#1945 black and white photographs of people

[kommabortsig]

Joseph_T._O'Callahan_gives_last_rites_to_an_injured_crewman_aboard_USS_Franklin_(CV-13),_19_March_1945.jpg

[angstics]

on my chemical romance's history of racism:

(edit: i wont rewrite anything since that will create discrepancies in reblogs. however, i will include these important additions: post 1 and post 2)

cultural appropriation is a neutral term that turns negative when people co-opt a culture without consideration to its people and history, or their prejudices and privileges. the rising sun japanese flag is an imperialist symbol used during japan's occupation of other countries from 1870 to 1945 (the guardian 2019). unlike other symbols of terror, the rising sun is normalized because of the japanese government's refusal to acknowledge its history. the symbol's meaning was popularized a few years ago when people from south korea protested its legality in the 2020 tokyo olympics (bbc 2020). aware or unaware of its history, americans have long appropriated the rising sun. in part because of their fascination with japanese art, in part because of orientalism -- a fixation on asian cultures that centers "exoticism".

my chemical romance has been associated with the rising sun symbol a couple of times. frank iero used to have a tattoo of it. gerard way designed frank's killjoys outfit to include it (seen in concept art and music videos). it is often used in mcr fanart.

tokenism is when something contains limited diversity to divert criticisms for the lack of it. my chemical romance has had a very white cast of characters in their music videos and stories. in the "i dont love you" music video, a main character is in black body paint. in the casting call, they specifically asked for a white man (there is 100% an online source -- please let me know if you have it). even casting a black person for this role would place him in a video that appropriated his skin color to mark his "difference" from the light-skin female character.

the female character points to the band's main problem with tokenism. if they arent casting a white woman, theyre casting a light-skin asian woman. the woman in the "i dont love you" mv is fetishized for physical traits stereotypically attributed to east asian women: big eyes, daintiness. east asian women feature most prominently aside from the band and main characters in the "welcome to the black parade" music video and photo shoot. the photoshoot is the only place where an ashy-faced black man and ambiguously tribal? brown man are seen (brought in by photographer chris anthony per the "making of the black parade" book). the director antagonist of the danger days music videos (shown in "sing") is a japanese woman. she is the only main character of color in the music videos and the killjoys: california comics. the focus of this post is on my chemical romance, but the comics are important to showcase that the reality is never "color-blind casting" or "limited roles". it's mostly white creatives (band members and directors and artists) who ignore non-white people when they cant use them, reflected as much by gerard way years later (nyt 2019).

"japan takes over the world" is a media trope that is built on the late 20th century fear of the return of imperial japan. this trope frames japanese people as unique aggressors, feeding into "yellow peril" fears of asian people "taking over" the white race. this trope is suggested all over the danger days universe, where the corporation BL/ind overthrows the US government. the appropriation of the japanese modern flag and lettering on the killjoys outfits, the primary BL/ind villain being a japanese person who only speaks japanese in videos, the official BL/ind website having a ".jp" domain and english-japanese translations. japanese people and culture only exist in this universe to decorate and threaten.

the point of this post is not to punish my chemical romance. in the decade+ since, they have made meaningful changes -- the sing it for japan project to aid japan during the 2011 earthquake-tsunami, developing diversity in gerard's comics / tv show, a mexican-american main character in the 2020 summoning video. people of color treated as real goddamn people.

however. all these faults exist in frozen time. there is no discussion attached to the work. so anyone, fan or casual, may come across it and not notice or care for these important issues. i know all this shit and i still fail to see instances of what i highlighted. it's difficult locating not only your own prejudices but those of others. those you look up to.

"my chemical romance" is the product of many people from 2001 to 2013. many of these people were male, white, american, and/or, most radically, liberal. clearly laying out what they did wrong is important. being careful with history and culture and personhood is important. prioritizing growth is important. constantly. forever.

[swan-of-sunrise]

Sunshine

Summary: Steve pays a visit to the Smithsonian’s new exhibit honoring Captain America, and a little bit of sunshine unexpectedly breaks through his cloudy day.

Pairing: Steve Rogers X Reader

Word Count: 3.4k

Warning/Disclaimers: Disclaimer for a candid depiction of depression and its symptoms, and brief depictions of PTSD

A/N: I wanted to start this new one-shot collection off with a look into Steve’s POV, specifically when he meets (Y/N) in the Smithsonian. It was my favorite moment to write in The Winter Soldier and I had so much fun revisiting it from a new perspective! Thank you all so much for reading, and I hope that you enjoy!

Sunshine March 2014 Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum, Washington D.C. (Fanfiction Masterlist)

Although it had been over two years since he’d been discovered alive and frozen in time within the wrecked remnants of Schmidt’s plane, Steve Rogers still didn’t quite know what to do with himself. He had work, of course; completing missions on behalf of S.H.I.E.L.D. was familiar, reminiscent of his past and all the work he’d done alongside the SSR as the leader of the 107th tactical team throughout the war. But outside of work, he struggled to find ways to keep himself occupied. The notebook he filled with seventy years of various pop culture references kept him busy but as his understanding of the 21st century grew, so too did the disconnect he felt from the people and places that surrounded him.

So, on a beautiful spring afternoon that others were no doubt spending with their friends and family, Steve found himself sitting alone in the screening room of the Smithsonian Air and Space Museum’s ‘Captain America: A Living Legend and Symbol of Courage’ exhibit. The filmed testimonials of various men and women who’d been directly or indirectly impacted by his actions included an emotionally-charged interview of Peggy Carter from the early 1950’s, several years after the creation of S.H.I.E.L.D. and her promotion to its first Director. Her hairstyle was different and her brown eyes had the hardened look of someone who’d seen far too much pain in such a short span of time, but to Steve she looked exactly the same as she had when they’d fought through Schmidt’s mountain fortress together in 1945.

“That was a difficult winter. A blizzard had trapped half our battalion behind the German line. Steve…Captain Rogers, he fought his way through a Hydra blockade that had pinned our allies down for months.”

Steve remembered the battle, just as he remembered each and every battle before and after. His elevated body temperature and high metabolism kept him from feeling the chill of the blizzard that raged on as he fought, but nothing in the super-soldier serum could keep his body from going numb when he saw the frozen and broken bodies of hundreds of soldiers scattered amongst the snow. He squeezed his eyes shut to stop himself from visualizing the explosions ripping through Panzers and hearing the roaring gunfire ricocheting off his vibranium shield, and he took a deep breath before opening his eyes and refocusing on Peggy.

“He saved over a thousand men, including the man who would…who would become my husband, as it turned out. Even after he died, Steve was still changing my life.”

He looked down at the compass in his hands and studied the black-and-white photograph he’d clipped out of a newspaper back in ‘44. He was happy that Peggy had gotten to live a long and happy life surrounded by loved ones and he made sure to tell her every time he visited her in the nursing home, but he couldn’t help but envy her a little; she’d lived the life he’d always wanted back before he took the serum and became Captain America, but after all he’d seen and done since, he wasn’t even sure what sort of life he wanted to live. He was lost in an unfamiliar world filled with people who believed he should be grateful for a chance at a new life and who didn’t care to know how he truly felt about his situation. It didn’t take him very long to learn that only one thing remained constant after seventy years: the rest of the world only saw Captain America, the Star-Spangled-Man-With-A-Plan, and not Steven Grant Rogers, the kid from Brooklyn who hated bullies and who only wanted to do the right thing.

The video continued to play as Steve stood and exited the screening room, slipping his hands into his jacket’s pockets and bowing his head while he went. The rest of the exhibit was filled with tourists eagerly examining artifacts from his life before and during his time of service, and Steve felt a familiar twinge of discomfort at the sight; it’s like they don’t understand that they belonged to real people and not characters from a story, he thought to himself as he walked past a group of young adults snidely critiquing Dum Dum Dugan’s combat gear displayed on a mannequin along with the rest of the 107th tactical team. There were far fewer people near the display dedicated to Bucky, so Steve gravitated towards it and studied the old photograph of his best friend; he was smiling and there was still a sparkle of life in his eyes, eyes that hadn’t yet seen the brutality of war, the unspeakable horrors concocted by the Nazis and the gruesome torture inflicted on him by Hydra while he was a POW.

