ornament – overlooked and revisited
I have just received a copy of Diana Newall and Christina Unwin’s marvelous book The Chronology of Pattern [Link] – just published in the UK by Bloomsbury/A & C Black. We still radically separate ornament from style and meaning, treating it as superfluous and superficial, yet it is the primary experience we have of much [...]
things – beyond objects
Two new books add depth to my long-running ruminations on the character of things. Nonobject, by Branko Lukic and Barry Katz, was published this week by MIT Press [Link] It’s a rather beautiful book about Branko’s design work. Barry (and Bill Moggridge in his foreword) provide fascinating commentary. The nonobject is inbetween, relational, interstitial, combinatory. [...]
Dere Street | Chew Green
In the North East of England for the Binchester excavations – Vinovium.org. Dere Street, the Roman road that passes through Binchester, here runs north across what is now the English-Scottish border. There was a medieval village – Kemblepath – up here in the wilds of Upper Coquetdale. On the site of Chew Green, the Roman [...]
Thessaloniki 2006
I have been working on a portfolio of photos I had put to one side. They are of the old covered markets in Thessaloniki. I was visiting Kostas Kotsakis in April 2006. More at archaeographer.com
ghosts in the mirror 1
Spent a family Thanksgiving up in Boonville, Anderson Valley with Sam and Angela Schillace. As ever, the locality is, for me, one of few fragile traces of somewhat indeterminate and agricultural pasts, juxtaposed with major investment in business futures. An old (cultivated) apple tree in the nearby field, railway carriages in the town converted to [...]
Heavenfield
Deniseburna near Hefenfelth on Hadrian’s Wall. 633 or 634. Oswald of Bernicia met and defeated in battle Cadwallon ap Cadfan of Gwynedd. (Polaroid transfer)
Big Sur CA
Molly and Emma. Site of several scenes in “The Sandpiper” – Vincente Minnelli 1965 – [Link] Ben and Josephine
Big Sur CA
One of those staged viewpoints. We are little different from the days of the Claude Glass – a tinted convex mirror through which the tourist or artist of the picturesque and sublime could see a composed and painterly image. Now we have the wide angle lens, saturated color (after Fuji Velvia), and the LCD of [...]
Anderson Valley
Boonville, Dan’s radio station. Fuji Fortia (super saturated color transparency for the tastes of the Japanese market), old stock. Casado pinhole camera.
Howick – The Bathing House
In the tracks of northern antiquaries, summer 2007 Part of the estate of the second Earl Grey (1832 Reform Bill) on the Northumberland coast, UK.
post mortem
Photographs taken after the death of a child were popular in the mid nineteenth century. Daguerreotype, 1850s, eastern USA.
gravestone, Bamburgh, Joyous Garde
Northumberland UK In the graveyard of Saint Aidan’s church – built in the 13th century. Founded c635.
Gary Hill – theater archaeology?
Gary Hill in the Colosseum – part of the Presence Project at Stanford.
more fantasy archaeology
– the never-ending search for the Holy Grail … The BBC is reporting what looks like another publicity scam Fascination with the Holy Grail has lasted for centuries, and now the Bletchley Park code-breakers have joined the hunt. But what is it that’s made the grail the definition of something humans are always searching for [...]