50 Words 4 Snow

      Sullarniq: Eskimo for snow blown in through a doorway.

↑ "Nocturne in Grey and Gold - Chelsea Snow" James McNeill Whistler (1876)

        Tuaq: Eskimo for lump of old ice frozen into new ice.

↑ "Hunters in the Snow" Pieter Bruegel the Elder (1565)

       Qanipalaat: Eskimo for feathery clumps of falling snow.

↑ "Moscow. Red Square" Boris Kustodiev

      Pukak: Eskimo for snow crust.

↑ "Ipatiev monastery in the winter light" Aleksey Savrasov (1870)

       Nittaalaq: Eskimo for air thick with snow.

↑ "February" Grant Wood (1940)

Here's a little send-off from Kate Bush — it's my favorite song on her album 50 Words For Snow (2011):


For extra credit, check out the title track "50 Words For Snow". (SPOILER: Stephen Frye monotonously recites Inuit snow words, probably poorly, for eight minutes. It makes me feel like I'm watching performance art that I reaaaly shouldn't be giggling at but I juuust can't help it.

      Inuit words via Azimuth.

Björk's House

Here she is, the queen of Icelandic music, Björk Guðmundsdóttir! When the days are so dark and short where I live I start eating lots of gjetost cheese and lighting candles all the time.

Björk's 1992 MTV Cribs house-tour of her Icelandic nest is awesome. She has this enormous and beautifully modern chandelier with blue taper candles in her living-room. As she lights the candles for the camera she chirrps and trills:

"I think this big room definitely needs a center-point, you know? And a light in the middle... I think chandelier is a heart of every home and in the winter its, like, dark - It's dark almost twenty hours a day. It's quite amazing how these candles can - they actually [light] up the whole flat and in a nice kind of way."

       I love how her possessions have been curated.  Everything is special!

Runway Ladies

Photos by Yvan Rodic

St. Petersburg, 2012
I really like the juxtaposition of these two photos by Yvan Rodic.
The уборщица and the модель.

Goodbye Summer

Shot with an old plastic MAXIM 101X 35mm.
After developing a trial roll of film was completely blasted by a light leak, I taped up most of this camera's body with painter's tape and didn't remove it until the film had been wound back into its canister.

I then brought this old plastic camera with me to visit my family at the beach. I wasn't even sure if my tape experiment would work so I was completely careless with my photo-taking. Many of these pictures were snapped by curious friends and relatives who found the Franken-camera sitting around  and wanted to see if it worked. The resulting photos ended up capturing this summer weekend nicely.

Morgan le Fay

Clad in chain-mail, structured armor, leather, and lace, Kristen McMenamy broods like a hellion in W Magazine's September 2012 editorial "The Dame of Thrones".

I love how barbed wire and a conical Philip Treacy transparent head-piece (#4) give this medieval Britain thing a whole seam-in-time feel. I remember hearing an interview with Monty Python's Michael Palin that a lot of the chain-mail worn in The Holy Grail was actually just knitted creations spray painted silver (sounds soggy). Craig Lawrence's metallic yarn chain mail shirt and pants (#3) are very convincing and wearable... something maybe Daphne Guinness would don to check out a litter of dalmatian puppies (or whatever it is that she does with herself). Her inspired silver glove by Shaun Leane (#8) certainly seems useful for glancing blows from little doggie paws.

mmm

Photography:  Tim Walker Styled by:  Jacob K Hair and Headpieces:  Julien d'Ys Makeup:    Val Garlande