Category: Photography

Posted on Posted in Cool cats, Gustav Klimt, Moriz Naehr, PhotographyLeave a comment
Moriz Naehr ~ Gustav Klimt in front of his studio in Wien-Josefstadt, 1912
Generally, visitors were amazed to see his sketches tossed here and there on the floor at the mercy of the cats.  Arthur Roessler reported, “Once I visited Klimt’s and rummaged through a pile of no less than 500 sheets, surrounded by eight or ten cats that meowed and purred and, in playing and chasing one another, scattered the rustling studies.  Amazed, I asked him why he tolerated this running around that ruined hundreds of his most beautiful drawings.  Klimt retorted, “It’s not important if they crumple up this sheet or that other sheet, that’s nothing.  That way they rub against one another and -You know? That is the best fixative!” ➔ Eva Di Stefano ~ Gustav Klimt: Art Nouveau Visionary

The Greatest Lady to ever Sing the Blues

Posted on Posted in Billie Holiday, Carl Van Vechten, Music, PhotographyLeave a comment
Carl Van Vechten ~ Billie Holiday, 1949

If I had to sing Doggie in the Window, that would actually be work.  But singing songs like The Man I Love or Porgy is no more work than sitting down and eating Chinese roast duck, and I love roast duck. – Billie Holiday

Wedding

Posted on Posted in László Fejes, Photography2 Comments
László Fejes ~ Wedding, Budapest 1965
This picture of the photographer’s sister and her guests on the way to her wedding won 1st Prize Most Artistic World Press Photo in 1965, but because it showed bullet holes from the 1956 revolution on the wall of the  building, Fejes was for years banned from publishing his photographs.

Darn that dream

Posted on Posted in Louis Armstrong, Lucien Aigner, Musical theatre, Photography, William ShakespeareLeave a comment
‘Somehow, I suspect that if Shakespeare were alive today, he might be a jazz fan himself.’ — Duke Ellington
 Lucien Aigner ~ Louis Armstrong as Bottom in the stage musical Swingin’ the Dream, a jazz version of William Shakespeare’s A Midsummer’s Night Dream, 1939


~~~~~
Darn that dream I dream each night.
You say you love me and hold me tight,
But when I awake and you’re out of sight,
Oh, darn that dream.

Darn your lips and darn your eyes,
They lift me high above the moonlit sky,
Then I tumble out of paradise–
Oh, darn that dream.

Darn that one-track mind of mine,
It can’t understand that you don’t care.
Just to change the mood I’m in,
I’d welcome a nice old nightmare.

Darn that dream, and bless it, too.
Without that dream I’d never have you.
But it haunts me, and it won’t come true,
Oh, darn that dream.


music by Jimmy Van Heusen
lyrics by Eddie DeLange

Mr. Rose

Posted on Posted in Books, Flowers, J. Horace McFarland, PhotographyLeave a comment
 J. Horace McFarland ~ Rose-Climbing American Beauty, 1911  [Pennsylvania State Archives]
➔  ExplorePAHistory.com


‘I should like no better epitaph than that it might be said, after I have passed along to other labors, that here dwelt a man who loved a garden, who lived in and grew with it, and who yet looks upon  it, even from afar, as a garden growing for all who love the beauties of God’s green earth.’  — J. Horace McFarland ~ My Growing Garden, 1915