Musée des beaux-arts, Quimper

Alexander Bloch La Chapelle de La Madeleine à Malestroit (Morbihan)

Maurice Denis Bretonne dans une barque

Hiroko Suehiro age 16, became the first Miss Japan in 1908. Her photograph was chosen from among those of young ladies from respectable families. Suehiro placed sixth in the Miss World Competition organized by the US Tribune.
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In the late 1990s, darkly tanned skin came back in vogue, giving the ’60s trend a new twist.
Instead of adopting a natural look, women called ganguro literally face-that-is-black, wear dark foundation on their faces and paint white circles around their eyes in homage to hip-hop culture. Other inspirations for the style include Barbie Dolls and Japanese pop singers. Accessories include a big wig, a scarf, long false eyelashes, white lipstick, and thick jet-black eyeliner. The trend is fueled by the belief that black skin makes the face look smaller.


Face to Face at New York University's Grey Art Gallery

Buddhist monks wear saffron-colored robes, but research reveals they don't know why. Nobody knows why, seemingly.

Awa Dance! If you dance, you're a fool! If you don't, you're a fool! If you're a fool either way, then dance! Sohn! Sohn!

Go is a game played by two contestants. In China and Japan it's just as popular as chess and draughts in Europe. There are a lot of legends about the invention of Go. One of these names the Chinese emperor Shun, who reigned from 2255 to 2205 B.C., as the originator of the game. It is said that he invented the game in order to strengthen the weak mind of his son.

Conceived on December 25, 1945 and born on September 30, 1946, Raël is the last of the Prophets, the Messenger of Infinity, the Pope of the Raelian Movement.

Son of YHWE and Jesus' brother, his mission on Earth is to reveal to the whole of humanity the truth about our origins and to build an embassy to welcome our Fathers from space, the Elohim.

He is the founder of the Raelian Movement, of the first human cloning company in the world, Clonaid, and of the first interpretation centre of the UFO phenomena in the world: UFOLand.

Avid of motor racing, singer-songwriter, author of best-sellers, those are the multiple facets of this extraordinary man.



They are yours to discover

Robert Klein Gallery has some perfect
William Henry Fox Talbot photographs

as well as
Sebastiao Salgado

and Robert Frank

http://phonogr.krc.karelia.ru/description/index.en.phtml

Who? Me?
Role-play in Self-portrait Photography @zabriskie gallery

daily photo guy's links to other obsessivist photo persons

Sami flag

hygiene+ @bathroom-mania
from muxway.org

a partial, annotated list of modern Korean fiction in English translation
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gateway of literature by and about Korean adoptees
including a link to 'ten thousand sorrows' which has a taint of the new age and something else I may not be able to read far enough to gather. the lesson of embarrassment the knee-jerk enthusiasm for the package, the quickness and facile optimism only skin deep, and the fun of putting neat images up. but I got the book and it doesn't ring true.
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also at A Better Chance

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Wayfarer: New Fiction by Korean Women

{not "here I am reading this exotic and fulfilling literature of another culture", but the hard and sure deep immersion into the real world of the other. real world, when you're there you only know it afterward, because when you're there you're only there. these women are heirs to a culture that must have had centuries of discipline behind it, 'must have' not because of historical fact but evidenced in the work they bring to the page. soul-anthems, frost on the long road, foreign lipstick, traditional clothing in an old trunk in a cramped apartment, brilliant minds in a cold dark season.}

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Contemporary Korean Fiction

"I’ve entertained the idea that I might just be getting old. But if it’s a function of my age that I remember hip hop as the people’s champ, so be it. I was raised on a vital art form that has now become a computer-generated character doing the cabbage patch in a commercial, or a comedian ‘raising the roof.’ That’s not influence to me, that’s mockery.
Hip hop my friend, it’s been a great 30 years filled with great memories, and it’s been fun to watch you grow. We’ve got dozens of broke innovators and plenty of mediocre millionaires out of the deal, but I really need my space now and we’ve got to go our separate ways. I will always love you, but it’s time for me to move on.
Yo, what happened to peace?

Peace.
Pierre Bennu "Fuck hip-hop" @dissident voice

"When a leading Muslim cleric in New Delhi called on Indian Muslims to join the jihad in Afghanistan last year, Indian actress and activist Shabana Azmi, a Muslim and an appointed senator, suggested in a nationally televised interview that it would be no problem to air-drop the robed cleric into Kandahar to wage his holy war there.

No less sensational was the fiery response of the shahi imam of Jama Masjid, one of the leading imams of New Delhi: "I won't respond to singing, dancing whores."
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While shooting a film about a shantytown, Azmi decided to observe a slum dweller for her role, and the two women became friends. A visit by Azmi to her friend's grim tenement shocked her into activism.

Upon her return to Bombay, she went on a five-day hunger strike to stop government demolition of slums, in the absence of an alternative.

"I have been the butt of Hindu and Muslim threats and intimidation," said Azmi, recalling the furor her film "Fire" sparked in 1996 with a story about two sisters-in-law who fall in love and seek erotic solace to escape their unhappiness. Mobs attacked the theater, tearing out the furniture, and the actress was accused of being "wicked" and "criminal" by extremist Hindu parties such as Shiv Sena."

Shabana Azmi


director Deepa Mehta

something else you won't see in the land of the free

Suzanne Valadon
believed that "painting was the most difficult [medium] in which to reach greatness." She worked for thirteen years on her oils before she showed them. ...her early Portrait of Eric Satie. The musician, who was to be called "The Father of Modern Music", met Suzanne Valadon at the Auberge du Clou, a boisterous and inexpensive nightclub, where he played the piano. An eccentric and penniless bohemian, Satie affected a top hat, a flowing lavaliere, and wore a pince-nez. His room in 6 rue Cortot was next door to Valadon's, with whom he had a six-month liaison. The affair began on January 14, 1893, and Satie proposed marriage that same night. He immediately became obsessed with the artist, whom he called his "Biqui", writing impassioned notes about "her whole being, lovely eyes, gentle hands, and tiny feet." Valadon did Satie's portrait and gave it to him, while the musician did hers, which he kept. The two works hung together and were found after Satie's death in his room at Arceuil.

Cahun not only continued to make photographs in her new surroundings, but also began to transfer her strategies of masquerade from artistic production to political activity. With Malherbe as coconspirator, she launched a covert anti-Nazi resistance operation in which both women assumed disguises to undermine the German occupation. Cahun and Malherbe were arrested, tried, and sentenced to death, but ultimately released from prison at the war's end. In the meantime, much of Cahun's work had been confiscated or destroyed by German soldiers. She continued making photographs until her death in 1954.