Other People's Houses

For three weeks now, I've been sleeping in other people's houses. Family in Beiarn in Northern Norway, five days walking with friends in the Jotunheimen mountains, brief visits to Lærdal and Askøy and a week checking up on new and old friends in Bergen. I've been blissfully, utterly offline. I've gone swimming in the fjords, I've woken up to 15 centimeters of snow, seen the midnight sun, crossed a glacier, heard a woodwind quintet give a concert at 2.000 meters altitude and played at least six different guitars. I have been thoroughly trashed in a variety of card games and I read some books without getting paid for it. Now I'm back in Oslo, and going to sleep in my own house. Here are some houses I've visited:

Glasögon

When I was in Stockholm a few weeks ago, I noticed that I had trouble focusing on glowing objects at a distance. When I got back, the phenomenon didn't go away, so I went to see the optometrist. As it turns out, I've most likely been hyperopic all my life, without noticing because it's been a small enough defect not to bother me. Lately, with me working too much, though, and the defect has come to the surface. Hence the glasses, for when I read. Just to give the poor muscles of my eye time to relax.

Arkhipelagos

I drømme vender jeg stadig tilbake til et bestemt sted: en grovkornet klippe med utsikt over et bestemt hav; disfullt og frådene mot klippene. Stedet (er det en øy?) figurerer i de forskjelligste sammenhenger, og jeg har for lengst gitt opp å forklare dets tilsynekomst. Enkelte ganger befinner jeg meg sammen med venner, grillende ved vannet eller i krig; andre ganger svever jeg alene gjennom de salte luftmassene, på arms avstand fra klippeveggen, nærmest i helikopterflukt over de grønnhvite sjøene. (…) Likevel er øya aldri fremmed for meg. Jeg vet for eksempel med sikkerhet at klippene vender mot øst, og at sola alltid er på vei opp. Luftstrømmene er behagelig varme selv om havtemperaturen er lav (derav den duse disen), og jeg behøver bare å lukke øynene for å vite at jeg har vært der utallige ganger før.
(Sigurd Tenningen, "Arkhipelagos" fra Gæa)

I'm having one of those "There is so Much AWESOME STUFF Being Made in the World" – moments

The reason: 3 visual candy sites I have found in rapid succesion today.

1. ffffound!
Which, apart from having a great name, basically consists of a bunch of people trawling the internet and finding awesome graphics and collecting them on their site. Sort of like the Shädy Äcres image editorial policy, but done by more people and without the text. And they probably smell better, too.

The result is fantastic. A collection of photographs, typography, graphic design, logos, illustrations, etc., etc. And it never stops being interesting. It doesn't stop dropping my jaw. If you only follow one of these links, follow this one.

2. 'Skine Art is a site which contains pages from visual artist's moleskine sketchbooks. Lots of really awesome use of the book's layout.

3. The photographic philosophy of Ryan McGinley (which I ffffound via Ffffound (oh, and probably NSFW depending on where you W)) seems to mostly consist of telling people to get naked and do stuff (though they seem mostly to not be doing what most people would imagine you were talking about if you asked them to get naked and do stuff). The results are captivating and annoyingly youthful and energetic.

The freakiest picture in there is undoubtedly the one of a naked man with his head more or less in a bear's armpit. The bear is in motion, the man seems to stand completely still, while the bear appears to lean on him. C-r-r-eepy.

Dying in front of the lens

Suitcases belonging to Robert Capa, containing thousands of negatives from the Spanish Civil War have been found. Certain members of the Larsen family who have written profusely on the question of the authenticity of the "Falling soldier" picture are no doubt thrilled.

*

In other, photography-related linkage, this video shows how a camera lens is made. It's an intricate process, taking six weeks. What I like most about it is how messy the process seems, but how perfect the result is.

When the philosopher Baruch de Spinoza wasn't writing huge, monumental works of philosophy, he was a lens grinder. Put another way, he was a lens-grinder who wrote philosophical books. He died of phthisis - tuberculosis caused by inhaling irritants: fine, glass dust.

That Alle ting skinner-feeling

Det er deilig å bo i en by der det snør. Det er også deilig at man faktisk kan gå ut for å gå på skøyter, og komme til å måtte gå hjem fordi banen har snødd igjen.

An expanding market for the cosmetics industry

Mark Story has taken some stunning portraits of people who have been worn by age. Some have lived in both the 19^th, 20^th and 21^st century, while others just looked unusually worn for their age. The descriptions of the lives of the supercentenarians are oddly poetic, as though these people have already become living stories about themselves.

114 Year 226 day-old
African American woman —
the 3rd oldest living person in the world,
and 2nd oldest living woman in the USA.

