Haunted Cars
Gilding wants an open field full of abandoned and rusted vintage cars in her hometown backyard!
Russian photographer and bloger, Ilya Varlamov, used clever lighting to capture these eerie photographs of abandoned vintage cars rusting away in this known field in Russia.
More photos from this series can be seen on English Russia or Ilya Varlamov’s Livejournal.
Inspired…
Gilding should be cleaning, but instead she is feeling inspired by these two series.
The first set, Bench Monday, Gilding saw a couple of weeks ago and has since been holding onto it. The second, The Sea, The Surge & The Seamstress, she found today, and the two combined have sparked a sort of inspired buzz in Gilding’s bloodstream.
The first, Bench Monday, was seen on Apartment therapy and, as a friend pointed out, had the cartoon remembrance of Tom & Jerry, when the occasional appearance of the Lady of House was seen from the knee down only. Of course, this particular image, which was the first one in the set we saw, helped cement that comical idea.
Gilding wonders just how many places she can think of to perch her feet upon and photograph. She also ponders just how much ambition doing so would take. You can see the entirety of the photographs in this group on their flckr.
The second set, The Sea, The Surge & The Seamstress, came via Twig & Thistle. The series is the creation of Samantha Lamb, and reminds Gilding of this bizarrely random movie — who’s name she can’t recall — that Mr. Gilding made her watch in which the exhuberant girl — and love interest of this rather boring, hum-drum of a guy — took pictures of apples every place that she went — she would literally carry an apple(s) with her to place about in an orderly random fashion to photograph it in that place at that time to commemorate it in her life.
That’s what this series reminds Gilding of. And though these photographs are not so random and are of a compositionally complete nature, they inspired that memory and how Gilding was somehow taken with it even though she rather hated the movie.
The Sea, The Surge & The Seamstress in its entirety can be seen here on Samantha Lamb’s flickr.
Win an SLR Lens from Tamron USA
Tamron USA, Inc. is sponsoring the MCP contest for a brand new lens. The winner chooses from the 18-270mm (for a crop sensor Nikon or Canon) or the 28-300mm (for a full frame Nikon or Canon).
Go to mcp actions: the blog for details on the contest and how to enter, or simply click here.
Milk Never Looked So Good
…Sexist, but nice. Actually, these are at least artfully beautiful — especially if compared to these. But Gilding supposes if you’re going to photograph milk in any setting other than atop cereal, there really is only one way for the mind to go…
Photographs by Andrey Razoomovsky
[Via Design You Trust]
Lolita in the Dragon’s Garden
Feelin’ the infatuation for this SCMP STYLE magazine spread (April 2009) by photographer Baldovino Baran. You may remember Gilding’s love for Baran’s “Vampire and the Nun” series, as well as a few other appearances of the photographer’s work on Gilding the Lily.
This series features model Elyse Sewell and is shot on location at Dragon Garden, Hong Kong.
Via HIGH SCHOOL ARCHETYPES on foto decadent
Horror on the Russian Subway
An awesome use of photomanipulation, these works by Russian artist Alex Andreev are part of his stylistic series, “Hermetic Art.”
Apparently, it is illegal to take photographs of the Russian subway. If this is what you see when the flash goes off, no fucking wonder. [Via English Russia]
Melnikova House
In the best translation Gilding can find, these photographs come from a box of rejected slides and negatives of the architecture of Soviet Moscow that somehow nomadd had gotten a hold of. “Putting it mildly” he says, they were “not [in an] especially good state.” Among them were these photographs of the Melnikova house objects and “round house [Arbate]” though Gilding isn’t quite sure who are what the significance of the home(s) are. nomadd then spent countless hours scanning, retouching, and restoring the photographs seen in this set.
Gilding found these particularly inspiring.
I Heart
…these images in Vogue Italia’s June 2009 editorial “NEO-Romantic” from photographer Emma Summerton. Via FASHIONINDIE. The models features in this series are Imogen MOrris Clarke and Abbey-Lee Kershaw.
And this editorial series, “The Vampire Nun,” by photographer Baldovino Barani in the June/July 2009 issue of Oyster Via High School Archetypes on the LiVEJOURNAL community foto decadent.
Candy Coated Viscera
Crumbles, 2009, by Nandita Scillitani
Exploring modern mythologies, the psychology of horror, and the role of the female in contemporary society, Nandita Scillitani’s photographs are uncomfortable and visceral, playing on the viewer’s comfort level like fingers on a harpsicord, only more discord and less fluffy angelic clouds. Their candy coated colors are unnerving in the face of their disturbing compositions, yet, like a compulsion, they beckon and intice you to stare. The works in her Art 1 gallery are perhaps her best example of this.
Though not as powerful in content or nature in her second online gallery, Art 2, SCillitani’s ability to capture such tactile imagery as is present in her works makes the objects caught within its glossy printworks allude to something thicker and alive and all to delicious not to reach out and touch just to see if you could really feel it.
More of Scillitani’s photographs can be seen on her website.
