a fine mess that's what it is

Harper’s Bazaar May 1943 - photo by Louise Dahl-Wolfe

The Smiths play at Moles, 1983 

Greta Garbo and her friend Salka Viertel (it was also rumored that they were friends with benefits)

“You would never know that I love you when you never hear anything from me, but I do - and forever. I am in a state that is no longer human but I cannot describe it on a piece of paper - it would not look pretty. I do think of you very very often and would give anything to be back in the days when I could take my buggy and drive to Myberry (sic) road and see you - the vibrant, wonderful person that is you. Now I am almost afraid to face you because I would be ashamed for many, many reasons, but the longing to see you is there, as always. If all turns out well and I can travel, I shall try to come and see you”. 

In Santa Monica she established a salon where the emigrant community and the intelligentsia met regularly, among them people like Albert Einstein and the Manns.

Celebrating William Christenberry

William Christenberry, who depicted rural Alabama through photographs, paintings and sculpture, died on Monday, November 28, in Washington, DC. He was 80. Known for photographs that measured the passage of time and evoked a sense of place in a region with a rich history darkened by racial and social injustice, Christenberry was one of the pioneers of color fine-art photography in the 1970s, working first with a Kodak Brownie snapshot camera before he incorporated 8×10 and 35mm cameras into his practice. Christenberry produced his work largely through annual trips to Hale County, Alabama which he thought of as home. His photographs show time’s effect on the landscape and humble rural architecture.

“I don’t want my work thought about in terms of nostalgia,” Christenberry said in an interview in 2005. “It is about place and sense of place. I only make pictures when I go home. I am not looking back longing for the past, but at the beauty of time and the passage of time.” Christenberry’s work also acknowledged the terrible racial history of the deep South through his piece “The Klan Room,” a tableaux of images of Ku Klux Klan events he surreptitiously photographed in the 1960s, paintings of Klansmen and sculptures.

Via