Both of her parents were slaves.

The family ate the food they grew.
She never watched her diet
and was never heavy.

She never smoked or drank,
and was 100 years old when
she first saw a doctor.

She was married to her second husband
for 72 years and has
3 children,
5 grandchildren,
46 great-grandchildren,
95 great-great-grandchildren,
and 38 great-great-great-grandchildren.

I love the fact that there are still people alive with slaves for parents. Makes you understand how the distant past is not so distant after all.

Zen and the art of finding lost objects

Today, R found my camera kicking around at the bottom of a backpack I never use anymore. It's been missing since mid-August. It's strange, because there are some things which I just don't lose, ever, and there was this crazy period in mid-to-late August this year where I in short order lost my keys, my camera and lost (but recovered) my cell phone.



It feels good, seeing the world in that way again. Here's a set from a trip to the Museum of Natural History in Bergen. I shot it this summer and it's just been sitting in the camera ever since.

the daily link

The daily links:

An interesting blog post/essay on photographic reality.

The NY Times, incidentally, has made its archives and all of its current articles available for free now. Which is about time.

Another blogger at the NY Times: Paul Krugman.. Great stuff. This would have gone into the feedreader, if I still had one. But I don't, because my own computer's network card has failed, so I'm using Ragnfrid's mac and can't make myself at home here.

The Norwegian literary fanzine magazine Vinduet recently celebrated its 60^th birthday. In the otherwise good anniversary edition was an article showing photographs of the working desks of Norwegian writers. I didn't really think they were all that interestin but now I see that the Guardian has been doing it a while (or so it seems - the articles aren't dated) and their articles are actually pretty fascinating, so maybe my peripheral eyes are just blinded by the bright lights of the continental, imperial glory of actual European newspapers.

On another happy note, were finally, finally getting an internet connection tomorrow. So no more buying bad expensive coffee to sit in cafes with WLAN access whenever I have to pay a bill. Hopefully, this also means I will be able to find the time to start blogging more regularly again.

The Ultimate Adbust

The city of São Paulo completely banned advertising. That's just totally, mindblowingly awesome and makes me hopeful for the future, in general.

Here's a strange and beautiful photoset of the empty billboard signs. Huge surfaces full of potential meaning.

I always think of advertising as signals with very high volume and very little content. Like people with megaphones in a crowd of people, shouting incredibly simple messages: "BUY THIS!" "THIS PRODUCT FEELS GOOD" etc. Now the billboards of São Paulo have become huge loudspeakers broadcasting simple, peaceful messages of sky and emptiness. It's very zen & I love it.

"John, we've forgotten to take our food pills."

I just found William Gibson's old short story "The Gernsback Continuum" online. There's some trouble with the formatting in my browser, and it runs straight into the next story without linebreaks (the last line is "my little bundle of
condensed catastrophe" and then it goes straight into the next one) but the text is all there. Here's another version, which is better-looking, but has an introduction which is not in the original and which loads very slowly on my computer.

Reading it now, Gibson's early style is way, way over the top. Part of what I always liked best about the Sprawl trilogy was his baroque, lyrical descriptions of his dirty future (his later novels are much more conversational in tone). In his early short stories, though, the style mostly doesn't work. But this one, the Gernsback Continuum, must be one of the most intriguing works of sci-fi from the last century. It tells the story of a photographer who is given an assignment to photograph futuristic architecture from the fifties and earlier. As he starts the assignment, he goes crazy (or perhaps actually comes in contact with alternate presents), and starts seeing the imagined futures of the past in his daily life. Hilarity and postmodern, existential emptiness ensues.

Ok, so the Zeno joke wasn\t very funny *ancient greek philosophers and references to obscure philosophical paradoxes, as well as inside blog humor_?how could that joke possiblyhave gone wrong__?). Now my keyboard seems to have taken a premature vacation, but I just wanted to stop by to promise that more substantial posting resumes tomorrow, first with a lengthy post concerning Bill Clinton\s hairdo, and to point you towards this gem of the internets {: the aptly named Shorpy. It\s a weblog which posts the most wonderful photographs from before the 1950\s and all the back to the invention of the photograph. It\s almost guaranteed to raise goosebumps every time.

Echo station 3-T-8. Imperial skiiers on the North Ridge

On Sunday, Ragnfrid and I went skiing with some friends in Nordmarka. I hadn't skiied in about 6 or 7 years. Now we're off on the early morning shuttle to enjoy the arctic weather and fantastic skiing on the ice-covered planet Hoth. Rumour has it they have the internets there, but we'll see if anything gets posted for the next couple of days.

Oh, and the photo collective Magnum has a blog. That goes straight to the feedreader.