Damian De Souza Archives - TheAppWhisperer

Mobile Photography & Art – Flickr/Instagram Group Showcase – 20 October 2019

20/10/201918/10/2019 by Joanne Carter

This week it was my husband’s birthday (and excuse me but I have to interject within this sentence as ‘husband’ just sounds such a formal a title to give to a man who has and continues to sustain our romantic union on the basis of deep mutual trust and desire, so forever and into the future when I mention him, I will refer to him as the ‘brunette’; it amazes me, like his mother, despite the gravity of time, he has not one grey hair, so my brunette he is), and as with each recurring birthday year, at least for the past 24, it almost always coincides with Lee Child’s latest novel being released. Child is so systematic with his writing schedule, that each October he drops another. I haven’t purchased it this year, our eldest son has pre-ordered it for him and will continue the tradition as I’ve stepped up to offer other gifts. But, no matter what I give, I know, the brunette loves nothing more than settling down, very close to me, one hand on my thigh, the other holding Lee Child’s latest novel. I think it’s Jack Reacher’s 6ft 5in, 250lb former US army military policeman that offers him all the fantasy he needs, or so it appears. Reacher is a loner, a wanderer, after leaving the army, he’s never settled into a normal life. There are similarities I can see, there’s no one that would ever accuse us of living a ‘normal’ life, it’s just not. But, saying that, I have to say the brunette normally carries more than a toothbrush when he lives the house. It has been said that there are many women that love Child’s books too, including leading academics. It’s interesting to me, to ponder what they crave, apparently, for some, it is his formal passages. Simple words but strung with a real mastery of rhythm, nothing complicated. His landscape visions in dusty American nowhere-towns also get some women swooning. Of course, we can’t be forgetting that Reacher is the perfect archetypal hero, the handsome stranger in town that avenges the wrongs. This years offering ‘Blue Moon’ apparently turns on male agression towards women and sexual exploitation, it’s seen as a female revenge drama. ( I’ve picked up that cue in the song title to this weeks mobile photography and art showcase, you’ll hear me, listen closely) . So, I’ll be reading it as soon as my guy hands it over. And despite Jack Reacher being a female sexual fantasy so…I’ve heard, I think I’ll stick with the real thing, the birthday boy does it for me…

Thank you to all the talented artists for submitting your works to our showcase this week. If you would like your work to be considered for entry in to our weekly Mobile Photography and Art Flickr Group, please submit it to our dedicated group, here. You can also submit images to our Instagram tag for this section #theappwhisperer.

rain.is.poetry, Lydia Cassatt, Filiz Ak, Anca Balaj, Anastasia Potekhina – @nassavva, @ja_graham – Jennifer Graham, Peter Wilkin, @marshadraws, @kimmartinodiaz – Kim Martino, @ipiotrxs, Ile Mont, @john_nieto, @berlewenjolixor, @to_be – Tuba, Emilio Nadales, Laurie Amerson – @laamerson, @pause.and.breathe – Susan Latty, @patragraphy, @clau_clara, @theartofmayte – Mayte artist, @schwitter.li – Liliana Schwitter, @lorenka – Lorenka Campos, @sandralbmartins – Violet Martins, @effe5, @jenvoigt – Jenny, @marymodale, Jane Schultz – @before.1st.light, Sukru Mehmet Omur, Robin Robertis, @tatteredphotograph, @hipstanitaelle, @klimtt – M. Cecilia Sao Thiago, Deborah McMillion, Clint Cline, Catherine Caddigan, Rita Colantonio, Andy Alexandre, Judy Wahlberg, Damian De Souza, Susan Blase, Linda Hollier, Tomaso Belloni, jilllian2 – Jill Lian.