Steve’s memories of Bucky and that fateful mission in the Alps were suddenly interrupted when the young woman standing in front of him turned and collided with his chest, dropping her notebook onto the ground and scattering its loose papers across the floor; she immediately knelt and began gathering up the sheets and Steve winced at the accident he’d inadvertently caused. “Sorry! Here, let me help you with that.” He kneeled on the ground before her and assisted her. “I wasn’t paying attention, I’m sorry-”

“I’m the one who should say sorry, I was so wrapped up in writing that I didn’t see…” The young woman’s voice faltered when she looked up from their shared work and her (Y/E/C) eyes widened in recognition. “Steve?”

Steve’s own eyes widened as he finally recalled just where he’d seen the woman before. “(Y/N), right? From yesterday morning?”

(Y/N) nodded. “That’s me.” She took the papers and tucked them inside her well-worn notebook as they stood. “What brings you to the Smithsonian?”

He shrugged and took a moment to adjust the bill of his baseball cap while he thought up a suitable answer. “I had the day off, and I guess I just wanted to see what all the fuss was about. What about you?”

“Research,” She answered with a smile as she proudly brandished her notebook. “I’m writing a novel, so I was looking up information on Soviet Cold War-era missiles. Then when I finished with that, I thought I’d also see what all the fuss was about. I actually had another spark of writing inspiration before I smacked into you just now.”

Steve’s brows rose with interest. “You’re a writer? Have I heard of any of your work before?”

“Well, this novel I’m working on is actually my first.” They both stepped aside to let a group of schoolchildren read Bucky’s display. “I’m trying to become a historical fiction novelist, and I chose to write about the Cold War for my first novel.” Steve couldn’t help but admire the brightness in her smile and how the simple gesture illuminated her entire face, so much so that he nearly missed her question. “So, what do you think? Is everything here historically accurate?”

“Pretty much. What do you think of it?”

(Y/N) considered his question for a moment before answering. “I don’t know yet; on one hand, I think it’s great that an exhibit like this exists to educate people, especially children, about history, but part of me can’t stop thinking that it’s also an invasion of privacy.” Taken slightly aback by her reply, Steve frowned in confusion and watched as she gestured towards the many display cases surrounding them. “Like these, for example. These are private sketches of your family and friends that I’m sure you never meant for others to see. And over there, they have your underwear on display, for God’s sake!” A nearby middle-aged couple threw her a disapproving glare at her exclamation and Steve did his best to stifle his chuckle. “I don’t know, I think that they should show more respect when they create exhibits like this, especially if the person they’re about is still alive. You may be Captain America, but that doesn’t mean you don’t deserve a little privacy, too.” The earnestness and underlying indignation in her words of defense took him by surprise, and it wasn’t until her head tilted to the side in curiosity that he registered the small smile playing on his own lips. “What is it?”

“Nothing…you just sound a little different from most of the people I’ve met since coming out of the ice.” Steve looked over at his best friend’s display and awkwardly cleared his throat as he struggled to keep their conversation going. “It’s lucky that I ran into you, actually, I was gonna try and stop by the VA today but I have no idea what the address is.”

“Oh, I’ve got it right here!” She reached into her pocket for her cell phone and began tapping away. “Let me see, where did I-ah, found it! It’s 50 Irving Street Northwest. All you have to do is go down North Capitol-wait, it might be 6th Street instead…and of course, no signal in here…” A small line formed between her brows as she frowned. “Urgh, if I had my car with me, I’d just give you a ride since I’m going there later anyways but Sam took it to work this morning…”

“I could always give you a ride, if you want?” Steve blurted out, praying that he wouldn’t start blushing as she considered his abrupt but sincere offer. “It’d be no trouble at all.”

(Y/N)’s smile brightened her expression and she nodded. “Okay, then. I’m pretty much done here, so just let me know when you wanna leave.”

“Let’s go.” They walked out of the exhibit and Steve snuck a clandestine look at the writer walking beside him; she was undoubtably pretty, with strikingly intelligent (Y/E/C) eyes and lips that seemed perpetually ready to curve into a teasing smile, and just as he’d done the day before when they’d first met by the National Mall, he compared her to sunshine breaking through a cloudy sky. She was vivacious and so full of life – a shining example of a modern 21st century woman – but at the same time, something about the way she talked and carried herself reminded him of a different time. He’d gone on a couple of dates since coming out of the ice but up to that point, the only woman he felt comfortable being around was Natasha, his coworker and occasional mission partner at S.H.I.E.L.D.; with (Y/N), though, he felt unusually at ease and the only discomfort came from the shyness she brought out in him. C’mon, Rogers, there’s nothing scary about just talking to her, he scolded himself before swallowing thickly and speaking up. “So, how far along are you with your novel?”

“I’m actually almost done with it, thank God. Not that I don’t enjoy writing, of course, but some days it feels like I’ve been writing this thing for a decade.” (Y/N) hitched the strap of her messenger bag higher on her shoulder and flashed him a thankful smile as he held the museum’s front door open for her. “Today was my last day of research. All I need to do is finish writing the last few chapters and then I can send them to my publisher for final approval.”

Steve smiled at the enthusiasm he detected in her voice. “Have you already chosen a title?”

“It’s called For Queen and Country, but there’s a funny story about how that came to be. I originally titled it The Détente Paradox, because the novel chronicles how a female MI5 agent discovers a plot to infiltrate and destabilize peace talks between the United States and the U.S.S.R.; my publisher argued that even if American readers knew the English translation, they wouldn’t understand the story from the title alone-”

“The Relaxation Paradox; makes perfect sense to me.” Steve felt himself flush as (Y/N)’s brows rose in surprise. “I, um, speak a little French. Sorry, you were saying?”

She looked impressed as they made their way towards the museum’s parking lot. “The criticism got under my skin and I couldn’t think of anything else until one night, my publisher called me after binge-watching some classic James Bond movies with his wife. In a couple of them, James Bond sometimes says he does the things he does as a spy ‘for Queen and country,’ and-wait, do you know about James Bond?”

“Nope, but I’ll go ahead and add him to the list,” Steve replied as he pulled out his notebook and jotted down the fictional spy’s name.

“So anyway, my publisher convinced me to change the title to For Queen and Country. I’d hate to boost his ego, but it sounds a lot better than anything I thought of.”

Tucking the notebook back into his pocket, Steve scanned the parking lot for any potential threats while he remarked, “In my day, authors usually sent a completed novel to a publisher instead of sending it in separate parts. I guess that’s changed, too?”

“No, that hasn’t changed; this publishing company’s co-owned by one of my old friends from high school who also happens to be the only person I trust to edit my writing. My situation is a little unorthodox, though; to convince his publishing partner to give a first-time novelist like me a chance, he’s been giving him some of my short stories to read. His partner likes them so far, so as long as I keep sending in things that he enjoys he might agree to publish my novel once it’s finished.”

Steve hummed to himself, even more impressed by the writer walking beside him than he already was. “Sounds stressful.”

“Well, it’s not ideal but it makes balancing research and work a little easier, and I’m not about to quit now, not while I’m so close to being published.” (Y/N) shrugged and looked over at him with a kindly smile on her face. “But what about you? What’re you doing to keep busy these days?”

Hastily deciding that (Y/N) didn’t need to know how he spent his free time alternating between visits with his ninety-three year old first love and moping alone in his apartment, Steve replied, “I work for S.H.I.E.L.D. Whenever I have some free time I read the internet and go through my list to mark things off. I didn’t have much to do this morning, so I listened to some of the soundtrack from American Graffiti; it’s not what I’m used to, but I liked it. All the songs sound unique from one another.”

The writer’s eyes lit up when he mentioned her music recommendation, and he felt his heart stutter at the beautiful sight. “Right? My mom was born in the sixties so she grew up listening to that type of music. Whenever my brother and I had to help on chore day, she’d put on her old records so that we’d have something fun to listen to while we cleaned the house.” They walked through the parking lot and as they turned down an aisle, Steve subtly checked that they weren’t being followed while an unaware (Y/N) continued to talk. “Sam thinks that music from that era is too cheesy, but this is also the guy who thinks that Marvin Gaye’s better than Jimi Hendrix so what the hell does he know?” He stopped beside his motorcycle and she sucked in a quick breath. “Is this yours?”

