Don't you just love finding great things. It beats buying. Thrifting, car boot sales, attics. Everything becomes cool at one point, if not upon its creation, a few years down the line. Photography can be much the same. The once normal family photo of 1978 is now iconic, hip and oozing with undertones of family rifts and the like. The shot above, here, has handwritten on the back '73. I'm Still Waiting. Sweets - Hurry Back.' It's stamped by an Army examiner. Vietnam perhaps? What a tale it could tell, if only it spoke.
In 1998, on a Parisian street, some pictures were found, over ten years later look at me is still showing off hidden treasures from around the globe. This page alone has become one of my new online favourites, if not only for the visual delight that is seeing all the thumbnails.
Last night I managed to catch a street performance from Beautiful Unit, it was quite the show, it was quite an evening.
Ever since we arched our backs for the first time, cried out, opened our eyes and lived, we have had records made about us and for us. Detailed in photographs, certificates and newspapers, we have all existed. Blogs and social media have only served to keep the detailing going well into adulthood, with more people knowing what you're doing with your life then ever before.
Being on Catherine Campbell's site brought all this home to me, as she had mentioned Anne Bonny as one of her inspirations. Upon reading the infamous pirate's wikipedia I realised that a great deal of what she did is simply conjecture and myth. I miss that. I don't always like knowing everything about someone, it takes away the mystery. It allows no room for our flaws to be swept away under the stories of our greatness, however false they may be.
Catherine Campbell is a wonder, yet not a small wonder. Check out her blog, site and flickr. Yeah, she's pretty well documented, but that's ok, it's all greatness, just like her pieces above.
I have a list of things I want to write about, literally. It's been a September of finding things, new things, great things. I am sorry I haven't been sharing them all, but know this, all in due course. The leaves are changing colour, my mind is full of ideas and low and behold before I know it the new blog will have turned one. A little part of me wants to mark the arrival.
Through a maze of links, blogs, artists, ebay items and carrier pigeons I have stumbled upon studioviolet. Thanks be to goodness Elisabeth Dunker and Camilla Engman joined forces in 2008, and so the Violet studio was born. To claim that each of them was merely a dab hand would be doing them both a disservice.
Don't just take my word for it. This porcelain set was made for a show, Mr Mustache was made for your enjoyment and these stamps were made so you could become the best pen pal the world. I tell you what, look through the images, then order one of these and write about just how good it all is.
Oh and there is a blog too, which you should take a glance through. Speaking of blogs, I just wanted to mention Aennie, from aenniemal. I wrote about The Bakery back in June, to whom she is strongly affiliated, but failed to point you in the direction of her fantastic blog. I made amends because I have been eyeing up this before halloween is upon us.
'The Tin Mine', written by Frances Eagar, is a beautiful book. Published in the UK in 1973 it tells the story of Laura, Harry and Sophie, three kids, and their last day together before Sophie heads to Africa, Kenya to be exact.
It's simple, yet poetically so, a fact which is no doubt lost on the children toward whom it is aimed. Yet it is not so much the story, with Harry falling into the rubbish chute and believing he has discovered a tin mine, but the illustrations which has me show you the book.
Lynette Hemmant was the artist. As soon as I picked it up I was in love with not only the style and the colour, a fantastic mustard, but the attention to detail, despite the age of the readership.
I knew I had seen her work before, and after some googling I realised she had worked with Dick King Smith. I took a glance through some of her recent work, but it seems she has moved into quintessential English country garden paintings, rather then this magical illustration she was once famed for.
I sometimes wish I was a kid, rifling through books to just gaze at the pictures, then I realise I still do just that.