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Flowers speak a language we understand. They tell us of time and its passing. They speak of life and death, enduring, waiting and survival. They speak of hope and renewal. “To be a flower,” Emily Dickinson wrote in Bloom, a poem, “is profound Responsibility”. We’re thinking of flowers as we look at this album from … Continue reading "The Life of Flowers In Vintage Found Photographs" The post The Life of Flowers In Vintage Found Photographs appeared first on Flashbak.
In 1994, the graffiti on the wall that ran along the Riverside Path in London’s Thamesmead told everyone that “GOLDFISH ARE WANKERS”. We’ve seen “LESBIAN TURDS“, learned that “Cats like plain Crisps” and that you can “FREE KUWAIT WITH TIGER TOKENS“, but this is the first fish-themed graffiti we’ve seen. Peter Marshall captured London … Continue reading "‘Goldfish Are Wankers’: London Graffiti, 1984-1994" The post ‘Goldfish Are Wankers’: London Graffiti, 1984-1994 appeared first on Flashbak.
The images below are from Columbia University’s collection of commercial stationery, featuring architectural illustrations and gorgeous typography for factories, warehouses, mines, offices, stores, banks and hotels. Industries in this album of architectural stationery vignettes range from livestock, textiles, printing, roofing, and brewing to wagon works, cordage and merchandising. Columbia’s Robert Biggert Collection of printed … Continue reading "Vintage Architectural Stationery Vignettes" The post Vintage Architectural Stationery Vignettes appeared first on Flashbak.
“These venues have a very ‘talkative’ quality visually – they‘re expressive in design, reflecting aspects of local culture, values, and even fantasies” – François Prost, Love Hotels There are about 37,000 Love Hotels in Japan. Sex on the clock in a rented room is big business in Japan, catering for 500 million lovers … Continue reading "Sex In A Japanese Love Hotel" The post Sex In A Japanese Love Hotel appeared first on Flashbak.
The Livre de la vigne nostre Seigneur is an anonymous illustrated treatise on the Antichrist, Last Judgement, Hell, Heaven, Christ and Antichrist. It features 15 illustrations that mark the End of Days. What makes the series particularly interesting is its lack of human figures wracked in pain and horror. Elsewhere in the book, it’s … Continue reading "15 Signs of the Last Judgement and End of Days: 1450 – 1470" The post 15 Signs of the Last Judgement and End of Days: 1450 – 1470 appeared first on Flashbak.
More in history
LAST OCTOBER I published a short breakdown of four geopolitical ‘schools’ that might shape China strategy under Trump. That piece was a pre-election preview of a much larger report I was writing for the Foreign Policy Research Institute. I published the preview as security: Trump might not win. If so I had better publish something before election day while interest in Trumpworld was guaranteed. Trump won. Interest in GOP debates did not abate. I continued to work on the report. As of this week the full thing is out. You can read it, in all its twenty-page glory, over at the FPRI website. What follows are some of its key points:
Civil rights icon Rev Dr Martin Luther King Jr was shot and killed on April 4, 1968, on a motel balcony in Memphis. One of the earliest successes of the civil rights movement was a boycott in Montgomery, Alabama. In 1955, after Rosa Parks was arrested for refusing to give up her bus seat to … Continue reading The Assassination of Rev Dr Martin Luther King Jr →
From Dwarfs to Wise Men... What's Up With the Number 7?
Ever thought about whether the world is there only because you think it is? That’s what George Berkeley meant with his philosophy of idealism. The 18th-century philosopher came up with a pretty wild idea: “To be is to be perceived.” According to him, we don’t find objects, and the world exists separately from our […]
Despite its status as one of the most widely known and studied epic poems of all time, Homer’s Iliad has proven surprisingly resistant to adaptation. However much inspiration it has provided to modern-day novelists working in a variety of different traditions, it’s translated somewhat less powerfully to visual media. Perhaps people still watch Wolfgang Petersen’s […]
