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Mobile Photography & Art – Flickr Group Showcase – 6 February 2022
You may have heard of Dr Megan Poe, she is a 46 year old psychiatrist and associate professor who teaches an undergraduate course on love, which she designed at New York University. It has achieved overwhelming success. The course is called ‘Love Actually’ and attempts to pack as much about the human experience of love in, as is possible. The course leans heavily on the work of Eric Fromm, the psychologist best known for his 1956 book, The Art of Loving. What I love about the syllabus of this class, is at its core, albeit a psychology class, its emphasis is on love, through art. As described in The Guardian…
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Mobile Photography & Art – Flickr/Instagram Group Showcase 9 May 2021
It is Mother’s Day in many parts of the world today, not officially in the UK, we celebrate that day in March. But Mother’s Day, really is everyday, with a beautiful mother of my own and three gorgeous children, I live both sides and it is glorious, in spades. It is a day, not only to be thankful but also to rejoice, to laugh, be happy, to celebrate. Laughter is the best medicine and its positive effects on our health have been clinically studied since the 70’s. There are over 5,000 laughter clubs worldwide, originally inspired by Dr Madan Kataria, who developed laughter yoga in Mumbai, I’m thinking of starting…
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Mobile Photography & Art Flickr and Instagram Showcase – 23 January 2021
In Ways of Seeing, John Berger discusses Rembrandt’s self portrait painting when he was aged 58 and contrasts this with an earlier self portrait painting when he was 28 – thirty years apart, explaining that the latter portrait only reveals ‘an advertisement for the sitter’s good fortune, prestige and wealth’. It was painted in 1634, in the year of Rembrandt’s first marriage. He is flamboyantly showing off his bride, not knowing that withing six years she will be dead. The painting is cited to sum up the happy period of his life. It was also during this period of history that oil painting was betoken to be ‘a celebration of…
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Mobile Photography & Art Flickr and Instagram Showcase – 15 November 2020
Developing an impregnable sense of self confidence should be the basis for a contented life but however, it is often the first stumbling block. Artists’ falter more than many professions with this, perhaps not so much as comedians, both occupations involve risks but without taking them, we cannot grow. Self-acceptance should never be elusive, it should be something we spend time on encouraging in ourselves as well as honouring in others, never losing the former. Eventually this Covid-cloud we are all living beneath will pass over, but whilst it is still here, its more important than ever to be gentle with our handling of ourselves and with each other. Increased…
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Mobile Photography & Art Flickr and Instagram Showcase – 4 October 2020
“However long your stay on this small planet lasts, and whatever happens during it, the most important thing is that-from time to time-you feel life’s sweet caress.” Words to live by as told by William Boyd in his sixteenth novel, Sweet Caress. This week you’ll notice a audacious, sweeping, rich layer cake of a showcase, a gasping hall of mirrors of lives, well lived. Enjoy! Thank you to all the talented artists for submitting your works to ourshowcasethis week. If you would like your work to be considered for entry in to our weekly Mobile Photography and ArtFlickr Group, please submit it to our dedicated group,here. You can also submit…
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Mobile Photography & Art Instagram/Flickr Group Showcase – 21 June 2020
“Photography is a foreign language everyone thinks they speak“, DiCorcia (1993-1994) cited in Galassi (1995). Photography is a language, adopted as a means of expression and communication or as an accompaniment to words. It has its own set of grammatical rules and codes. How we read an image is determined by our own personal background factors. A universal photographic language does not exist when compared to a spoken or written language. Photography as a language is more to do with an interpretation rather than a direct translation of information. Language connects people and it also divides them, any language only works if it’s understood. This weeks mobile photography and art…
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Mobile Photography & Art Flickr/Instagram Showcase – 14 June 2020
“In these last decades ‘concerned’ photography has done at least as much to deaden conscience as to arouse it”, Sontag, S. On Photography (1979). Sontag argued that beleaguering the public with sensationalist photographs of war and poverty was a definitive way to numb the public’s response. Sontag believed that the more distressing images people viewed, the more immune they became to their impact; viewers became reduced to inaction, either through guilt or a dismissive lethargy towards making a difference. Sontag reversed this view in Regarding the Pain of Others (2004), but ‘compassion fatigue’ is still used as an argument against war imagery today. I have been thinking about this a…
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Mobile Photography and Art Flickr/Instagram Showcase – 10 May 2020
‘Literature is the most powerful means we have for communicating consciousness’, said author Garth Greenwell. The author of a new book, ‘Cleanness’ which I have yet to read, as I am currently rereading his debut ‘What belongs to you’, a book that has served Greenwell, so well. It’s not the subject that draws me as much as the equisite literature that soaks every line. However, I believe good art can be the most powerful means we have for communicating consciousness. The kind of art that worms its way into a person’s being, art that imbues our lives, illuminating our innermost thoughts with eloquence, compassion. Art teaches us to be more…
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Mobile Photography & Art – Flickr/Instagram Group Showcase – 17 November 2019
I was delighted this week to learn that 45 year old Ivorian artist, Joana Choumali has become the first African photographer to scoop the Prix Pictet prize, winning with a series of embroidered photographs responding to the trauma of terrorist attacks in Ivory Coast in 2016. The series is entitled ‘Ca va aller‘ – meaning – ‘it will be ok‘, a reference to stoical reaction to adversity that she said permeated Ivorian culture. Her images were printed onto canvas and then later embroidered with stitches directly onto the surface. Combining photographic imagery with fabric and therefore, creating ‘conceptual portraits‘. She created this work ‘as a need to process the pain‘.…
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Mobile Photography & Art – Flickr/Instagram Group Showcase – 29 September 2019
Susan lived “in constant terror that [her mother] would withdraw suddenly and arbitrarily.” […] In the house she grew up in, love was not given unconditionally. Instead, it was extended temporarily, only to be dropped at will: a winnerless game whose rules the girl learned far too well. I am currently reviewing new literature by Benjamin Moser, a heavy tome of a book, entitled “Sontag: Her Life and Work”, sent to me by Allen Lane the publishers and a subsidiary of Penguin Books. I’ve not finished this book, not by a long way (yet). This week has been a tough one personally, not least with the resurgence of early years’…