Author Archives: the magnificent something

About the magnificent something

Editor, writer, blogger, and dedicated iphoneographer. Lives in London, loves coffee, and sees the world in technicolor.
Dec7

Chamomile, Long Johns, & Hope

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I have been putting off writing this post for days, if not weeks now. So, on this Friday night, as I was walking over London Bridge, weaving my way through the masses of suited people wearing trainers on their feet and serious expressions on their faces, I decided that today would be the day I write about it; about the last few weeks.
I sneaked in the Pret at the corner of the bridge, got a ridiculously overpriced banana and an orange juice, found an uncomfortable chair, and sat in front of my open iPad.

So here we are. About 4 months ago, I woke up from a phone call with bad news, went to work to receive another one of these phone calls, took a four day trip to Greece to attend two funerals, came back, quit my job, and got an internship in the field I am actually interested in.
From almost the first week of my 3 month internship, I knew that I made the right choice, and this was terrifying; I was so close to it, I was living it, an experience with an expiration date, a fairy tale with numbered pages. It’s not necessarily the specific job that I was so attached to, even though I love the company. It was the fact that I was doing what I actually liked. I was in a creative field, with normal working hours, and an endless supply of inspiration. I will write a separate post about the internship, as it is not the focus of this post, and I don’t want it to take over.

However, you need to understand that throughout these three months, I worked hard in most aspects of my life. I was freelancing to gain some financial support, interning, writing this blog, adjusting to a different kind of living, and constantly looking for a job that I could pick up on the end of my internship. The truth is, I spent most of my time trying to ignore this nagging feeling that the uncertainty for the future was generating; I think the feeling was a cross between anxiety and fear, and I pushed it as back as I could. I was convinced that by the time the three months were up, I would find something; as the days became weeks, and applications never got responses, I still kept smiling, and giving the thumbs up, saying that everything would be ok.
One day, I received an email from one of my dream jobs. Very long story short, I spent a month preparing for 2 interviews, putting my hopes up, grabbing a seat at the top of the mountain and watching my hopes crashing down when I got a no the day after my second interview. I brushed it off, said that it was ok, moved on, applied to other jobs, got interviews, and even got a great offer. Was I really ok? No.
When that job gave me a negative response, everything inside me came tumbling down, even though I put a brave face and kept going. It was almost as someone that just run a marathon, and at the end said, ‘why don’t we go for a lovely walk, maybe some shopping, and the a bit of dancing afterwards?’.

This was not just about the job. It was about everything; about trying so hard, for so long, and coming so close only to get a lovely packaged ‘no’. It was about hope, and the energy that it requires. It was about the last year, everything that has happened, all the things that changed, all the things that stayed the same.
So if I could not realise it, my body would. I was exhausted, my energy levels completely depleted; and so for once, I decided to listen -actually, I had no choice. I acknowledged how finishing my internship made me feel (I spent that evening eating a family-sized Ben & Jerry’s on the couch, watching re-runs of Murder She Wrote and crying when the killer confessed). I spent the rest of that week taking it easy, wearing long johns, drinking chamomile, and getting on a first name basis with the take-away guy. I stayed in the house, relaxed, started reading up on meditation, began eating healthier, joined a gym, and finally acknowledged how much losing that opportunity meant to me. When I did that, some perspective crept in.

Does this mean that everything is magically ok? Again, no. It means that this whole experience was a reminder that I need to take care of myself, not stress to bursting levels, and most importantly, do something good for my body and soul every day.

Last week, one of the companies I was freelancing for offered me a position, and after weighing it up with the other offer, I gladly accepted it. I start on Monday. That is all from me. I now have a banana to finish before going for a quick swim.