Music this week is ‘Read all about it’ by Emile Sande – another of my favourite British singer/songwriters

Mobile Photography & Art – Flickr/Instagram Group Showcase – 22 September 2019

22/09/201922/09/2019 by Joanne Carter

The three of us, our bodies sharing a common goal and process, the same level of exhaustion reached – potentially. Coming together, tearing apart. Despite the degradation of our bodies, we pushed through. Toll was the point, haggard breaths, sweating foreheads, shaking thighs, pushed to the limits, exhaustion was the symptom but not the goal. The late night service station off the motorway, still somewhere far up North, was stark. But contained pockets of human existence joined by essential basic common needs, in the dead of the night. A millennial loved up couple, cuddled in the queue, ecstatic with the elation of food quashing their hunger, the woman pirouette’s around her man, rocking her ample breasts simultaneously, he yawns. A family, wife/mother (45) hunched and dressed in a hoodie, texting frantically, the husband/father (49) repeating loudly ‘I am so angry’ , the boy (12) expressing ‘she’s only going to live in the car for a year, Dad’. The sister (13) staring blankly into space. Another couple, man (65) woman (25) wander slowly into view, heads down, the woman I notice with heinous black inflamed eye, as they share an order booth. She selects (with difficulty) their food, her elongated manicured white nails, not fit for a touch screen. Another couple, man (29), woman (70) attempt to select their food in the booth with coupon codes, it takes 25 minutes for them to choose, as they finalise the order, the woman cries, she wanted to add a hot chocolate, they begin again. And now it’s the two of us, having left our middle son, miles and miles up the motorway, at university, we drive home, semi autonomously. Sometimes I feel I can do without the present, the past is more than enough, I silently weep, a job well done. Homeward bound…we change gear.

clau_clara, marshadraws, _soulkitchen_, dayindigo, wstairs, ja_graham, joe.legrand61, klimtt – M. Cecilia Sao Thiago, ilemusi – Ile Mont, clizit2020 – Clint Cline, mitrydate, thelma.penteado, cooksbay, alisasmithwilliams, laurence_bouchard, coeiphoneart – Gerry Coe, rejanerubino, berleyart, lillorizzo, ritaipunina, dinalf – Dina Alfasi, eva.peopleoflondon, imaco57 – Isabel Alfonso, csernusphotography, kein_grund, Lee Atwell, p.a. hamel, Susan Rennie, Gianluca Ricoveri, Andy Alexandre, Jennifer Bracewell, Cintia, Sebastian Burczyk, Jun Yamaguchi, Damian De Souza, Tomaso Belloni, Lorenka Campos, Deborah McMillion, Christine O Sobczak.

Music this week is by Freya Ridings entitled ‘Lost Without You’

Mobile Photography & Art – Flickr/Instagram Group Showcase – 15 September 2019

16/09/201915/09/2019 by Joanne Carter

“Help I have done it again. I have been here many times before. Hurt myself again today, and, the worst part is there’s no one else to blame. Be my friend, hold me, wrap me up, unfold me, I am small, I’m needy, warm me up, and breathe me. Ouch! I have lost myself again, lost myself and I am no where to be found, yeah, I think that I might break, lost myself again again and I feel unsafe, Be my friend, hold me, wrap me up, unfold me, I am small, I’m needy, warm me up and breathe me….” lyrics to this weeks immaculate mobile photography and art showcase, Sia, entitled ‘Breathe Me’. Be kind, be kind, be kind, this week I learned a dear friend had lost her son, and there are words to say about this, you’ll find them all above… just love, all, support, do not withdraw, be kind.

Eliza Badoiu, mitrydate, jaleyuce4 – Jale Yuce, clau_clara – Claú Clará, yembo, Sarah Bichachi, jenni_bea – Jenni Bea, dinalf – Dina Alfasi, kats_eye_phone, bortolinimassimo, headattacks – Manuella Basselda, pause.and.breathe, piccionistefania – Stefania Piccioni, catalin_gherasim, filizakart – Filiz Art, dinga.diary, Lorenka Campos, ange_ombre, klimtt – M. Cecilia Sao Thiago, Peter Wilkin, ritatipunina – Rita Tipunina, daisy.bumstead – , accidental_artist3 – Ransom Candice, michzsimmons, Marian Said Rubin, Francesco Sambati, Jun Yamaguchi, Kathy Clay, David DeNagel, Albion Harrison-Naish, Qingxian Guo, Andy Alexandre, Damian De Souza, Catherine Caddigan, Yasuo Furue, Debara Splendorio, Susan Blase, Rita Colantonio, Barbara Braman, Clint Cline, Jilllian2 – Jill Lian, Laila, Linda Hollier, Peter Wilkin, Jane Schultz, Susan Rennie, p.a. hamel, Gianluca Ricoveri.

