The Four Seasons

Linda and I were at a neighborhood yard sale a couple years ago, and though there was nothing at this lady's driveway setup, it did make for a neat photo, especially with the amazing Japanese maple. So I asked, "Do you mind if I take a picture? Your Japanese maple is really beautiful."  The woman was so excited to hear this she said "Oh please do! But wait- let me show you something and also wait til I shut the garage door before you take the picture." Then she proudly came out to show us these portraits of her tree in each of the four seasons, taken from the same spot in her driveway. I thought this was so great. Sometimes the best things at yard sales are things you can't buy. No, I'm kidding. but I love that she loved her tree so much.

Koyo Okada's Mt. Fuji

Koyo Okada's Mt. Fuji. 1959

"I have photographed the mountain more than 150,000 times,
but I fear that I have still not exhausted all its possibilities."

Cover design and layout by Ryuichi Yamashiro
Published by Charles E. Tuttle Co.

Japan, you are in our hearts.

I know someone who knows someone who knows Allen Jones quite well. Or, Kitchen Trophy

A few years ago British interiors photographer James Merrell was up for a weekend photographing our apartment for Domino magazine (here, here, and here), and among the things I (possibly pesteringly) kept pointing out was our kitchen trophy. At this he said, "Yes No! I did see it and love it- and actually the only other time I've ever seen one is at Allen Jones' house.  ...Roger Dean and Yes and I would be hanging out there and we'd always see that knifey jumble on his kitchen wall."
Totally excited to have this connection I was all, "this makes us all mates now, right?!?"

Anyway, above is our kitchen trophy as of the other day, basically a collection of kitchen utensils piled together on the wall like a sort of heraldic crest, including my grandfather's corkscrew, a Stelton bottle opener, an old Zig Zag corkscrew, Dansk knives, a beat-down cleaver, a Danish gnome cheese-cutter, an Adidas tennis racket bottle opener and some other stuff. 

Allen Jones, from the Pirelli calender, 1973. Photographed by Brian Duffy and airbrushed by Philip Castle.


Jones with his sculptures Table, Chair, and Hat Rack, in his apartment, 
from the book 70's Style & Design.


The Jones Residence via Google street view, with quite coincidentally yet appropriately a leather-booted bird strolling by directly across the road.

Take R.I.T

Selections from Rochester Institute of Technology yearbooks, 1974, 76, and 78.

(in no particular order)

Calif.

Chateau Marmont by Jenny Agutter (Logan's Run, An American Werewolf in London) from her awesome book Snap.

Coincidentally Dennis Stock's more awesome book is loaded with photos of ape extras hanging around Los Angeles, taken during the filming of Planet of the Apes, 1968. But I just love these two photos.

C'etait un Rendezvous

Rendez-vous (Claude Lelouch 1976)

Early one August morning in 1976 the French director Claude Lelouch mounted a camera to the front of his Ferrari and filmed his breakneck drive through the streets of Paris, from Porte Dauphine to Sacre Coeur. After "C'etait un Rendezvous" was shown publicly Lelouch was arrested and the car confiscated.

Not long after it was released our local library had a copy, and my brother and I used to get our dad to rent it constantly, every chance we got. Back then renting movies was a little more complicated, as the movie was an actual big can of film, and my dad would have to lug out the movie projector and thread the film, while we'd set up the giant silver screen on its rickety aluminum tripod. But when the lights went out and the movie started rolling, nothing beat sitting on the carpet staring up at the screen with a permanent smile for 9 minutes, the smell of dusty electricity, the smooth clacking of the projector, and the loud Ferrari engine blaring through the steel speakers.
Happy Bastille Day!

A Wonderful Time

Today for a change we just drove around looking for signs, as nothing stood out in the newspaper listings, and it seemed pointless trying to decide which ad had the most promising version of "something for everyone". Turns out we drove luckily, as the first was really good- a moving sale of a former ad man, and we picked up some old Art Directors Annuals and some other cool odds and ends. The middle was a few hours of driving around from toys to Nascars to baskets and the usual nothingness, but it was sunny and fun. However from that we came to a really great moving sale in Cape Elizabeth. This was our last stop of the day, at around 1 o'clock. Why these fantastic books were still there is a mystery. Being an easy mark for any old Tolkien, I got all punchy when I saw these -geek alert- pirated LOTR Ace paperbacks and the rare "lion" cover of The Hobbit, along with old hardcovers of Smith of Wootton Major, Farmer Giles of Ham, and Tom Bombadil- Nice! Also a ton of James Thurber, which is always fun to paw through, some old Wyeth family books and catalogs, and some 60's and 70's bohemian stuff, among which was this Ecology/Earth Day silkscreen from 1970. Balancing all this was the rare find of a nice first edition of Slim Aarons' 1974 book 'A Wonderful Time', his photographic journey through the backyards and playgrounds of the rich, jet-set, and favored few. We grew up with this book, a gift from Commander Whitehead to my grandfather Meyers, but I haven't seen it in years.

Definitely a wonderful time, Saturday.

(Commander Whitehead)

Penn

We drove down to New York and on the way detoured over to my parents' house in Connecticut to preview their yard sale. Among the things we bought (back) was this old copy of  Irving Penn's Moments Preserved, for $1. Penn is the master of composition and still life, and his portable studio with the canvas backdrop is eternally inspiring. If you're in Los Angeles this September, The Getty Museum is having a massive retrospective. 

also at the tag sale: