to that, the identities of the couple remained anonymous, of course, enhancing the mystique of the photo.
It took exactly one day for the identities of the Vancouver couple to be determined. By the following week they had appeared on The Today Show, and by doing so, naturally dispelled the intrigue of the photograph. We now know the exact circumstances which led to that moment and have an aerial video to savor as well.

THIS WOMAN'S WORK

 3 very interesting images of or by Lee Miller:

1. Appearing as a statue come to life in Cocteau's The Blood of a Poet.
2. Her photograph of a suicided Nazi girl (daughter of the mayor of Leipzig).
3. Miller herself, bathing in Hitler's bathtub, 1945.