Mobile Photography & Art – Flickr/Instagram Group Showcase – 30 June 2019

30/06/2019 by Joanne Carter

Her body is “like a car that you park in the projects, you don’t leave anything valuable in it ’cause you can’t keep it from being broken into,” a frustrating but all to realistic quote from ‘Baise-moi’ (1993) a novel by Virginie Despentes. The quote calmly describes her friend who was gang-raped, she reasons, ‘at least they left her alive‘. The book itself is about two young women on a revenge sex and killing spree following the gang rape. The author, Despentes, herself was gang raped at 17 and had a knife in her pocket at the time but was too terrified to use it. She writes in her memoir ‘King Kong Theory’, 2006, “I am furious with a society that has educated me without ever teaching me to injure a man if he pulls my thighs apart against my will, when that same society has taught me that this is a crime from which I will never recover,”. I am not trying to set the scene for a rant here, merely frustratingly mentioning that living a life as a man is a wholly different experience to living life as a woman. Art, for so many is a sanctuary and a necessity and I fiercely guard everyone’s entitlement to it. Some artists get distracted with soul-sucking tasks to make money, it’s a necessary evil. What I see here every single week, are the heftiest and most fascinating inspirational artists. I make this statement not with empty braggadocio but without falsity. This weeks showcase results in an allegory that feels elevated. This is multi-dimensional story telling, of real people because this is what is required, so we can luxuriate in the crevices of our emotional rational irrationality. Enjoy!

Anca Balaj, Clarisse Debout, klimtt – M. Cecilia Sao Thiago, Jane Schultz, Mazetman – Monsieur Georges, berleyart – Kim, Niels Brunelli – @niels_b, acciental_artist3 – Ransom Candice, Rosa Perry, Loulou Buntbein, Rita Colantonio, Linda Hollier, Deborah McMillion, Jun Yamaguchi, Lorenka Campos, Albion Harrison-Naish, Damian De Souza, Fleur Schim, David DeNagel, Peter Wilkin, Sheldon Serkin, Alexey Amelyushkin, Jeremy Cassell, Karen Axelrad, Susan Detroy, Clint Cline, woltarise, Rob Pearson-Wright, Yasuo Furue, Laila, Judy Wahlberg, Susan Rennie, Gianluca Ricoveri, TheiPhoneArtGirl – Meri Walker, jilllian2 – Jill Lian, Deborah Field.

Music this week is ‘True Intimacy’ by Leah West

Mobile Photography & Art – Tickle Your Fancy #64

22/06/201922/06/2019 by Joanne Carter

Welcome back to our sixty fourth post in our Tickle Your Fancy section. Tickle Your Fancy includes a round-up of between ten to twelve key links to articles from around TheAppWhisperer over the past few two weeks, ones you may, by chance, have missed.

Just to explain the title for this section Tickle Your Fancy is an English idiom and essentially means that something appeals to you and perhaps stimulates your imagination in an enthusiastic way, we felt it would make a great title for this new section of the site.