Love,

G

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Dec6

Dark Knight or Dark Art? Andy Hope’s 1930 Comic Visions

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I am standing under a giant billboard for the Dark Knight DVD release. The poster is faded, and bits of it are torn. Everyone I know has seen it. I gaze up, my lips parting momentarily from my paper coffee cup. I cock my head to the left, a grimace spreading on my face, and I already feel critical.
You see, I have a special relationship with comic books. Childhood memories of summer holidays always smelt like sunscreen, sea salt, and paper. Dark ink on cheap pages, small speech bubbles and one-liners, fast action without action. In these pages, characters were living more in a square box than others have lived in their entire lives.
I remember coming out of the sea, running towards my towel (held on the sand by four large rocks, one on each corner), digging in the beach bag and bringing the latest comic book under me. The tips of my hair would drip on the page, making the ink run, the story coming to life. I remember quiet afternoons, when everyone had a quiet siesta; everyone but me and the crickets: I read, they sang. Of course, then I was too young to know how to read; but that did not matter. I knew that something important was happening in those pages, and that filled me with a thrill that I can still feel on my fingertips.

I grew up watching He-Man and She-Ra, reading Duck Tales, hunting for the latest issue of Xmen, Superman, and even Aquaman books. I think that the fond memories I have of these novels might be why I am so aware of the recent comic book-to-screen flood. Different Spidermen, Supermen, X-Men, Avengers, and well, Batmen are jumping in their Lycra (or leather) bodysuits, and fly (on a jet or with a cape) over the city skyline and to the top of the Box Office.
Some stay true to the original; some deviate. For me, the value is not necessarily on how loyal they remain to the actual story of the comic book; it is about the comic book feel that they carry with them on the big screen.
This reminded me of the adopted the name Andy Hope 1930 as he considered the year vital to the main elements of his work: the rise of the comic book to a mass medium and the abandonment of suprematism and Russian Constructivism.
Hope 1930 is known for his iconography, combining comic books, science fiction, mythology, history, pop culture, and literature in his work with bold use of brush strokes and colours. In the Medley Tour exhibition, he tried his own superhero talent, attempting to manipulate time:throughout the exhibition he revisits his past work, and identifies the path of his technique, deconstructing his work and working backwards in order to move forwards.
He uses familiar themes like the black masks from his depiction of Robin Dostoyevsky; the woman’s hairstyles from his paintings of Hollywood starlets; and the dark shapes that accompany the majority of his past work, to trace his journey through his work.
He also built an actual batcave inside the exhibition, referencing the classic Bruce Wayne hideaway, constructed with a playfulness that reminded me of my childhood view of the comic book world.
I look at the poster again. Anne Hathaway as Catwoman. I sigh. It starts raining, and as I begin walking again, I decide to clear my head from preconceptions, and go and watch the movie with an open mind.
To the Batmobile!

Love,

G

Nov19

A Family at Wartime

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I don’t like war movies. The closest I have been to watching a full movie about wartime is the Sound of Music, and even in that, I hated the part where Rolfe turned out to be a Nazi, trampled over Liesl’s heart, and almost robbed the Von Trap family of their freedom.

You see, I dread the thought of a war, and not in the war is bad-peace is good-let’s all sit in front of a campfire holding hands and sing cumbaya kind of way. I find it dreadful because I think that it is the perfect setting for the worst kind of human nature to break free. Yes, the tactical moves, and fights, and war casualties are awful enough, but what makes my skin crawl are accounts of ‘normal’ people doing despicable acts during these times.
From medical trials on prisoners to making furniture out of human skin, and from countless tales of betrayal to the dehumanising nature of power, wartime comes to show you that the worst kind of crimes can be committed outside of the battlefield.
This is why I found the Imperial War Museum’s ‘a Family at Wartime’ so heartwarming. The exhibition, fantastically curated in the far left corner of the ground floor, is a metaphor for all the good that shines through the human evil. Each family member stands for different ways that people in Britain (and I assume throughout the world) made the best out of the worst, made life liveable and saw the everyday as another day that their heart kept beating.

The exhibition is centred on the Allpress family who lived in Stockwell, where every member played a minuscule, yet important role in the war, having to cope with rationing, evacuation, war work and events such as the London Blitz and VE Day that shaped everyday life and the story of a nation.

The exhibition features a model house of the Allpress family home, a family tree diagram, photos and interviews, as well as recreations of the era billboards, settings, iconic propaganda posters and films.

Visitors can also get in a replica of an Anderson shelter, scan the airwaves for radio shows from the archives, and see a range of interactive exhibits that we’re really popular with the little ones (yes, and me…).

