About the Flaneur
![Gustave Caillebotte. Paris Street, Rainy Day (La Place de l’Europe, temps de pluie). 1877. Oil on canvas. Art Institute of Chicago. [Source: Wikimedia Commons]](../wp-content/uploads/2009/02/gustave_caillebotte_paris_street_rainy_day_1877_wiki.jpg "gustave_caillebotte_paris_street_rainy_day")
I walk through my blindness the way I wander down streets in Paris: unfettered and alive, alert to the raw material of the senses. I am a flaneur. Come along with me. Just don’t try to take my arm, unless I ask. What’s a flaneur? Read the first post, Return of the Flaneur to Galerie Vivienne. After that, try Foot Rage and the Blind Flaneur. Then stay tuned.Kiki: Man Ray’s Dada Muse
The legendary Kiki of Montparnasse posed for Man Ray’s Le violin de Ingres (1924). See more from Imaging Paris.Lee Miller: Surrealist Muse
Lee Miller traced a meteoric trajectory from flapper fashionista to surrealist muse. She played the Statue in Jean Cocteau's first movie. Picasso painted her portrait. She apprenticed with Man Ray and later became a noted war photographer for British Vogue. Read more.Miss Tic: Paris Street Art
Poet and street artist Miss Tic isn't exactly a kid in a hoodie with a can of spray paint. Maybe she can still run like hell when the police show up, but can she sprint in high heels? Well-known in international avant-garde circles, her work is exhibited now at the Venice Biennale as well as the alleys of Paris. Read more. See Ethics of Love for a video montage of Miss Tic's provacative poetry. More Paris Street Art.
The Lake and the River
![Fog at Isle Royale [Source: wildmengoneborneo.com]](../wp-content/uploads/2008/04/isle_royale_fog.jpg "Fog at Isle Royale [Source: wildmengoneborneo.com]")
I’ve canoed on Lake Superior for almost as many years as I’ve been losing eyesight. I return year after year like a migrating loon to learn the other side of a slow, uncertain process that we could call “going blind.” After 35 years with the lake as my teacher, I know what lies on the other side. I call it letting go of sight. Read Big Water. See more about the Great Lakes.
What is a village? A small place, yes, as wide as the world, layered with histories and stories, where you can walk wherever you want to go. My vision of that place is Yellow Springs 2.0.
Not This Pig
If there is an emerging genetic underclass, I could run for class president or class clown. Read more in Not This Pig (2003).Blind Photographers
In the moment when Paul Strand photographed her surreptitiously on the street in New York, the social engineers who created a system for licensing beggars never imagined that a blind woman had culture or could make culture. She herself may not have imagined it. Paul Strand probably didn’t give her much credit for making culture, either. Read more: Curiosity & The Blind Photographer [MiT5 2007] See more on blind photographers.BottomFeeder U.S.A.
![Grant Wood. Parson Weem’s’ Fable. 1939. Amon Carter Museum, Forth Worth.. Steven Biel describes the painting: “Parson Weems, imitating Charles Willson Peale’s pose in The Artist in His Museum (1822), opens a red velvet curtain on the legendary scene: Augustine Washington, elegant in crimson coat, white ruffle, tan breeches, silver-buckled pumps, and green tricornered hat, grasps in his right hand the slim trunk of the bent cherry tree. A row of cherries dangles from the perfectly rounded treetop, mirroring the very cherry-like fringe of the Parson’s curtain. Augustine’s outstretched left palm and furrowed brow signal a serious inquiry. His son George, boyish in stature and dress—coatless, with sky-blue breeches and petite buckled pumps—is manly in his expression. In fact, his white-wigged head is that of Gilbert Stuart’s portrait and the dollar bill. He points with his right hand to the hatchet in his left. Wood chips lie in the circle of soil at the base of the tree, its lower trunk smoothly incised and poised to split off. In the background, a well-dressed slave couple harvests the fruit of a second tree.” [Alt Text Source: Common-Place/ http://www.common-place.org/vol-06/no-04/biel/ ]](../wp-content/uploads/2011/08/grant_wood_parson_weems_fable_200px.jpg "grant_wood_parson_weems_fable_200px")
BottomFeeder U.S.A.- Attention Economy – October 14, 2023
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Category Archives: street art
Are You Human? Decoding CAPTCHA’s Into Street Art
One of the biggest barriers I confront on the Internet is the CAPTCHA code. I can’t decipher them without the assistance of a fully-sighted person, who has trouble doing it, too. The accessibility feature that renders a CAPTCHA as an audio representation isn’t much of a solution, either. My ears are trained to hear the subtlest patterns (crossing the street, my life depends on that), so I hear far more information in the garbled audio than the CAPTCHA permits. So, as often as not, I fail to prove that I am an independent, self-sufficient human being. Continue reading
London Street Art Prepares for “The Thousands”
The blind flaneur needs to figure out how to get to London for this. via RJ Rushmore at Vandalog: The street art exhibition I announced last week finally has a name: The Thousands. It also has a special blog where … Continue reading
Imaging Paris: May 1968
Augmented Illusions: passers-by (hoogstraat)
I’ve often wondered how others would respond if they saw the street and its movement as I see it with what’s left of my peripheral vision. Rotterdam sensory artist Alex de Jong created a video sequence of time-lapse photographs that … Continue reading
Paris Street Art: Atoll 13
Thanks to vitostreet for sharing this image in the Creative Commons. See more at StreetArtPariS. The photo also is tagged for the Wooster Collective pool. Imaging Paris documents places in the city and the images that inhabit them. “Just as … Continue reading
Imaging Paris: Miss Tic’s Wanton Acts
Paris street art by Miss Tic graces a wall near Rue Mouffetard. [Photo by La_Caille] Miss Tic’s graffiti poem reads, “Les actes gratuits ont-ils un prix?” Ms. Modigliani translates this literally as,”Do gratuitous acts have a price?” The pun seems … Continue reading
Imaging Paris: Street Art on Rue Calvin
Photo by [auro] The photo is titled “la musique adoucit les murs” (“music softens walls”). Thanks to [auro] for sharing it on the Creative Commons.