“Yep, it’s a Harley-Davidson Street 750. The one back there in the exhibit’s a Harley, too, a modified ’42 WLA Liberator. I’ve always preferred motorcycles to cars, so it was nice to see that they haven’t changed too much over the-” The rest of his sentence died in his throat when he caught sight of the unreadable expression on (Y/N)’s face, and his heart instantly plummeted in his chest. “I’m sorry, I should’ve told you that I didn’t have a car. If you’re not comfortable with-”

“No, no, it’s okay, I’ve always wanted to ride a motorcycle!” (Y/N)’s exclamation took him by surprise, but he managed to return her excited smile with one of his own. “Do you have a spare helmet?” He pulled a helmet out of the bike’s back compartment and tossed his baseball cap into it, trying his best not to think about how cute she looked when she placed the helmet on her head. “Wait, what about yours?”

Steve flashed her a teasing grin. “Super-soldier, remember?” She rolled her eyes as he swung a leg over the bike and sat, giving the empty space behind him a pat before placing his hands back on the handlebars. “Hop on.” She followed his direction with less than perfect grace, doing her best to respect his personal space while also trying her hardest not to fall flat on her face, and Steve bit back a smile as he watched her progress in the rearview mirror. “I’ll be able to hear you over the engine noise, so feel free to give directions as we go. And make sure to hold on tight, okay?”

“Sir, yes, sir!”

Chuckling, Steve revved up the engine and backed out of the parking spot; the writer seated behind him predictably panicked at the sudden movement and involuntarily moved her hands from beneath her seat to rest on his waist, causing Steve to blush as he gently took hold of her hands and guided her to wrap her arms around his torso. If he weren’t a super-soldier with heightened abilities, he almost certainly would’ve crashed the motorcycle because of how distracted he found himself by (Y/N)’s presence. He could feel the warmth of her body through his jacket and smell the faint scent of her perfume as she clung onto him and on a wild impulse, he sped up and grinned when she shrieked in delight and tightened her hold on him. True to his word, he heard her give him directions amidst her laughter and much to his disappointment, they reached the VA in under fifteen minutes.

Steve parked the motorcycle in front of the building and switched off the engine before turning in his seat to look at his beaming passenger. “So, how was your first ever motorcycle ride?”

“Amazing!” She held onto his shoulders as she clambered off the bike and removed the helmet. “I might even have to trade in my baby for one!” Steve’s eyes widened at her remark, and she hastily shook her head. “No, no, that’s just my dumb nickname for my Volkswagen Bug! I don’t have an actual baby, of course, and if I did I certainly wouldn’t trade it…um, so yeah, no baby…and no guy, either, in case you were wondering. I’m single, single like a Pringle.” (Y/N) cringed at her own words and dropped her head in her hand to avoid eye-contact. “You can stop my dumb rambling anytime now, Steve…”

Steve’s grin widened. “Don’t worry, it’s not dumb. Entertaining, yeah, but definitely not dumb.”

The writer shot him a glare that would’ve intimidated him if it hadn’t looked so adorable on her. “You know, you’re a lot more of a pain in the ass than the history books make you out to be.”

Just as he was prepared to say something flirtatious, his cell phone chimed with a notification and when he looked to see what it was, his heart sank in his chest and reality came crashing back down on him.

Nurse Alia: Mrs. Carter’s been having a rough day. Might do her some good to see an old familiar face.

Steve tucked his cell phone back into his pocket and looked back up at a confused (Y/N) with an apologetic expression on his face. “I’m sorry but I’ve gotta go, something just came up. I’ll try and make it for the end of the meeting, though.”

“Okay, I’ll be sure to let Sam know!” Their fingers brushed as he took the helmet from her and stowed it away, and she gave him a half-hearted wave as he revved the engine and backed out of the parking spot. He returned her wave and sped off down the street, the image of (Y/N) standing by herself on the sidewalk with a befuddled expression on her face burned into his memory while he navigated the streets of D.C. to reach Peggy’s retirement home. But while he drove, he recalled the way his heart lurched when (Y/N) smiled at him, how lovely her laughter sounded as he gave her her first ride on a motorcycle and just how – for the briefest of moments – he hadn’t felt so alone and unseen. Like sunshine breaking through a cloudy sky, he thought to himself once again, resolving to see the writer who uncovered Steve Rogers from beneath the façade of Captain America again as soon as he could.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ 

A/N: This was my first time writing from Steve’s POV, so let me know how you liked it so I can decide if I wanna write from his POV in a future one-shot! Thank you all so much for reading and commenting, and I hope that you enjoyed it!

Spotify Playlist: https://open.spotify.com/playlist/3ziGMhEsAw833GQ9eV44nR?si=6dfead09c76848d5

The Falcon and the Winter Soldier (Part I)

Stumblin’ In Book VII: “Superhero Snapshots” Masterlist

Stumblin’ In Book I: “The Winter Soldier” Masterlist

Tagging:  @mrs-obrien​​​ @lahoete​​​ @awkward117 @cminr @natdrunk​​ @momc95​​​ @savedbystyle​​​ @miraculouscloud @awkwardnesshabitat​​​ @marinettepotterandplagg​​​ @mangosandmimosas @supersouthy @benakenalove​​​ @brooke0297​​​ @hufflepeople​​​ @becausewelie​​​ @outoftheregular​​​​ @junipermurdock​​​ @ladydmalfoy @mads-weasley​​​ @username23345 @crist1216​​​ @capswife​​​ @lilmschild​​​ @avngrsinitiative @crowleysqueenofhell​​​ @y-napotat​​​ @mary1raven​​​ @groovy-lady​​​ @ljej95​​​ @innersublimefury​​​ @prettysbliss​​​​  

[harvardfineartslib]

Today is International Day Against Nuclear Tests. 

Nuclear weapons testing began in 1945. In the United States, there have been more than 1,000 nuclear tests, which account for half of the global total tally - not including the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

Nuclear tests disperse radioactive particles far and wide, poisoning the soil, air, and water, and affecting the environment and every living thing in it. The fallout results in cancers and other chronic illnesses among inhabitants. Test sites remain uninhabitable, even after decades closure and partial clean up. Of the total number, 528 tests were conducted above ground. These atmospheric tests alone had a destructive force equal to 29,000 Hiroshima bombs. It is estimated that 13 to 34 million people have died due to radiation related to nuclear weapon testing.

In 1988, American photographer Dona Ann McAdams (b. 1954) created a collection of twenty-four spiral bound postcards of black and white photographs depicting nuclear power plants and laboratories across the United States and Australia. This artist’s book poses as wide-eyed and naive travel postcards. These photographs of control rooms, tourist information sites, the surrounding landscape and towns, and McAdams herself explore the quiet and ominous encroachment of atomic technology onto the landscape and into our cultural consciousness. (Summarized from Printed Matter).

The Nuclear Survival Kit: They're Juggling Our Genes McAdams, Dona Ann, American photographer, contemporary [artist] artists' books 1988 (publication) Repository: Harvard Fine Arts Library, Special Collections, HOLLIS: 99155271303703941 HOLLIS number: 8001640434

[missdirectiontv]

✨ pinned? fr? ✨

yup. it’s that time again.

hey! i’m Zoë, a writer, photographer, ttrpg enthusiast, furry, college student, and just all-around nerd. you might know me from the Wanderers’ Library or my CC photos!

if you wanna reach out to me, both my DMs and Askbox are always open.

my photos will all be on this page under the tag #zoë’s photo album, and i plan to release as many as i can under Creative Commons! (the specific license is CC by 4.0, which means that you can pretty much just use it wherever as long as you credit me.)

my writing will be tagged with #foxthoughts (i came up with that on the spot, here’s hoping that nobody’s yoinked it already). this’ll be everything from general writing advice reblogs to putting my stories straight into the post.

if i make any other recurring tags or sideblogs then i’ll put them here.

some random information about me, in case we do two truths and a lie *shrug*: i’m trans, in case you hadn’t guessed already. she/her. i live in texas. i’ve played D&D since i was 10. the first games i played were wizard 101, skyrim, and minecraft. can’t remember the order though. i’m an occasional graffiti artist. i’ve got an INSANE interest in humanity through the ages, and that’s why i’m majoring in Anthropology. i’m working on a whole world right now, called Vesuix. it’s high fantasy and where most of my pieces are set. i’m interested in urban exploration (but can’t do it very often since i’m in texas) (it’s unrelated to the graffiti, i only take my camera and some food). my camera is a Leica D-Lux 7. my sona is the white-haired fox girl you’ll see on my page. she’s very gay (just like me). i play the bass and guitar. i collect old books and my oldest is a copy of Costain’s The Black Rose from 1945.

that about wraps it up! again, feel free to DM or send some stuff to my askbox and say hi! it’s always nice meeting new people.

signing off

Zoë ✨

[thepastisalreadywritten]

Despite what the song says, a kiss isn’t always just a kiss.

