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Mark Culham

@markculham.bsky.social

540 followers 490 following 3.4K posts

Where the bee sucks, there suck I

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Mark Culham @markculham.bsky.social · 9h

📷 Bruce Davidson
Black & white photograph of Leonard Bernstein sitting between two people, a woman nearest us, out of focus, elbow on table, hand to face, and a man furthest from us somewhat out of focus, face resting on hand, both of them looking down, as is Bernstein, in focus, fingers on forehead, lit cigarette between fingers. Below them on the table is an open music score.

Mark Culham @markculham.bsky.social · 9h

📷 Alfred Eisenstaedt
Black & white photograph of Leonard Bernstein, although he is just a small figure in the centre of the picture. Between him and us is half of his orchestra with a percussionist and his timpani taking up much of the focus of the bottom half of the photograph. Above are 4 packed circles of the concert hall.

Mark Culham @markculham.bsky.social · 10h

📷 Richard Avedon
Black & white photograph of Leonard Bernstein in a conductor's pose, head down hands up, fingers spread, black clothing, just a white cuff can be seen, black hair, all white background. He might be parting curtains or separating two fighting school children.

Mark Culham @markculham.bsky.social · 11h

📷 Unknown photographer
Black & white studio-like portrait of Katherine Mansfield. The intense stare seems to go just above the camera but when I zoom in it seems directly at the camera. Shoulders turned somewhat to our right but the head turned straight towards us - bob cut symmetry. Black hair, grey background, greys all else.

Mark Culham @markculham.bsky.social · 11h

📷 Ida Baker
Black & white photograph of Katherine Mansfield leaning back against a balustrade looking up to our right, but much of the photograph is taken up with the top of the balustrade going away from us as if the camera was resting on it as the picture was taken. Then in the middle of the picture the balustrade turns right and we find Mansfield there in the corner as it curves round. Behind her are trees on the right and a view of hills then sky on the left.

Mark Culham @markculham.bsky.social · 11h

📷 Unknown photographer
Black & white photograph of Katherine Mansfield. She leans to her right into the top centre of the shot, the top of her head out of frame, she looks down at the camera, open book in her right hand which is just behind a pile of books that we get a glimpse of in the bottom right hand corner. There's a window behind her, and left and right are photographs that are difficult to make out (literary heroes perhaps, one looks like Swinburne). A chance photograph or one well worked out and casually performed.

Mark Culham @markculham.bsky.social · 21h

📷 Edward Steichen
(Photographed from a book)
Vanity Fair colour photograph of Lillian Gish. Half the photo is taken up with two flowering plants with Gish above them seemingly asleep, resting on cushions but almost as if resting on the plants themselves, the cushions appearing above her head and shoulder. Three layers, cushions, Gish, plants. Smelling flowers as she sleeps.

Mark Culham @markculham.bsky.social · 22h

📷 George Hoyningen-Huene
Black and white photograph of Lillian Gish in a dramatic pose as if a film still. Her right forearm and hand go straight up, her fingers tensely grip her head covering her right ear, her head leans into the palm of her hand and her eyes wide-open look up to our right, her mouth half open. That's all on the left hand side. Everything else is black with a smokey effect towards the top. The rest of her body can't be seen, just forearm, hand and head.

Mark Culham @markculham.bsky.social · 22h

📷 Emil Orlik
There's evidence for at least four photographs that Orlik took of Lillian Gish where she is sitting side on to the camera and where we see her head supported by a piece of equipment that presumably was used when photographs required long exposure times, but that wouldn't have been the case here and anyway it is not hidden. Orlik is known as an artist rather than a photographer but I haven't found any paintings or drawings of Gish either that might explain this arrangement, so I'm left with this interestingly odd set up that I'll assume was the point. I have put one image of three head shots (already online) above a full photograph (one of two available online) of Gish seated.

Mark Culham @markculham.bsky.social · 2d

📷 War Officer Official Photographer
Another random black & white photograph from IWM collection of a soldier asleep in the sunshine on the deck of a ship with the ship's cat sleeping beside him.

Mark Culham @markculham.bsky.social · 2d

📷 Neil Libbert
Black & white photograph of a cat jumping over an alleyway, we see the cat mid air. I was reminded of this photograph by the previous post.

