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Online nowHapax: Hapax is a guy from Cork, Ireland.; Likes 19,171 pages, 195 videos, 1,363 photos • 951 fans • Received 322 reviews; Member since Jan 18, 2005

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Evgen Bavcar: 3:07pm 7 reviews photography •http://www.zonezero.com/exposiciones/...; evgen bavcar
shooting blind

Self-Portrait

Hanna Schygulla

Slovenian landscape

My childhood world was one of light and eternity. Everything comes from there. I try to salvage everything I can from my homeland. Family album photos are my favorite. When a friend described El Greco's paintings to me, light and colors are what I remember from my childhood. For me fluorescence will always be light shining on water, the reflections I saw. I have to go back to my country often to refresh my palette. When I go back to my hometown I touch the trees or the bottom of walls to feel the passage of time. But what's most important is what goes on in my head, what I imagine. It's what I call the gaze of the third eye.

Portrait with hands

Every photo I take I have to have perfectly organized in my head before shooting. I put the camera at the height of my mouth and that's how I photograph people I hear talking. The autofocus helps, but I can manage without it. It's simple. I measure the distance with my hands and the rest is done by my internal desire for images. I know there are always things that escape me, but that's true of photographers who can physically see. My images are fragile; I've never seen them, but I know they exist, and some of them have touched me deeply.

Geneva with the eagle

I depend on others to make my photos. They have to describe the landscape or whatever is in front of me. Other people tell me what they see and I act accordingly. I pick my photos on a contact sheet the same way as everyone else does, the only exception being that I have to control the physical gaze of those who serve as mediators between the contacts and my own inner reality.

*

Why would a blind man want to wear transparent eyeglasses? Why would he wish to walk the streets of Paris dressed in the same black hat, cape and red scarf worn by Aristide Bruant as depicted by Toulouse-Lautrec? Why would he want to risk speaking on a radio program about paintings which he has never actually seen? And why would he desire to take photographs?

The name of this man is Evgen Bavcar, he is an art photographer and he is completely blind. Born in 1946 in a small Slovenian town near Venice, he lost both eyes before he was twelve in two consecutive accidents. Four years later, he laid his hands on a camera for the first time, to take a snapshot of the girl with whom he was in love: as he recalls, The pleasure I felt then resulted from my having robbed and fixed on a film something that did not belong to me, I secretly discovered I could possess something that I could not see. Bavcar studied History at the University of Ljubljana, and Philosophy at the Sorbonne. Having settled in Paris he embarked on an academic career, and intensified his photographic activities. In 1988 he was named Official Photographer of the City of Light's Photography Month. Since then his work has been widely exhibited, particularly in Europe. Walter Aue, the acclaimed Berlin poet, considers that after Niepce, Fox Talbot and Daguerre, Bavcar is "the fourth inventor of photography". . . .

INSIDE TELEVISION - CBS &CBC (Templeton Memoir): Jul 19, 3:26am 1 review poetry •http://www.templetons.com/charles/mem...; minou drouet
no genius she

Tous les enfants ont du génie sauf Minou Drouet - Jean Cocteau

. . . The following day we were scheduled to interview Minou Drouet, a most extraordinary child who, at the age of eight, was being hailed by the leading literary figures in France as a prodigy. Hers was an astounding story.

Minou Drouet's mother was a prostitute and her father a field hand. As an infant she was taken into the home of a middle-aged woman, whose ambition to write well exceeded her talent. She adopted the child and raised her with love, surrounding her with music in a home dedicated to literature. It appeared that Minou was retarded. At six she hadn't spoken a word. The judgment of four doctors was that she would never be normal.

One day, her mother played a recording of a Brahms symphony for her. Minou swooned. When she was revived, she spoke perfect French in complex sentences. Shortly thereafter she began to write poetry. Some of the poems were published and immediately provoked debate. It was said that no child of six could possibly have such thoughts, much less express them so profoundly. It was argued that, unlike music, poetry demands an experience of life, experience that no child so young could have had. It was charged that her adoptive mother - a poet herself who aspired to recognition but had been judged second-rate - was the author of the verses.

