The Magic of the Cities.

Zen promotes the rediscovery of the obvious, which is so often lost in its familiarity and simplicity. It sees the miraculous in the common and magic in our everyday surroundings. When we are not rushed, and our minds are unclouded by conceptualizations, a veil will sometimes drop, introducing the viewer to a world unseen since childhood. ~ John Greer

Thursday, September 29, 2011

The Cloisters III







The Unselfconscious Process
One of the most confusing and paradoxical aspects of Zen is its view of the self. Zen says we aren't who we think we are. While we are seen to exist in the relative sense, in terms of the absolute, the dance and the dancer are considered to be one. Many spiritual traditions have seen similar truths, and claim that by losing one's life, life is indeed gained. By emptying we become full. While no doubt confusing for the novice, its implication for the photographer would be to forget oneself, as much as possible, when taking pictures. This, in fact, is a very common experience among musicians and painters, who often report "losing themselves" in their art. In a sense, the picture takes itself. In the words of Henri Cartier-Bresson, "you have to blend in like a fish in water, you have to forget yourself." The artist becomes the process of creation. When something bigger than the persona takes charge, when Life itself is given free reign unhampered by our premeditated ideas of what should happen, the resultant pictures can be quite remarkable.
John Greer. Artist's Statement (Fragment)


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Wednesday, September 28, 2011

The Cloisters II

Head, perhaps an Angel. Limestone. France. Île-de-France, about 1250.





Altar Frontal. Catalunya, Spain. ca. 1225


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Monday, September 26, 2011

The Cloisters I




Head. Strasbourg. 1280-1300

The Angel of Annunciation. Northeastern Italy 1430-40.

The Cloisters museum and gardens, the branch of The Metropolitan Museum of Art devoted to the art and architecture of medieval Europe, was assembled from architectural elements, both domestic and religious, that date from the twelfth through the fifteenth century.
The building and its cloistered gardens—located in Fort Tryon Park in northern Manhattan—are treasures in themselves, effectively part of the collection housed there. The Cloisters' collection comprises approximately three thousand works of art from medieval Europe, dating from about the ninth to the sixteenth century.
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Friday, September 23, 2011

Inside


Dip him in the river who loves water.”

"Sumerge en el río a aquel que ama el agua."
~William Blake

This week's challenge:
'Inside'

Have a great weekend!


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Thursday, September 22, 2011

Flying


" The only journey is the one within. "

~Rainer Maria Rilke



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Wednesday, September 21, 2011

Monday, September 19, 2011

Any Given Sunday / Un Domingo Cualquiera





 Street Performers in Mexico Park. La Condesa. Mexico City

"When you photograph people in colour you photograph their clothes. 
But when you photograph people in black and white, you photograph their souls!"
Ted Grant



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Saturday, September 17, 2011

Lost








William Blake’s

Exuberance is beauty.

Art can never exist without naked beauty displayed.

If the doors of perception were cleansed everything would appear to man, as it is, infinite.

No bird soars too high if he soars with his own wings.

One thought fills immensity.

The man who never in his mind and thoughts traveled to heaven is no artist.

The road of excess leads to the palace of wisdom.

The true method of knowledge is experiment.

You never know what is enough unless you know what is more than enough.

What is now proved was once only imagined.

To see the world in a grain of sand, and to see heaven in a wild flower, hold infinity in the palm of your hands, and eternity in an hour.


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Thursday, September 15, 2011

Borda Garden







The Borda Garden is located near the cathedral of Cuernavaca. Originally, this was a house bought by José de la Borda, the mining magnate of Taxco in the mid-eighteenth century. Later, his son, Manuel de Borda y Verdugo, transformed the grounds of the house into gardens filled with flower and fruit trees to satisfy his passion for botany. These gardens also contain a number of fountains and an artificial lake that were completed in 1783. 
The complex also contains lodgings, offices, a restaurant, and a nightclub. In 1865, this was the summer home of Emperor Maximilian I and his wife Carlota Amalia. It hosted major political soirees in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, such as those sponsored by Porfirio Díaz and Emiliano Zapata.
Today the area is a public park where the gardens have been maintained and it is possible to take a short boat ride on the lake. The house has been converted into a museum. Six of its halls are dedicated to temporary exhibits while the other seven are devoted to recreating the characteristics of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. (Wiki)

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Wednesday, September 14, 2011

Whispering


When you realize how perfect everything is,
you will tilt your head back and laugh at the sky.
~Buddha

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Tuesday, September 13, 2011

Leaves




There  Is  another  world  and  it  is  in  this  one.
~Paul Éluard

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Monday, September 12, 2011

Vanishing Colors





Imagination is the beginning of creation. You imagine what you desire,
you will what you imagine and at last you create what you will.”
~George Bernard Shaw

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Friday, September 9, 2011

21st. Century Skyscraper


New York by Gehry at Eight Spruce Street
From the mind of Chicago’s Pritzker Pavilion architect, a sensuous first skyscraper
Frank Gehry’s new 8 Spruce Street apartment tower may be the most delicious piece of eye candy to hit the Manhattan skyline since the Chrysler Building. It is also a very expensive place to live. A 450-square-foot studio rents for at least $2,600 a month, and the asking price for a three-bedroom penthouse apartment is expected to be somewhere around $25,000 a month.

The 76-story high-rise, Gehry’s first skyscraper, is wrapped in a sensuous exterior of stainless steel that ripples like folds of drapery and brilliantly catches the light. There is nothing else quite like it, though the building bears similarities to Jeanne Gang’s spectacularly undulating, 81-story Aqua residential and hotel tower in Chicago.

At 870 feet tall, New York by Gehry is the tallest residential tower in the Western Hemisphere and a singular addition to the iconic Manhattan skyline. For his first residential commission in New York City, master architect Frank Gehry has reinterpreted the design language of the classic Manhattan high-rise with undulating waves of stainless steel that reflect the changing light, transforming the appearance of the building throughout the day.
Gehry's distinctive aesthetic is carried across the interior residential and amenity spaces with custom furnishings and installations.


Last 2 images by Forest City Ratner Companies

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