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Mark Culham

@markculham.bsky.social

540 followers 490 following 3.4K posts

Where the bee sucks, there suck I

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Mark Culham @markculham.bsky.social · 5h

A man balancing on a pole.

Mark Culham @markculham.bsky.social · 6h

A photographic still from the Monty Python sketch Whicker Island. Five of the Monty Python crew dressed as Alan Whicker, with microphone in hand, all in a line on a sandy beach, sea in the background, palm tree appearing into shot on the right.

Mark Culham @markculham.bsky.social · 6h

📷 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.

Mark Culham @markculham.bsky.social · 6h

📷 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.

Mark Culham @markculham.bsky.social · 7h

📷 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.

Mark Culham @markculham.bsky.social · 8h

Mark Culham @markculham.bsky.social · 8h

📷 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.

Mark Culham @markculham.bsky.social · 8h

Mark Culham @markculham.bsky.social · 16h

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

'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

Mark Culham @markculham.bsky.social · 17h

📷 Louvain Rees of photographs at Glamorgan Archives

'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.

Mark Culham @markculham.bsky.social · 17h

A cropped black & white photograph by Moneta Sleet Jnr. of Thelonious Monk playing the piano with Pannonica de Koenigswarter leaning against it looking on, together with the cropped album cover photograph for Underground where they are separated by a cow and he has a rifle over his shoulder as he plays and she, dressed as a French Resistance fighter, has one in her hand. I've just noticed that the supposed barn that they are in has a stained glass window, the leading and colours depicting a flowering plant.

Mark Culham @markculham.bsky.social · 17h

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 . . .

A still from Monty Python's Spanish Inquisition sketch which I was reminded of by the joke in Hamlet when Hamlet asks Osric what Laertes weapon is and gets the response rapier and dagger.

Mark Culham @markculham.bsky.social · 18h

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.

Mark Culham @markculham.bsky.social · 18h

📷 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.

Mark Culham @markculham.bsky.social · 19h

📷 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.

Mark Culham @markculham.bsky.social · 1d

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.

Mark Culham @markculham.bsky.social · 1d

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.

Mark Culham @markculham.bsky.social · 1d

Four stills from the short black & white film Backstage starring "Fatty" Arbuckle and Buster Keaton. A woman (Molly Malone) is appearing at an open window on stage as Arbuckle sings to her playing his ukulele. Unseen here, Keaton causes the front of the stage house to fall over Arbuckle but he passes through the open window. As house frontage falls Malone is seen sitting on a very tall step ladder.
The quoted post shows the same stunt performed by Steve McQueen in his short film Deadpan.

Mark Culham @markculham.bsky.social · 1d

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

Mark Culham @markculham.bsky.social · 1d

📷 James Stopforth
The same photograph of Steve McQueen as the one in the quoted post except here he has his eyes closed.

I wrote previously
Black & white photograph of Steve McQueen, looking past the camera by a whisker🤔. White t-shirt, grey background, head dark grey to black (shadow) with whiter patches of reflected light, head shaved, forehead hard and smooth like polished stone softer facial features, stubble with specs of grey, a different texture.

Mark Culham @markculham.bsky.social · 1d

A still from the film Playtime of Jacques Tati in his Monsieur Hulot role. He is looking down on an office floor where there are a number of identical cubicles with no ceilings within which we see one person working. As with the photograph in the quoted tweet we see Tati from behind in coat and hat. No pipe this time but instead he holds an umbrella.

Mark Culham @markculham.bsky.social · 1d

📷 Robert Doisneau
Presumably a black & white promotional photograph for Jacques Tati's film Jour de fête. We see him in a white studio, white back wall and white floor, in his postman's outfit with his bicycle in pieces before him, carefully arranged so that the pieces, although scattered, are scattered in their relative positions on the bike. They take up most of the floor and appear black against the white floor and could be an assemblage in an art gallery. Tati has an inner tube with a bulge in it round his shoulder and a pump in his hands. He is looking at the camera. The image is a photograph of an old print that has coloured slightly with time.

Mark Culham @markculham.bsky.social · 1d

📷 Henri Cartier-Bresson
Black & white photograph of Jacques Tati and the young Alain Becourt walking over a road ahead of us, Tati with his hand on the boy's shoulder, umbrella in his other hand. They would have just walked past, or under, a sign that we see only part of in the top right corner of the photograph. It shows a cartoon-like figure of a boy holding an adult's hand. We see the adult has an umbrella and the french word Oncle appears and the name Jacques Tati. This is a promotional poster for the film they've just made.

Mark Culham @markculham.bsky.social · 1d

📷 Yale Joel
We see the back of Jacques Tati as he looks down on a big wide hole being dug out in preparation for a building in a city. We see diggers, trucks, bulldozers and workmen in the hole. Further on at the top of the photograph we see skyscrapers blocking most of the sky. He stands bottom centre, legs close together, coat, trousers, smart shoes, hands behind his back, pipe sticking out from his mouth to his left just so we can see it, trilby hat.

Mark Culham @markculham.bsky.social · 1d

😊