Artists cited include: Susan Maxwell Schmidt, Clarisse Debout, Oola Cristina, Deborah Field, Deborah McMillion, Yariv Weinberg, Karen Axelrad, Kathy Clay, Sergiy Beliayev, Catherine Caddigan, Gianluca Ricoveri, Susan Rennie, Lorenka Campos, Damian De Souza, Jun Yamaguchi, borisbschulz2009, Catherine Caddigan, Arko Rayhan, Susan Detroy, Peter Wilkin, Laila, Paul Yan, Dragan Fly, before.1st.light – Jane Schultz, Clint Cline, Enio Godoy, Lydia Cassatt, Rita Colantonio, Kate Zari Roberts, Sheldon Serkin, Nick Kenrick, Tomaso Belloni, Eleni Gemeni, Jormain Cady, Elaine Taylor, Shelley Benjamin, M. Cecilia Sao Thiago, Dr Christophe Christ, Sandra B Martins – Violet Martins, Rita Colantonio, Deborah McMillion, Lisa Mitchell, Dale Botha, Catherine Caddigan.

Mobile Photography & Art – Flickr/Instagram Group Showcase – 16 June 2019

16/06/2019 by Joanne Carter

“To be excellent at anything, it must cost you something“, a direct quote from ‘In Pieces’ by Sally Field. A book that she spent seven years writing, without ghost writers, unusual for her circle. This book made me weep this week. It’s a beautifully written intimate memoir as well as a gut wrenching self portrait, bordering on a personal investigation. Now at 71, Field felt the compelling need to assemble her fragmented past. Contrast that with ‘Normal People’ by Sally Rooney, another book I have been reading, a future classic by all accounts and a book the BBC are working on for a new tv drama. It’s a story written in less than one year, showing what it is to be young and in love at any time. It too bought me to tears. I’m always quite close, the price we pay… Whilst putting together this weeks mobile photography and art showcase, each carefully chosen image is so fascinating, assuming and expressing the status of work of art. I like to think of these images as characters I compose with and elevate them to stage, with a realist meticulousness and luscious concern for detail, invoking a narrative of uncommon richness and intensity with a radical reframing of the purpose. Enjoy.

Susan Maxwell Schmidt, Clarisse Debout, Oola Cristina, Deborah Field, Deborah McMillion, Yariv Weinberg, Karen Axelrad, Kathy Clay, Sergiy Beliayev, Catherine Caddigan, Gianluca Ricoveri, Susan Rennie, Lorenka Campos, Damian De Souza, Jun Yamaguchi, borisbschulz2009, Catherine Caddigan, Arko Rayhan, Susan Detroy, Peter Wilkin, Laila, Paul Yan, Dragan Fly, before.1st.light – Jane Schultz, Clint Cline, Enio Godoy, Lydia Cassatt, Rita Colantonio, Kate Zari Roberts, Sheldon Serkin, Nick Kenrick, Tomaso Belloni, Eleni Gemeni, Jormain Cady, Elaine Taylor, Shelley Benjamin, M. Cecilia Sao Thiago, Dr Christophe Christ, Sandra B Martins – Violet Martins.

Music this week is ‘Silver Bullet’ ©Alpha

Mobile Photography & Art – Flickr/Instagram Group Showcase – 2 June 2019

03/06/201902/06/2019 by Joanne Carter

As humans, we have the unique ability of utilising our skill of habit, to our own disadvantage. We can fail to take note of what is always around us. Thus, we suffer emotionally because we lose sight of the value of what we have and then yearn for imagined attractions elsewhere. We live on auto pilot. As an example, if you think back, to when first learning to ride a bicycle, we become hyper aware of everything, as we sit on the saddle and place one foot on a pedal and the other on the ground, to steady us. As we try to push off and bring up the other foot to its pedal, we are acutely conscious of everything that is going on, we’re highly alert to sound, light, movement, balance and speed. But, after years of practice, we then jump on a bicycle and it’s possible to ride and ride without thinking consciously about changing gears, balancing, breaking or indicating. Our actions become a part of subconsciousness. And it is this autopilot being that can become our misfortune because, we begin to hardly register the important things. So instead of editing out the lesser things, enabling us to concentrate on the road, which is crucial in my example, we end up editing out elements of the world that have so much to offer us. But it is art that can bring us back to a more accurate assessment of what is valuable by working against our habit of autopilot and inviting us to recalibrate what we admire or love. This is called, Appreciation. When an artist creates an image, of an everyday item, objects that we encounter on a daily basis, when we view this image of those same items in a gallery, or look at them in a photograph, our attention is arrested and directed, we start to pay more attention to their shape, design, colour, we see them, as if for the first time. And despite this modest example, in time, we learn to look with kinder and more alert eyes at the world around us. One of the powers of Art is that it enables us to reawaken and value the merit of lives we live.