A kiss can be political, because it’s the first of its kind or because it’s between two heads of state.

A kiss can also become iconic when it’s captured on film, even if the kiss itself was invasive and unwanted.

With that in mind, here’s a list of some of the most memorable kisses in history.

Scholars debate whether kissing began as a trend that spread around the globe, or sprung up organically in different regions.

Whatever the case, the earliest known written mentions of it are in Vedic Sanskrit scriptures circa 1500 B.C., according to research by Vaughn Bryant, an anthropology professor at Texas A&M University.

These scriptures, known as the Vedas, were foundational to the religion of Hinduism.

After that, kissing continued to appear in ancient Indian and Hindu literature.

The Mahabharata, a Sanskrit epic compiled by the 4th century A.D., has a line in which someone “set her mouth to my mouth and made a noise that produced pleasure in me.”

The Kama Sutra, an ancient Sanskrit text on eroticism and love, also has a chapter on kissing that identifies different methods of kissing and types of kisses.

Kissing isn’t just a romantic act. It can also be a sign of friendship or betrayal.

In the Gospels of Matthew and Mark, written circa the 1st century, Judas betrays Jesus by identifying him with a kiss so that armed men can take him away and eventually kill him.

Judas’ kiss has since become a popular storytelling allusion.

It may have inspired the “kiss of death” that appears in mafia literature and film (but was probably never an actual mafia practice).

Perhaps the most famous example is in The Godfather Part II, when Al Pacino’s character gives his brother Fredo the kiss of death for betraying him.

The first people to smooch on film were May Irwin and John C. Rice, who appeared in a short film known variously as May Irwin kiss, Kiss, or The Kiss.

In 1896, the two performers went to Thomas Edison’s studio in New Jersey and reenacted their final kiss scene from a play they were putting on in New York City.

On stage, no one thought the kiss was that sensational. But many felt the close-up footage of them kissing was too risqué.

In 1898, black performers Saint Suttle and Gertie Brown starred in a short film titled ''Something Good-Negro Kiss,'' the first film to show Black Americans kissing.

In 2017, film historians rediscovered the footage, which was filmed by a white man named William Selig in Chicago.

“There’s a performance there because they’re dancing with one another, but their kissing has an unmistakable sense of naturalness, pleasure and amusement as well,” Allyson Nadia Field, a professor of cinema and media studies at the University of Chicago who helped identify the film, said in a university press release.

“It is really striking to me, as a historian who works on race and cinema, to think that this kind of artifact could have existed in 1898.”

On the morning of 14 August 1945, patients burst into Greta Zimmer’s Manhattan office claiming the war in Japan was over.

The Austrian immigrant wasn’t sure what to think, so on her lunch break, she went to Times Square in her white dental assistant’s uniform to see what the news ticker said.

The atmosphere there was celebratory. The ticker confirmed that it was indeed V-J Day, and World War II was over.

As Zimmer looked away from the ticker, a Navy sailor named George Mendonsan — who’d started drinking early and mistook Zimmer for a nurse — ran up and aggressively kissed her, leaving his girlfriend behind.

Zimmer struggled to push the stranger off, and they parted ways.

But unbeknownst to both of them, photographers Alfred Eisenstaedt and Victor Jorgensen had each captured the moment, as recounted in The Kissing Sailor: The Mystery Behind The Photo That Ended World War II.

Eisenstaedt’s photo became one of the most iconic WWII images in U.S. history, in part because viewers mistook it for a picture of a Naval officer and nurse celebrating together.

The photo has also stirred controversy, as many people have claimed over the years to be the couple in the image, while others point out that it depicts a nonconsensual moment.

Zimmer said in an interview with the Library of Congress in 2005:

“It wasn’t my choice to be kissed...the guy just came over and kissed or grabbed!”

When William Shatner and Nichelle Nichols kissed on a 1968 episode of Star Trek, it was not technically the first interracial kiss on U.S. television.

But it was the one that seemed to have the most cultural impact.

In the episode, titled “Plato’s Stepchildren,” Captain James Kirk and Officer Nyota Uhura encounter aliens who force them to kiss each other through telekinesis.

In Nichols’ book Beyond Uhura: Star Trek and Other Memories, she recalls that NBC was worried how white Americans would react to the scene, so they asked the actors to film two scenes: one with a kiss and one without a kiss.

However, Nichols and Shatner purposefully messed up all of the kissless takes in order to ensure that NBC aired the kissing scene.

During the Cold War, leaders of communist states often greeted each other with what’s called the “socialist fraternal kiss.”

This could be on the cheek or the mouth, but the most famous example is French photographer Régis Bossu’s 1979 picture of the Soviet Union’s Leonid Brezhnev and East Germany’s Erich Honecker kissing on the mouth.

The kiss occurred when Brezhnev visited East Berlin to celebrate the 30th anniversary of the German Democratic Republic (i.e., East Germany).

When the Berlin Wall came down in 1989, the Soviet artist Dmitri Vrubel recreated the image in a mural on the wall’s east side.

He captioned it: “My God, Help Me to Survive This Deadly Love.”

[denimbex1986]

"Well first of all, I think Robert Downey Jr. is just absolutely electrifying in that role; I think he's mind-blowingly good in it. We talked a lot, me and Robert and Chris about it, about this sort of dynamic between that relationship because it's really, really interesting and, and complex. And you know, when you think that one man's motivation in destroying another man can be about a slight, you know, at this tiny, tiny event, so he feel slighted so - and it was just fascinating to talk about that. And, and then the scenes where we did get to work together it was just the best; I mean he's the most wonderful scene partner - so generous, so focused, but you kind of never know what you're gonna get in a brilliant, in a brilliant way. And some of those scenes, Chris let us loose a little bit so we could actually surprise and improvise a little bit and it was, they were some of my favourite scenes in the movie, yeah."

"Well yeah because plotting that was very kind of interesting because it's not - it's so complicated. It's not straightforward, it's not linear; it's really not black and white. You know the rush to, to make the bomb, because they're in the race with the Nazis, that's very clear, but then when Germany surrender, then it becomes very kind of opaque. And, and then obviously kind of plotting his kind of moral journey, which is quite complicated as well, so I leant on Chris an awful lot you know, the script comes from Chris' head, he knows each frame, he knows every single scene, so we just talked and talked about it - and obviously I would do an awful lot of work and then we would just plot it. And you're right, it's tricky shooting out of a sequence, but it's just a lot of communication really."

"Oh it was all in camera, yeah. Like when stuff starts vibrating - that was done with a projector. So they would photograph the background, then project the photograph onto the background, then vibrate it very gently. So it was, it was, it was amazing - but that, but like, that's always been my experience working with Chris is that it's always been practical so I'm all - I've never done a green screen obviously with Chris and so every movie I've been in the environment. I remember being up on top of a mountain in, in Inception, in the middle of a snowstorm; we were doing the skiing scenes, and it's all for real so you get a better, truer performance from your actors."

"Oh my goodness, there's so, so many I don't think I can kind of pin down one particular thing. I, I hope the film does to people what it's done to you, is to provoke and to get people interested and to start thinking about like - the world we live in now was changed in 1945 and we're still living in this nuclear age because of that, and we all should be conscious of it and aware of it I think."

"...I felt like when I read the script, I remember finding it just really pulse-racing and emotional and immersive, and that's clearly his intention - Chris - when he wrote it; that it is within the traumatic brain of this one man - that's why it feels like you're left kind of destroyed by it because it plays like a horror movie. It's so internal, the internal storm of this man the whole way through it and you kind of felt that when you read the script. And then I think because Oppenheimer was so enigmatic and ambiguous and he kept you leaning in like: 'What's he really thinking about all of this?', Chris wanted these quite, and, and there were these big personalities in his life, that the characters were very colorful; like she was a real fireball; like such an extraordinary person really - not an easy person but, but it's so exciting to play her."