The controversy became a cause celebre. The French Academy of Arts and Sciences decided on an experiment to validate or to dismiss the claims made for the child. Minou was placed in a room behind one-way glass. She was provided with paper and pencil, and after she was alone and incommunicado, given three subjects to write about. She did as she was instructed and the results were scrutinized. There could be no question; the poems were the product of a prodigious talent. Jean Cocteau, the eminent writer and film-maker, commented: "She's not an eight-year-old child, she's an eighty-year-old dwarf." **

For my interview with Minou Drouet, a picnic hamper had been purchased and a colourful blanket found. Minou and I were filmed under the Riviera summer sun at an idyllic location over looking the Mediterranean. She was an extraordinary child: beautiful, outgoing, animated, aware, coquettish serious. There was one problem: no one our team had troubled to find out if she spoke English. She didn't, and I retained only the residue of two years of high-school French.

The camera a followed us to the spot selected. I spread the blanket and together we laid out the food. Minou thought it great fun and was especially delighted when she discovered that some "Co-ca Co-la" had been included. She chattered on animatedly and I responded gauchely, straining for the appropriate words, often to her outbursts of laughter. Fortunately, there was enough communication to get us by, and my lack was more than compensated for by her unspoiled charm and vivacity.

When it was time to end the shoot, I took her hand and said a halting good-bye. She kissed me and said. "Bon jour mon ami du soleil," and went off with her mother, leaving me enchanted for days. . . .

** Translation corrected thanks to Clayfeet

Articles in Time & New Yorker

Amedeo Modigliani. Portrait of Blaise Cendrars. - Olgas Gallery: Jul 18, 12:15pm 1 review art-history •http://www.abcgallery.com/M/modiglian...; amedeo modigliani
portrait of blaise cendrars

Blaise Cendrars, originally Frédéric Louis Sauser (1887-1961) Swiss novelist, poet and traveler, born in Chaux-de-Fonds, Switzerland. His mother was a Scot and he regarded himself as a cosmopolitan. When he was 15, he ran away from home to work for a jewel merchant with whom he traveled through Russia, Persia, and China. He later described this journey in a long poem, Transsibérien (1913). In 1910, he met Apollinaire, by whom he was much influenced. His poems Les Paques à New York (1912), Transsibérien and La Panama ou Les Aventures de Mes Sept Oncles (written in 1918, published in 1931 in a translation by John Dos Passos), were important in shaping the spirit of modern poetry. He was careless with the truth and was fond of apocryphal stories. During the World War I he fought for France in the French Foreign Legion. His best novels include, La Confession de Dan Yack (1927-29; 1946; trans Antarctic Fugue, 1948), Maravagine (1926 trans 1969) and L'Or (1925; trans Sutter's Gold, 1926).

The Tower by William Butler Yeats:

Jul 18, 2:09am

1 review

poetry, ireland •http://www.online-literature.com/yeat...

raftery the poet
reilig na bhfilí
the cenetery of the poets, killeeneen, county galway
I took these pictures, with a very cheap camera, in late '04 - Hapax

Antoine Ó Raifteirí, a native of County Mayo, was blind from childhood and earned his living by playing the fiddle and singing his songs in country houses in the west of Ireland. He is buried here with his friends, the poets Marcas and Peatsaí Ó Callanáin.

Yeats referred to him in his Nobel Prize acceptance speech:

I have in Galway a little old tower, and when I climb to the top of it I can see at no great distance a green field where stood once the thatched cottage of a famous country beauty, the mistress of a small local landed proprietor. I have spoken to old men and women who remembered her, though all are dead now, and they spoke of her as the old men upon the wall of Troy spoke of Helen; nor did man and woman differ in their praise. One old woman, of whose youth the neighbors cherished a scandalous tale, said of her, «I tremble all over when I think of her»; and there was another old woman on the neighbouring mountain who said, «The sun and the moon never shone on anybody so handsome, and her skin was so white that it looked blue, and she had two little blushes on her cheeks.» And there were men that told of the crowds that gathered to look at her upon a fair day, and of a man «who got his death swimming a river», that he might look at her. It was a song written by the Gaelic poet Raftery that brought her such great fame and the cottagers still sing it, though there are not so many to sing it as when I was young:

O star of light and O sun in harvest,
O amber hair, O my share of the world,
It is Mary Hynes, the calm and easy woman,
Has beauty in her body and in her mind.

