When I was in Birmingham this week I managed to grab twenty minutes to take a quick look around the city’s Art Gallery. Not a great deal of time, but just enough to see this Gwen John painting. Like so many of her portraits of women, this one is withdrawn and lost in thought. But … More Friday Picture: Gwen John
Another one from Edinburgh’s National Gallery of Modern Art but this time a very recent image. It’s of electronic music pioneer Daphne Oram, who co-founded the BBC Radiophonic Orchestra. The artist is Glasgow-based Victoria Morton. I think the mish-mash of bright colours probably match the strange new sounds she was producing in that studio.
I’m posting this week’s picture a little early because I’m expecting my Friday to be a little busy! I’m in Edinburgh covering Scotland’s independence referendum and managed to snatch a couple of hours to feast my eyes on this jaw-droppingly beautiful city as well as to pay my first visit to the Scottish National Gallery … More Friday Picture: Pablo Picasso, ‘Mère et Enfant’
I snapped this recently at the Virginia Woolf exhibition at the National Portrait Gallery. I stood, stared, went away and came back again, several times. Wonderful. More thoughts here.
I took this photo lying on my back on a sumptuous red velvet-covered bed in Tredegar House in Newport. To add to the surrealism, I had just slipped out of a reception for international journalists at the NATO summit. Tredegar House is a grand manor house in Newport, run by the National Trust. It was … More Friday Picture: Tredegar House
This image is of ‘The Magic Crystal’ or ‘The Crystal Gazer’, by Gertrude Käsebier, 1904. It’s from the the Royal Photography Society collection at the National Media Museum in Bradford I know it, of course, from the cover of ‘Pearly Dewdrops’ Drops’/ ‘Spangle Maker’ EP by Cocteau Twins.
Two extraordinary and contrasting images from the Folio Society edition of Hugh Thomas’ comprehensive history, ‘The Spanish Civil War.’ Above is a picture of the jailed Catalan government in May 1935. Amongst those staring at the camera from behind bars, Lluís Companys is third from left. The image below is much earlier - from 1926 … More Friday Picture (s) Spanish Civil War
