segunda-feira, 29 de novembro de 2010

Nude Light/Shadow, by Erwin Blumenfeld


Nude Light/Shadow, New York [black], 1952
by Erwin Blumenfeld

Erwin Blumenfeld (1897 – 1969) was a famous american photographer of german origin.
In the 1930s, he published collages mocking Adolf Hitler. In 1936, he emigrated to Paris. With the German occupation, he was interned in a concentration camp in 1940 because he was Jewish. In 1941, he could escape to the USA.
In the 1940s and 1950s he became famous for his fashion photography, working for  VogueHarper's Bazaar, and also for artistic nude photography. In the 1960s, he worked on his autobiography which found no publisher because it was considered to be too ironic towards society, and was published only after his death. and

About Erwin Blumenfeld

Erwin Blumenfeld was a renowned photographer whose work is situated between 1930 and 1969. He was born in Berlin on 26 January 1897, moved to Holland late 1918, and started a professional career in photography in 1934. He moved to France in 1936. From 1937 to 1939, he published in Vogue and Harper's Bazaar. When the Second World War broke out, he was interned in French camps as an alien, but was eventually allowed to leave for New York in 1941. He became a US citizen in 1946. His more personal work is in black and white; his commercial work in fashion, much for Vogue and Harper's Bazaar, is mostly in color. In both media he was a great innovator. In black and white he did all his work personally in the dark room. In color he drew on his extensive background in classical and modern painting. He married Lena Citroen in Holland in 1921 and had three children there: Lisette, Henry Alexander and Frank Yorick. He died in Rome on July 4th, 1969.

Fonte: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Erwin_Blumenfeld

quinta-feira, 25 de novembro de 2010

Sonhar... Fernando Pessoa

"Matar o sonho é matarmo-nos. É mutilar a nossa alma. O sonho é o que temos de realmente nosso, de impenetravelmente e inexpugnavelmente nosso."
Fernando Pessoa 


Anna Pavlova - graciosidade, beleza e leveza inatas e inimitáveis

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ReOcCAuVZVw&feature=related

Anna Pavlova was the illegitimate daughter of a laundry-woman. Her father was probably a young Jewish soldier and businessman. When she saw The Sleeping Beauty performed, Anna Pavlova decided to become a dancer, and entered the Imperial Ballet School at ten. She worked very hard there, and on graduation began to perform at the Maryinsky Theatre, debuting on September 19, 1899.
In 1907, Anna Pavlova began her first tour, to Moscow, and by 1910 was appearing at the Metropolitan Opera House in America. When, in 1914, she was traveling through Germany on her way to England when Germany declared war on Russia, her connection to Russia was for all intents broken.
For the rest of her life, Anna Pavlova toured the world with her own company and kept a home in London, where her exotic pets were constant company when she was there. Victor Dandré, her manager, was also her companion, and may have been her husband (she deliberately clouded this issue).
While her contemporary, Isadora Duncan, introduced revolutionary innovations to dance, Anna Pavlova remained largely committed to the classic style. She was known for her daintiness, frailness, lightness and both wittiness and pathos.
Her last world tour was in 1928-29 and her last performance in England in 1930. Anna Pavlova appeared in a few silent films: one, The Immortal Swan, she shot in 1924 but it was not shown until after her death -- it originally toured theaters in 1935-1936 in special showings, then was released more generally in 1956.
Anna Pavlova died of pleurisy in the Netherlands in 1931.

Lewis, Jone Johnson, "Anna Pavlova", in "About.com: Women's History", http://womenshistory.about.com/od/dance/p/anna_pavlova.htm, consultado em 25 Nov. 2010

terça-feira, 23 de novembro de 2010

Afghan Girl - National Geographic

 

Picture:  Steve McCurry; published in National Geographic magazine, 1985.

A Life Revealed

Her eyes have captivated the world since she appeared on our cover in 1985. Now we can tell her story.

