*Photography
I went to Ultra Violet's studio this past weekend to take photographs of her and her work. Ultra Violet said the first person she met off the boat ( arriving from France in the 60's ) was Salvador Dali. She became his muse, and later on, became a muse to Andy Warhol and a superstar in his Factory.
This series for me is a collective reflection on the human condition. Behind the funny hats and painted faces are the anxieties we face in the 21 century - terrorism, global disaster threats like the Swine flu, freedom to choose partners, freedom to accept other people's choices, the environmental Health of our Spaceship Earth, globalization, multiculturalism and the extinction of identity.
I will spend Christmas in the Netherlands again, although for a very short amount of time and afterward I am heading to Madrid to study at the Prado, mostly to look at Hieronymus Bosch work, hope it's not travelling somewhere. Especially interested in The Garden of Earthly Delights, the museum site says it's in room 56, so I'll be there.
My favorite sport is base jumping, I practice a special version of it where you have to perform some aerial acrobatics and go through a series of hoops to get the chute to open. I really enjoy this. Occasionally I look at fashion and the display of fabrics accompanied by beautiful lighting.
I felt the oppression embeded in the walls and the pain of the inprisoned ghosts, I wouldn't say this was very attractive to me. I find it very strange this place is a tourist attraction.
Looking out of the rock and towards the beautiful city across the bay I can think of only one thing - how very priviliged we are to enjoy our freedoms and to enjoy the freedom to do the things we love.
I returned to the palace of Fine Arts to reshoot photographs I took a month earlier - back then I had wondered into the space by chance and didn't carry a tripod... which resulted in grain and noise. I looked up the time stamps on the files and then googled for the sunset time for that day. Turned out besides sunset there are all these interesting terms associated with sunset data like Civil Twilight, Nautical Twilight and Astronomical twilight. According to the charts I had taken the picture (below) 20 minutes after sunset and 10 before civil twilight when wild things come out, obviously, beasts are partial to beautiful light.
Today sunset was around 7:30 pm so I waited 2o minutes for the twilight to set in and some amazing things happened during that time - a guy stood under the belly of the dome and sung with the most beautiful voice a song called "Salve Regina" ... after that I lied to a couple of Tourists that the Palace was a part of a pre-earthquake bathhouse, absolutely not on purpose and out of sheer ignorance.
So Here it is San Francisco palace of Fine Arts - round Two:
