imperfect hope
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my online scrapbook- cargocollective.com/tessconnellan
-flickr.com/photos/violet-joan-king/
-violet-joan-king.tumblr.com/
favourite blogs
If I had to choose my most favourite blog in the whole of Tumblr (something I dearly hope I’ll never be asked to do), the online scrapbook of photographer extraordinaire Eleanor Hardwick would have to take the cake. The perfectly pitched combination of unique high fashion, short films and music videos you can’t seem to find anywhere else, and stills from the sorts of cult movies too few people seem to know about, all set to the types of electronica and shoegaze tracks that are somehow hypnotising and danceable at once. As for the photography inspiration lineup Eleanor alone seems capable of putting together, it is nothing short of what I would call perfect. Bewitchingly ethereal shots that could be outtakes from a Sofia Coppola/Tim Walker collaboration of a Brothers Grimm fairytale, perfectly imperfect disposable candids from photographers the world over, black and white frames of hope in history, a veritable showcase of Flickr photographers so astonishingly talented that your entire faith in the Internet is restored in two and a half seconds and incredible professional shoots by everyone from Lina Scheynius to Ryan McGinley. The palpable influence of all this art on Eleanor’s own breathtaking work seems to make it all the more special – think of how privileged you would be if Tim Walker or Annie Liebowitz gave you one of their scrapbooks to peruse at your leisure. The fact that it’s online is no detractor from its validity, if you ask me. Eleanor’s discipline (in that she doesn’t often reblog what I’d call hilarious garbage – Social Network memes, Harry Potter/Mean Girls crossovers and fandom in-jokes – too often) makes for an entirely unique atmosphere that’s both ethereal and underground. Prepare to be seduced.
I’m pretty sure it’s a given that the Tumblr of fashion blogging sensation Tavi would be an awesome experience, and also an instant follow. I’ll put it this way – I never knew how many things had simultaneous teen angst and witch vibes before seeing her tags. In fact, all of her tags are perfect in my opinion – “apocalypse”, “back to school” and “fairy” are only a few. Being another person with similarly odd and specific vibe categories in my head (eg. Sherlock Holmes vibes, Kubrickian madness vibes and Greig Fraser vibes), this is comforting. And of course, constant Miu Miu S/S 10 fangirling is very much accepted on my corner of the world.
Do you know how difficult it is to accurately invoke the sheer incredulity one feels when viewing a mind-numbingly perfect mix of Marie-Amelie Sauve styling, Dazed editorials, 90s nostalgia and Tarantino stills? Oh wait, I JUST DID. Gabi manages to track down every incredible fashion shoot EVER (I mean the ones that you want to wallpaper your room with) and freak out over them without ever being what I would call a fashion bore – and by that I mean her eloquence and way of relating it to other cultural arts (I SEE YOU PUTTING MIA FROM PULP FICTION IN JIL SANDER) in a way that is both interesting and coherent. Or in one sentence, PRREEEEEETTTTTTYYYYYY BOG IS PREEEEEETTTTTTTTYYYYY. Don’t ever change, Gabi.
Genevieve makes gifs of films like Roman Polanski’s Repulsion, Tim Burton’s Ed Wood and Kubrick’s Dr Strangelove. Her blog is a goldmine of the most sublimely haunting, beautifully eerie black and white images I’ve ever seen. Her URL is named after Vera Chylitova’s Sedmikrasky (Daisies), a film she turned me on to, now my favourite fantastical-homemade Czech Surrealist motion picture from the 60s. In fact,Sedmikrasky lies next to The Strokes, in her gifs list. I believe enough has just been said.
One of the (many) annoying things about me is that I try to keep my Tumblr neatly ordered and painstakingly selected, so it functions like an online scrapbook. For example, a Tim Walker photo I would stick into an actual scrapbook, so it is reblogged. An “Art Student Owl” meme, no matter how true, would be nowhere to be found in any of my actual scrapbooks (pretentious about content? Moi?) so I try to resist. Most of the time, I fail. Molly, however, holds no such ridiculous pretensions. Her blog is proudly full of hilarious frivolity – gif trains, stand-up quotes, and the best moments from British comedic television. If you’re looking for a laugh, you’ve come to the right place. Of course, the occasional perfect vintage film photo or perfect Harry Potter post pops up at just the right moment as though Molly is somehow psychic. That or a genius. Or a Time Lord. Probably all three. Oh, and speaking of which, if you’re not a hardcore Whovian, you won’t understand half her content. You have been warned.
