Friday, July 17, 2009

Power

Ring of Gyges







mascara - prison







dream - house







escape from the labyrinth














Excuse me. How about a little brushing?




43 comments:

  1. LOVE these images - especially dream house - beautiful! thanks for sharing!

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  2. I love Angelina's wind-blown look - she's a model!

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  3. Beautiful photography. Sweet Angelina - brush that babies hair.

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  4. Beautiful words
    by Lovely pictures,
    very good choice :)
    Thanks for the friendly music
    by the great shots !!

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  5. Enjoyed watching the video several times. I like the music and found the images to be contemplative.

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  6. Prospero:
    Beautiful pictures to match our imaginations. You always do such a beautiful job. I can't seem to find any insects to photograph, but I keep looking. You so inspire me. Please pop over today and look at my pics on my blog. Not near as perfect as I see yours, but I do take the cake for the cutest and best smiles on this one. Country Hugs my friend, Sherry

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  7. Mascara prison is my favorite, good eye

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  8. Prospero, I am going to google tonight and read a little. I love art and the meaning behind it. I like that you challenge your studies, this makes for a very good mind. Who wants to study something with no meaning, no opinion. Just love it. I will get back with you once I have read a little. Country Hugs, Sherry

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  9. Once again, I'm in awe of your photos and your captions! I'm grinning like an idiot as I scroll down the page! Great fun!

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  10. I agree with Jacob - I also am in awe of your photos and captions. I especially loved Mascara Prison. Perfect!

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  11. Dang!!!I just LOVE coming to your blog!

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  12. I always enjoy seeing what you will be sharing. I really enjoyed the video and your music, you are just full of many talents!

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  13. I Googled Ring of Gyges as I often do look up some of your captions. I see how that fits in with the post title. The escape from the labyrinth is clever. I'm still pondering dream - house. :)

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  14. oh, still lost in that myth world, Prospero? :-) i love the Ring! and the soft focus and the colours of the entire series. the German Romantic poets and philosophers used to say that humankind can only be saved by a new mythology - and now that the ancient one is gone, it is art's task to create a new one...

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  15. I've just googled the Ring of Gyges too! It does remind me of Lord of the Rings and Gollum. Love the photo.

    I hope Angelina enjoyed her brushing!

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  16. and you play too? Beautiful! I'll brush you Angelina:)

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  17. Kimstar... answer.... I don't know how you send you a answer back from my blog so I will answer here.. I just went out and got a tripod just like the one you described...but I didn't have it with me with those night pictures. I will go back and try again. Your little dog is so cute... I had a little shelitie colored just like her she reminds me of her a lot..

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  18. Prospero, you compose music too? I really like this video! Very nice to watch those beautiful pictures with the music. That dream house is my dream house too :-D Looks so grand. As always, I really enjoy looking at your photos. That 'mascara prison' is so comical for me ;-D (maybe it is a 'mascara gallow' ha ha...) Have a great weekend!

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  19. the ring of power... is so beautiful! so, beauty as power? hearing your music makes me feel more connected with you.

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  20. your photos and your words are wonderful.

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  21. Powerful images. The ring is so vibrant.
    the video is nice even in b/w.
    Wonderful post.

    Regina

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  22. I see that you have been a bit in The Land o Myths and Fantasy - a good dream is not be despised.

    PS Thank you for the comment - yes, it is kind of special.

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  23. GREAT POST!! Love your creative mind!

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  24. This comment has been removed by the author.

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  25. Manuela:

    the ring of power... is so beautiful! so, beauty as power?

    Interesting, yet consider the second shot closely.

    mascara - prison

    mascara, the eyelashes: fairly obvious.
    the trap as prison: also obvious.

    How about mascara as a prison?
    How about beauty as a prison?

    And considering the power aspect, we may ask: Is beauty power? Is vanity power? What about the power implications within a patriarchal society?

    Perhaps it is a cautionary tale as is in the Ring of Gyges (1) and Icarus (4).

    H.G. Wells, in writing The Invisible Man, surely had Plato's Ring of Gyges in mind. The ring gives the owner the power to become invisible and the moral dilemma of being able to steal at will (consider what is going on in world finances today). Absolute lack of societal restraints.

