This post is inspired by the plethora of responses I get
when I post some of the pictures I find on my FB page. “Where DO you find these?” or “Can I get a
link?”. So I want to post this here so every
time someone really, realllly
wants to know I can send him or her a link to this blog post and then THEY will
be the sorry ones!
The images I post tend to fall into these broad categories:
Emblemata, Illuminated manuscripts, illustrations of fables
(Aesop, Fontaine or otherwise), and images from alchemical texts. Old illustrations liberated from their text
have a tendency to suddenly become evocative and fabulous, I love them
dearly. Text is so problematic, no? Just get rid of it! That's why they invented Photoshop.
I don’t typically find things by doing a google search for a
certain topic. I come upon them in the
course of surfing the ‘net. There are a number of sites I check every single
day which reliably post interesting images.
So they are a source. But then I
am apt to follow one link to another until I am so hopelessly lost that tracing
any breadcrumb trail is impossible. Its
surfing the net, after all, not spelunking the net or doing archeological digs
of the net. I am skimming across the
surface covering tons of ground and paying very little attention (if any) to
sources, credit or any information about the images, which might somehow
identify or explain them. See this post for why.
For those with an urgent need to know more about the images,
Google now offers a reverse image search. It’s very easy. Drag the image you’re wondering about to your
desktop and from there, drag it back into the inquiry box of Google
images. It will prompt you to “drop
image here”. This is not only
informative, but it can also lead to discoveries since it will find visually
similar images as well.
Finally, I will say, I love these images. I started out with a sort of casual wish to
make the point that weird art work has been around for as long as there have
been humans. I think its hard to be
truly weird. Most images that set out to
be “Weird” are contrived and silly: therefore they are automatically,
ironically, not in the category of weird at all. To be strange, there has to be enough of the
typical to persuade us to drop our guards.
Then, BAM!
Hey--if you can't get enough of this type of thing, please check out my tumblr!
Below is a list of blogs I like.
(If you do not subscribe to Tumblr and weird images are your
thing, well go and get an account. It
supplies you with a feed...a yummy, yummy feed, indeed.)
/// sfumato
2 comments:
Thanks for taking the trouble at 4 A.M. to post these sources for weirdness, we all enjoy your research into the infinite fount of wierdity...Sincerely, Ed McIlvane
Also much appreciated here at Casa del Mew!
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