"Yeah, I, I felt like a really - you know Chris was so clear that, you know, with this, with the way that it was written in this subjective voice and that the whole movie lived or died hinged on that performance. He, you know, the book it's based on is called 'American Prometheus' and Chris said: "I'm not calling the movie that, I'm calling it 'Oppenheimer' because it's gotta be; that's our emotional - that's our way in." And so everything was like, to your point like, it - every question I had from: 'How do I calibrate this so it gives you what you need - so it's in support of that larger idea?' because that's what; that's how the movie works really - really on that central performance which is so good."

"I remember Chris going: "I mean Damon's going to be thrilled, he's got so many trailer lines."

"Is that what he said?"

"He did, he did and he knew it."

"I, I don't - I'm just, I'm just playing the, the scene and you know, a line like: 'This is the most important thing to happen in the history of the world'. like, it's just true, right? It's like - so you just play authenticity of that line like, and the, you know, and the script did a really good job of kind of teasing out that tension that was there just because the military had this need to kind of compartmentalize everything and need for secrecy - that desperate need for secrecy because it was life and death - you know, a species level, you know, annihilation potentially, like there's nothing more consequential than that, and yet the, the scientists are like, you know: 'To get to the truth, we have to share information', and it's like, you know, how can those two, those two philosophies co-exist, right? So, so there was a lot to play and Groves was also a very unpopular guy, which was fun so you can kind of mine that for some laughs here and there you know, because he didn't care obviously. It was fun, it was fun to play."

"Well, you're right there are different fights you go through in life, you know, and some are more emotional and some are physical - like what Matt Damon does every night, he's just brawling all the time - but I think, I would say, I think it's conviction. I, I think like her conviction and her surety in him, her passion for him and what's right and fighting on his behalf when he seems so passive was just infuriating for her. And there was a ferocity to the character - that's just who she is, it was in her DNA - that's just; people are who they are."

"But also fighting within the context of her life and the time she lived in, right?"

"Well the time she lived in which was like, which was challenging for someone like her, who was really meant for more than just being strapped to an ironing board in isolated Los Alamos; I mean she deteriorated in support of fostering him, so I saw great sacrifice - there's a fight in sacrifice as well. I just found her to be sort of extraordinary in that way; I really admired her and she also wasn't very well liked, you know?"

"It's an awesome performance though; it's great."

[quailfence]

Description partially by @pomegranate-cuties

[Image description: Image 1: Screenshot of a National Post article by Tristin Hopper published on October 27, 2016, titled "'They're not human': How 19th-century Inuit coped with a real-life invasion of the 'walking dead'" with the subtitle "When remote Inuit met the mad, desperate remnants of the Franklin Expedition, they couldn't rule out that they had been invaded by demons."

The article is accompanied by a black and white photograph of human skulls among rocks, with what appears to be a stick impaling one of them. It is captioned, "A 1945 photo of skulls, bleached white by the sun, discovered around King William Island in what is now Nunavut."

Image 2: Screenshot of Tumblr tags by @techmomma: "this is my favorite oral history to tell people about #| love the look in people's faces when tell them this."

Image 3: Photo of the Tempest production described above. A bloody person with their rib-cage and guts showing emerges from the body of a seal. They have a wild, frantic expression and long claws. End description.]

@a-captions-blog

https://nationalpost.com/news/canada/theyre-not-human-how-19th-century-inuit-coped-with-a-real-life-invasion-of-the-walking-dead

Indigenous groups across the Americas had all encountered Europeans differently. But where other coastal groups such as the Haida or the Mi’kmaq had met white men who were well-fed and well-dressed, the Inuit frequently encountered their future colonizers as small parties on the edge of death.

“I’m sure it terrified people,” said Eber, 91, speaking to the National Post by phone from her Toronto home.

And it’s why, as many as six generations after the events of the Franklin Expedition, Eber was meeting Inuit still raised on stories of the two giant ships that came to the Arctic and discharged columns of death onto the ice.

Inuit nomads had come across streams of men that “didn’t seem to be right.” Maddened by scurvy, botulism or desperation, they were raving in a language the Inuit couldn’t understand. In one case, hunters came across two Franklin Expedition survivors who had been sleeping for days in the hollowed-out corpses of seals.

“They were unrecognizable they were so dirty,” Lena Kingmiatook, a resident of Taloyoak, told Eber.

Mark Tootiak, a stepson of Nicholas Qayutinuaq, related a story to Eber of a group of Inuit who had an early encounter with a small and “hairy” group of Franklin Expedition men evacuating south.

“Later … these Inuit heard that people had seen more white people, a lot more white people, dying,” he said. “They were seen carrying human meat.”

Even Eber’s translator, the late Tommy Anguttitauruq, recounted a goose hunting trip in which he had stumbled upon a Franklin Expedition skeleton still carrying a clay pipe.

By 1850, coves and beaches around King William Island were littered with the disturbing remnants of their advance: Scraps of clothing and camps still littered with their dead occupants. Decades later, researchers would confirm the Inuit accounts of cannibalism when they found bleached human bones with their flesh hacked clean.

“I’ve never in all my life seen any kind of spirit — I’ve heard the sounds they make, but I’ve never seen them with my own eyes,” said the old man who had gone out to investigate the Franklin survivors who had straggled into his camp that day on King William Island.

The figures’ skin was cold but it was not “cold as a fish,” concluded the man. Therefore, he reasoned, they were probably alive.

“They were beings but not Inuit,” he said, according to the account by shaman Nicholas Qayutinuaq.

The figures were too weak to be dangerous, so Inuit women tried to comfort the strangers by inviting them into their igloo.

But close contact only increased their alienness: The men were timid, untalkative and — despite their obvious starvation — they refused to eat.

The men spit out pieces of cooked seal offered to them. They rejected offers of soup. They grabbed jealous hold of their belongings when the Inuit offered to trade.

When the Inuit men returned to the camp from their hunt, they constructed an igloo for the strangers, built them a fire and even outfitted the shelter with three whole seals.

Then, after the white men had gone to sleep, the Inuit quickly packed up their belongings and fled by moonlight.

Whether the pale-skinned visitors were qallunaat or “Indians” — the group determined that staying too long around these “strange people” with iron knives could get them all killed.

“That night they got all their belongings together and took off towards the southwest,” Qayutinuaq told Dorothy Eber.

But the true horror of the encounter wouldn’t be revealed until several months later.

The Inuit had left in such a hurry that they had abandoned several belongings. When a small party went back to the camp to retrieve them, they found an igloo filled with corpses.

The seals were untouched. Instead, the men had eaten each other.

[manmetaphysical]

Scorpio People: a Phoenix Rising from the Ashes

3: Art for Pain’s Sake

Photographer Robert Mapplethorpe (4/11/1946) took his sexual appetites to the ultimate level by cataloguing the fetish interests of the New York gay scene with his camera lens. He placed his black and white male lovers into his photographs which exposed their naked bodies in a stark, cold manner. He had Pluto conjunct Saturn in Leo which might explain the powerful effect of his images, how they tell a story not told before about a subculture that is usually hidden. This is especially true as that Saturn/Pluto is sextile to Neptune which rules photography in the sign of Art, in Libra. He brought a classical pure style to the subject matter such as the stamens of calia lilies and male members but he also catalogued some of the seamier BDSM fetish practices, leather, chains, knives, bondage and even torture practices. Some viewers and sponsors found this distasteful, fuelling more controversy over his exhibitions.

The debate as to whether his work is porn or art or somewhere in between still goes on, but certainly since Mapplethorpe, we are more accustomed to seeing naked male flesh and his influence on UK photographers such as Rotimi Fani Kayode (Taurus) was evident. His ex-room mate and good friend Patti Smith wrote that he “worked without apology… Robert sought to elevate aspects of male experience, to imbue homosexuality with mysticism. As Cocteau said of a Genet poem, “His obscenity is never obscene.”

With fashion designer Rick Owens (18/11/1961) there is sometimes a focus on genitalia. His 2015 Autumn-Winter catwalk shows had the male models fully clad in black with just their naked members visible through a peep hole. Needless to say this no underwear let-it-all-hang- out- trend did not really catch on. But is that a Scorpio obsession? Probably not, since everyone who looks is also part of the obsession. A voyeur is like vital food to an exhibitionist- the one can't exist without the other. Yet it is interesting that the idea to focus on the penis came from a Scorpio designer whose middle name is Saturnino and who has been called 'Lord of Darkness'.

