The week in pictures

Mama Cass, Michelle Phillips & Hendryx Hendrix; Blake Lively; Kubrick & Jack; Gorky Park.

City life

Paris (Feb), London (NYE), Hampstead Heath (Dec).

Couches of the World

The journey is the destination.

All you've done is hide behind words

Marilyn by Michael Ochs, from Time magazine's 'birthday' portfolio of 85 Marilyn Monroe images.

And no dream is ever just a dream

Above: Kubrick then (1949) and later (2001, i.e. 1968). Below: Kubrick then (1949) and later (The Shining, 1980) A portfolio of the director's work as a photographer here.

Waitak'

My grandfather (right), Waitaki, 1930.

Entirely Feasible Germany

Last year in Berlin. The U55 line really is that efficient.

Some of them are old

I've started writing late at night again, maybe because I need quiet and darkness for the slow stuff, with the TV set flickering in the background and the shot I promise myself when I finish, which I never do, but have anyway.

MaudNewton-dot-com has a great interview with William Gibson in which the novelist discusses the old and secondhand objects that appear in his stories:

I have a kind of vast and half-forgotten library of objects — artifacts, really, because the things that I describe are always man-made. And one of them will be summoned from the library through some unconscious or poetic process when the narrative requires it. I know that sounds precious, but I can’t think of a less precious-sounding way to put it.

I reach instinctively for something without knowing why, and place it in the narrative, and if it strikes a resonant chord with me, I’ll leave it there. There probably are times when the thing that arrives from the library proves to resonate oddly with where the narrative wants to go, and it has to be taken out and replaced with something resonates more in tune with the rest of the structure.

Pictured: my great grandfather, Bill Collard (white suit) and the crew, Waiuku, 1921.

Early morning, later, other side of the world

My grandparents - I think somewhere on the East Coast. From an old glass plate negative. Grandad holding the bugle and Grandma with Joyce in her lap, who died, so this photo was taken before my mother was born. I think the boy is my uncle, Sandy, and the other woman is either my aunt Lottie or Kinner. The man on the right worked with Grandad on the railways - he's in at least one of the other photos. It looks like New Zealand but it looks like so long ago.