Saturday, October 10, 2009

"The Camera Can Photograph Thought” Dirk Bogarde


Just short of needing meds for being compulsive obsessive (alphabetized CDs, color coded closet), I am not afraid to own up being a collector (but not a hoarder). I have posted about collecting certain writers & musical artists. I collect different versions of songs- Mack The Knife & Waters Of March, to name 2. I collect river rocks, but they have to have a stripe & be oval. For decades I have been fascinated by & collected orbs, from marbles to bowling balls, globes to gazing balls. I have a collection of vintage photographs, mostly 1860-1960, of men being affectionate with each other. It is a getting close to being a world class gathering of snapshots & formal portraits. I have been in the process of trying to determine who I can leave them to. I would love to find an institution that would like to preserve this hand-picked archive of men touching, hugging & kissing each other. Some of these photos are framed & put into very tasteful groupings by the Husband, & many I just have in protective sleeves in a box that can be brought out for viewing.


In the late 1980s, the Husband received a magical old scrapbook from the 1930s as a gift from his employer at the time. It was the scrapbook of what is obviously a British male couple in their early 30s, at least 1 of the pair is an architect or draftsman. The photos include nice images of their pair of lovebirds & their Staffordshire terrier. There are great shots of them, obviously in love, holding on to each other & touching, & there is a series from a “grand tour” that includes men in swim suits on Mediterranean beaches being much more immodest than Americans of the period, & photos naked brown men in North Africa. We would drag out the scrapbook to show people until, with little regret, the husband took them out of the book & framed them in the same style & size of simple black frames.



I thought I would start sharing different vintage photographs form my collection as a new feature on Post Apocalyptic Bohemian.

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