Passengers
Posted: March 10, 2014 Filed under: Art, Painting/Drawing, Photography | Tags: 20th century, art history, Beguiling of Merlin, Burne-Jones, Chris Marker, classic, French, ingres, La Gioconda, Leonardo da Vinci, metro, Mona Lisa, Paris, passengers, people, subway, travel, women 1 Comment 
Passengers: A Subway Quartet. Chris Marker. 2008-2010.
In this series of photographs Chris Marker captures the passengers of Paris Metro at their most banal, illuminating the beauty and poetry of our everyday lives. In this sub-series, A Subway Quartet, Marker insets a famous classical painting which mirrors the expression and/or pose of his character.
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We Die to Each Other Daily
Posted: October 10, 2013 Filed under: Prose, Writing | Tags: 1950s, change, memory, people, play, society, stranger, T.S. Eliot, The Cocktail Party, theater 1 CommentAn extract from The Cocktail Party by T.S. Eliot:
“We die to each other daily. What we know of other people is only our memory of the moments during which we knew them. And they have changed since then. To pretend that they and we are the same is a useful and convenient social convention which must sometimes be broken. We must also remember that at every meeting we are meeting a stranger.”
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On The Beach
Posted: July 27, 2013 Filed under: Art, Photography | Tags: aerial view, beach, Brazil, California, crowds, Greece, Hawaii, interaction, Italy, Massimo Vitali, ocean, On the Beach, people, Richard Misrach, sea 1 CommentHere are some breathtaking photographs of the sea/beaches by two highly influential photographers: Richard Misrach and Massimo Vitali. Immerse yourself in the fantastic shades of turquoise.
Richard Misrach
In his series On the Beach, Californian photographer Richard Misrach studies human interaction and isolation through aerial photographs (taken from hotel balconies) of beaches in Hawaii. Misrach says, “I always thought about it as being a god’s-eye view, looking down and seeing these amazing human interactions.” 
Massimo Vitali
Italian photographer Massimo Vitali has been documenting crowds since 1994, studying how and where people gather. Nature vs colonisation. These photographs are taken in Greece and Brazil. “Upon these swaths of water, sand, and sky are people parked and splayed, inactive, passive, disinterested, as neutral as grains of sand in an hourglass or the dots on a box of dominoes spilled out of their box onto a blanket… [Massimo Vitali] illuminates the apotheosis of the Herd” (What the Butler Saw)
“I have tried to avoid behaviour that is too focused on everyone doing the same thing. e.g a football stadium, where everyone is looking and reacting in the same way. I focus on groups of people, but I try to photograph them at times when they are not doing the same thing, in situations where they are free to maintain their own personality and individuality.” From an interview with Massimo Vitali