However, the show stopper has to be the corridor that leads to the exit. On your left, a map of the area with marks on the bombing sites, explains the different levels of destruction that these metal cones of death caused. On the right wall, you will find paintings from the wartime, that literally paint a picture of overcoming terror by unity.

A few steps down and I am in the specially constructed gift shop, and I want to buy everything. The whole space is reminiscent of a home from that time, with vintage games, cushions, and cookbooks from the war.

I leave the museum with a bag of sweets. As I sit on the park bench outside, I open the bag, munch down a couple of jellies, and gaze at the giant cannons in the middle of the courtyard. I wonder if we learned. I wonder if we ever will.

Love,

G

Nov13

The Semi-Naked Truth of John Palatinus: People from the Village

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I have always been fascinated with the distinction between artistic, erotic, and pornographic. The fine lines between the forms (if there are any lines at all) are tested by a lot of artists, some times to provoke, other times to test, and in some instances, well, just because it happened.

I remember the first time I saw a picture of a naked man. I was in that stage between not too young and not old enough, and its source was so unexpected that I remember surprise overtaking every other single feeling.
It was in a magazine. I remember going to the newsstand, and seeing the corner of a cover hidden behind a pile of other magazines on the top shelf. Now, you have to believe me, I really did not know why these magazines were on the top shelf, why they were covered in plastic, or why parts of them had small stickers blocking parts of the cover picture. I just read ‘great competition’ on the cover, and as I was going through the stage of collecting everything, I grabbed it, went to the counter, and even though I thought it was strange that the cashier asked me twice if I knew what I was buying, I accepted his offer for a black bag and went home.

I remember going in the living room, taking the magazine out of the bag and out of its plastic case, and opening it. The feature it was in started with a guy wearing a flannel shirt, black trousers and boots. His hair was curly and his face long. It seemed like every shot magically took one piece of clothing off him, so, when I turned the page, there he was, naked. I had never seen a picture of a naked man before. It was so strange. He was so …different. His penis was the strangest, weirdest thing I had seen up until that moment; don’t get me wrong, growing up in Greece meant getting your fair share of nude sculptures in museums, naked lithographs in history books and if participating in sports, locker rooms with other naked men. But the fact that this was on a magazine made this experience totally different. It was not meant to be artistic; it was intended to be erotic-even though it ended being pornographic.

So being in Space Station 65 and standing in front of John Palatinus‘s naked portraits of men is making me think of these distinctions. Male sexual photography was defined, stigmatised, and redefined during the 1950s, and Palatinus was one of the key figures in this era.
During that period, photographers started taking portraits of handsome men with built bodies, that as time passed they started losing items of clothing. The images were printed in magazines like Tomorrow’s Man, or mailed directly to customers in the pretence of admiring the male physique. However, when full-frontal pictures started emerging, the authorities stepped in and arrested various publishers, photographers, and models.

One of these photographers was John Palatinus. When the New York police department and the US Postage Inspectors raided his apartment, they confiscated all of his prints, photographs, original negatives, cameras, lights, and equipments. After a conviction of Conspiracy and a misdemeanour charge, Palatinus was disgraced, out of business, and most importantly robbed out of his whole back work.

Now, you might be reading this and thinking ‘well, what work? This was pornography!’. And that is where the fine line lies. Even though the pictures were sexually charged, they would be described as erotic instead of pornographic. They were admiring the male form instead of cheapening it. Palatinus got rid of the cheesy props and the cheap backdrops, and used white backgrounds, lights and shadow to highlight the topography of the male physique.

Countless of shoots have been informed from Palatinus’s work, and some have actually completely copied his style (giving him credit, of course). This is why archivist and curator of vintage physique photography, Alan Harmon, was extremely surprised when he after speaking with Palatinus, he discovered they not only lived close by, but would embark on a mission to retrieve a lot of his photography from various sources.

A large portion of his work has been recovered, and can be seen on the walls of Space Station 65. From the risqué to the explicit, it is the demure that seem to hide questions about sexuality, arousal, erotica and, well, art.