    In the forth photo, we have Icarus. He and his father were imprisoned in the labyrinth. They escaped by making improvised wings out of wood, feathers and wax. Icarus, drunk on the feeling of invincibility of flight, a sort of absolute power, flew too close to the sun and met his death.

    dream - house, is the least clear with respect to power. Some readers assumed "dream house" was the intended meaning. There is, however, a hyphen between the two terms.
    It could also be a dream, where there happens to be a house (a completely different meaning).
    It could also be the power of revelation, which may be good or evil.
    The dream house meaning, may also be positive - as a dream house; or more sinister as a symbol of power and riches.

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  26. escape from the labyrinth is my favourite this time, and again you impressed me with your imagination!!!!!!
    have a nice weekend:)

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  27. beauty as power, the power to define beauty, the power to acquire and maintain beauty - all these in the context of a patriarchal society, deeply problematic concepts - you'll get no disagreements from me.

    but how about power in different hands, like Adrienne Rich describes in one of her love poems:

    'Your small hands, precisely equal to my own -
    only the thumb is larger, longer - in these hands
    I could trust the world, or in many hands like these,
    handling power-tools or steering-wheel
    or touching a human face...such hands could turn
    the unborn child rightways in the birth canal
    or pilot the exploratory rescue-ship
    through icebergs, or piece together
    the fine, needle-like shreds of a great krater-cup
    bearing on its sides
    fingers of ecstatic women striding
    to the sibyl's den or the Eleusinian cave -
    such hands might carry out an unavoidable violence
    with such restraint, with such a grasp
    of the range and limits of violence
    that violence ever after would be obsolete.'

    this must be possible. we must believe it is.

    and beauty in the greek sense of arete, excellence - beauty as the excellence of the world, the essence our world, and us here learning to see and manifest it. a piece of music or a photograph so beautiful it hurts, as in Rilke's:

    'For beauty is nothing but the beginning of terror, which we are still just able to endure,
    and we are so awed because it serenely disdains to annihilate us.'

    which has us going back to Keats's
    'Beauty is truth, truth beauty'

    there would be no hiding from that, no matter if we have rings that make us invisible or not, and that would be the power of beauty?

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  28. Love the bee shot. Very sci-fi. Escape from the labyrinth fits it perfectly.

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  29. Too much mystery and philosophising going on here tonight for me ! so I will just enjoy the beautiful images and the little urchin and say Goodnight and have a great week-end.

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  30. Hello Prospero, Thanks for the explanation on the 'dream-house'!

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  31. With every scroll of the mouse wheel another great picture is revealed. Wonderful! Escape from the labyrinth is mysterious and telling at the same time.

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  32. Love the slide show - especially thing that looks like a grass! Such smoothness! The mascara is my fav! Amazingly I just saw this carnivore plant at the zoo yesterday - it looked so regular - in your picture it looks exactly the way it is in my imagination - sexy and bold and merciless! The ring is fabulous. I saw your post yesterday, but my husband installed some kind of parental control and it did not let me to leave a comment - today he got rid of the thing - I am free to browse again

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  33. Wonderful, as allways! This time I have a favourite: 'Dream - House'! Fabulous b&w!

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  34. "The essence" - that's the Kind that i see your work - and i like it.
    Always the dream elaborated to be decoded

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  35. Beautiful, my favorite this time is the shot of the bee, and the flower blurred. I love this. And of course, sweet lil Angelina. :)

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  36. Mascara cracked me up. Power startled me. All of these are amazing.

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  37. You have the greatest imagination! Love the prison!

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  38. No brushing needed. The complete natural look is just what we want today. (Me included.)

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  39. That dream house looks very soft and dreamy. I also enjoyed the music, thanks...

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  40. Breathtakingly beautiful, magical & mystical.

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  41. Hi
    I am all checked everything was okay.
    I was just fainted and ended up wrong.
    I am now equipped because I've slept a lot.
    I have a part of my face blue with a little yellow ;(
    Thanks for all the kind words :)
    Anya :)

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  42. this block is great!!!...hhummm was sure you had commented, I think I came so often to look at all the pictures that remain in my imagination, sorry.

    beautiful shots, of Papillion, the ring...my favorite!

    kisses

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Your words are only true if I deem them to be so.