scrunched 2
More explorations with torn and scrunched papers, this time from magazines. Quite different from the scrunched print I did recently. Wonder where these are going?
You are browsing the Blog for Photoworks Archives - Page 14 of 51 - Marja-Leena Rathje.
by Marja-Leena by Marja-Leena fog and sun
8:12 a.m., November 15th, 2012
In a very wet month,
a rare moment of brilliant light
mirrored in water
softened by fog
(Compare to November 19th, 2008)
by Marja-Leena ancient doors
I’ve been off on a tangent today starting with reading blogs, as often happens. I’d been visiting my friend Mouse where curiousity sent me exploring the site of a commenter. Her photos of ancient doors in Provence are so beautiful and compelling that I began to wonder whether I had taken anything similar in my relatively limited travels.
I pulled out our Italy 1993 photo album (pre-digital days!) and got lost in there for a while. I found numerous images of arches, which I love, and ornate doors in grand cathedrals such as in Florence. But really none are of very old doors in homes, except for a glimpse of the ones in a beautiful old stone house in the Appennines. Below is my favourite one, a bricked-in door in a wall (not a home) by the Etruscan castle in San Severa. It was used it in my Meta-morphosis VI prints.
I often wonder why I have this love for the very old and weathered, yet I would not tolerate our home looking like that. I know it is partly about the setting for we live in a very young part of North America. If we let our house get this rundown, our neighbours would have it condemned! But there are a few historic sites even here, such as the old Britannia shipyards in Steveston, where I found some locked doors.
Doors are so everyday, yet they can have a mystery, even hold hidden fears in dreams and tales. When they are weathered and ancient, their history calls out. Who lived here? What stories happened behind these doors?
by Marja-Leena rosemary
dew of the sea
woody herb in my garden
evergreen hemlock-like needles
greens for fall and winter bouquets
overly strong fragrant oils on my fingers
name of a childhood friend
Added Nov.15th:
The phrase ‘rosemary for remembrance’ has been playing in my head.
Just now, I’ve found the source, dear Will Shakespeare, of course:
There’s rosemary, that’s for remembrance; pray, love, remember: and there is pansies, that’s for thoughts.
– Hamlet (1601) act 4, scene 5
(from The Oxford Dictionary of Quotations)
by Marja-Leena fallen phal
This particular phaleonopsis or moth orchid in my collection has been blooming for several months. Today two flowers fell off and I felt the urge to scan them. I love seeing closely the fine textures and patterns – imagine them larger on a full screen.
Compare this to some earlier scanned phals: papery and freshly fallen.
by Marja-Leena 
by Marja-Leena reading & sleeping
I’m taking it easy this week nursing a cold. With tissues and tea beside me, I am really enjoying the guilty pleasure of more reading time with a timely receipt of a library book I’d placed on hold: P.D. James’ Death Comes to Pemberley. More than half way through and loving it, the only one of this grand dame’s books I’ve ever read. A dear friend is a keen fan of James so I’d given her a copy of this for her birthday last year. As a Jane Austen fan, it was high time to read this for myself and what a pleasure!
As you know, I love textures and stone, and this scan I once did of marble seems just right today, an illustration of the condition of my brain cells this week?
by Marja-Leena urban textures
visual surprises in a parking lot, good thing I had the camera
by Marja-Leena leaves underfoot
Autumn is a second spring when every leaf is a flower.
– Albert Camus
by Marja-Leena sunflower
Last weekend I received a magnificent bouquet of sunflowers from a visiting sister-in-law. Sadly they wilted some days later so I cut the heads off to spread on a plate, and scanned the freshest looking one for posterity. Sunflowers are so appropriate right now as we are having a very warm Indian summer. May the sun shine on you too, my dear readers!