Owens, incidentally is the favourite designer of that other Scorpio, the originator of Twitter and billionaire Jack Dorsey (19/11/1976). Dorsey has Mars conjunct the Sun at 28° and does things his own way. He is aloof and difficult to pin down, hiding behind a beard which makes him a dead ringer for Aleister Crowley in his mountaineering phase. He loves fasting, ice baths and saunas and making billions. He has now set up a rival to Twitter/X called Bluesky. Whatever he is up to is anyone’s guess as he seemingly evades detection of his motives- the more you look at him, the less you know.

Mapplethorpe was among the few who are also ‘double’ Scorpio lending that extra umpf of Scorpionic charm. These are the ones born early morning when the sun is rising on the Ascendant. Some others include Sai Baba (23/11/ 1923), Hilary Clinton (26/10/1947), Neil Young (12/11/1945), Chloe Sevigny (18/11/1974) and pop star Adam Ant (3/11/1954) who even wrote a song about it called ‘Scorpio Rising’. Both Sun and Ascendant in the sign of Scorpio would mean some of the Scorpionic traits would be visible in the way they look, most likely in the face or in their general physical presence having a visceral effect on others.

Pablo Picsasso (25/10/1881) famously had very intense eyes and his gaze could be unsettling. Although he was not a double Scorpio, his Sun at 2° of Scorpio is on the IC (4th House cusp) and opposite Saturn. Anyone with Jupiter conjunct Pluto would also tend to have an expanded intensity and since the eyes are ‘windows to the soul’ that would be revealed in the gaze.

Scorpio is the sign associated with transformation and that includes all elements of that physical, emotional and psychological- this is inner work and mostly hidden, but occasionally it happens in the full glare of world publicity. Again no one sign has the monopoly on self transformation, it can be a reality for anyone with a prominent Pluto in their charts, but there are a couple of well-known figureheads who happen to be Scorpio sun signs.

One is the ultimate drag queen and glamazon Ru Paul (17/11/1960). The Drag Race TV show became much more successful than anyone could have predicted making Ru Paul a household name and almost an industry. That could not have been achieved without huge levels of hard work and focussed drive. He has Saturn opposite Mars and a triple conjunction of the Moon, Neptune and Mercury in Scorpio which points to a shifting sense of inner identity and glamorous presentation. 

And then it is hard to ignore one of the most well-known male-to-female transexuals Caitlyn Jenner (28/10/1949). Starting life as William Bruce Jenner, nicknamed ‘Bruiser’ marrying three times and fathering several children (Kris Jenner, his last wife, is also a Scorpio) and then becoming a successful gold-medal winning athlete, then becoming Caitlin Jenner. She has lead the way for trans rights due to her level of fame, (Mars and Pluto in the 10th House) but she is often controversial and outspoken.  It is hard for Scorpios to reveal their secrets so this has been a major and very public transformation of great interest to the collective (Pluto trine to Venus but sextile to Neptune and square to Saturn) at great cost to her personal life. She claims in spite of it all she is still a very private person.

How did such a transformation become so fully realised? They say the Moon represents many shifting moods- first you see it then you don’t- so it is fascinating to me that Eros and Psyche are conjunct the Moon in the very first degrees of Aquarius in Jenner’s chart so they are ruled by Uranus. But also there’s Neptune conjunct Mercury and the South Node in Libra making the story of shifting inner identity confusing. She says it is ‘about your soul’.

[elizabethphotography2024]

Photographer Research #2 ( Pete Turner )

Pete Turner is a color photographer who was born on May 30th, 1934 in New York. He started to pursue his photography career in 1945 when he moved to Rochester and started to create and process his black and white photos. As time went on, he started to focus more on color photography since most commercial shows started using colors which he wanted to learn in order to have an opportunity to create imagery of what he always wanted to. He learned how to manipulate hues and saturation and was also fascinated with geometry and surrealism. One of the photos I like from him is the photo "Times Square".

This photo immediately caught my attention since it is the first photo you see on his website. I really like the blue atmosphere in this photo since it suddenly changes the feeling of the picture to be calming and quiet since there are no people around in sight. Another interesting thing about this picture is the three colors on the stoplight which are red, yellow, and bluish-greenish. It is certainly an interesting choice of how he decided to blur the background of the photo which distorts the green stoplight color more of a blue color since the atmosphere is all blue. I feel like he decided to blur the background in order to give the main focus to the manhole in front of the picture which is really smart and creative at the same time. Another photo that I like from him is the photo "Balloons and NYC".

What I like about this photo is how warm the atmosphere is. The atmosphere makes the photo feel like autumn and feel more lively and comfortable as well. I also like how you can still see half of the building since the other half is only brightly highlighted from the sky in the photo. It shows that he specializes in blurring photos but not to the extent where he would blur the whole photo in order to make the photo not look messy and confusing. Another thing I like about his photo is how some people are wearing bright-colored clothes and the balloons are also brightly colored to match the atmosphere of this photo, which enhances it more.

The reason why I picked this photographer is that I really like his colorful style of photography and I like using color in general which I can learn a few things from him in terms of hues and coloring atmosphere. I also like how he blurs most of the background in order to make the audience focus on the emphasis of the photo which is another cool way to trick the eyes of people. In general, I really admire his color atmospheric feel and tone since I tend to favor those a lot.

[2024ardn632isobelchilberto]

Week 2 - Task 1: Read: Photography and Truth - Part 2

In the second part of Photography and Truth, the article starts by talking about how photography became for the people with the release of Kodak No. 1 and then the Kodak Brownie camera. Marketed as easy to use and then with the brownie camera more affordable and accessible to general audiences. An example brought up regarding the accessibility of the camera was Elsie Wright and Frances Griffiths's staged fairy photography. This example of photography trickery, to me, is a harmless example of children's imagination. And I think it is wonderful that these cousins were able to create compelling photos that tricked people of all ages, as they were harmless and a great story to look back on. It's interesting to think that people embraced these photos due to a need to believe in something due to the devastation of WWI. This makes me think about my childhood and the childlike innocence I had towards viewing photography as fact. I'm sure I have vague memories of seeing staged photos of fairies and believing them as real. As for a child, that is a wonderful reality to escape into.

The article moves on to talk about snapshot albums and how they are seen as sincere. However, it ignores the fact that each image is selected, framed, and curated to present a certain idea. I can think of family portraits we had done when I was younger. The staging of what we wore, the lighting, and the poses. Each portrays a superficial reality that wasn't entirely true.

Another key claim is that colour is seen as lurid and unrealistic while black and white are seen as truthful, sincere and serious. In some ways, I associate black and white with the past and the misguided opinion that photography was entirely truthful. However, the existence of hand-colouring portraits was a thing during the nineteenth century, a form of manipulation relating to the use of colour in photography. After this, the colour is manipulated during the processing of images. In a way, even now, the colours a camera takes aren't even going to be exactly as seen in nature. The popularisation of filters and auto filters on phone cameras means that what we put out into the world is never faithful to the true colours of what we took the photo of.

During the twentieth century, documentary photography became a key means of recording world events. The article talks about images that often portray a sense of realism but the actual photo being staged to suit/further the agenda of the photographer. An example provided in this section stuck out to me. Yevgeny Khaldei’s photograph Raising a Flag over the Reichstagtaken in 1945, depicts Soviet victory over the Nazis during the battle of Berlin. This was staged by using the available soldiers to reenact the action. In some ways, it seems this was shown to portray something that happened. So, one could argue this is founded in truth but was still manipulated/staged. Photographers using editing techniques like Photoshop can also allow quick manipulations to "heighten the power of their works", such as editing the Migrant Mother to remove the thumb, which was deemed to detract from the overall image. The article talks about how a small lie is erased by the importance of the photogram in communicating a greater truth. Photographs can also be altered to portray ideas to the public that suit a political agenda and propaganda narratives, such as in Stalin's case, where political opponents removed by murder were removed from photographs, altering the perception of history. Another example of the manipulation of the general public is the photograph of an American Girl in Italy, which was used to talk about the positive experiences of women travelling alone. But it was later adapted to suit the narrative of street harassment and the dangers women face, completely skewing the native to suit a different agenda.