By Cathy Newman
Photograph by Steve McCurry
She remembers the moment. The photographer took her picture. She remembers her anger. The man was a stranger. She had never been photographed before. Until they met again 17 years later, she had not been photographed since.
The photographer remembers the moment too. The light was soft. The refugee camp in Pakistan was a sea of tents. Inside the school tent he noticed her first. Sensing her shyness, he approached her last. She told him he could take her picture. "I didn't think the photograph of the girl would be different from anything else I shot that day," he recalls of that morning in 1984 spent documenting the ordeal of Afghanistan's refugees.
The portrait by Steve McCurry turned out to be one of those images that sears the heart, and in June 1985 it ran on the cover of this magazine. Her eyes are sea green. They are haunted and haunting, and in them you can read the tragedy of a land drained by war. She became known around National Geographic as the "Afghan girl," and for 17 years no one knew her name.
In January a team from National Geographic Television & Film's EXPLORER brought McCurry to Pakistan to search for the girl with green eyes. They showed her picture around Nasir Bagh, the still standing refugee camp near Peshawar where the photograph had been made. A teacher from the school claimed to know her name. A young woman named Alam Bibi was located in a village nearby, but McCurry decided it wasn't her.
No, said a man who got wind of the search. He knew the girl in the picture. They had lived at the camp together as children. She had returned to Afghanistan years ago, he said, and now lived in the mountains near Tora Bora. He would go get her.
It took three days for her to arrive. Her village is a six-hour drive and three-hour hike across a border that swallows lives. When McCurry saw her walk into the room, he thought to himself: This is her.
Names have power, so let us speak of hers. Her name is Sharbat Gula, and she is Pashtun, that most warlike of Afghan tribes. It is said of the Pashtun that they are only at peace when they are at war, and her eyes—then and now—burn with ferocity. She is 28, perhaps 29, or even 30. No one, not even she, knows for sure. Stories shift like sand in a place where no records exist. 
Time and hardship have erased her youth. Her skin looks like leather. The geometry of her jaw has softened. The eyes still glare; that has not softened. "She's had a hard life," said McCurry. "So many here share her story." Consider the numbers. Twenty-three years of war, 1.5 million killed, 3.5 million refugees: This is the story of Afghanistan in the past quarter century.
Now, consider this photograph of a young girl with sea green eyes. Her eyes challenge ours. Most of all, they disturb. We cannot turn away.
"There is not one family that has not eaten the bitterness of war," a young Afghan merchant said in the 1985 National Geographic story that appeared with Sharbat's photograph on the cover. She was a child when her country was caught in the jaws of the Soviet invasion. A carpet of destruction smothered countless villages like hers. She was perhaps six when Soviet bombing killed her parents. By day the sky bled terror. At night the dead were buried. And always, the sound of planes, stabbing her with dread.
"We left Afghanistan because of the fighting," said her brother, Kashar Khan, filling in the narrative of her life. He is a straight line of a man with a raptor face and piercing eyes. "The Russians were everywhere. They were killing people. We had no choice."
Shepherded by their grandmother, he and his four sisters walked to Pakistan. For a week they moved through mountains covered in snow, begging for blankets to keep warm.
"You never knew when the planes would come," he recalled. "We hid in caves."
The journey that began with the loss of their parents and a trek across mountains by foot ended in a refugee camp tent living with strangers.
"Rural people like Sharbat find it difficult to live in the cramped surroundings of a refugee camp," explained Rahimullah Yusufzai, a respected Pakistani journalist who acted as interpreter for McCurry and the television crew. "There is no privacy. You live at the mercy of other people." More than that, you live at the mercy of the politics of other countries. "The Russian invasion destroyed our lives," her brother said.
It is the ongoing tragedy of Afghanistan. Invasion. Resistance. Invasion. Will it ever end? "Each change of government brings hope," said Yusufzai. "Each time, the Afghan people have found themselves betrayed by their leaders and by outsiders professing to be their friends and saviors."
In the mid-1990s, during a lull in the fighting, Sharbat Gula went home to her village in the foothills of mountains veiled by snow. To live in this earthen-colored village at the end of a thread of path means to scratch out an existence, nothing more. There are terraces planted with corn, wheat, and rice, some walnut trees, a stream that spills down the mountain (except in times of drought), but no school, clinic, roads, or running water.
Here is the bare outline of her day. She rises before sunrise and prays. She fetches water from the stream. She cooks, cleans, does laundry. She cares for her children; they are the center of her life. Robina is 13. Zahida is three. Alia, the baby, is one. A fourth daughter died in infancy. Sharbat has never known a happy day, her brother says, except perhaps the day of her marriage.
Fonte: http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/2002/04/afghan-girl/index-text