This made me think of the homoerotically charged imagery of Ambercrombie & Fitch, and the Men’s Health magazines that use simular poses and eventually claim to serve the same purpose: admire the male physique. The classic cover shot with a man looking down at his toned torso with a smile on his face is tinted with a hint of eroticism that can be found in that early male physique photography.

The camera might be digital now, but the light still captures the same questions, the same social mysteries, the same fine lines that make the edges of the pixels.

‘click’

Love,

G

Nov11

Try Again Later

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You know when you try, and try, and then try some more? When your head is so used to tension headaches that a stress-free moment feels so unusual? When the last thought that crosses your mind before you sleep is the thought that starts your morning, even before you are awake?
That is what happened in the last two weeks; a project completely overtook my everyday; my train of thoughts only carried this specific task, and when in the end all of this preparation amounted to nothing, I just stood there, mouth half open, eyes wide open, a sense of disbelief and sadness flooding in.
Not necessarily because it did not happen; but because all this effort was in vain. Having another project coming up meant having to pick myself up, and with a stiff upper lip, keep performing.
But the weekend came, and you know what? I allowed myself to get sad; I embraced the whole sinking sensation that comes with being disappointed; I did not aim to be productive: I slept for 15 hours from Friday to Saturday, woke up,had a lazy day in, drinking lukewarm chocolate milk and dunking iced buns in it, watching re-runs of the Big Bang Theory and feeling the weight of the duvet pinning me on the sofa. By the early afternoon, the soles of my feet felt restless.
You see, I really think that when moments come where things do not get your way even though you tried really hard, moments that bring disappointment, leave you disheartened, times that truly, really, totally and utterly suck, it is crucial to stay in the moment, acknowledge how deflating it is, and only after this moment is over, move on.
There are moments that are lost on the everyday, both positive and negative, that are so small yet so monumental in their own little way that it is worth to take some time to see how they made you a better person, wiser, stronger, or well, more grounded.
After the second episode of Scrubs, I got up, in the shower, out of the door, and into the cold, the sunshine, the world that holds so much beauty and so much pain, and so many more moments to be lived, and noticed, and remembered.

Deep breath in; first step; the rest will follow.

Love,

G

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Nov9

Girl in Front of a Boy

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The woman next to me stops on her tracks. She looks through her watery eyes, stares at the shop assistant behind the counter, and starts:
‘I’m just a girl, standing in front of a boy, asking him to love her‘ she says with an audible pain in her voice. The shop assistant smiles politely, and then grabs a pile of books and makes her way to the back of the store. She looks used to this expression of unrequited love. The woman next to me giggles, and turns to her friend to see if she got the whole thing on her phone; a thumbs up and a loud giggle later, and a man with a yellow sweater has taken her place, reciting the same monologue with the same pained expression.
You see, I am inside the Notting Hill bookshop, standing very near to the spot that Julia Roberts made her final plea to Hugh Grant. As I see a sea of tourists taking pictures, I approach the sales assistant, who seems unfazed from the commotion.
We start talking about the movie, and she tells me that the shop is not the actual place where the movie was shot. I think she must have registered the surprise in my eyes, so she adds that it is indeed the inspiration for the bookshop in the movie.
Apparently, the set designer drew the set of the travel bookshop based on this one. She also tells me at the actual location was the Kurt Geiger shop two corners down the street, even though it is unrecognisable now.
I thank her, and I keep browsing; the bookshop has a really good selection, and a charm that explains why it was the inception behind some of the most central points of the movie.
So, I pass the young girl that is now reciting the monologue in Spanish, and make my way to the Kurt Geiger shop. It is indeed unrecognisable. But just a breath away is the infamous Portobello Market, so I make my way down the stalls and take in all the views that can be seen on the first scene of the movie.
Spending the day as a tourist in your own city; spending the night seeing the Hollywood version of the places you just were. Popcorn, duvet, couch, and a finger pointing at the screen: I was there today!

Love,

G

Nov7

Other People’s Lives in Almost Every Picture: Erik Kessel’s Found Art

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Two women walk together, hand in hand, down the street. They are twin sisters, the only tell-tale sign their identical clothes. They look quite different, but there is something behind their features that unites them. In the blink of an eye, one of the sisters disappears, never to be seen again, leaving her sibling alone in the photo. Who is taking this picture? Who was taking these pictures all along?

