Thousand Word Love Story

WAY too much editing last week. My wrist is shrieking in protest, so for today I'll leave it at the 1000 word love story captured in this photograph:

I love the faces of his friends, trying to live vicariously through this kiss.

Have a great Monday, everyone!

Life in Pictures

Not sure if this post should be related to time travel or time suck, but both are completely perfect. Life magazine just released its entire archive to Google Images courtesy of the Library of Congress. This union marries the delicious searchability of Google with creme de la creme photographs from every decade beginning in 1860. How great is that?

I lost an hour, easy. Don't say I didn't warn you.

Vj Day, August 14, 1945, Times Square

Atom Smashers, Time Travel and the Magic of Twelve

Happy atom-smasher day to you! Should the earth cave in on itself in a massive black hole of destruction and alternate universes and time travel become accessable, I'll be there. Come find me. Or, I'll be clipping away at the end pages of my novel. Either way, my mental bookmark will be here:

Late 19th Century Footage @ Yahoo! Video

PhonographCylinder, a video creator, edits pieces of historical footage together to create a spectacular sense of time travel. This footage is from the late nineteenth century, a time of huge leaps in motion photography and a few years beyond the past setting of my novel. Pure inspiration to hang my final scenes on. Check out his other historical subjects, from the 1906 San Francisco earthquake to the 1900 Paris World's Fair.

Remember the September 16th time travel invitation? As the deadline approaches, I'm sad to say that while the Day's Inn is still serving complimentary coffee, the invitation has been revoked. Either the movement went underground, the interviews didn't net any potential candidates or the leader checked into someplace with worse conditions than stains on the mattress and Bob Ross-style paintings. Alas, I cannot even rekindle the moment, as the presentation has been removed from YouTube. For all disappointed Vortex readers, I offer up a challenge...

Chad Darnell's project: 12 of 12. It's a viral photo sharing project-12 images on the 12th day of every month. Link to August's 12 of 12 and the rules:

1) ALL PHOTOS MUST BE TAKEN ON THE 12TH OF EACH MONTH.

2) After you post your pictures onto a webpage of your choice (Livejournal, typepad, MySpace, Flickr, etc...) please post the TIME, LOCATION, and A SMALL COMMENT in the pic.

3) You own the rights to all of your pictures. The idea "12 of 12" is mine. While credit is not necessary, please don't credit someone else with the idea.

4) The original concept was at least one body part in the picture. That idea was slowly faded away. The important part is that it are 12 pics.

5) When referring to the project, please refer to it as "12 OF 12" - not "12 ON 12."

6) Once completed, please e-mail or post the PERMALINK of the post AND the city and stateand country of WHERE THE PICTURES WERE TAKEN. (If you are on vacation, it's where the pics were taken.) or city

(The permalink is the link to the ENTRY of your page. If you just send me your website, I have to track it down. By listing the permalink, it helps for people to go back and view your previous 12 of 12 entries from previous months.)

ANYONE is welcome to join in, even if you've never done it before! I hope you will.

-C

I'll be joining in this Friday the 12th and hope you will, too. Until then, know I appreciate each one of you, faithful and occasional, visitors. Thank you for sharing part of your day with me here.

Aesthetic Ideal of the Anti-hero

In the nineteenth century, a movement in photography called the "aesthetic ideal of the sublime" urged artists to capture images to elicit the physical sensations of fear and excitement. Prior to this, official surveyors for Congress, and later, photographers commissioned by the railroad expansion west, captured the larger picture. Horizons. Mountain vistas. Workers lining a stretch of rail. Technological advances in photography gradually made it possible for the photographer to reach more extreme landscapes.

Grand Canyon of the Colorado, near the big bend by Peach Springs, by William Henry Jackson, probably 1892, when, along with Thomas Moran, they traveled for the Sante Fe Railroad. Jackson was the offical photographer of the Hayden Survey of the American West, 1871-1878.The National Museum of Art, Smithsonian Institution.

This new subject matter allowed viewers to take in exceptional examples and trials of the human condition. Suddenly, it became possible for someone sitting in a Victorian parlor in Connecticut to pick up a stereoscope and experience a moment of terror. Awe. Extreme sympathy. An explorer with a spyglass leaning over the rim of the Grand Canyon. Men baracaded behind a stronghold, guns poised for a Native ambush.

One photograph I found moved me more than all the others. Without getting into graphic detail, its subject was death. Not the kind used to preserve historical record as battleground images or matters of medical study, but a completely voyeuristic look into a moment of extreme grief. This became the dark side of the antagonist in my current novel. An 1880s railroad photographer who longs to capture what no one has before him. The moment life slips away.

This is Charles Pierre Baudelaire, an accomplished poet and translator in nineteenth century France. The poor man became the inspiration for my anti-hero.




The With New Eyes: Exploration and the American West exhibit has moved on from where I experienced it at the Amon Carter in Fort Worth, but I highly recommend it if it comes near you and the American West fascinates you.


If you'd like to read more about my work-in-progress, click over to my website. There, you'll find a quick blurb, a few opening paragraphs and some other photos that inspired The Night Caller.