This is another simple one – this entire blog is dedicated to stills, gifs, behind-the-scenes things and director’s/actors/crew quotes from Joe Wright’s Pride and Prejudice. All are perfectly compiled, and pictures even I haven’t seen (I have three pages of articles on Joe Wright on the wall next to my bed, perfectly placed so I can see them as I lie there going to sleep, just FYI) are regular. An instant follow for Austenites, cinephiles and Joe Wright fangirls (SHUT UP WE TOTALLY EXIST) everywhere.
Oh, Lord. Emily’s blog is prime running-out-of-words territory. Imagine if Lula magazine was started in 1900, with a pixie as the editor-in-chief, then add some Dickens, some Bronte, some Edward Gorey and picture the office of this marvellous publication on a ghost ship floating in the North Sea, cut off from all that is earthbound and yet still able to bewitch us mere mortals with the slightest touch… Hear that? That’s the sound of me getting lost in my imagination. Such is the effect of milkwoods.
Bob Dylan, Virginia Woolf, faded photos of punks, stills from The Dreamers, Nabokov quotes and Old Hollywood. Also, the header is a Sylvia Plath poem and the background picture is of Ophelia. All of this is executed without the slightest trace of pretension or self-consciousness (I need lessons on that matter). Excited yet?
(Being a worshipper at the altar of celluloid rather than Christ, I will use, um… the Lumiere Brothers as a replacement for any deity’s name, so as not to cause offence, yes? Because that’s not weird?)
Before I stumbled across Talia’s blog (by finding THE EXACT LET THE RIGHT ONE IN STILL THAT I WANTED on it), I felt adrift in the sea of cinephilia. Was I the only one who found it fun, not just something you do at school, to notice the costuming and cinematography and characterisations and inter-film references? Was I the only one who had to suppress a squeal when I FINALLY found out about my favourite director’s next film (AND they’re doing it with this actor who was brilliant in THIS and THIS costume designer who did THIS and my third favourite cinematographer AND this composer AND this person who won the Oscar for this is writing it, AND… etc etc)? Was I the only one who got excited over the plot device and framing/cinematography of I’m Not There, not just zzzoommmggg Cat Blanchett playin’ a duuuuude? Was I the only one who wondered if the all-white-except-for-one-red-corner Rubick’s Cube that Oskar has at the start of Let The Right One In was a foreshadowing visual trick for all the red blood on white snow we’ll see later? Most of all, was I the only one who seemed to be able to relate absolutely everything in real life to a film at some point, and not be able to comprehend a future without being involved in it? Then, I found Talia’s blog. She reblogged Hot Fuzz gifs, Scorsese posters, and wrote the most absurdly eloquent, hijacking-my-thoughts-except-better-than-I-could-ever-write reviews of every film she watches. Then one day, along with a Let The Right One In still of a Rubick’s Cube, came my thoughts. Nearly verbatim. Praise the Lumieres. I was saved.
Fry and Laurie. Monty Python. The Beatles. Doctor Who. Charlie Brooker. Harry Potter. Think of all the things that make Britain – in all its self-deprecating, bizarre, begrudgingly-optimistic glory – Britain, and you will find them here. Less loud than Little Britain, and probably funnier.
Zines, delicious Nineties tastelessness, Sonic Youth, vinyl records, hilarious vintage advertising, David Bowie, random genius of all kinds – Samantha may seem like an old soul yearning for the days when romancing involved mixTAPES, Blythe dolls ruled the universe (THAT TOTALLY HAPPENED) and Polaroids were more of a norm and less of an apparent hipster affectation (Hi, I’m Tess, my Polaroid camera is my baby), but her fresh and irreverent commentary on all this nostalgia cements her place in the modern world as a beacon of hope for lovers of stylish kitsch, healthy dreaming of times past and punk bands that sold cassettes. We’re just lucky she’s taking us along for the ride.
This is, simply put, beautiful. Whether it’s of a bowl of rasberries, a collage covered wall, flowers floating in a sink, a sleeping girl, a dragonfly or someone’s breakfast, Kit (or Katherine if you want to address her properly – ‘cause she’s totally, like, a Queen) has an eye for simple and breathtaking images. Speaking of which, her own of her art diary caused me to fangirl immensely (newsflash: the thing is goooood) before realising she had in fact done it herself. Yaaayyy fellow art students. Even if the talent they have that I don’t makes me want to cry. And obviously, judging by her title, she is a Harry Potter fan. This is a requirement.
