Sweet ad by Catherine Prowse for, of all things, Palliative Care Queensland.

Great 10 minute doc about a young keeper who worked at an Australian Safari:

Some of you may know that I sell vinyl records for a living. Today, a copy of Wim Mertens' A Man of No Fortune, And With A Name to Come walked in the door along with some Philip Glass and Steve Reich. I first heard this record in 1993, when I was running Art & Trash, the best arthouse video store Toronto's ever seen. Though not expensive, today's copy is only the third I've seen in 30+ years.

In North America, the Belgian composer is probably best known — if he's known at all — as the composer of the score for Peter Greenaway's film The Belly of an Architect, which contains Mertens' most famous piece, Struggle for Pleasure:

My personal favorite Mertens piece is probably Often a Bird:

Here's A Man of No Fortune..., which is just Mertens' piano and countertenor voice:

As I listened to it today for the first time in many years, I recalled that I'd sometimes put the CD on repeat, played very softly, to calm my dog, Fletcher, who suffered from separation anxiety — he once almost ate his way through my wooden front door. The music worked quite well.

If it agrees with you, you may like Hania Raini's output.

The New Yorker has the latest piece by Nobel winner, Annie Ernaux. I've read just about everything she's written that's been put into English and this piece is on par with her best. If you like this, you will like her books and understand why she was awarded the Prize in 2022.

On Cancer and Desire — Images from a complicated year.

Want to know more? Here's Ernaux's Wikipedia entry.

Breathtaking work from Tine Poppe: Gilded Lilies — Portraits of cut flowers.

I wanted to post them all but then there'd be no reason to visit Poppe's fantastic site.

Some of Lukas Vasilikos B&W series, Stories Retold. I believe most of these were shot in Greece, where Vasilikos lives.

See the full series on the Vasilikos website.

Lukas is part of the Burn My Eye collective.

Werner Herzog's memoir Every Man for Himself and God Against All offers a fascinating glimpse into the life of this renowned filmmaker. While I'm not a huge fan of his films, even though I've seen many, I find Herzog's perspective as a writer to be compelling.

One of his most famous concepts is ecstatic truth, a term he coined to describe a form of truth that is not bound by factuality. This is not to be confused with the Republican notion of "alternative facts," as Herzog is not ignoring or denying facts. Rather, he seeks to illuminate and enhance them, much like how Miles Davis might explore a musical note by not playing it directly, but by playing around it. This idea of "ecstatic truth" resonates with me. Years ago, I shared with a lover a story I’d written, only to have her accuse me of fabricating details. My response at the time was that the story represented a more essential truth, even if the specifics were not entirely factual. “But it’s not truth,” she said.

“It’s narrative truth,” I replied.

"So, a lie."

Obviously, she wasn't having it.

Let me say one thing about ecstatic truth. The simplest way to explain it is by looking at Michelangelo’s Pietà, the statue. Jesus in the arms of Mary is a thirty-three-year-old man, tormented on a cross and taken down, but his mother is only seventeen. It’s one of the most beautiful sculptures that was ever created. And my question now is did Michelangelo try to cheat us, did he try to give us fake news, defraud us, lie to us? The answer, of course, is no. He shows us a deeper truth of both figures.

— Werner Herzog, Werner Herzog Has Never Liked Introspection

Read The Ecstatic Truth in the New Yorker (2006).

Read Werner Herzog Has Never Liked Introspection in the New Yorker (2022).

Read Werner Herzog Defends His Ecstatic Truth (2023).

The Verge on AI in photography with the release of the new Google Pixel:

An explosion from the side of an old brick building. A crashed bicycle in a city intersection. A cockroach in a box of takeout. It took less than 10 seconds to create each of these images with the Reimagine tool in the Pixel 9’s Magic Editor. They are crisp. They are in full color. They are high-fidelity. There is no suspicious background blur, no tell-tale sixth finger. These photographs are extraordinarily convincing, and they are all extremely fucking fake. 

Some of the examples they offer:

These were created in-camera. No additional software or skills required.

The conclusion of The Verge's article? We're fucked.

Those are street maps of some of the places I've lived.

Make your own on the City Roads website.

If you saw Wim Wenders' most recent film, and are not someone who has visited Japan, I'm guessing you were impressed with the public bathrooms of Tokyo.

These photos were gathered by EastEast for their piece, In Praise of Shadows, Ruminations on the aesthetics of a Japanese toilet.