Beautiful Books

A-a-a-ahhhhh! So lovely! The equally lovely Cheryl was the one to enhance my life with these images.

The beauty in Thomas Allen's images comes from two angles: firstly, he carefully cuts images from books and stands them up, making little dramas come to life atop piles of old volumes. The books themselves are characters in the unfolding stories. Secondly, he photographs them with an artist's eye, using light like paint and short depth of field to heighten the pulpy melodramatic scenes he seems to lean towards. They're witty, delicate -- in contrast to the often macho scenes depicted -- and well-crafted. It's one of the most exciting bodies of work I've seen in a long while.

Upshot, 2002

Old books are the ordinary objects I use in my photographs. These beautiful volumes with scarred and wrinkled covers, discolored pages, and fragile spines are not precious commodities that should be stored on a shelf, but actors waiting for direction. Cutting pages with a knife forms characters. They are brought to life by pulling the severed parts outward—wire, tape, and other tricks help to hold their place in front of the camera. “Good” light emphasizes drama and a shallow lens focus simulates depth—mimicking the third dimension. Scenes are captured on film and the resulting photographs are picture books that tell stories without words. In “Recover,” castaways drift atop the very thing that documents their ordeal, and a boxer’s own shadow becomes his opponent in “Spar.” The book is no longer something to be looked through. It must be looked at. This is my new obsession.

Recover, 2003

Virginia Quarterly Review
Foley Gallery
Thomas Barry Fine Arts

Canuckistan 2006 -- The Return of the Pith Helmet

Well, maybe. Yesterday I applied for a scholarship to attend the XVI International AIDS Conference in Toronto, August 2006. How excitement! I mean, yes, it will mean working my proverbial off at the event if I actually am approved for this funding, but it also likely means a return visit to BC and meeting up with several Toronto-based online friends I've only known in two dimensions until now. A combination of keen powers of divination and casual inspection of my bank statements tells me that I'm not likely to see the Land of the Donut again in the near future without it.

As I understand it, I've got Buckley's* of getting this sponsorship, but my ticket's in the hat, so I've done all I can do for now. Until March, anyway, at which point the applications for Media Scholarships -- which is more appropriate for what I do, really -- are being taken. I'm thinking of it as having bought a lottery ticket.

I have my dibs in for a spot at theJune 2006 14th INTERNATIONAL SYMPOSIUM on HIV & EMERGING INFECTIOUS DISEASES in Toulon, France, too. Now if that doesn't sound like a crackin' fun holiday I don't know what does. Just imagine the souvenirs!

* Because I know some non-Australian will ask:
Buckley's. noun Colloquial
1 Also, Buckley's chance, Buckley's hope. a very slim chance; forlorn hope:
2 Buckley's and none, (humorous) two chances amounting to next to no chance.
[? from William BUCKLEY, influenced by the pun on the name of the former Melbourne department store, Buckley and Nunn]

I just lo-o-ove the web. Today I made a few changes to my blog template. I didn't touch the code for the links in the sidebar. I republished the blog and -- voila! -- suddenly the links don't actually link anymore. Wonderful! The coding is exactly the same as when they did link; I checked, and they look just fine in the template, so what the hell is going on is beyond me. Aargh!

(Stupid blog.)

National Day of Community Protest

Protect Your Rights At Work.

The Australia-wide hookup. Union heavies' picnic. Girl reporter braved the madding crowd.

I only stayed a little while, and was dissappointed that the whiney rhetoric was still keeping the crowd from making its rowdy march across the bridge an hour and a half into the day's events. I would like to have taken part in that, but print deadlines wait for no comrade... so back to the coalface I went.

Every B-list celeb had something to say...

...and the odd A-lister made an appearance, too.

The Biscuits Union? Is there a Crumpet Union, too?

Update: Comrade Bron, who stayed longer, reports that the march went up Peel St and into West End, not over the bridge and into the city as I'd assumed....why a stroll through the cappucino strip is going to overthrow the government I'm not sure.

ABC News report of the day's events.

Beyond Wool and Needle - Prelude to a Philosophy of the Future

Knitting is very slow.

Knitting is not quick.

If you're an instant gratification type, knitting is not the pick.


Funnily enough, I am an instant gratification type in many ways. I find knitting a valuable exercise in slowing down, being patient, grooving on the journey rather than grinding my teeth in strained anticipation of the desitination. It's not easy. But I'm getting there.


Needle through, yarn over, pull it back through... and off........

Needle through, yarn over, pull it back through... and off........

Needle through, yarn over, pull it back through... and off........

Needle through, yarn over, pull it back through... and off........

Needle through, yarn over, pull it back through... and off........

Needle through, yarn over, pull it back through, needle back in, yarn over, pull it th-h-h-hro-o-o-o-ough..... and off.....

Turn the stitch counter one...

Start again.........

