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Postcards from London
Wifi seems to be back, so here's the view from my room:
Today was the Man Ray exhibition at the National Portrait Gallery, then a tasty late lunch. I don't know the answers to "What makes a good portrait?" or "What makes a good photograph?". The portraits were rarely comfortable or formal, the sitters often had a touch of a frown or unease, or the pictures were very staged and theatrical, often of actresses or dancers. And 90 years ago. Montages were done in camera, with double exposures etc, and painstaking processing. There were some striking effects in his magazine work, two dark kissing lips look like a bird on the wing. The 'Group of Surrealists' photo tickled me, a bunch of them lined up in two rows like a football team picture, not looking remotely surreal. Or was that the point? I mostly didn't get solarisation, but the portrait of Elsa Schiaparelli had a wonderful eerie washed-out effect. Lee Miller in a Bathing Suit (linky) was shot against a dark background column that turned out to be her shadow, cleverly placed, it could almost have been a different shadow.
Late lunch at Côte, charcuterie and a niçoise tuna (gorgeous tuna, seared outside with black pepper, still hot, and rare inside) and a floral glass of muscat while my friends tucked into the non-dairy-free creme caramel and chocolate pot which looked absolutely nommy. If it were merely a sin to eat creme caramel, I would totally have done so.
Today was the Man Ray exhibition at the National Portrait Gallery, then a tasty late lunch. I don't know the answers to "What makes a good portrait?" or "What makes a good photograph?". The portraits were rarely comfortable or formal, the sitters often had a touch of a frown or unease, or the pictures were very staged and theatrical, often of actresses or dancers. And 90 years ago. Montages were done in camera, with double exposures etc, and painstaking processing. There were some striking effects in his magazine work, two dark kissing lips look like a bird on the wing. The 'Group of Surrealists' photo tickled me, a bunch of them lined up in two rows like a football team picture, not looking remotely surreal. Or was that the point? I mostly didn't get solarisation, but the portrait of Elsa Schiaparelli had a wonderful eerie washed-out effect. Lee Miller in a Bathing Suit (linky) was shot against a dark background column that turned out to be her shadow, cleverly placed, it could almost have been a different shadow.
Late lunch at Côte, charcuterie and a niçoise tuna (gorgeous tuna, seared outside with black pepper, still hot, and rare inside) and a floral glass of muscat while my friends tucked into the non-dairy-free creme caramel and chocolate pot which looked absolutely nommy. If it were merely a sin to eat creme caramel, I would totally have done so.
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Reading about the microwave network, I find out that the tower we used to live very close to (Charwelton, Northants - we lived in Priors Marston) was rarer than I thought - the microwave network had only a few dozen towers. It was also part of the Cold War nuclear-resistant comms network. I expect the Russians were fully aware of this and we would have been turned to glass pretty promptly if Stanislav Petrov had been less careful.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_Telecom_microwave_network