It seemed as if the ancient world lay all about us with its freedom of imagination, its delight in good stories, in man's force and woman's beauty, and that all we had to do was to make the town think as the country felt; yet we soon discovered that the town could only think town thought. . . .

He is the blind poet of Yeats's poem "The Tower."

Jul 18, 2:06am

The quotation carved in the slab of limestone beside the grave is the first two lines, in Irish, of a famous poem by Raftery:

Archaeology needs to recover its core principles and ethics - The Irish Times - …: Jul 15, 3:46pm 1 review archaeology, ireland •http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/o...; driving an unnecessary motorway through a unique archaeological landscape
power corrupts

The scene of destruction at Soldiers Hill Meath
via DublinStreams

. . . Much is made of whether archaeology could stop projects like the M3. My experience working with communities in campaigns against cultural destruction in various countries is that archaeology alone rarely stops developers.

Problems with archaeology on the M3 should surely be investigated but by a people's inquiry (facilitated by academia perhaps) also looking at reported land speculation and toll profits, failure to consider cheaper and more effective public transport or energy provision, the circumstances surrounding the sale of national resources to the private sector, attempts to divide local communities and failure to properly consult and inform them, involvement of multinationals with links to corrupt development elsewhere or profiteering in war zones, and an investigation of all the professional structures and the often strange planning decisions that permit disputed developments.

These are issues that communities all over Ireland and worldwide struggle with as they fight for their lives, livelihoods, land and culture. The M3 construction and indeed other disputed developments such as Shell's pipeline and refinery in Mayo, must stop while this inquiry happens; we have won the battle to halt far bigger developments - it is never too late.

The Tara debate was the talk of the congress; many international colleagues expressed shock at the remarks of Brian Duffy, the State's chief archaeologist: "I don't care where the money comes from if it pays for good archaeological work."

Many felt that the partisan nature of the State sector indicated that few field colleagues in the private sector would consider reporting instances of bad practice. Following the debate on Tara and several similar cases from other countries, WAC's final plenary passed the following resolution: "Noting the increasing role of the private sector/cultural resource management in the profession, the World Archaeological Congress expresses serious concern at the potential for erosion of standards and professional ethics. The congress calls for explicit inclusion of these concerns in its Code of Ethics. The congress calls on all colleagues to support those field archaeologists working in the private sector, who are striving to maintain professional standards in difficult conditions."

There have been recent reports on the reversal of privatisation in New Zealand, reflecting a growing trend. There is a similar feeling in archaeology that independent regulation of this sector is needed with some advocating a return to archaeology as a wholly public sector service. Others besides me think that Ireland might provide a model. . . .

38 sites discovered during test-trenching, on M3 route
via TaraWatch

FOTO: Modernity in Central Europe, 1918-1945: Jul 14, 7:02am 1 review photography •http://www.guggenheim.org/exhibitions...; modernity in central europe, 1918-48
high ways

Umbo: Eerie Street, 1928

Paul Wolff: Imperial Highway, 1936

Across Austria, Czechoslovakia, Germany, Hungary and Poland, photography fired the imagination of hundreds of progressive artists, provided a creative outlet for thousands of devoted amateurs, and became a symbol of modernity for millions through its use in print and advertising. The face of central Europe had changed profoundly in the aftermath of World War I: empires had collapsed and fledgling nation states had taken their place (see maps). In a region where the dominant cultural model encouraged art to be instructive and critically engaged with contemporary issues, photography flourished and helped negotiate the oftentimes uncertain prospects of this sudden transition to modernity.

Widespread attraction to photography in central Europe inspired the rise of the illustrated press, innovative techniques such as photomontage, and the proliferation of commercial studios and other camera-friendly institutions. The region also witnessed the spread of surrealist and documentary photography, as well as the emergence of politically engaged photography that furthered agendas across the ideological spectrum. To recover these images is to be reminded how well connected the region once was and how singular and forceful a contribution was made there, not only to the history of photography, but also to modern consciousness.

