Shannon

National Portrait Gallery, London - March 2026

street scene person with armful of papersnext to someone in a lion suit

'Sidewalk Activity on Bleecker St. in Greenwich Village',
Robert Sefcik, 1970.

#Photography Marc Riboud, Paris.

368 Spadina Road at Heath West Forest Hill Village

The view out my window without obstruction iPhone 13 mini sketch for Rollieflex shot
on film SFX 200 no filter.

#TreesOnTuesday on the walk home Saturday night

The image shows a picturesque winter evening along the canals of Amsterdam, beautifully illuminated with Christmas lights. The trees along the canal are decorated with bright lights, reflecting in the water. Snow lies on the quays and on the boats moored in the canal. The traditional canal houses are visible in the background, adding to the iconic Amsterdam atmosphere.

This evening on the Spiegelgracht in Amsterdam.

© Edward Pfizenmaier
Wollman Rink, Central Park, NYC, 1954.

Artwork of a human figure wearing tattered clothes and with empty sightless eyes drifting above a landscape of scrawny scattered pine trees

#Ghost over the trees (1931) by Franz Sedlacek #PhantomsFriday

Boy in the Window
Paul Himmel
1952

#Photography Robert & Shana ParkeHarrison

Three yellow coneflowers with drooping petals and a green background.

Rudbeckia #watercolour #watercolor #floral #ArtYear

Quiet wintry neighbourhood street with sun about to rise + the crescent moon shining

Cary Grant in uniform, with a tiny little puppy poking his head out of the pocket of the jacket.

Cary Grant's birthday, which means it must be time for the puppy in the pocket photograph again. Taken during filming for 1933's "The Eagle and the Hawk", I believe.

'The Dance on the Shore,' from 1900 is one in a series of 22 pictures Munch painted called ‘The Frieze of Life,' of which the most famous image is 'The Scream.' The works were conceived as a part of an epic exploring the progression of modern emotional life through themes of Love, Anxiety and Death

Berlin,Deutschland,Germany

NYC
Dennis Stock
1950

Morning all. Photograph by Paul Trevor, Wentworth Street, London 1978. A woman is crossing a street which has high fencing to both sides after the demolition and clearance of housing. The woman is wearing a long coat with its hood up, the hood looks like a cowl or a pixies hat. A very gothic look and feel to this photograph.

Morning all.

Photograph by Paul Trevor, Wentworth Street, London 1978.

Cover of The Women's Press edition of Cora Sandel's Krane's Cafe, showing an illustration by Gill Day of two women cleaning the tables of an empty cafe, with a village and mountains visible out of two windows.

Epigraph page of Cora Sandel's Krane's Cafe. "If people can see that you're suffering, you're finished" - Agnes Mowinckel. "Poverty is terrible. Of all so-called misfortunes, it's the one that affects you most deeply internally" - Hjalmar Söderberg

And Cora Sandel's Krane's Cafe (1946, tr. Elizabeth Rokkan). A woman in a small Norwegian town, who has been ground down by poverty and the demands of others, reaches breaking point and scandalises the town.

Cover of a Virago Modern Classics edition of A Woman of My Age by Nina Bawden, featuring a painting of the back of a nude woman sitting on a red cushion ("The Red Cushion" by Dorothy Cadman).

A couple of highlights: Nina Bawden's A Woman of My Age (1967). A vivid and often brutal novella of a middle-aged woman looking back on her life and marriage, while on a disastrous holiday in Morocco.

A pile of book spines. From top: A Woman of My Age by Nina Bawden, Ragtime by EL Doctorow, How I Came to Know Fish by Ota Pavel, Grand Hotel by Vicki Baum, Indelicacy by Amina Cain, One Clear, Ice-Cold January Morning at the Beginning of the Twenty-First Century by Roland Schimmelpfennig, Krane's Cafe by Cora Sandel, Death in the Museum of Modern Art by Alma Lazarevska, The Foxes Come at Night by Cees Nooteboom and Dusty Answer by Rosamond Lehmann.

My favourite books of 2024. Read some wonderful books last year, and discovered some new authors (to me) that I'm excited to explore further in 2025.

A man, photographed through the window of a metro station above. He stands at a street crossing below. Dimly lit streetlights provide some light onto the dark scene.

weary #dark #berlin #streetshot

Unfortunately I have now run out of bookshelf space again.

"Disgusted with life, she retired to the society of books"
Rosina Emmet Sherwood
1888

No doubt you've decided on an anti-social Xmas & New Year.

Choose 20 books that have stayed with you or influenced you. One book per day for 20 days, in no particular order. No explanations, no reviews, just covers.
#Books
#BookSky
#BookChallenge
Day 20

Choose 20 books that have stayed with you or influenced you. One book per day for 20 days, in no particular order. No explanations, no reviews, just covers.
#Books
#BookSky
#BookChallenge
Day 19

Choose 20 books that have stayed with you or influenced you. One book per day for 20 days, in no particular order. No explanations, no reviews, just covers.
#Books
#BookSky
#BookChallenge
Day 18

A Forest of ancient yew trees

Ancient yew tree forest - Kingley Vale, Sussex

Difficult to age yew trees, but multiple trees are estimated at 1,000 years old

Choose 20 books that have stayed with you or influenced you. One book per day for 20 days, in no particular order. No explanations, no reviews, just covers.
#Books
#BookSky
#BookChallenge
Day 17

Choose 20 books that have stayed with you or influenced you. One book per day for 20 days, in no particular order. No explanations, no reviews, just covers.
#Books
#BookSky
#BookChallenge
Day 16