ne(one)piphany

 
“The Emir of Bukhara” (1911), by Sergei Mikhailovich Prokudin-Gorskii

Prokudin-Gorskii, with the support of Tsar Nicholas II, spent several years in the early part of the twentieth century shooting the countryside and peoples of Russia. An inventor and scientist, he developed a special camera that could take (in rapid succession, and on a single plate) images of the same scene shot through red, green and blue filters. Intended for projection, the images would combine to form a color image when projected through the same set of colored filters (much like the three-strip technicolor process in motion pictures). The result was a series of images of immense beauty and historical importance, a record of a world vanished into the mists of revolution and change.

About 70 of his photos, combined digitally from scans of original glass plate negatives, are on display as part of “The Empire That Was Russia: The Prokudin-Gorskii Photographic Record Recreated,” a web exhibit hosted by the Library of Congress.

Four from Egypt, 11/2000.

Egypt is a country that embodies the clash between modernity and antiquity. I find black and white suits the mood very appropriately.

(as always, click to enlarge)

 

 

 

My god, Ali G is on The Daily Show With Jon Stewart and he’s not in character. It’s totally blowing my mind.

Sorry for the quietness around here lately. I’m working on a Secret Project, but it’s taking up all my time. However, there are a few things of note to mention.

One, if you venture down to Portland you absolutely must grab dinner at Murata. We had shogun-nabe (a giant Japanese hot pot full of seafood and other goodies — heavenly!) and to-die-for amaebi nigiri.

Two, have tickets to see Howard Shore conduct his Lord of the Rings Symphony at Benaroya Hall on Friday. Related, but not exactly pertinent, came away from Portland with a copy of Ian Brodie’s Lord of the Rings: A Location Guidebook (as well as more mundane items like Rough Guide to Sydney and Fodor’s New Zealand). Planning, planning, planning.

Three, well, I guess there is no three. So instead here’s a reworked excerpt from something I wrote back in 2002:

• Read “Tara’s Feast”

For the first time in well over a year, “ginger altoids” is no longer the top search engine referral to this site (cf. Zeitgeist). Somehow this makes me feel a little sad.

This sky was straight out of Maxfield Parrish, though this song was running through my head: