Mark Culham

📷 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.

📷 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.

📷 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.

📷 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.

📷 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.

📷 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.

The third of three photographs in this thread of Diane Keaton by Annie Leibovitz. Black & white. With her hair tied up at the back but long and loose at the front we see Keaton in profile leaning her head and hair against a white wall and casting on it a curved light grey shadow, with the side of her face a darker shadow. All else is just her neck and shoulder in a black top extended behind her and curving down beyond the base of the photograph.

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.

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.

A man balancing on a pole.

📷 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.

📷 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.

📷 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.

📷 Jane Bown Three prints of the same photograph of Orson Welles each with a different level of light and shade. At the bottom the background is totally black and we just see Welles's disembodied face but in the other two we can see the panelled wall behind him, one dark grey the other light grey. Welles in half profile looks at the camera.

📷 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.

'Elizabeth and George, two of the hospital's patients. A photo was taken of each patient; long-term patients, or those who returned would usually have more than one picture, which testified to their physical improvement - or deterioration' Louvain Rees

When I think of the ways people can be institutionally photographed these are extraordinarily sympathetic and just as I would wish.

Our chief weapon is surprise . . . surprise and fear . . . our two weapons are fear and surprise . . . and ruthless efficiency. Our three weapons are fear and surprise and ruthless efficiency and an almost fanatical devotion to the Pope . . . Our four . . . no . . . amongst our weapons . . .

Black & white photograph very similar to the album cover for Underground where the cover photograph is attributed to Horn-Grinner Agency, but clearly directed by Thelonious Monk and relating to Pannonica de Koenigswarter who we are probably seeing at the back pointing a rifle out of the window. She served with the Free French Army but here we are in a French Resistance type set up. There's a tied-up German officer on the left behind Monk who is playing a piano surrounded by guns, hand grenades, bottle of wine, in a barn with straw on the floor and stacked at the back.

📷 Burt Glinn Three cropped (me) colour photographs of Thelonious Monk playing the piano at the same concert. We just see his head with woolly hat, a slight corner edge of the piano with glass ashtray in two, and the audience out of focus behind. The colours in each due to lighting changes is different, going from dark greeny blue to reddish brown to light blue/violet.

📷 W. Eugene Smith Two black & white photographs of Thelonious Monk, one a cropped version of the other. The fuller photograph shows Monk playing the piano, we are side on, the orientation is landscape, one hand is on the keys the other is lifted, he leans back, eyes closed, cigarette in mouth, hat on head, all black except for white patches of reflected light on his face and collar. Around his head and shoulders is a drawn red rectangle and this is the cropped photograph often seen online. There is also a further cropped version which I will quote post later.

The stunt shown throughout this thread is repeated by Buster Keaton in his film Steamboat Bill Jnr. Four stills show the front of a house fall on top of him except he passes through a window.

Buster Keaton in his short film One Week performs the same stunt as the first post in this thread and the post it quoted. In four stills we see the side of a wooden house fall on top of him except he passes through the gap of a window.

And I thought an office chair graveyard was just a myth.