place, nature, landscape

The drifting white downy clouds are to the landsman what sails on the sea are to him that dwells by the shore,—objects of a large, diffusive interest. When the laborer lies on the grass or in the shade for rest, they do not much tax or weary his attention. They are unobtrusive. I have not heard that white clouds, like white houses, made any one’s eyes ache. They are the flitting sails in that ocean whose bound no man has visited. They are like all great themes, always at hand to be considered, or they float over us unregarded. Far away they float in the serene sky, the most inoffensive of objects, or, near and low, they smite us with their lightnings and deafen us with their thunder. We know no Ternate nor Tidore grand enough whither we can imagine them bound. There are many mare’s-tails to-day, if that is the name. What would a man learn by watching the clouds? The objects which go over our heads unobserved are vast and indefinite. Even those clouds which have the most distinct and interesting outlines are commonly below the zenith, somewhat low in the heavens, and seen on one side. They are among the most glorious objects in nature. A sky without clouds is a meadow without flowers, a sea without sails. Some days we have the mackerel fleet. But our devilishly industrious laborers rarely lie in the shade. How much better if they were to take their nooning like the Italians, relax and expand and never do any work in the middle of the day, enjoy a little Sabbath in the middle of the day.

From Henry David Thoreau's Journal - 24th June 1852

Posted by poacher in place, nature, landscape at 11:05 | Comments (0) | Trackbacks (0)

Nothing is as vast as empty things - Francis Bacon


Moselely Baths

Ten thousand years in the future, long after the Côte d’Azur had been abandoned, the first explorers would puzzle over these empty pits, with their eroded frescoes of tritons and stylised fish, inexplicably hauled up the mountainsides like aquatic sundials or the altars of a bizarre religion devised by a race of visionary geometers - JG Ballard


Victoria Baths

More abandoned swimming pools at Polar Inertia

Posted by poacher in photography at 11:59 | Comment (1) | Trackbacks (0)

Crowds, St Petersburg


Eerie long-exposure photographs of crowds in St. Petersburg. I can't decide if these are placeless images, or if they need the context of St. Petersburg to grant them meaning. I think they evoke a universal truth of crowds and the relentless slog of work and toil. To me they embody the clammy horrors of London in Eliot's The Wasteland:

Unreal City,
Under the brown fog of a winter dawn,
A crowd flowed over London Bridge, so many,
I had not thought death had undone so many.

(Spotted at BLDG)

Posted by poacher in photography at 13:24 | Comments (0) | Trackbacks (0)