Category: Europe
-
Twins of an era
Ed van der Elsken (1925-1990) was a street photographer. Wherever he was, in Amsterdam, Paris or Tokyo, he roamed the streets with his camera for days on end and took pictures of … people. Looking at his pictures at an exhibition of his work in 2017, the atmosphere of the 50s, 60s, 70s of the…
-
Béla Tarr and the seventh art
His last and maybe final film: The Turin Horse (black and white, 146′, 2011). There is inside and outside. Outside: a deafening storm rages over the barren land. The gale blows clouds of sand and dead leaves in the air. A desolate bare tree stands on the hill in front of the farm. Inside: the…
-
Art with a wink
The one girl looks intently at the other, and vice versa. Each one utterly intrigued by the sight of the other. I remember I had a funnily-meant little book long ago, called ‘Kunst met een knipoog’ (‘Art with a wink’), with a winking Mona Lisa on the cover. Here it is not the girls that…
-
Model backs
Lovely loose hanging hair. An equally lovely loose hanging little dress, revealing a beautiful, delicate back. Don’t turn round angels, you may break the enchantment! A village woman from the hills. Her bare lower back betrays a slender waist and sinuous, strong body. As an animal in the wild. And then, a woman’s back and…
-
Tamata
τάματα is the Greek word for vows and votive offerings, referring to a popular practice among the faithful of most if not all religions. I have shown and written about this fascinating phenomenon earlier on this blog in a series of posts dedicated to the local Hindu god Golu Devta in Kumaon, India, and the vows…
-
Ossuarium
In one of the orthodox churches of Paleochora I saw to my surprise a big open stone reservoir filled with human bones: an ossuary inside the church in full view! I have understood that ossuaries came into use in places where graveyard space is scarce. After a few years in the ground the remains of…
-
Aegina – Paleochora
The old town of Aegina had always been at the coast of the island, next to the harbour where it is situated now again. But in the 9th century the town was shifted inland where it could be defended better against the attacks of the Saracens. In the 18th century there were still 400 houses…
-
3-D Devotion
Going through the Herkyna gorge south of Livadia, a town in Boeotia, Greece, one passes the Fountain of Memory and the Fountain of Forgetfulness, the ancient Mnemosyne and Lethe of which Pausanias speaks. For me the water of Mnemosyne has done its work because I remember well first having seen from down the façade of…
-
Café Kafka
Several cafés in Prague where Kafka liked to come a century ago with his friend Max Brod do not exist anymore. Instead we now find cafés named after him. If Brod had followed Kafka’s wish and had destroyed his friend’s unpublished manuscripts after his untimely death in 1924, the world would not have known the…
-
Gorazdova Heaven
This heaven seems badly in need of a lick of paint. But even if it was less run down, it would still be a rather strange impression of a heavenly abode, at least from the outside. Good that it is clearly indicated so we know where to report after our death. Photo of the week:…
καιρός remembered 