images and words

Edvard Munch´s Vampire (1894)

>> – painting

Edvard Munch's 1894 masterpiece Vampire is to be sold after more than 70 years in the hands of a private collector.

Vampire, often seen as the sister of Munch's iconic painting The Scream, will be auctioned at Sotheby's, in New York, for an estimated $35m (£19m). It would smash the existing Munch record of $30.8m (£16.65m) set in May for Girls on a Bridge.

Vampire provoked controversy when it was first unveiled, stoking early-20th Century fears about women's liberation. It depicts a man and woman locked in an embrace and represents themes of love, sex and death.

(...) Simon Shaw, senior vice president and head of Sotheby's Impressionist and Modern Art Department in New York, said: "Few paintings pack as hard a punch as Munch's Vampire. "Like The Scream, it distils extraordinarily intense feelings into a simple, unforgettable motif. The lovers, locked in their dark embrace, evoke love's paradox as a source of tenderness and pain." [source: BBC]

Indeed, the first title of the Painting was "Love and Pain".

Kevin Kelly - Photography and Pilgrimage

>> – photographer, photography, world

Pilgrim, Gangotori (India) - The sources of the Ganges river are popular pilgrmage destinations. This lowland pilgrim is on his way to Gangotori, one of the sources, on a hike of several days into snow. His head is well wrapped, but the rest of his clothes are skimpy. Everything else he has in his in bag.

Kevin Kelly is a writer, and one of the founders of Wired Magazine. On his site, many subjects, like photos, films, documentary, writings, and others.

The Tibet Album (photography)

>> – historical photos, photographer, photography, world

Mt. Chomolhari, by Frederick Spencer Chapman (1907-1971)

"Two ladies wearing Lhasa dress", by Rabden Lepcha

"Tibetan boy with kite", by Spencer Chapman

The Tibet Album presents more than 6000 photographs spanning 30 years of Tibet's history (1920-1950). These extraordinary photographs are a unique record of people long gone and places changed beyond all recognition. They also document the ways that British visitors encountered Tibet and Tibetans.

Featuring photographs taken by Charles Bell, Arthur Hopkinson, Evan Nepean, Hugh Richardson, Frederick Spencer Chapman, Harry Staunton and the previously unidentified photographs of Rabden Lepcha.

Stéphane Pannemaker (engravings)

>> – engraving, historical photos, world

Gaucho des environs de Buenos-Ayres.

Maxourounas (Brésil)

Jeune dame mulâtre

Stephane Pannemaker was a member of a German family of engravers, who were known for producing wood engravings with hard, metallic lines and sharp contrast of lights and darks.

The pictures above are from a Gallica web page about a book with engravings of whole world, intitled Moeurs, Usages et Costumes de tous les Peoples du Monde (1844). The sellectioned pics are about engravings made on Brazil and Latin America.