Pip plays the ukulele. She listens to Florence + the Machine, Mumford and Sons and Dire Straits religiously. She is amazing at drawing, and the incredible Florence mural on her wall she did herself. When pictures of the aforementioned musicians are not getting priority, skeleton necklaces, photobombing pigeons and Harry Potter (but of course) is to be found. Her accent is perfect. Back in the confusing days of when I first got Tumblr, I followed her immediately in the I-like-your-URL-instant-follow way of actually putting together a dashboard, and her sheer kindness, humanity, and self-deprecation (she made a gif of herself with a cat mug that says PIP AIN’T EVEN MAD) has kept her right up top for all this time. For pure niceness, she has yet to fail me. Thanks, Pip.
madbabyruthl3ss, heart-still-beating, ohandonemorewhitestripedthing
Dani, Dani, Dani. Farrah, Farrah, Farrah, Farrah. Mary, Mary, Mary. What would I ever do without you? When I finally thought of finding some White Stripes blogs to follow to pacify ever-growing obsession, this candy-cane triumvirate welcomed me into their kingdom with open arms (shut up. That’s what they are. In my head. They sit on piles of vinyl records instead of thrones and eat tacos and wear gold boots and secretly run Third Man Records. These are facts). Instead of being looked at like the annoying 12 year old that follows the big kids around, they treated me with real respect, a quality that is all too absent from most o the Internet. And by respect, I mean they laughed at my imagined conversations between the members of The Dead Weather, joined me in acknowledgement of the odd-but-atom-bomb-strong attraction of Jack White, and giggled inappropriately at a picture of Mr White apparently on top of Julian Casablancas. Also, their mutual grief (it sounds absurd to call it that in the scheme of world tragedies, but you know what I mean) at the White Stripes breakup made the whole affair feel like a candlelit vigil of celebration rather something to cry over. Also, Mary photoshops Jack White onto unicorns, Dani provides such a steady stream of VV that she was in my dream last night (overexposure = dreams, I’ve heard, excellent) and Farrah also experiences the physical pain I suffer when The Strokes pop up on my dash and my ovaries explode. All of them are also hilarious, kind and endlessly inclusive. Don’t ever change, guys!
Elegant photos and illustrations and fellow Joe Wright fangirling and Deathly Hallows tattoo and moving personal posts and hilarious dealing with of idiots and Anglophilia. Arina, born in Iran but raised in Norway, is one of the reasons to love Tumblr. How else would you ever meet (real life equivalent of following a blog? Is it really “stalk”? I don’t know!) someone this interesting?
This blog is half a cocktail of Old Hollywood, Lee Miller, French cinema, Elizabeth Taylor and Victoriana, and half the greatest amount of Barcelona football fangirling you’ve ever seen. I reblog the first half like mad, and giggle at the fact that I wouldn’t know one end of the second half from the other. If you are similarly minded, as in a lover of black and white images or of Barca, this is the place for you.
The other day, my father asked who my favourite photographers were. I answered “Mostly 17 and 18 year old girls from Sweden, east London or Montreal with hair in colours you usually only see in sweet shops.” Laurence fits this to a tee, being a resident of Canada’s French hub and having the most inarguably perfect bright turquoise locks of anyone I’ve ever seen. To me, that’s reason enough to follow her (a lot of her photos are self-portraits, so the magnificent mermaid regalia is on full display), but if not, perhaps this sample of her tag list is more persuasive: Yelena Yemchuk, The Cottingley Fairies, Addams Family, birds, Twin Peaks and Miyazaki. And of course, the influence of these on her divine photography is palpable, so like Eleanor Hardwick, the feeling of honour that you get to see inside her ‘scrapbook’ prevails.
This blog is one of a kind. I mean that literally – all the genius contained within it is the sort you never seem to see anywhere else. A sample: an illustration from an old German children’s book, a photograph of Bela Lugosi as Dracula from his won personal collection, David Bowie with a telephoto lens, technicolour poodles, a collectable “The Munsters” pen and a book called “The Wolf-Woman”. Incredible taste much?
Other than understanding my Seamus McGarvey fangirling and being a fellow cinephile, Bel’s breathtaking film photography documents her not-so-everyday life in The Big Apple and her various adventures (The Wizarding World of Harry Potter on Pentax K1000, I NEED TO BREATHE) in a manner as exquisite as Richard Avedon captured his portraiture subjects. Through her lens, New York becomes less of a manufactured “city hub” and stereotypical travel highlight and more of a people’s city, a vulnerable place. Bel’s city is one of The New Yorker, Mondrian’s Broadway Boogie-Woogie, the builders eating their lunch sitting on steel bars hanging off the Chrysler Building, and Margaret Bourke-White. In fact, at the rate she’s going, Bel is a worthy successor to Madame Bourke-White herself. Keep the celluloid coming, Bel.
Last up, we have the most recent addition to this list. This is collection of the most wonderful artworks (mostly collages, eeeeeeeeeeeeeee) I’ve ever seen. This legitimately outstrips some art galleries I’ve been to. The sheer beauty of these pieces leaves me absolutely speechless. Just click, scroll, and fall in love.
