February 7, 2009
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The cats are screaming outside. There is an ambulance screaming down the road. Even the wind is screaming tonight.
I find that I have lost track of time. Weeks go by and I realise I haven’t replied to that email, telephone call, letter. I have a lot to do right now. But also, I’ve slowed down, now I am in my seventh month of pregnancy. Everything takes longer, some things are just impossible. I finally got all but 2 copies of Sein und Werden sent out. Do buy a copy if you can. There’s some really wonderful writing and artwork in there. Don’t just take my word for it, check out these reviews:
http://abandonyourtimidnotion.blogspot.com/2009/02/sein-und-werden-philias-and-fetishes.html
http://graceandreacchi.blogspot.com/2009/02/sein-und-werden-paw-prints.html
http://graceandreacchi.blogspot.com/2009/01/sein-und-werden-curiouser-and-curiouser.html
And today I got this quote from a contributor: I got my copies of SEINUNWERDEN this week and the magazine looks great! You’ve put a lot of hard work into this project and it shows. I look forward to my year’s subscription. Thanks again for not only publishing my story, but also for putting into such a beautiful format. The next part especially made me laugh, because his mental image ain’t odd at all. It’s exactly how it is, just me, slogging over a hot printer… Please tell me that you have other volunteers helping you assemble the magazines. I have this odd mental image of you printing, gluing, tying, cutting alone late into the night under a soggy English moon.
One thing I miss recently is having the time to read. A while ago J picked up a biography of photographer, model and muse Lee Miller from a second hand book shop and I started reading it over Christmas. But I’ve not had chance to read it for a few weeks and I think it’s about time I got back into it.
I came across a picture of her a few years ago and thought she was quite beautiful:
But only later learned of her connections with Man Ray, Picasso etc. Here she is, around 1929, with Tanja Ramm in front of a wall hanging by Cocteau.
Miller went from model:
to muse (Electricity by Man Ray):
to fashion photographer for Vogue, to war correspondant. A couple of years ago I was fortunate enough to catch an exhibition of her war photographs at the local gallery. I was amazed and awed and moved,
The Burgermeister’s daughter who committed suicide:
A Buchenwald Guard after being beaten:
It’s a brilliant book. Interesting and brilliant. Some biographies get a bit dull but not this one. Not so far. It’s quite intriguing. Her family life, her father who photographed her naked from a very young age (let me just clarify that she was naked, not he!!), the rape by a family friend when she was 7 that left her with gonorrhea. For this she had to have treatment for the rest of her life, and by her mother until she left home. But it didn’t stop her defying the rules of the 1920s, partying, fucking, living out the bohemian dream. She fucked with the boys as hard as she played with them. She was one of them. In a time when colleges offered women courses in domesticity, she was out following her dream. She’s one of those damn inspiring women I just love reading about!
Comments (6)
wow, i want to read it, too.
seven months, holy cow. you’re almost there.
Was Lee Miller the one who married Penrose and then put all her plates in a box in the attic, so her children didn’t even know she knew how to take photographs until after she died? Or was that Dora Mar?
@heidenkind - I know that she was married to Penrose. I hadn’t heard about her putting all her plates in the attic. I actually started reading a book about Dora Maar a while ago. Another one I got distracted from. She was with Picasso and he treated her very badly. She was a brilliant artist in her own right.
Lee Miller sounds like my kinda chick.
What are those random hairy leg bands–and as my hubby so eloquently put it, ‘Why does a baby have pubic hair?’
Although it doesn’t necessarily look like pubic hair to me; it looks more like a little hair suit. Hirsute? Hirsutism?
Maybe it’s some kind of faun-baby. Without hooves.
In other news, I like my print copy of the new Sein. Very pretty indeed.
it’s when you hear stories like these that you realize how much time you’ve wasted sitting around and worrying..