Needle through...........


...and so my mind chants. Fixing my attention on such a mundane and manual task gives my mind licence to wander, yet keeps it tethered to the weaving in and out. The sublime union of freedom and restraint, liberty and bondage, makes for some fruitful reflections.

The end of the year is in sight, and so with it comes my annual spring tide of twinkly-eyed optimism. It's impossible for even the heaviest heart not to lift as the errors of the dying year are archived and the shiny promises of the new one contemplated. It's a time for potential.
I am very excited about the coming year. It's taken a long time to ramp the energy up since coming back to Brisbane; to know where to go or what to do. Or how. The first glimpses of the rest of my story have been hard to catch. But aren't the things worth having like that?

Not unlike the knitting. Stitch by stitch by stitch by stitch. It's a long, concentrated slog, but once it's finished...

Have a great Potential Season. May your coming year be just difficult enough.

New Work Laws Offer A Brave Olde Worlde

The Government is proud to unveil its new industrial relations program - SerfChoices. You may have seen the ads for it already: smiling peasants plough the fields while soothing mandolin music plays. You wouldn't believe how hard it was to find peasants with full sets of teeth for those ads, this being the Middle Ages and all. Or ones that remembered how to smile. But I digress.

SerfChoices features exciting changes to the way your lord handles your employment. In the past, there were many ways you and your lord negotiated. Some lords liked to beat their serfs with maces; some cudgels; some preferred the rack. The Government is pleased to announce there will now be one standard method for beating peasants with large sticks, making it a simpler and fairer system.

SerfChoices also changes the way you, the peasant, negotiate your weekly payment of turnips.

In the past, you negotiated your turnip ration in the presence of your lord and the Government's official torturer, Dagmar the Terrible. The Government is pleased to announce it has eliminated third parties such as Dagmar. Now your lord will beat and torture you directly as you beg for scraps. Once negotiated, your contract will be cast in iron. You can't get much more cast-iron than manacles.

SerfChoices guarantees that many of your employment conditions remain unchanged. As a peasant, you're not entitled to holidays, so there's no change there. Your medical benefits remain intact - when you pass out in the fields from exhaustion, you will be left until you recover or the wolves take you.

The Government has made it illegal for your lord not to beat you because of race, colour, sex or age. Everyone will be given the same number of beatings, making it a better system for all.

The maximum number of working hours a day will be fixed at 23. One hour is permitted for sleeping, smoking noxious weed from the West Indies, and turnip consumption. Casual peasants will earn a quarter of a turnip and a piece of weevil-infested bread for each hour they work over 23.

Your protection from unfair dismissal will depend on your individual bargaining power - that is, whether or not you can talk your lord out of shooting you with his crossbow. Yet another way the Government is rewarding individual talent.

Thanks to SerfChoices, Sunday will no longer be a day of worship, but of work. Your lord is your living god - you may worship him whenever you please. Collective bargaining - otherwise known as peasant rebellions - will be treated in the usual manner, with the king's horses using the dissenters for speed bumps until they drop their demands.

Over time you may notice that your daily turnip ration goes down. That's because peasants in Upper Saxony and Timbuktu are willing to work for less. SerfChoices will allow us to build foundations for a stronger, more prosperous kingdom. If we don't act now, soon there'll be no turnips for your children and your children's children. And no one wants that.

-- Charles Purcell, Sydney Morning Herald.

They Hate Us For Our Friesians

A New South Wales mid north coast dairy farmer is trying to come to terms with a lightning strike on his herd this week.

There has been a regular pattern of wild electrical storms across the region in the past few days.

In one of the most startling events lightning strikes killed 68 dairy cows on a farm about 10 kilometres west of Dorrigo, inland from Coffs Harbour.

The cows were clustered together in a paddock about to be milked when they were struck by lightning during a violent electrical storm on Monday afternoon.

The storm hit the area at Fernbrook on the Waterfall Way.

Another 69 cows survived the lightning bolt.

Work begins today to bury the dead animals.

The Dairy Farmers Board says it is almost impossible to protect livestock from being killed by electrical storms.

The board's Terry Toohey says he was shocked to hear about the 68 cows.

Mr Toohey says there is nothing that can be done.

"Probably the only way would be to fence them away from trees and that's an impractical thing to do - it's just one of those nature things that we've got no real control over," he said.

ABC News Online.

When it was suggested that this tragedy was an invention by the government to avoid scrutiny of the industrial relations and counter-terrorism laws the Prime Minister was firm in his denials.

"It is purely coincidental," he said.

"Now if I had made the calculation that I'll put this off for a few days so people won't accuse me of that, and something were to happen, people would have every right to condemn me unconditionally."

Attorney-General Philip Ruddock also says the timing is a coincidence.

"I don't manufacture advice that we have received, we act on advice that we receive," Mr Ruddock said.