Vintage Chinese landscape images.

With the delicate beauty and traditional motifs of Chinese painting (birds, boats, mountains, etc.) in mind, photographers of [Asian pictorialism] used more than one negative to create a beautiful picture, often using visual allegories. Realism was not a goal.

Don Hong-Oai was one of the last photographers to work in this manner.

Gallery 71

Given the available technology in the era these images were created, they are remarkable achievements. As documents they remind me of the work of Edward Sherif Curtis, chronicles of a passing way of life. The pitch-perfect matching of style with content is magic. Beautiful.

More of the images of Don Hong-Oai are available on Picasa. The cyrillic-script identification on the pages makes me a bit uncomfortable for provenance and proper copyright attribution, since I don't read that language. I'm taking it on faith that a Picasa posting is respectful of the artist's rights.

That said, the images deserve to be sent further and wider in the world, and I am more than comfortable to be a part of that. I would hope that Don Hong-Oai, who died in 2004, would be happy to see them on their way.

There is, after all, an eternal aura to them.

Moss Rock.

I'd come to La Jolla for the quiet, to walk, breathe the fresh air, empty myself. I'd been in a job that had grown demanding beyond my ability to bound, locked in by my sometimes overactive sense of responsibility.

Through the years I find myself thinking more about the longer-term obligations that might come with my early enthusiasms. Most times I'm successful now in sensing emotional quagmires. Sometimes they still sneak up on me. The slow accretion of duties in this position certainly did, masked by my joy in working with talented, generous and healthy people.

Now I came to rest, free of the job. I took a small cottage near the ocean. At night I heard the waves, smelled the breeze through my open window. Savoring the entire place, the air, the colors, I waited until the third day to give myself to the beach.

Slowly I walked, breathing in the immense vista, the feel of the sand, the new browns, rusts, grey-greens. Overhead platoons of pelicans swept down to the breaking water, then straight up, then level again. I made a lot of images with my camera, silly details that struck my fancy. A couple of classic waves, breaking in the sunshine.

And at the edge of a small overlook, looking straight down to the splashing water, this moss.

Hailey Johnson, Grade 8, Longmont.

Trail Ridge Middle School.

Longmont, Colorado.

How often do we go to an art show in a public school district and see something like this?

How many people can take school acrylic paints and create this magic?

Thank you, Malachi, for sending this to me.

And thank you, Hailey Johnson. We wish you continued success.

Frederik Macody Lund.

Constructed beginning in 1070 AD, the Nidaros Cathedral in Norway is the northernmost of the medieval cathedrals. Over the centuries it has aged and it has burned, once completely except for the stone walls.

In the early 1900s a plan was developed for its restoration, becoming mired in some controversy over the exact nature of the work required.

Frederik Macody Lund proposed from his historical studies that the west facade had been designed according to the principles of the golden rato.

The cathedral takes on an entirely different level of glory in its northern winter setting.

Love notes to the Universe,

...I send these journal entries out into the world, humble gifts to the universe, notes in bottles tossed into the sea that are really just love notes to anyone who happens to run across them.

From a Z. posting date 11.09.2009.

Jewel sparkling.

Rudi Huisman continues his explorations of light in the darkness, with this extraordinary image of his daughter Birgitte.

This is powerful imagery in its own right, taken to the level of genuine art as a symbol of matters far deeper than a girl on a swing.

Pagosa Springs, Colorado.

Malachi and Nicole have been traveling through southern Colorado with their children.

With their regular postings to a social website, we've been able to be with them through many adventures. We've also shared some times of sheer boredom as they cross the vast distances of this beautiful state.

This image is beautiful, the tiny cathedral is elegantly designed and constructed. And one of the most special people in my life stands sweetly in the entryway

Thanks, Malachi.

James Abbott McNeill Whistler: Battersea Reach.

From the little systematic reading I've done about the life of James Abbot McNeill Whistler, he was a bit more self-consciously promoting himself as an artist than I'm comfortable with, or than I admire in a human being.

But I'm asking myself about his qualities as a person. If I go down that path I fear most of the accomplishments of the human race will soon be negated.

As an artist? That's another matter.

Stretching the sensibilities of the time, as I understand it his work was based on color and composition, with content being nearly irrelevant. Thus we have the portrait of his mother, he called simply Arrangement in Grey and Black No.1. I think it fair to say that this work, for all its extraordinary power to captivate through generations of viewers, was only one step way from the many self portraits Rembrandt became famous for.

Whistler made many paintings at Battersea, an area of the London, England borough of Wandsworth. It sits on the south side of the River Thames, historically a farmland, then a center of industry, more recently known for its wealth. The Reach is the stretch of the River along the northern town limits. True to his goal of being nearly content free, many of his paintings were nocturnes, low light and therefore subtle color.

Here we see Nocturne: Blue and Silver—Battersea Reach

Musee Oceanographie, Monaco.

In a brief visit to the gift shop before departing Monaco, I chanced upon a French-language booklet on the history of The Oceanographic Museum of Monaco.

After several days in the south of France my long hibernating language skills were beginning to stir to life, so I was able to make rudimentary sense of the distinguished story of this museum and this country.

Then I encountered this graphic.

What had begun as a brisk thumb through a souvenir brochure became a swift decision to purchase it, for no other reason than to digitize, print, study and live with this image.

I love the pen and ink, the watercolor, the tones of grey--and yes, the fine balance between the sea and the architecture.

I'd never connected it with Jacques Cousteau or the Beatles, though there it was, at the entrance to the Musee Oceanographie de Monaco, the Yellow Submarine.