Via mocoloco
August Come Early
Gilding is loving the photography of August Bradley, especially her Hasselblad Masters Book, and feeling rather inspired by her saturated colors, melancholy scenes, and a feeling of the otherworldly happening just beyond the scope of our viewable frame.
Above images from August Bradley’s Hasselblad Masters Book; August Bradley Images
I Heart
Has Gilding mentioned that she hearts photographer genius Steven Meisel. She just finished reading the Vogue US May 2009 article The Godfather on the man himself. Soooo Hott. The man is a genius and gorgeous and witty and shy and likes girls and boys…Jesus, it really doesn’t get any hotter than that. And on top of reading about him, the magazine is chock full of his photography so Gilding is a happy girl with this issue. It’ll even make the covetous spot of being kept in her small collection of archived magazines — there’s all of two…including this one. Oh quit gasping. Magazines are so much more fun as art projects and you damn well know it. But no worries, Stevie, this magazine will be past down onto Gilding’s spawn, who will be haunted mercilessly if they ever harm it.
From the series the great pretender, from this Vogue Us issue, Meisel explores the dynamic marriage of artist and muse as model Natalia Vodianova role-plays nine of fashion’s most legendary models.
Images scanned by Luxx at tFS and feaured on Foto Decadent by ecstacy lover.
As it is, or as we see it…
i.anton has Gilding feeling spring and thinking of Europe…and wallpaper. God, Gilding would love to have some of these photographs blown up as large panels of wallpaper to cover her taupe colored apartment walls.
About Russian Women
A translated source for these images can be found here on English Russia. The original source of the collection is from plasmastik on LiveJournal.
This images is one of the most powerful of photos in a collection from plasmastik. The collection features different Russian women. All from different social strata, ages, and occupations. All having but one thing in common, they are all women that are on the verge of something else, whether it be a strong emotion or of a capitulating moment in their life.
Gilding is feeling particularly responsive to this image, however. The stark contrast between the two women reflectively photographed is both drawing and at the same fights your eyes for the center of attention. Each woman’s face tells a story and the eye vies to see them as one even as it tries valiantly to separate them and see them as the individual women they are. The contrast in their ages is both dark and humbling, and the black and white gradient drives home this otherwise blatant knowledge of mortality that women so desperately rebel against.
Out of Russia
Photographer Valeri Kochergin has traversed the harsh whorl of Kola Peninsula to photograph [above and below] its ice and snow covered terrain. Technically speaking, the photographs aren’t that spectacular, but the content within them is pretty eye goggling.
See the rest of the series of photos here from English Russia
The Kola Peninsula is flanked on the west end with two mountain ranges: the Khibiny Mountains and the Lovozero Tundra. The whole of the peninsula is covered with many fast-moving rivers with rapids, as well as a few major rivers, all of which are important habitats for the Atlantic Salmon. Because the last ice age removed the top sediment layer of the soil, the surface of the peninsula is extremely rich in various ores and minerals.
During the Soviet period, the peninsula’s main port, Murmansk, was a significant submarine production center and remains home to the Russian Northern fleet. But Kola Peninsula as a whole has suffered major ecological damage, mostly as a result from the military — mostly naval — production, as well as from industrial mining of apatite. Today, about 250 nuclear reactors produced by the Soviet military, remain on the peninsula. Though no longer in use, they still generate radiation and leak radioactive waste.
Looking at these pictures, it hard to imagine anyone being able to live in an environment like this. Still, the Sami peoples now heard reindeer across much of the region, and recreational fisheries have developed with remote lodges and camps hosting sport-fisherman throughout the summer months. on Kola Cape, its flanking Hibini mountains have given the region a travel twist offering ski lifts and trails around now abandoned Soviet structures.
And what would a blogging trip into Russia be if we didn’t have at least a small snippet on some bit of Russian architecture. Russia’s churches are unique in that there really aren’t any of the Goth persuasion, unlike their popular brethren in much of Europe. Preferring to stay faithful to their architectural design, many of the Russian Orthodox churches carry elements of Eastern churches from Bysantium — or modern day Turkey — from where the church’s orthodoxy originated.
However, it was on occassion that Russian architects combined elements together with their traditional architecture that were reminiscent of Europes famous gothic cathedrals, resulting in structures, such as the one, above that have so been labeled Pseudo-goth churches. How pretty. (Source)
And this surreal image just had to be posted. According to English Russia, this photo was one of the most famous shots taken by Russian photographers during Worl War II. In the background are the ruins of Stalingrad — the city where most of the heavy city battles took place. It is here that some historians say that the Nazi invasion of Russia broke down.
The monument itself is a bit odd, depicting Russian children dancing around a crocodile. You can see the traces of bullets on the statues, leaving their bodies dappled with holes. And even in black and white, its amazing to be able to see the flames of the burning building in the background.
After the war the momument was rebuilt even before the surrounding buildings. And while Russia has some bizarre statues around and about, Gilding is interested to know what exactly was the meaning behind the composition of this statue. Kids playing Gilding gets. Kids playing around a crocodile, not so much?