I am at home, on the sofa, hearing the rain pound the windows as I take a sip from my apple and ginger tea. I turn the last page of Erik Kessel‘s In almost Every Picture #4 and I take a deep breath in.

I went to his presentation a couple of weeks ago in the KK Outlet, where he talked about his found art books, pictures of other people’s lives taking over each page. The books are transformed into slow motion flip books, telling a story from beginning to end with a clarity that is heartbreaking and heartwarming at the same time. In these terms, Kessel is a storyteller that stands silently in front of you, putting in books pictures that transform them into more than just picture books; it’s not images-it’s lives.

His books have twists of life that are stranger than fiction: the unknown woman that documented time in automated photo booths (Book #6); the restaurant that would take a picture of you bottle-feeding a live pig before you had your dinner (Book #10); the husband that took pictures of his wife fully clothed immersed in water (Book #11); the pet with the mysteriously flat head and the objects it could balance on it (Book #8); the woman that got further away as time and love faded; and finally, the deers that took pictures of themselves (Book #3).

Possibly my favourite ones are books #9, #7 and #2: in #2, we meet the disabled woman that saw the world through a car window and the man who took her pictures; in #9, we see the endless, and progressively more persistent attempts of a family to photograph their tar-black dog; however a truly interesting life journey can be seen in the seventh book, where Ria van Dijk‘s life is documented as every time she hits the bull’s eye in a funfair where a picture is taken. To think that the moment she pulls the trigger of a gun she also clicks the shutter of the camera, her action leading to a string of reactions that captures this moment forever, is truly extraordinary. People around her change; she changes; technology changes; even the capturing method turns from pure analogue to Polaroid, to more modern methods. Yet still, there is this constant presence. This persistence. The person she is as everything around her changes.

Erik Kessel was telling us how he found his found art in boxes in flea markets, and how each stall might hide a different life story. I asked him if someone was to find a box belonging to him in the future, what would that book look like. He thought for a moment, and then said ‘my children; I always take pictures of my children. When they were young, and fell, or had a bloody nose, I would grab my camera and shoot them -and then go for the plaster afterwards’. At that moment, I realised what appealed to me I his work and choices: the observational view of life, the one that is not distinguishing between a beautiful or bad picture, but the one that looks at the story in front of the lens.

I also wondered about the future of found photography now that analogue is under threat. Will Flickr and Instagram be the flea markets of the future? Are they the flea markets of today? Are they the sources of peeks of other people’s lives, or are they a storytelling tool? Sharing, encountering, observing the familiar, the other.

observing other people’s lives, their thoughts, their emotions, their characters, their truth, their lies, their upbringing, their nature, their nurture, their memories, their perception, their decisions, their heartbreak, their joy, their instincts, their morals, their moments, these moments that belong to them and only them and the world that surrounds them and made them who they are, they made it what it is. Look in the picture. You will see it there.

Love,

G

Nov1

Within Spice Tolerance Levels: Why I like Pho

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I think my palate is the definition of a paradox: my tolerance to spicy food is minimal; with just a bite of anything spicy, my eyes well up, blinking repeatedly as they widen; my breath speeds up, every exhale coming out with a fiery hotness, every inhale begging for the cool air to rush in.

But still, I always find myself ordering the item with the three red chillies sign next to it. I always scan the menu for the spicy options, a momentary amnesia blocking the tears, sweat and sharp inhales that will go with my order. And then my dish comes.

So I think that might explain why three pairs of eyes are searching my face for all of the above signs. I am sitting in front of a big soup bowl, wearing a bib, and even after a big mouthful of my Bun Tom Hue (hot and spicy juicy tiger prawn soup), my eyes are still dry, my breathing normal, my lips forming a smile.

You see, I am inside Pho, one of my favorite Vietnamese restaurants in London. For some reason, they seem to get it perfect every time. Spicy but not painfully so; hot but not scorching; the tastes are not overpowering; they compliment and complete each other, allowing all the different layers to come through in every bite.