You’ll see plenty of examples in this weeks Mobile Photography and Art Showcase, as each artists utilises art as a re-sensitisation tool and helps us recover our own sensitivity by finding new ways to view the old. Enjoy!

Poetic Medium, Sheldon Serkin, before.1st.light – Jane Schultz, Gianluca Ricoveri, Clare Pickett, Ian Clarke, Catherine Caddigan, Oola Cristina, Jun Yamaguchi, Enoi Godoy, Eduardo Mueses, Lorenka Campos, Laila, Deborah McMillion, Jeremy Cassell, Jormain Cady, Song Hui, Anastasia Potekhina, Clint Cline, Rita Colantonio, jillian2 – Jill Lian, TheiPhoneArtGirl – Meri Walker, Damian De Souza, Kathy Clay, Judy Wahlberg, Susan Rennie, Michael Hamments, Kate Zari Roberts, Filiz Ak, Amy Ecenbarger, M. Cecilia Sao Thiago, Becky Menzies, Carol Wiebe, Peter Wilkin.

Music this week is ‘A Love Song’ by Xenia Dunford

Mobile Photography & Art – Flickr/Instagram Group Showcase – 26 May 2019

26/05/201926/05/2019 by Joanne Carter

“As soon as the vote of Brexit came through, half the people I know were trying desperately to work out whether they had Irish grandmothers. But I would never take dual German nationality because I owe this country too much, and I wouldn’t want to dilute it”. Deeply loyal, Judith Kerr speaking in the Financial Times in 2017. Commonly known, within Britain, as our ‘national treasure’, Kerr led a remarkable life and wrote and illustrated the most enchanted children’s stories. I was so saddened to read that she had died this week, born in 1923 into a bourgeois Jewish family in Weimar, Berlin. Her father, Alfred was a famed theatre critic and essayist and her mother, as well as housewife (no small task), a talented composer. Alfred was outspoken in his prose and it attracted enemies. Not least when it came to mocking the Nazis and as soon as Hilter became Chancellor in 1933, the family fled Germany. Nine year old Kerr and her elder brother Michael, with their mother escaped by train across the border to Switzerland, after a few months, penniless, they arrived in Paris. Kerr wrote how she loved the ‘brevity of the French (language) after the endless sentences in German’. Fortunately, for the family, the film director, Alexander Korda, a Hungarian Jew, working in Britain, bought Alfred’s script about Napoleon’s mother and this enabled them to move to England and therefore avoid the Nazis invasion of France in 1940. The film was never made and Kerr always suspected he only bought the script to save their lives.

A fascinating story and there’s so much more I could tell you about her life. Most of all, I am grateful for the influence she has had on my own small family. Two of my children have serious developmental disorders, along with specific learning difficulties and I read and snuggled up with them relentlessly when they were younger. So, it really warmed me when speaking with my middle son, Jovian (almost 18), who was actually the only child consciously wandering around the house, when I started to compose this Sunday’s showcase early this morning. I said to him, ‘Good Morning Jove, do you remember when I used to read ‘The Tiger Who Came To Tea’, when when you were little?’. He hesitated, but of course, once I showed him the glorious illustrations, he recalled the story instantly and he smiled warmly with the memories and thus his smile ignited me and gave me another excuse to hug him. That’s the legacy that Kerr has left behind, to many families, a warm embrace with enchanted memories firmly planted in our souls. Very often, children’s authors, try to ‘get rid of the parents’, in order to build the excitment of the story, but Kerr kept the parents as central to her work and that’s an aspect that I really appreciated. My tiny family mean the world to me and I really wanted them to feel that parents can actually be fun and enjoy their excitement too. I still recall my children’s eyes widening when it came to the part of Sophie’s parents taking her out to tea (after dark) – because the tiger had eaten all their food – what an adventure, what magic!

