Sunday, May 11, 2014

When the Bearded Lady Sings

The winner of the 2014 Eurovision Song Contest was the Austrian singer Tom Neuwirth in his alter ego of the bearded drag queen Conchita Wurst. We know drag, but millions of TV viewers wondered: what's with the beard?



The essay has been moved to my personal website:

When the Bearded Lady Sings

 

Friday, May 9, 2014

Life in the Shadows


I like to work with themes when I go around and take random photos with my smartphone. The paradox of a glimpse of order in chaos is inspiring. Here is a bunch of photos on the theme of shadows.

Shadows are intriguing. They form sort of mirror images, rather obscure ones, as if reluctantly revealing something essential about the objects causing them. The chaos hiding behind order, if you will. The yin accompanying every yang (the Chinese duality originally refers to the shady and the sunny side of an object).

Shadows also remind us that the universe is a dynamic relation between what is and what isn't. As Plato pointed out in the cave, sometimes we mix up the two. We come and we go, casting lots of shadows in between, tracks of the fact that we once were. But these tracks are as evanescent as we are. It all slips away into the void.

I started taking shadow photos in 2007, but the additions were scarce. A couple of weeks, though, I took a stroll in Berlin when the city bathed in splendid sunlight, creating lots of sharp shadows. So, I had a go on my theme again. After that, I thought I had enough for this little exhibition.

Click on the images to see them enlarged.