This week, we’re exploring the interplay of light and shadow–at different times of the day, in different seasons, under natural light, in artificial light. Choose whatever conditions you like. It’s totally up to you. You may also want to process your images in black and white to highlight the light and shadows.
Self is traveling. Her “light and shadow” photos were all taken in Bloomsbury, where she stayed last week:
It was rainy and cold in Belfast today, but — what an experience it was to visit the Titanic Museum on the same dock where the 11-story-high cruise ship was built. Self has visited the Seacity Museum in Southampton, which told the moving story of the large number of Southampton employees who sank with the ship (most of the Titanic staff were from that southern English city). But Belfast was where the Titanic was built, and the shipbuilding process is meticulously described, as is the history of Harlan & Wolff, the company that produced, in total, 1401 great ships (The Titanic was number 403; according to our tour guide, the builders knew their shipbuilding process was sound. The fault did not lie with them or their engineers. In fact, the man who designed her went down with the ship, as did eight of his engineers. In contrast, the man who owned the cruise line cravenly jumped into one of the 20 lifeboats — imagine, only 20 lifeboats for 2800 people! — ahead of the women and children, and survived). What a fascinating story.
The Titanic launched in April 1912. The museum opened in April 2012 (making this month the museum’s 10-year anniversary)
Last June, there was an exhibit at San Francisco’s Legion of Honor of the work of Wangechi Mutu. Self had never heard of this artist before; the exhibit was a revelation. Here are some of the pieces that were on exhibit:
Wangechi Mutu Exhibit, Legion of Honor, San Francisco, June 2021
Another Wangechi Mutu Piece from last June’s exhibit at the San Francisco Legion of Honor
Today she was back on the Stanford campus. She dropped by the Anderson Collection (which she loves visiting, not least because of its setting, facing a grove of old oak trees).
Hard to believe this is the very heart of the campus.
It was a gorgeous Sunday afternoon. People were out jogging, biking, strolling.
1. Starts with “I.” 2. A Favorite. 3. “I”nsect. Tom 😀
Starts with ‘I’: IMPROBABLE – In a very wee vintage shop in downtown Fort Bragg, DoOrwaRd, self found this magnificent print by “the foremost mushroom forager on the West Coast,” Billy Sprague.
2. A Favorite ‘I’: The opening sentence to self’s story, which appeared in Western Humanities Review last year: “I didn’t like the blind woman.” Apologies for the shameless plug, but she roamed all over her archives and didn’t find Irises or any other favorite thing beginning with an ‘I’ and was impatient.
3. Finally, Insect: Louise Bourgeois’s giant spiders at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, July 2018
Louise Bourgeois giant spiders at the San Francisco MOMA
Self has fallen behind the SquareOdds Challenge! She will do her best to catch up.
Today, she’s sharing her photos from a visit last April to the California Academy of Sciences in Golden Gate Park. The Academy and other museums were just beginning to open to the public again. Self rushed over as soon as she could.
The building is fabulous. Designed by Renzo Piano, it is powered entirely by solar energy. It has a living roof — six inches of soil were carted in, and then the designers decided to see what would grow. Now, years later, a meadow has sprung up. It is lovely.
Here are two views of the living roof, from above and below:
Kanlaon 