World War I in Color: The Autochromes of Albert Kahn

Reblogged from Quite Continental:

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Color Autochromes — an early form of color photography — taken during WWI, from the collection of Albert Kahn.  It is an amazing real-life look into the world that Downton Abbey so elegantly recreated for Masterpiece Theatre.  Sidenote: I am completely obsessed with the show.  Are you?

Kahn was a French banker and philanthropist who attempted to collect a photographic record of the entire world between 1909 and 1931. 

Read more… 71 more words

My father in law was a photographer. He spent years trying to perfect color in his photographs. It was a painstaking effort. He had to paint the prints by hand. And these photos tell of a Europe almost completely gone.

Marilyn Monroe stepped into my head

I just woke up. With thoughts of Marilyn. Monroe. Not the shocks. She contradicts all our preconceived notions of the dumb blonde. Not that she was Hedy Lamarr. She was a sex symbol. But she also went to visit an old famous poet, Carl Sandberg.

She interested one of America’s greatest playwrights, Arthur Miller. Enough that he married her.

She became the mistress of a sitting American President.

At a party with Frank Sinatra and several gangsters she was passed around like a joint.

Marilyn Monroe was a paradox. She had serious personal issues. At the same time she seemed carefree and natural. She lived in an age when the ideal woman had to be 2 dimensional. Beautiful. Always available. No baggage. She was a complicated person. This is one of her poems.

O, Time
Be Kind
Help this weary being
To forget what is sad to remember
Lose my loneliness,
Ease my mind,
While you eat my flesh.

But none of this tells you the whole story. Marilyn had a dream about her acting coach. (Think of T.S. Eliot and The Hollow Men) In the dream he was a doctor. And she was on the operating table. He opened her up. And this is what Marilyn wrote.

He
thought there was going
to be so much—more than he had ever
dreamed possible …
instead there was absolutely nothing—
devoid of
every human living feeling thing—
the only thing
that came out was so finely cut sawdust—like out of a raggedy ann doll—and the sawdust
spills
all over the floor & table and Dr. H is
puzzled
because suddenly she realizes that this is a
new type case. The patient … existing
of complete emptiness

 

That’s what murder will do to you

Dylan wrote this song, Hard Rain’s Going To Fall. And I met a young actress. And fell for her like a ton of bricks. Pined is the word. I was at the end of a messy relationship. And of course there was the girl in my philosophy class who dressed up every day in black leather and a cape and who looked like Deborah Harry. So I wrote this book, ‘murder‘. Dedicated it to my father. But really it was the actress. She would later appear in a movie with Burt Lancaster. And then the book almost won a national book award but I was disqualified. I had just turned 30. It was a young author’s award. I didn’t get the actress. Or Deborah Harry. And my other relationship did end. But without malice. That’s what ‘murder’ will do to you.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

at the morgue

 

at the morgue I lay on a cold

slate               stiff and stretched off

like a sail

pregnant with wind

across from me

on the horizon lay a red-headed kid

like a lighthouse.

I remembered him

at my window each night

as I lowered my gown.

to my horror

I saw the tattoos

my teeth marks

in his hands

I screamed out

“This is my killer.”

No one heard. No one listens to the dead.