Mark Culham @markculham.bsky.social · 2d

📷 German Army
Black & white photograph found from a random search of the IWM collection shows a dog jumping a shallow trench with two soldiers kneeling, looking over the top. The dog is mid air. I was reminded of a recent photograph I saw by Neil Libbert with which I will follow this post of a cat doing similar except I don't think the cat was carrying messages.

Mark Culham @markculham.bsky.social · 2d

📷 Cecil Beaton
Black & white photograph of Ram Gopal and another dancer, dancing on a rock platform by the sea. The abstract geometric background of the other two photographs is not apparent here, sea, rock and sky do not form parallel lines instead, the rock platform breaks up into the sea and the horizon slants down left to right. The dancers have one arm curved above their heads and the other bent at the elbow.

Mark Culham @markculham.bsky.social · 2d

📷 Cecil Beaton
Black & white photograph of Ram Gopal and another dancer, dancing on a rock platform by the sea, but we don't see the sea this time just the rock and the sky with the dancers feet on the edge of the two.

Mark Culham @markculham.bsky.social · 2d

📷 Cecil Beaton (reversed)
Black & white photograph of Ram Gopal and another dancer, dancing on a rock platform by the sea, their arms waving as they stride to our right. In almost parallel sections we see sky, sea and rock as the background to their curved lyrical figures.

Mark Culham @markculham.bsky.social · 3d

Mark Culham @markculham.bsky.social · 3d

The second of three photos in this thread of Diane Keaton by Annie Leibovitz. Keaton is in a white overall-like but presumably fashionable dress (this is a Vanity Fair photoshoot) with white arm length fingerless gloves and ashe is holding up a white woolen top that has her head inside. Again she could be anyone. The walls behind her are white and, on a white chair beside her, there is a white cat.

Mark Culham @markculham.bsky.social · 3d

One of three photographs in this thread of Diane Keaton by Annie Leibovitz.
We see a figure bent over with one leg bent in the air behind her at the knee the other straight. She is leaning against a white wall in a black dress with black hair. She could be anyone. On the left we see a bit of a white step ladder.

Mark Culham @markculham.bsky.social · 4d

A man balancing on a pole.

Mark Culham @markculham.bsky.social · 4d

A photographic still from the Monty Python sketch Whicker Island. Five of the Monty Python crew dressed as Alan Whicker, with microphone in hand, all in a line on a sandy beach, sea in the background, palm tree appearing into shot on the right.

Mark Culham @markculham.bsky.social · 4d

📷 Cecil Beaton
Four Harold Pinters from the same photoshoot, dressed alike, cigarette and glasses in hand but standing and looking in different directions against a plain white background. They would form a group as if at a party if they didn't overlap each other. As I have already posted something today relating to Monty Python I could title this photograph Pinter Island.

Mark Culham @markculham.bsky.social · 4d

📷 Peter Rand
Black & white photograph of four people in a tight space one of which is Harold Pinter at the back, somewhat out of focus in front of a window providing no view. Forming an irregular semi-circle in front of him are Alan Bates, Donald Pleasence and Robert Shaw as in their roles for The Caretaker. Bates and Pinter look at the camera, Pleasance and Shaw to the left of the camera, a kind of a zigzag.

Mark Culham @markculham.bsky.social · 4d

📷 Neil Libbert
Black & white photograph of Harold Pinter who looks as if he could be on stage directing - let's say he is on stage directing. He stands with hands on hips his legs cut off by the bottom of the photograph, he looks to our left and beyond us, on his left there's a man's head and smoke like cigarette smoke, and a smokey haze ascends above and over Pinter within which the light from a series of spot lights, in a diagonal line from the top right hand corner, is diffused. Something close to us but out of focus bottom right hand corner I can't decipher but feel I should be able to.

Mark Culham @markculham.bsky.social · 4d

Mark Culham @markculham.bsky.social · 4d

📷 Angus McBean
Black & white photograph of Orson Welles as Othello strangling Desdemona played by Gudrun Ure. It's a staged pose for a theatrical production. Othello stands over the bed but looks away to his right, his arms quite straight, his hands around Desdemona's neck,whose head, upside down, hangs over the end of the bed looking in our direction, mouth open, her hands grasping up by his chest. Black background.