WAITING FOR THE MIRACLE

From the website of photographer Olga Chernysheva:

According to Ernst Unger "Life consists of a miracle…"

This photo-series is shot in an attempt to free an everyday view.

Usual, familiar images become mysterious and magnetic. They urge the spectator to see the state, but not the objects themselves. In their loneliness, isolation, dignity and natural self-sufficiency these images are, in fact, a striving for beauty. They are directed toward future.









There is more of these pictures here.

Today I was lying in bed and I saw a spider crawling up the wall and that really freaked me out. Jokes aside about it crawling out of my vagina, the though the spider had been anywhere near my body in the night gives me chills. I killed it with my Chanel flip flop. Where I am from, we are trained to react like this from a young age. Snakes however are given more grace and we give them a wide berth.

My nephew has his 7th birthday party tomorrow - my sister has rented out the local pool, two life guards and some super slide something for two hours and made some green cake in the shape of a car from some show something called Ben Ten or something. My sister and I were joking about our birthday cakes as a child... We'd have to argue for chocolate cause Mum didn't like chocolate cake for example. Anyway after having one of the Cardinal's cakes I won't be turning back.

HAHAHA Mum and I actually were talking on the phone the other night about all the Christmas presents my sisters kids got. I reminded her about how I was obsessed with getting a Mr Potato Head and I never got one. She told me that I could have saved my pocket money and got one and I was choking laughing saying "What pocket money? 20 cents for every cabbage moth we caught in the garden!?" Which only happened when the runner beans and broad beans were growing. One day though she still might get me one and I will be so thrilled!

In my house, if we got the day off school cause of bad weather, we would have to sit in our school uniforms and do a few hours school work before we were allowed to change again and get back to life. The plus side of my weird father is that we had a big back garden full of fruit trees, a train track over the back fence where we would go and play aborigines, a big garden shed where Dad let me use the tools, rabbits [although we had to eat them...], two dogs, a cat, a cubby house, spoiled for sunshine and a haunted hallway. My ex will tell you the house has a ghost. He nearly shit himself when she appeared in the room one night. He had to sleep with the light on after that. ROTFLOL.

Last night I bought a Le Creuset casserole so I am feeling very smug. Then I freestyled a lamb casserole with plums, turnip and onion and kind of fake Moroccan spices. It smells amazing. Credit crunch home cooking / microwave lunch at work.

TRACK FOR THE MORNING: DJ Rod Lee - HUMP

So yeah, I'm waiting for the miracle.

xx Lektrogirl

THE APOLOGY

Darren Sylvester - Just Death Is True 2006

I lay on the sofa and stared at the ceiling and listened to what seemed like an apology. Was it?
My mind kept wandering with more questions I wanted to ask. He said that I fell silent. I said 'I didn't think I should butt in for once." As it appeared he was trying to apologise.
Well not sorry for what he had done I don't think - but sorry for how it made me feel. Apparently he thought I was mad with him. But I had another million questions. There was no time. I went through this all once before. I have too many questions. And like VaVaValeria says: I think too much.

And it must be true. A man in a long coat said it to me today on the corner of Tottenham Court Road and Oxford Street outside the station there. What is it with that corner? It is skanky. Who are these kind of weird hustlers there now? Two weeks ago there was the man following me down the street. And today. The man. He said "Hello!!" as he walked past. Next thing I knew he had doubled back and was standing next to me at the traffic lights. He said "You look so serious. You think too much. Why are you thinking so hard?" Remember that show 'Highway To Heaven?' It was just like that, only it smelled of chip fat from that Greek place on the corner.

And so tonight on the phone, I tried hard not to think so hard. I tried to let the apology be whatever it could be. But I hung up the phone and by the time I reached the kitchen, I had a list of questions trailing after me that I just had to leave like leaves I guess on the pavement. And let them turn into nothing.

xx Lektrogirl

P.S. Laser therapy does hurt [but only really quickly] and it is fucking BANGING. My advice is get it done. Results after the first session.

