BARCELONA PRIMITIVA book

BARCELONA  PRIMITIVA

GINA VERSTER

my new photo-essay book depicting the older and newer layers of Barcelona from the provocatively primitive to the radically elegant, from the rapturous Casa Batllo to the cerebral Pavello Mies van der Rohe, all aglow in shades of barça blanca...

Please feel free to preview it here...
BARCELONA PRIMITIVA

Graçias/Merci/Thank you!

paris primitif BOOK

paris primitif

 GINA VERSTER

my absence from posting on this blog for the last little while has been justified by the creation of a book that I have recently self-published on blurb 
the book paris primitif is comprised of a selection of the more compelling images and text from this blog and rearranged in intriguing pairings!

it is available for sale from the blurb bookstore and can be previewed in its entirety here

[please feel free to forward this link to anyone you know who might be interested - I know, not another book on Paris!]

letterlitter

sometimes words just drop away and lie in a confused jumble on the lower consonant level...

then contritely whisper back a spare constellation of bareback alphabets...

puffluff

the old  michelinman huffs and puffs along to fill up on air that is almost free...
in copenhagen, 1 krone buys you nothing else...

dutchinese

my half dutch/half chinese world transposed to an amsterdam chinatown where all the made in china bicycles feel at home but may not park themselves here...

mecheeseca

Souci Souris was wearily trekking along on her pilgrimage to a fabled Land of Holy Dairy when one day she looked up and knew she was finally at the Temple of the Golden Wheels of the Sacred Kaas...

leaving her own Land of Blessed Frommage, she had hoped to discover fresh flavours and experience less complicated favours in this other ancient cheese mecca, but soon realized that she needed to go home again to more familiar tastes...

[a birthday homage to G-M T-Rat and his obsessive delight in the unpasteurized camembert that he gets to gnaw on every enlightened day in F-land!]

rietveld's ringer

the attention to details is astoundingly meticulous within and without this structural paean to De Stilj principles...
Rietveld rang Mevrouw Schroder's bell and a multi-faceted jewel of a house was birthed in this windblown land of geometrical profundity...

Rietveld-Schroder House
Prins Hendriklaan 50
Utrecht 

elefantile love

 the elefantile order of danish draft...

 the elefantile command of teutonic rank...

the olifantile rite of dutch ordinance...

moooi beauuutiful

the precarious hijinks of higher dutch design perch willy-nilly  in a sunstrewn whiteout wonderland...
the big black horses tethered at the entrance flicker their halos but never did whinnny...

moooi

Westerstraat 187

Amsterdam 

FOAMative

 

the images float in two dimensional insouciance in a room demarcated with large angled swathes of heavy blues...

the young dutch snapmeister commands his place in a lofty canalhouse museum with the formidable consideration of his inert antecedents...

[from "Still/Life:: Contemporary Dutch Photography" at FOAM (Amsterdam Museum of Photography), Keizersgracht 609, Amsterdam]

schipface

I looked up and was startled by the "face" this building was making at me - cross-eyed with tongue sticking out - somewhat comically rude, and yet so adroitly executed with the brick and tile patterning on the protruding shapes, the angled placement of the "eyes" windows and the keystone "tongue" hanging down above the entrance doorways...

adorning the facade of Het Schip built in the late 1920's by Michel de Klerk of the Amsterdam School, celebrated for its expressionistic use of materials and forms...

Museum Het Schip

Spaarndammerplantsoen 140

Amsterdam

Vorhangeschlosser der Liebe

 

a cluster of colour coded metal locks holding on for dear life - throw away the keys into the murky canal conceding eternal love on this very pedestrian of bridges...

lacking a cheap padlock, a red ribbon will do - or even a most unwieldy tire lock device... [as clunky as the german translation for such cluttery lovelocks]

frau blaumanita

the freakish amalgamation of a toxic fungus cap onto a XX chromosomal humanoid...
or perhaps just an oversized fanciful hat crowning a lovely girl on her way to the park...

glaube an den Schuhmacher...

[in the window of the workshop of bespoke shoemaker Benjamin Klemann in Hamburg]

swedeheart

walked along the antipoetic wall...

it is easy to love fragments that have been on the way a long time...

feel the smell of truth...

the poem which is completely possible...*

*selected cryptic lines from 'Hommages' by Tomas TRANSTROMER (translated from the swedish by Robin Fulton)

wisewabbits

pinkbottleblob

a salacious sea creature...a gigantic squeak toy...a rare and exotic flowerhead...a pretty party-dressed mine...
this vivacious vandal's delight squats benignly on the sidewalk, unperturbed by the passing feral urges to kick at its protuberant presence...
 

BIGness

a roomful of BIG [Bjarke Ingels Group]  hyper-innovative projects on exhibit was a sumptuous architectural feast...
the immaculate maquette for the sleek-peaked WEST 57th apartment building in New York soaring aerodynamically towards the ceiling - this sharp-edgy pyramidal superstructure soon to grace the Hudson riverfront...

[part of the Frontiers of Architecture series of exhibits at the Louisiana Museum of Modern Art, Humlebaek, Denmark]

swede boy

the tyroboy looks me in the eye
with raised fists and taunting mouth...
the tornout words do not tell me anything - I am guessing they are not gentle...
I pass them by, I turn back - he is still challenging me...
the fledgling alpha round with this freshface minimenace  - the futilefight is on...

paris mirage

the sentimental skies of a paris spring beckon - pierced with antique crosses, the tall iron maid, the tricolour pride...

the years dwindle, the moss darkens on stones forgotten, the metal corrodes, and the flag frays - and yet...

"dans le vieux parc solitaire et glacé

deux spectres ont évoqué le passé.

-te souviens-tu de notre extase ancienne?

-pourquoi voulez-vous donc qu'il m'en souvienne?

-qu'il était beau le ciel, et grand, l'espoir!..."

[selected lines from "Colloque Sentimentale" by Paul VERLAINE (1844-96)]