Finally, the article talks about interpretation and manipulation. A key claim is that a photographer’s subjective view should be considered in terms of how a photograph is framed and read, contradicting the idea that a photograph is an objective record. Therefore, we should be vigilant and look at photographs with a critical eye. I think this is true for my generation as we are aware of manipulation, and it is so easy for us to do it ourselves. We choose which images we like the most in terms of flattering angle and framing. Continuing on from this, the article talks about how, in the mid-twentieth century, multiple significant texts talked about the history of photography, but they neglected a large amount of the history, focusing on a Western white, male point of view. Recently, though, there has been a shift to highlight different narratives and create a more inclusive larger picture of the history of photography.

To conclude, it is important for us to look at photography with a critical eye, especially with the emerging popularity of technologies like deep fake, AI, and better editing tools in Photoshop. It is easier than ever for anyone to manipulate photos to suit a personal agenda. That being said, it does not mean that photography portrays the truth. We just need to have a critical eye when viewing it. So therefore, photography has and will always have a complicated relationship with the truth, but awareness of this would allow us to understand it rather than fear it.

[xtruss]

At age 110, Lawrence Brooks of New Orleans is the Oldest Known Living U.S. Veteran of World War II. From 1941 to 1945 he served in the Pacific with the Army’s predominantly African American 91st Engineer Battalion, as a support worker to its officers. Of the 16 million U.S. veterans who fought in World War II, only 300,000 are still alive. He credits a healthy lifestyle, deep faith and love of people for his longevity. Photograph By Robert Clark

America’s Oldest Living WWII Veteran Faced Hostility Abroad—And At Home

At 110 Years Old, Louisiana Native Lawrence Brooks is Proud of His Service and Says he Would Do It Again.

— By Chelsea Brasted | Published: May 11, 2020 | Saturday November 11, 2023

Editor's Note: Lawrence Brooks died on January 5, 2022, at the age of 112, the National WWII Museum said in a statement.

The memories are more than 75 years old now: Cooking red beans and rice halfway around the world from the place in Louisiana that first made the recipe. Cleaning uniforms and shining shoes for three officers. Hopping in foxholes when his trained ear could tell the approaching warplanes were not American but Japanese.

The man who keeps these memories is older still. At 110, Lawrence Brooks is the oldest known U.S. veteran of World War II. This month marks the 75th anniversary of the end of the war in Europe. Of the 16 million U.S. veterans who served, about 300,000 are still alive today, according to the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs.

Brooks is proud of his military service, even though his memories of it are complicated. Black soldiers fighting in the war could not escape the racism, discrimination, and hostility at home.

Lawrence Brooks, photographed in his home, holds a portrait of his younger self. Born September 12, 1909, Brooks was drafted into the Army at age 31. Despite the segregated army and hostile treatment he received during and after the war, Brooks is a proud veteran. After the war he worked as a forklift operator until he retired nearly 40 years ago. The national World War II Museum in New Orleans hosts a birthday party for him each year. Photograph By Robert Clark

When Brooks was stationed with the U.S. Army in Australia, he was an African-American man in a time well before the Civil Rights Movement would at least codify something like equality in his home country.

“I was treated so much better in Australia than I was by my own white people,” Brooks says. “I wondered about that. That’s what worried me so much. Why?”

Rob Citino, Senior Historian at the National World War II Museum in New Orleans, says the U.S. military then had “racist characterizations” of African-American soldiers during the war.

“You couldn’t put a gun in their hands,” he says of the then-prevalent attitude. “They could do simple menial tasks. That was the lot of the African-American soldier, sailor, airman, you name it.”

The jobs open to African-American troops depended on the branch of service and changed as the need for manpower increased throughout the long years of war.

“We went to war with Hitler, the world’s most horrible racist, and we did so with a segregated army because, despite guarantees of equal treatment, this was still Jim Crow America,” Citino says. “African Americans were still subject to all kinds of limitations and discrimination based on the color of their skin. I think they were fighting for the promise of America rather than the reality of America.”

Of the 16 million Americans who donned a military uniform, 1.2 million were African Americans who were “often being treated as second-class citizens at home,” Citino says.

To put that into perspective, Citino says, consider that German prisoners of war could have been served at restaurants while en route to or from their quarters at Camp Hearne in Texas, but the African-American soldiers who transported them would have been denied service.

Brooks says he never discussed these inequalities with his fellow African-American service members. “Every time I think about it, I’d get angry, so the best thing I’d do is just leave it go,” he says.

The military was not formally desegregated until President Harry Truman forced it with a 1948 executive order. For Brooks, who served in the Army between 1940 and 1945, that order would come too late.

A reluctant soldier, it didn’t sit right with him that he might be required to take another person’s life.

“My mother and father always raised me to love people, and I don’t care what kind of people they are,” he says. “And you mean to tell me, I get up on these people and I got to go kill them? Oh, no, I don’t know how that’s going to work out.

Raised in Norwood, Louisiana, near Baton Rouge, Brooks came from a big family of 15 children. He drew on another lesson from his mother—cooking—in his Army job, which had him assisting a few white officers, doing their cleaning and cooking. Part of the 91st Engineers Battalion in the Pacific Theater, whose responsibility was to build military infrastructure, Brooks’ unit often didn’t stay anywhere long. He’d occasionally drive the officers he served to nights out on the town when they could get away for an adventure or two. But even that job didn’t keep him from carrying a rifle everywhere he went.

“I had to keep it with me,” he says. “And I was glad I did. I didn’t want to be out there shooting at people because they’d be shooting at me, and they might have got lucky and hit.”

Brooks says he was treated “better” by white Americans when he returned from the war, but it would take nearly two decades before the Civil Rights Act was signed into law.

The father of five children, 13 grandchildren, and 22 great grandchildren, Brooks worked for many years as a forklift operator before retiring in his seventies. For years he avoided discussing his experiences in the war, sharing little of his story with his children as they grew up.

His daughter, Vanessa Brooks, who cares for him, says the first time she started hearing his stories was about five years ago when the World War II Museum began hosting annual birthday parties for him in New Orleans, where he now lives. But he still shies away from his family’s questions about his war years.

“I had some good times and I had some bad times,” Brooks says. “I just tried to put all the good ones and the bad ones together and tried to forget about all of them.”

Brooks says his military years taught him to straighten up, so he did his best to eat right and stay healthy. He never enjoyed the taste of alcohol and the way liquor burned his throat. “I don't like hurting my body,” he says.

In 2005, Brooks lost his wife, Leona, to Hurricane Katrina. She died shortly after the couple was evacuated by helicopter from their home. “Hurricane Katrina took everything I owned, washed away everything,” he said last year.

Still, Brooks is upbeat. He enjoys spending warm days on his daughter’s front porch in Central City, a neighborhood at the heart of New Orleans. It’s not uncommon to hear Mardi Gras Indians singing, or watch a brass band-led second-line parade go by on Sundays.

Brooks uses his walker to head out of his bedroom—bedecked in the black and gold colors of the New Orleans Saints—to chat with the children at the daycare next door. At 110, he says, his key to a good life is straightforward: “Serve God, and be nice to people.”

[chrissywill-blog1]

1.     JOURNALING

Unity and variety: wholeness or individual. Examples are a bag of m&m has a variety of colors, but the shape and sizes are the same, so the bag has unity.

Balance: equilibrium, or everything are at where it should be. Example is a chair has to be designed certain way to balance a weight.

Emphasis and subordination: focus and not focus on something. Examples are putting a size on a clean sliding glass door to emphasize there is a door, or making a glass door looks clean so people cannot tell if there is a door (subordination)

Directional forces: where is the artist trying to show me. Example is street signs, signal signs.

Repetition is when you keep drawing the same thing over and over again that turned into a rhythm. The piano keys have 7 white keys with 2 and 3 sets of black keys (repetition), there are about 5-6 of these sets (rhythm)

Scale is sizing and proportion is the size of a part compare to the whole. Examples are I am looking for a full-sized bedframe to fit in my tiny bedroom so that the bed is proportionated to the room (large scale).

2.     WRITING AND LOOKING

TITIAN, Pieta

Figure 5.2 (chapter 5)

3.     CONNECTING ART TO YOUR WORLD

Color is part of my life and I am sure it is affecting my life just as everyone. If my top does not match with my bottoms, I cannot get out of my house. My closet is organized in the same hues, that means the bright color pieces have their own sections.

