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Thursday, April 29, 2010
Saturday, April 24, 2010
Thursday, April 22, 2010
Tuesday, April 20, 2010
More from Eyjafjallajokull, Iceland - The Big Picture - Boston.com
The first of 3 photos by Olivier Vandeginste, taken 10 km east of Hvolsvollur at a distance 25 km from the Eyjafjallajokull craters on April 18th, 2010. Lightning and motion-blurred ash appear in this 15-second exposure. (© Olivier Vandeginste) #
The second of 3 photos by Olivier Vandeginste, taken 25 km from the Eyjafjallajokull craters on April 18th, 2010. The ash plume is lit from within by multiple flashes of lightning in this 168 second exposure. (© Olivier Vandeginste) #
The third of 3 photos by Olivier Vandeginste, taken 10 km east of Hvolsvollur Iceland on April 18th, 2010. Lightning flashes and glowing lava illuminate parts of Eyjafjallajokull's massive ash plume in this 30-second exposure. (© Olivier Vandeginste) #
A man runs along the roadside, taking pictures of the Eyjafjallajokull volcano as it continues to billow smoke and ash during an eruption on April 17, 2010. (HALLDOR KOLBEINS/AFP/Getty Images) #
See More from Eyjafjallajokull - The Big Picture - Boston.com
Monday, April 19, 2010
Technologies of the Imagination: A review of Tilism-e Hoshruba in translation
From:
by Bilal Tanweer
HOSHRUBA—The Land & the Tilism (Book One)
By Muhammad Husain Jah
Translated with Introduction and Notes by Musharraf Ali Farooqi
516 pages, Urdu Project
ISBN: 978-0978069551
Price: US $25
[This tale] has consumed whole generations of readers before you. And like all great tales, it is still hungry—ravenous, in fact—for more. You may not return from this campaign. Or come back so hardened you may never look at stories in quite the same way again.
It might seem an exaggeration, but here are the facts: this yarn was spun by two generations of storytellers and it is spread over eight thousand pages in its original Urdu language. At the height of its popularity in North India, it attracted legions of followers all the way from the aristocratic class down to the ordinary folk of the bazaar. In other words: this is a bloody carnival of a book, and everyone is invited.
Reading it, you immediately think of Borges’ remark on The Thousand and One Nights: “one feels like getting lost in [it], one knows entering that book one can forget one’s own poor human fate; one can enter a world, a world made of archetypal figures but also of individuals.”
That sums it up, really. Except, during the course of this narrative, our poor fate is in the hands of five tricksters, who are the heroes of the tale: they are spies, assassins, chameleons, and commandoes all rolled into one and their tricks usually involve elaborate plots to overcome the astounding magic of enemy sorcerers. But they aren’t your regular Bond-style smart guys; they are much flatter – types, as Borges puts it. And that’s how the narrative also goes: focused entirely on action and rooted firmly in absolute notions of good and evil, beauty and ugliness, love and loyalty, it lacks every nuance of psychology or empathy with the ‘other’ that you may think of. It is a tumbling, rollicking war machine that lusts after the triumph of good and will settle for nothing less than a thorough devastation of evil that is the enchanted Land of Hoshruba and its ruler, Emperor Sorcerer Afrasiyab.
In a delightful introduction to the volume, the first of twenty-four that will be published over the course of the next eight years, the translator, Musharraf Ali Farooqi, carefully constructs an imagined account of how this mighty and fabulous tale might have come into being.
During the mid-nineteenth century in Lucknow, India, where oral storytelling was still a viable career ……..Read more
Sunday, April 18, 2010
Saturday, April 17, 2010
A Journey Round My Skull: Persian Handstands
Mihr Ali, Fath Ali Shah, Qajar Painting, 1813-14
above and below images come from wikimedia
Mihr Ali, Qajar Painting, 1813-14
Anonymous, from the Shahinshahnameh, 1810
(detail of freaky camels)
Muhammad Hasan Afshar, portrait of Nasir al-Din Shah, with cherubs, 1854-55
Muhammad 'Ali, portrait miniature of Muhammad Shah, c. 1845
Unknown (again the Shirin painter?), A girl standing on her hands
These paintings come mostly from two books: Qajar Paintings (1972) and Qajar Portraits (1999) (the latter going for an obscene $500 on Amazon at the moment).
Read about Qajar art on wikipedia.
From a Sotheby's auction: "Court painting in Qajar Persia gave particular importance to the representation of women. From the mid-seventeenth century onwards, royal artists were attracted by European depictions of female subjects, borrowing certain poses, imagery and stylistic techniques into their own work."
Women were often the focal point of the Shirin Painter, and I can't wait to dig up more of his acrobats. Qajar Paintings contains a group of these, but not in color (hence that last scan).
Read more: A Journey Round My Skull: Persian Handstands
Friday, April 16, 2010
Wednesday, April 14, 2010
The Devil Hath Met with His Match Alexandra Grinevsky’s 1930 illustrations for Machiavelli’s L’Archidiable Belphegor
The Devil Hath Met with His Match Alexandra Grinevsky’s 1930 illustrations for Machiavelli’s L’Archidiable Belphegor. from the collection of Richard Sica
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