maurag.com

I find this guys work a perfect cross of humorous and painful.
Photography, illustration, books, animation.
Maybe you will like it too.

David Shrigley.

 “When my nape exploded I entered another dimension: inchoate, sub-planetary, protozoan. Universes are opened and closed continually” – Rabbi Ronnie Cahana

My life the last few years has been filled with anguish, a filled and broken heart, and the constant questioning of life and death and what it’s all supposed to mean to me, to others. I’ve visited places in myself that were previously behind doors were locked with rows of deadbolts. The answers found through this process sometimes stand boldly and fiercely in front..but sometimes twist into more questions of their own..or just disappear like smoke. Sometimes, rarely, but sometimes, answers nestle themselves into me, like lost puzzle pieces settling into place and in that giving some relief from the feeling of vastness inside. Emptiness.

I found this piece this morning. Timely given recent and not so recent things in my life. I found it incredibly moving and beautiful. It’s a daughters documentation of her fathers journey through “locked-in” syndrome, a complete eyes down paralysis caused by a stroke. Her photographs, his poems written by eye blinks recorded by his wife and daughter. What I found most moving was his awareness and full immersion into his new world, his ability to process the state and through will and love of life reassemble his world and make his way back, ultimately being able to move again. If only partial.

Original post is here: CoolHunting

More of Kitras work and a link to help fund her fathers recovery is here: Kitra Cahana

Absolutely love these journal entries by Pat Perry on his cross country motorcycle adventure.

http://patperry.net/blog

via

Taxi

It’s supposed to be a deer..but it looks like Jack to me.

From Teagan White. via Designspiration

And that’s ok. Because it’s not so bad.

Oh Vice. You are so awesome. So in this response to that OTHER video with 20 gorgeous models kissing for the first time in gorgeous clothes..this is 20 strangers from the street kissing each other for $33. And I gotta say…add a sappy song on top and I would love it JUST AS MUCH. Seriously. It’s still pretty awesome to see how it changes people.

See it here..I couldn’t figure out how to embed this one.

The older I get, the more I understand how tragic life can be, how little it takes to shift from one road to the next and how irrelevant it is to judge others on their blundering path through life. We all blunder at some point. I just finished watching Stories We Tell, a documentary about a girl, the director, who is in search of understanding her deceased mother and her living father, and her newly realized biological father, a result of an affair with a man who 30 years later still loved her to the depths of his core. You can tell. The story slowly unwinds through the articulate interviews with brothers and sisters and also, the written story as spoken by her father. This movie has a lot to say about love, life, and the search for truth of relationship or existence.

Much of the film is composed of interviews and vintage home movie footage, but some of the scenes are reinacted, with actors, which comes as a disappointment to me and what I thought was the directors search for truth. They seem misplaced in their attempts to recreate reality, going a step further than the spoken “truths” of those vocalizing their memories of the mother and the events that transpired. There is a scene in the film that is one of the more beautiful moments I’ve ever seen in a film though, and it’s really pure perfection of story, edit and sound track working in perfect harmony creating something that speaks so much louder than any one of it’s parts could ever reach.

It’s worth watching the film just for that minute..but if you don’t..it’s this song below, Demon Host by Timber Timbre, playing and one by one each person who has been in the film up to this point is shown sitting in silence/thought with their faces bearing the weight of their memories. If ever there is truth, it is in that moment, on each of their faces.

The film is definitely worth a watch. You can get to it here. Stories We Tell.

The Silence of Dogs in Cars – Martin Usborne

I absolutely love this series of photos of dogs in cars. The artist Martin Usborne states that the series was shot in response to a childhood memory of being left in the car and feeling as if no one would ever come back for him, if perhaps he would be alone forever. While many of the images feel very much staged with perfect scenes and perfect lighting, it’s clear to me that the dogs weren’t given the agenda and have either settled in for the wait, or are anxiously fretting the return of their person. I really can’t say anything any better than this reviewer, on Yatzer.

Conveying Usborne’s preoccupation with the separation that exists both between humans and (other) animals and between ourselves, ‘The Silence of Dogs in Cars’ is a haunting portrait series of dogs as they sit and wait inside locked vehicles. Setting out to perform a cathartic experiment, the photographer re-enacted the fear that he couldn’t bear as a child. Over the course of more than forty images in the series, Usborne paired a variety of settings and cars to dogs, documenting their commanding reactions as they faced the same fate he did when he was young. Silence and solitude prevail as the canines’ expressions shift from sad to expectant, angry and dejected. Seemingly sheltered and protected, yet utterly vulnerable, they wait, trapped, appearing to be uncertain of what lies ahead.

However, in what appears to be a darker and arguably rather invigorating twist in the portrayal of a pictorial commonplace – the incessantly-photographed ‘man’s best friend’ – we also find a poignant series that hits close to home. Masquerading as animal photography, the series sees Usborne subtly shifting the focus away from his canine subjects, as he projects man’s worries, anxieties and deepest fears onto them. Honest and raw, the images convey an immediate emotional honesty that only animals can express. Behind their uneasy expressions and piercing stares, we recognize a realm of feelings that we usually suppress; the fear of the unknown, the fear of being alone and unheard. A fear universally felt but with no outlet to be expressed. In this vein, Usborne’s mesmerizing images are not so much about dogs but about those horrible feelings that inevitably arise in all of us from time to time.

Horrible feelings indeed. Some of these images brought such emotion to my heart I teared up immediately.

More photos and write up here on Yatzer.

I’ve been pinning a lot on Pinterest lately. Both under Maura G and RedCamper. It’s funny how things pop out …like life does, things get thrown at you when you need them most.

So..this…

led me to this..

Warsan Shire – “For Women Who Are Difficult To Love” from MovingOn & StereoOpticon on Vimeo.

Which made me cry.

And then led me to this book of poems she wrote….

Which I look forward to receiving. That little scribble lead me down a path I’m thankful for.

Here is the authors website. Warsan Shire. 

I adore this series by artist Chino Otsuka. What looks like a straight photo is actually a digitally manipulated image of Chino inserting herself into an image take during her childhood. So adult woman stands next to child self. So, so beautiful. Tender. If only we could not only stand next to old self, but speak to them, or maybe better..have them speak to us.

Found on Facebook via a friend..but original source is here.

Mymodernmet.com