4.     ART PROJECT

5.    Group 6: PHOTOGRAPHY

The photo on the left is called the V-J Day photo because it captured a scene of a sailor grabbing a nurse to give her a kiss in celebration of Japan surrendered the World War II. Alfred Eisenstaedt- a German American photographer took this picture when he was walking down on the street of Times Square. Alfred chose black and white because it was 1945 when color photography was not that popular, and it also represents the part of the history. The photo on the right in the other is full of different colors and pigments. The yellow taxis are the signature of New York City as well as the big advertisement lights and signs showing another busy but normal in Times Square

[creativeprojectrhianna]

Artist Research - Barbara Kruger

Life -

Barbara Kruger was born in 1945 in Newark, New Jersey. Kruger briefly attended Syracuse University, then Parsons School of Design in New York City, where she studied with artists and photographers Marvin Israel and Diane Arbus. Kruger worked in graphic design for Condé Nast Publications at Mademoiselle magazine, and was promoted to head designer within a year, at the age of twenty-two. Kruger has described her time in graphic design as “the biggest influence on my work…[it] became, with a few adjustments, my ‘work’ as an artist.”

At the beginning of her art career, Kruger reportedly felt intimidated by entering New York galleries due to the prevailing atmosphere of the art scene which, to her, did not welcome "particularly independent, non-masochistic women". However, she received early support for her projects from groups such as the Public Art Fund, which encouraged her to continue making art.[16] She switched to her modern practice of collage in the early 1980s.

Kruger lives and works in New York and Los Angeles. She is an Emerita Distinguished Professor of New Genres at the UCLA School of the Arts and Architecture. In 2021, Kruger was included in Time magazine's annual list of the 100 Most Influential People.

Kruger taught at the University of California’s Berkeley, San Diego, and Los Angeles campuses. Solo exhibitions of her work were organized by the Institute of Contemporary Arts (1983), London; the Museum of Contemporary Art (1999), Los Angeles; the Moderna Museet (2008), Stockholm; the National Gallery of Art (2016), Washington, D.C.; and the Art Institute of Chicago (2021). She participated in the Venice Biennale in 1982 and 2005 and received the Leone d’Oro for lifetime achievement at the latter. Kruger’s work appears in the permanent collections of several major museums, including the Whitney Museum of American Art and the Museum of Modern Art, both in New York City.

Work -

In the early 1970s, Kruger started showing artwork in galleries in New York. At the time, she was mainly working in weaving and painting. However, she felt that her artwork lacked meaning, and in 1976, she quit creating art entirely for a year. She took a series of teaching positions, including at University of California, Berkeley. When she began making art again in 1977, she had moved away from her earlier style into photo and text collages. In 1979, Kruger developed her signature style using large-scale black-and-white images overlaid with text. She repurposed found images, juxtaposing them with short, pithy phrases printed in Futura Bold or Helvetica Extra Bold typeface in black, white, or red text bars. In addition to creating text and photographic works, Kruger has produced video and audio works, written criticism, taught classes, curated exhibitions, designed products, such as T-shirts and mugs, and developed public projects, such as billboards, bus wraps, and architectural interventions.

Kruger addresses media and politics in their native tongue: sensational, authoritative, and direct. Personal pronouns like “you” and “I” are staples of Kruger’s practice, bringing the viewer into each piece. “Direct address has motored my work from the very beginning,” Kruger said. “I like it because it cuts through the grease.” Kruger’s work prompts us to interrogate our own positions; in the artist’s words, “to question and change the systems that contain us.” She demands that we consider how our identities are formed within culture, through representation in language and image.

While Kruger often produced her work on vinyl, she also made everyday objects and increasingly large-scale installations. In 1990 her work Untitled (I Shop Therefore I Am) (1987) appeared on shopping bags, while Untitled (Questions), a three-story mural resembling the U.S. flag, was installed at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles (later the Geffen Contemporary at MOCA). The mural featured nine questions, including “Who is beyond the law?,” “Who does the time?,” and “Who salutes the longest?” The provocative yet abstract questions remained relevant when the mural was reinstalled in 2018–20 as the United States reckoned with protests over racial injustice and heightened political divisions.

[thedeadgameblog]

(via RRBC 30-DAY BLOGGING CHALLENGE - DAY 8)

I am dedicating today’s article to Tony Vaccaro, the famous photographer. The first picture is Tony in 1945, holding his beloved camera.

This week, I learned that the famous photographer Tony Vaccaro died at 100. A sad day for the world. He had photographed my brother in 1981, the year of my brother’s car accident, and two years before my brother passed.

Tony took photos of Presidents Kennedy, Obama, and Nixon. Famous stars like Sophia Lauren. Artists like Picasso and Georgia O’Keefe. And my brother, Neil Leist. Neil had just become the CEO and President of American Bakeries. He made his fortune in the commodities markets and was on his way to the top. The accident ended his dreams and mine.

“Michelantonio Celestino Onofrio Vaccaro was an American photographer who is best known for his photos taken in Europe during 1944 and 1945, and in Germany immediately following World War II. He subsequently became a fashion and lifestyle photographer for American magazines.” Wikipedia

Born: 1922, Greensburg, PA

Died: December 28, 2022

Parents: Giuseppe Antonio Vaccaro

Awards: World Press Photo Award for Arts and Entertainment

The day I met Tony Vacarro, and his family was one of the best days my husband and I spent together. How did I get to meet this extraordinary person? My blog on WordPress opened this door for me. A few years ago, I wrote an article about my brother and how he was my hero and the one I cherished most, and Tony Vaccaro’s daughter-in-law found it online. Maria Vaccaro emailed me and offered me the chance to meet her father-in-law and see the pictures he had taken of my brother. Tony Vaccaro had opened his archives for the first time to the public. His family sorted through the photos and contacted people if they wanted to purchase their images. I cannot describe how excited I was to meet someone who knew my brother and had also photographed him.

On a Sunday, we drove to Long Island City, where Tony lived with his son Frank, his wife, Maria, and their two young children. We walked up the steps to Tony’s apartment, where his massive archive of photographs was stored in the front room. Maria introduced us to Tony, a small, skinny man who appeared frail. But what I noticed first about him was the intelligence in his eyes. He was excited to meet us and showed us his famous framed photographs hanging on the walls. Tony spoke about his life and the famous people he photographed.

Maria found my brother’s black and white pictures, and I felt the room spinning. Neil was smiling in each image. The photos brought back memories. I told Tony that my brother was in a car accident a few months after he had taken his picture. Tony didn’t know my brother had died and began to cry. I was overcome that this great man wept for my brother that I hugged him. I’m not one to show emotions in front of others, but I felt closer to this stranger than many people I’ve known my whole life.

I wanted all the pictures, but Maria explained we could purchase enlarged ones since we were looking at the negatives. I had to pick one. This wasn’t an easy task. When I finally narrowed it down to two pictures, I asked Tony which one he liked best. He pointed to one, and that was the one I chose. Tony had photographed my brother sitting behind his desk. That day, Tony was hired to take photos at a company, and my brother was one of the people chosen for this honor.

After we purchased the picture, Tony led us to his small bedroom, showing mementos from his life, including his favorite cameras. Then he offered to take us to a restaurant where his famous photographs were displayed. I was excited; I didn’t want the day to end. Tony hung an old camera around his neck, saying it was a camera he’d used in combat in WWII. This camera made him famous when he took candid pictures of the war, where he revealed the reality of war and its horrors.

Tony and Maria joined us as we walked a few blocks to a quaint Italian restaurant. Once inside, we were welcomed by the owner and made to feel at home. Tony led us around the two rooms, showing us the framed pictures on the walls. There were black and white photos, but many were colorful. My favorite was the one he took of Georgia O’Keefe. Afterward, we sat at a table near the fireplace and were soon joined by Tony’s son, Frank, and their two children. They were going to have dinner, and we were invited. Since the restaurant wasn’t Kosher, and we couldn’t eat anything cooked there, we had coffee while they ate. Tony had the sweetest family; the children were friendly. Frank and Maria told us endless stories of people they met through Tony. Tony told us tales of Sophia Loren, one of his favorite stars. He hoped to invite her to his 100 birthday party a few years away. I’m happy Tony reached 100, but I don’t know if he had his birthday party since he died a few days later.

I will never forget the day I spent with Tony Vaccaro and his family. He was someone not soon to be forgotten.