domingo, 21 de novembro de 2010

Blue Roses

"Blue roses, often portrayed in literature and art as a symbol of love and prosperity to those who seek it, do not exist within nature, due to genetic limitations being imposed upon natural variance. Traditionally, white roses have been dyed blue to produce a blue appearance; in 2004, researchers have used genetic modification to create blue pigmented roses. A blue rose is traditionally a flower of the genus Rosa (family Rosaceae) that presents blue-to-violet pigmentation and also the Morganus Clarke sunflower seed disposition, instead of the more common red or white variety."

Fonte: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blue_rose

Just live - Soren Kierkegaard

"A vida só pode ser compreendida olhando-se para trás, mas só pode ser vivida olhando-se para a frente."
Soren Kierkegaard

quinta-feira, 18 de novembro de 2010

Anna Pavlova - a perfect swan

Anna Pavlova (1881-1931)
Anna Pavlova was a russian ballerina. She studied at the Imperial Ballet School, St. Petersburg and joined Imperial Ballet, St. Petersburg in 1899, was made prima ballerina in 1906.
Made several guest appearances in Europe in 1907. Was a guest artist with the Ballets Russes in 1909, partnering, among others, Vaslav Nijinsky. Resigned from the Imperial Ballet in 1913 and never returned to Russia. Founded her own company and toured the world with it for the rest of her life.
Anna Pavlova inspired at least three generations of women dancers, and is considered the best female dancer of all time, on a scale with Nijinsky. Michel Fokine created The Dying Swan for her, a role she will always be remembered in. Since 1974 her residence in London has been the Anna Pavlova Memorial Museum and the headquarters of the Pavlova Society. She died of pneumonia three days after insisting on performing in Paris instead of seeing a doctor or resting.

Fonte: "Anna Pavlova", in The Ballet, Ballet Encyclopedia, http://www.the-ballet.com/pavlova.php.

sexta-feira, 5 de novembro de 2010

O Povo Culto - Agostinho da Silva

O Povo Culto
"Os povos serão cultos na medida em que entre eles crescer o número dos que se negam a aceitar qualquer benefício dos que podem; dos que se mantêm sempre vigilantes em defesa dos oprimidos não porque tenham este ou aquele credo político, mas por isso mesmo, porque são oprimidos e neles se quebram as leis da Humanidade e da razão; dos que se levantam, sinceros e corajosos, ante as ordens injustas, não também porque saem de um dos campos em luta, mas por serem injustas; dos que acima de tudo defendem o direito de pensar e de ser digno. "

Agostinho da Silva, in 'Diário de Alcestes'

quinta-feira, 4 de novembro de 2010

"Warhol TV" - Exposição de Andy Warhol no CCB, Museu Berardo

"Warhol TV"

 
"Entre 1979 e 1987, Andy Warhol (1928-1987) produziu e realizou verdadeiras emissões de televisão. Essa parte da sua obra - até hoje bastante desconhecida - é o reflexo das obsessões do artista: beleza, celebridade, fascínio por outros artistas, músicos ou estilistas . Um mergulho na Nova Iorque dos anos de 1980 e uma nova reality television."

Patente de 26 Julho a 14 Novembro.

terça-feira, 2 de novembro de 2010

"Barceloneta"

Carolina Quirino
"Barceloneta" (detail)
acrílico s/ tela
70x50 cm
2010