P.S.S. Thank you. You know who you are. Have a nice time and see you for a Flat White soon.

PHIL THE PHOTOGRAPHER

My friend Phil [Mr Chips] has been using a camera to take pictures that I think Sanna got him from the charity shop. He has been running black and white film in it and I have been checking out his pictures with great delight. Every time he uploads a new set, his picture - particularly those of women - are just full of a nice magic.



It is true that 'reducing' everything to black and white can hide a multitude of sins and suddenly make things look like 'art' but I personally think what is the most powerful thing about Phil's pictures is the dialogue between himself and his subjects. These are not 'models' or just 'shitty friend snaps'.



I guess Phil is just lucky to have so many female friends who are comfortable in his company.



And because of that, he seems to be able to make all the women beautiful. And I find that all the other pictures of men - the pictures seem devoid of the same kind of commitment to the subject, or that subject is more disconcerted by the camera. I dunno what it is.

Compare this:


to this:


It just isn't the same.

The other thing I love about Phil's ability to engage with his subject and in turn tell a story with the image is how he can turn something totally inanimate into something magnificent







Anyway - I think Phil is my new favourite photographer. If you want to check out his other pictures, here is his Flickr. [rated - SFW].

THE BORING ONE

Dear Mathieu

In celebration of our conversation this evening, I have decided to curate a new Blog exhibition called THE BORING ONE with some of my favourite pictures from V aka the 'boring' one. Who as you know, I prefer to your last girlfriend known as 'the boy'. As for poor Julie, I am sure she would prefer to remain out of all of this.

So, for the grand opening of THE BORING ONE, please scroll down to view the pictures I have selected. Which you have already seen a thousand times before.

On curating this exhibition:
I love the internet. I love that people post the post intimate things on there. The most public domain. And then, often in private, thousand of people look at it. Thousands of people could all be looking at it in private all at the same time. It is mind boggling. I love it. There is no privacy any more. I love looking for people's secrets.

Et Voila.

THE BORING ONE
Photographs by .v


fantôme
Taken on May 26, 2008


Tu as dit laisse-moi te mettre dans un taxi si tu rentres chez toi dans cette tenue tu vas te faire violer et tuer et on retrouvera ton corps au bois de Boulogne.
Taken on April 30, 2008


ce n'est pas privé c'est un portrait/ I need you to hold on while the sky is falling
Taken on September 8, 2007


Taken on January 2, 2008


laideur fascinante de la décoration des hôpitaux
Taken on January 11, 2008


DSC09767
Taken on January 11, 2008


DSC08439
Taken on November 30, 2007


that night I fell asleep with the light on
Taken on October 4, 2007

ACTIVITIES

Yesterday I finally got around to framing a lot of images I had been wanting to.


Here are two by Carlo Mollino. Actually he is an architect foremost, then furniture designer. He actually looks really scary if you ask me. But I love his polaroids.


Him.

POLAROIDS

less well known are mollino’s erotic polaroid photographs.
after carlo mollino died, his executors found more than 2,000 polaroid
photographs, made beginning in the 1960s, subjects are turin’s unpenitent magdalenes - most of them nude.
at one level they can be confused as little more than a genre of amateur
pornography with a disinterested will to artistic form.
the beauty of mollino's images resides primarily in the pathos and humor
of the incommensurability between the ordinariness of these women,
however lovely, and the artist's need to weave a fantasy around them.
‘every nude betrays its author’, wrote carlo mollino in 1959.

But his photography from negative was heavily retouched when printed - I really like that aspect - that the the medium of photography that is often considered documentary still isn't a finished piece yet. It is also disappointing though cause I always believe the fantasy of something. When I realise, it is a bit heart breaking.



F.Y.I. Those images I put in those Victorian ivory frames are from a book I pulled apart - they obvs aren't original! They aren't even the best reproductions - a cheap Taschen. When I realised my original Polaroids book was worth £100's I thought it best to keep it in tact...

I also framed this:



xx Lektrogirl