What adds to the food is the people in Pho. The team Leader is a combination of a style icon and a service guru, always around to give you the best advice on what and how to eat (you will be surprised how necessary a bib is sometimes).

If you go there, you need to try Goi Cuon Tom (fresh summer rolls with prawns and fresh herbs), Rau Muong Xao Lai (stir fried morning glory with garlic), and Pho Tai Lan (Hanoi style soup with flash fried steak and garlic).

Where was I? Oh, yes; spoon in one hand, chopsticks in the other; back to my tear-free Bun Tom Hue!

Love,

G

Oct31

Pumpkin Pie for Breakfast and other Scary Tales

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The smell of pumpkin came in with the first deep breath of the day. I stretched, tried to bury my head in the pillow and will myself back to sleep for another 10 minutes, but all in vain. I am awake.
I get up, put the kettle on, and sit on the sofa under the duvet I dragged from the bed. As the sound of One Tree Hill pushes me back to sleep, the ping of the kettle wakes me up. I get up, make tea, open the fridge and get the pumpkin pie out.
I cut a generous slice, then eat a bit from the tin as I am putting it back in the fridge. I take my plate and mug and walk back to the living room, sit down, turn the TV off and put on Alex Clare on my iPod. I look at Jonathan, the pumpkin, as he is staring out of the window, surrounded by green and orange cupcakes.
True to Halloween form, I realise that I am eating his insides. I look at my plate, and then at Jonathan and shrug. Well, it’s supposed to be a scary day, right?
I walk with my empty plate back in the kitchen, put in next to the sink and I grab a roll of my ‘spine’ bread (with the bone marrow made of olive paste filling). I munch absent-mindedly, as it suddenly hits me. A sense of rising panic spins inside my chest as I turn my head slowly to face what is behind me. No, it can not be.
I take a step forward, extend my hand slowly and reach for the handle. I am wide awake now. With a deep breath, I open the door, and the light makes everything look so…enticing. Phew. I was worried for a second that I did not see the pumpkin pie and pumpkin cheesecake slice from Konditor and Cook I got for this evening; but there it is. Waiting.
I closed the fridge door, got up, double checked the scary DVDs for tonight and after a quick shower, got dressed, put my headphones on and with Michael Jackson‘s Thriller playing, I stepped out of the house.

And though you fight to stay alive
Your body starts to shiver
For no mere mortal can resist
The evil of the thriller

Boo.

Love,

G

 

 

 

 

Oct28

Here: Unilever Series and Tino Sehgal’s human cloud in Tate Modern

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I am talking to a stranger; she tells me about the cities she nested in, the different houses she stayed in, different people she lived with. She asks me ‘where do I belong?’. Here.

Moments before, I was watching a group of people walking backwards towards the exit. They stopped, started chanting, and the lights on the ceiling followed their rhythm. Then the started running in circles, trying to find an invisible end goal. Here.

I took my coat off, put in on the floor and sat down for a second. I looked at them, I looked at how people reacted to them. The group is wearing normal clothes, and apart from one common characteristic, their worn-out trainers, they could not easily be singled out as part of the collective. You see, I am standing in the middle of the Turbine Hall in Tate Modern, observing Tino Sehgal‘s Unilever Series commission.

Unlike Tacita Dean’s analogue marvel, this piece is the first live work to take over the space, with a human cloud of participants whose movements, sounds, and conversations are the choreographed building blocks of the overall piece.

The work is constructed by the physical and vocal energy of the participants and visitors, and the invisible moments that bind them. The public is fearful, delighted, inquisitive, eager to participate, willing to create obstacles, move together, move away, stand still.
It is interesting to see their reactions, their distanced curiosity, the glances they throw at the group, making sure they don’t get caught looking.

However, it is also interesting to explore the feeling of absolute calmness when you give in to the whole process, when you stop resisting, and sit down, and watch; when you don’t flinch once someone comes to talk to you; once you don’t deal with the experience as a novelty act, but as just an experience that does not have to be defined.

Life does not have to be defined. Some times, it is enough to sit; not to participate, not to shun away. Just sit, and be. Here.

Love,

G