This is the influence of art and all that you do, all that you create. When creating mobile art, remember, it’s not just you that feels the warmth of your creations, it’s the rest of us. Draw, paint, photograph everything, you’re gifts are priceless.

Candice Railton, Hanni K, Rob Pearson-Wright, Paul Toussaint, Eduardo Llerandi, Arko Rayhan, Jun Yamaguchi, Deborah McMillion, Lorenka Campos, Damian De Souza, Kathy Clay, Judy Wahlberg, Susan Rennie, before.1st.light – Jane Schultz, pa.a hamel, Anatasia Potekhina, TheiPhoneArtGirl – Meri Walker, Woltarise, Rita Colantonio, Gianluca Ricoveri, Yasuo Furue, Michael Hamments.

Music this week is ‘Love Heals Us All’ Dave Tough

Mobile Photography & Art – Flickr/Instagram Group Showcase – 5 May 2019

05/05/201905/05/2019 by Joanne Carter

“Whenever the world throws rose petals at you, which thrill and seduce the ego, beware” Anne Lamott. I was told a similar thing, not quite so poetically, when I was promoted and became the technical editor of a print camera magazine, many years ago… it’s long gone. “Many congratulations Joanne, but keep those feet on the ground“, cautioned the main editor of the title. Sound advice, but doesn’t it get a little boring sometimes? For years now, I’ve noticed that I have become more and more sensible and it’s getting frustrating. I’m organised, at least in my mind, it might not show physically in my office. I keep my children’s diaries, as well as my own ticking over, day by day. I attend fabulous five star art events, around the world, I attend school meetings with senior teachers, I view the most breathtaking art – on a daily basis, I share my life with the richest most eloquent artists I’ve ever had the good fortune to befriend, I read and respond to specialist medical reports, I attend countless hospital appointments and physical examinations monthly and each time, return home, to remain forever sensible and organised. Even my car, is so understated that it only occurred to me recently, why it was that every single time I look into my rear view mirror on the motorway, that there seems to be a horizontal row of traffic a good 100 yards behind me, the reason being, the British public appear to believe this is an undercover police car and I’m about to turn on my hidden blue lights to anyone who overtakes me. It’s actually quite useful, I can get to destinations much quicker and my car remains untouched when unattended (unusual for around here).

To desire is as good as to possess and I think, I’ll just keep being judicious a little longer, at least until I can fully reveal what I’m working on, after that, I can assure you, my feet won’t touch the ground, yours won’t either and the only blue lights we’ll see, will be the ones at the celebratory party!

Oola Cristina, Chris Feichtner, Paul Yan, Jun Yamaguchi, Clint Cline, Lydia Cassatt, Robin Robertis, Allyson Marie, Karen Axelrad, Catherine Caddigan, Jennifer Bracewell, borisbschulz, Poetic Medium, jilllian2 – Jill Lian, Yasuo Furue, Tracey Grumbach, Rita Colantonio, Kristie Michele Art – Kristie Benoit, Joseph Cyr, Kat McClelland, Lawrence Lazare, Damian De Souza, before.1st.light – Jane Schultz, Susan Blase, jon jon, Kate Zari Roberts, Susan Rennie, Judy Wahlberg, Rob Pearson-Wright, TheiPhoneArtGirl – Meri Walker, p.a. hamel, Michael Brunsfeld, Lorenka Campos, Candice Railton, Gianluca Ricoveri.

Mobile Photography/Art Pic of the Day (1,015) via Instagram

25/04/2019 by Joanne Carter

Here’s day one thousand and fifteen of our mobile photography/art Pic of the Day section via Instagram. Each day we select one image a day for our Pic of the Day section on Instagram, with this hashtag #theappwhisperer.

To ensure your image receives our attention, please upload it to Instagram with this hashtag #theappwhisperer.

Today, we congratulate @remintrusions – Damian De Souza with this image, untitled.

To view more of his work, please go here