Karel Teige: Travel Greetings Photomontage (printed matter, ink, and watercolor), 1923

Meditations on SoundEye ~ theatre notes: Jul 13, 4:56pm 1 review poetry •http://theatrenotes.blogspot.com/2008...; alison croggon
on soundeye 2008
I permit myself to blog this review of our recent SoundEye Festival not just because it's so flattering to our efforts, though that doesn't hurt, but because it accurately describes much of what we set out to achieve, and it seems that this year at least, we may have fluked a success. - Hapax

Language, so the wisdom runs, is what separates us from beasts. Unlike the average amoeba or domestic cat, we possess a glittering consciousness that is a microcosm of the galaxy itself, and of which the most noble excresence is the ability to communicate in abstractions. This raises us above other living things, and - like our expulsion from Eden, which was an expulsion into consciousness and the primordial moment of our alienation from other living things - justifies our exploitation of the planet, which is given to us, God's chosen higher beings, to do with as we will.

This has been the basic contract of of human authority since around the Renaissance, though it started long before. Our humanity is measured against the non-humanity of animals, and if we wish to deprive others of their humanity, we merely need to categorise them as less than human, as animals themselves. George W Bush is only the most crass example of what happens when such linguistic manifest destiny is put into practice.

At the other end of language are writers who are concerned with at once smashing and exploiting the hidden legislations of language, worrying the loosening tendons of syntax and grammar into the animalities of sound and redelivering language to the body, bewildered and unknown to itself. They make a various and implosive language, corrupted and broken and enlivened by post capitalist consumerism, conscious and angry, shamanistic, ecstatic, beautiful, polluted, impure: but most of all, it's language that articulates consciously, through soft tissue palate and breath and skin and bone, the impossible abstractions of thought. It's language that traces the oscillations between the tangible and the intangible, here and there, the said and the thought, the mediations of technology and self. Poetry.

If language is so deeply embedded in our idea of our humanity, then tinkering with its DNA, as poetry does, is a deeply political and significant activity. At the same time, it's an activity which has to negotiate its own lack of significance, its continuing marginilisation, its lack of audience, which it does with varying degrees of defensiveness or belligerence or grace. At its best and most bracing, it's an art about which, even more than most, it's impossible to generalise: it is stubbornly particular in the multiplicities of its insistences on now, here, this. Poets have to be spoken about one by one. And a week ago in Cork at the SoundEye Festival of the Arts of the Word, about 30 poets proceeded to prove that truism. Continue reading

PlanetBye: Jul 13, 2:59pm 2 reviews astronomy, geoscience •http://planetbye.blogspot.com/; bente lilja bye
planetbye
Earth science expert and astrophysicist writes about Earth observation, geodesy, climate change, geohazards, water cycle and other science related topics

Photo: NASA/MODIS

Yarlung Tsangpo becomes Brahmaputra that finally meets Ganges.
(Yarlung Tsangpo runs parallel to the Himalayas on the very upper part of the satellite picture, turning back in the opposite direction as Brahmaputra in India and finally meets Ganges on its way to Bay of Bengal, Indian Sea)

Originally from Ajihad but found thanks to Stellare, who, and in this I echo Etcetera, keeps easily the best science blog on SU. Long may she be with us to maintain it! But if she leaves SU, at least we'll still have this external blog on which to follow her posts.

History of Remote Sensing, Aerial Photography: Jul 10, 2:40am 2 reviews photography •http://employees.oneonta.edu/baumanpr...; remote sensing
bird's eye

Remote sensing deals with the art and science of observing and measuring items on the Earth's surface from a distance. By this definition remote sensing encompasses the field of aerial photography. The term, "remote sensing," was first introduced in 1960 by Evelyn L. Pruitt of the U.S. Office of Naval Research. However, the first aerial photograph was taken in 1858, 102 years before the term "remote sensing" came into existence. Long before satellites and microcomputers started dominating the field of remote sensing, people were taking pictures of the Earth's surface from afar. Taking these pictures was not an easy task and people risked their lives to bring about the development of the field.

In 1903, Julius Neubranner, photography enthusiast, designed and patented a breast-mounted aerial camera for carrier pigeons (Figure 10). Weighing only 70 grams the camera took automatic exposures at 30-second intervals along the flight line flown by a pigeon. Although faster than balloons they were not always reliable in following their flight paths. The birds were introduced at the 1909 Dresden International Photographic Exhibition. Picture postcards of aerial photographs taken over the exhibition were very popular. They were used at other fairs and for military surveillance. Two sample pictures are provided below. One can see in the one picture the tips of the bird's wings as it flew across a palace.

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