Kafka On The Shore

Kap Bambino (via piercethenight: fuckyoudraculas)

Another great shot here

via nedhepburn:mandr: oats:

oats:

Kids in Paris having the times of their young lives watching a puppet show

This photo was taken in 1963 at a Guignol puppet show in Parc de Montsouris, Paris…Le theatre de Guignol has been getting this types of reaction from French kids for more than 200 years.

A typical scene from Guignol would have the ugly bad puppet approaching our hero (Guignol) very slowly from behind with the intention of knocking him down with a big ugly stick. The kids would go insane trying to warn Guignol of what’s about to hit him. Repeat that about 10 times and by the end of the show, the kids will have lost both their voices and the will to live. I’m telling you, it’s not for sissies.

From the series “Being twenty in Iran” by Iranian/French photographer Isabelle Eshraghi

Click here to see the whole series
Listen here to the Persian music she’s chosen as the soundtrack to her website

A rare portrait of the camera-shy Albert Kahn on the balcony of his office in Paris in 1914

“In 1909 the millionaire French banker and philanthropist Albert Kahn embarked on an ambitious project to create a colour photographic record of, and for, the peoples of the world. As an idealist and an internationalist, Kahn believed that he could use the new autochrome process, the world’s first user-friendly, true-colour photographic system, to promote cross-cultural peace and understanding.

Kahn used his vast fortune to send a group of intrepid photographers to more than fifty countries around the world, often at crucial junctures in their history, when age-old cultures were on the brink of being changed for ever by war and the march of twentieth-century globalisation. They documented in true colour the collapse of both the Austro-Hungarian and Ottoman empires; the last traditional Celtic villages in Ireland, just a few years before they were demolished; and the soldiers of the First World War — in the trenches, and as they cooked their meals and laundered their uniforms behind the lines. They took the earliest-known colour photographs in countries as far apart as Vietnam and Brazil, Mongolia and Norway, Benin and the United States.

Kahn died in 1940. His legacy, still kept at the Musée Albert-Kahn in the grounds of his estate near Paris, is now considered to be the most important collection of early colour photographs in the world.”

Kahn’s palatial home at Cap Martin on the French Riviera, photographed around 1910

Albert Kahn’s much-loved garden at his home near Paris in 1911


Guests in the gardens of Kahn’s cliff-top residence in Cornwall on 25 August 1913

Ladies of leisure striking the pose in Albert Khan’s Gardens, Boulogne Billancourt (Paris), 1910

Last time I was in Paris, I found myself on the grass of some overly sculpted park, shooting the breeze with old friends. We talked about green spaces and agreed that the Albert Kahn’s Japanese Garden was one of the best kept secrets in Paris. Then, one of us pointed out how funny it was that we were having a conversation about where to find the best green spots in Paris while 15 years ago we probably had the same conversation about the best bars in town. Interesting how one’s relationship with the city evolves with age.

Sidenote: The Japanese garden, conceived between 1895 and 1910, is surrounded by other gardens of various styles (a French garden, an English garden, etc…), forming Les Jardins Albert Kahn.