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markculham.bsky.social
Mark Culham
@markculham.bsky.social
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Where the bee sucks, there suck I
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Rough notes on the visual language of silent films

You owe me money
Black & white cropped photographic still from the film Underground by Anthony Asquith. A woman is standing with her palm held out towards a man, and with her other hand on her hip, tea pot style. The landlady has caught Bert, Cyril McLaglen, trying to do a runner without paying for his rent.
November 26, 2025 at 4:34 PM
markculham.bsky.social
Rough notes on the visual language of silent films

- the directions
- let me confirm those directions
- yes, you have them right, my dear
Black and white photographic still from the film Underground by Anthony Asquith. Through the leaves of an indoor plant we are looking down on two women pointing with their fingers. Nell, Elissa Landi, is confirming with the landlady the directions to Kate's room, and they are both pointing above the camera which is presumably filming from the stairs that will take Nell to Kate's room.
November 26, 2025 at 4:27 PM
markculham.bsky.social
Rough notes on the visual language of silent films

The hide behind the door classic
A sequence of five black & white photographic stills from the film Underground by Anthony Asquith. Nell, Elissa Landi, hides behind a door as Bert, Cyril McLaglen, opens the door to look into the room but closes it again without seeing her. In two of the stills we see both of them either side of the open door.
November 26, 2025 at 4:13 PM
markculham.bsky.social
I've added a woman from an Andrew Wyeth painting to the photograph by Max Oettli in the quoted post. In the painting she is lying on grass looking towards a house. Here, I've cropped her to show mainly her upper body and placed her outside the frame in the bottom left corner but with one hand on the grass of the photograph, looking towards the derelict house.
November 26, 2025 at 9:19 AM
markculham.bsky.social
📷 Max Oettli Black & white photograph of a derelict house, still with its roof, apparently in the middle of nowhere. The house is positioned in the photograph just below the centre and a touch under the meeting point of grassland and sky, with shrubs and trees in a line to either side. But the sky is also a foreboding thing, cloudy, greys and white as if applied with brush strokes.
November 26, 2025 at 9:04 AM
markculham.bsky.social
📷 Max Oettli Two black & white photographs. On top, a woman, with a half eaten banana in her hand, is looking at some food held in the fingers of a man. In the bottom photograph the man has held his arm out straight so that the woman can bite on the food held between his fingers. She still has the banana in her hand.
November 25, 2025 at 9:55 PM
markculham.bsky.social
📷 Max Oettli (or at least from his collection) Going through Max Oettli's photographs it appears I might be seeing a lot of Simone as it looks like they get married. It's not clear he took this photograph. It's a rather straightforward photograph with a photographic blemish. Simone stands against a fireplace. I've chosen the photograph only because it is possible to work out, from the small glimpse, the painting she is standing under, as it is by Rembrandt. I will post the photograph with the full painting added next.
November 25, 2025 at 8:59 PM
markculham.bsky.social
📷 Max Oettli I have started to explore the 3000 odd photographs of Max Oettli that are held at the National Library of New Zealand. Here we have a photograph of two women. The photographer is probably sitting back from a table we can't see . In the right hand corner we see the head of a woman looking down as if reading or writing then, to her right, taking up all the left edge of the photograph another woman is standing presumably on the table. Her pose is almost dance-like but difficult to understand. She could be changing a lightbulb except she is looking down at the other woman. It's not clear if they are in a room or outside under an awning.
November 25, 2025 at 8:27 PM
markculham.bsky.social
Funny as it may sound these remind me of the often abstract stained glass maker Alan Younger. I'm aware of two windows of his where what I take to be his usual style has been added to with quarries like these.

St Nicholas, Alcester
A stained glass window by Alan Younger where the main abstract design, in reds and blues, is in the shapes of a cross. Then dotted around it are little quarries with birds and flowers that are difficult to see from a distance. The style he has used for these feels deliberately dated and quite quaint.
November 25, 2025 at 6:52 PM
markculham.bsky.social
📷 Edgar Richard Williams Black & white photograph of three men with backpacks and ice-picks appearing to be walking across flat ground of snow from right to left with rocky peaks, partly covered in snow, and then a clear grey sky for a background. Their walking postures are identical and the chances are they are not moving at all but posed for the photograph. A bit of fun.
November 25, 2025 at 2:57 PM
markculham.bsky.social
Fairford's Presentation of Mary at the Temple, is unusual in that she is climbing the steps and is about to enter but there is no priest to meet her, there's no one at all. Unusual but not unique. The British Museum has a couple of prints.

This by the Master of the Berlin Passion.
November 24, 2025 at 9:30 PM
markculham.bsky.social
Presentation of Mary at the Temple

I'm up to four medieval Presentations in stained glass for the UK

St Mary's, Fairford
📷 Rex Harris
November 24, 2025 at 9:12 PM
markculham.bsky.social
Raising of Lazarus
All saints, Gresford
Stained glass by Lucien-Léopold Lobin

He has used a distinctive section of Julius Schnorr Von Carolsfeld's woodcut, but nothing else. How odd.
November 24, 2025 at 8:30 PM
markculham.bsky.social
📷 William Williams A black & white photograph, mainly light greys, of a stone coffin with a circular cavity for the head and a tapered rectangular shape for the body, leaning against a stone wall. Pavement in front and a glimpse of a window above.
November 23, 2025 at 8:21 PM
markculham.bsky.social
You can't just stick a half naked man in your painting willy-nilly. I'm being forced to speculate and I don't like being forced to do anything. If he's a Cynic how am I supposed to make sense of that? The beginning of an ascetic religion. Diogenes and his barrel (it was a jar!) having lost his lamp.
Detail from the painting in the quoted post of a half naked man sitting on steps watching Mary approach the temple. Beside him is a portable liquid container.
November 22, 2025 at 8:13 PM
markculham.bsky.social
Presentation of Mary
Domenico Ghirlandaio

When I first saw this I was confused by the woman running down the stairs, I couldn't place her in the story but that was because I was reading the Protoevangelium of James and not Pseudo-Matthew who states Mary entered into a 'community of virgins'.
Presentation of Mary at the Temple by Domenico Ghirlandaio is a frescy showing Mary walking up the stairs holding a bible to be greeted by priests and women, and with people watching on including her parents.
November 22, 2025 at 4:12 PM
markculham.bsky.social
An image from a Monty Python sketch where they are dressed up as grey haired old ladies dressed in black with flowers in their hats, in a pseudo documentary about Hell's Grannies.
November 22, 2025 at 3:12 PM
markculham.bsky.social
Will Kimball has researched this design, he's interested in all things trombone, and believes it originated with Pieter de Witte c.1590,and shows it repeated on canvas, stone, silver, wood, and glass. Interestingly he does not have the London one.

kimballtrombone.com/2010/06/15/s...
November 22, 2025 at 8:43 AM
markculham.bsky.social
and now the thickened sky
Like a dark ceiling stood
Painting by August Strindberg Marine avec récif One of Strindberg's storm paintings. Brown rocks to the left, a dark sea, bottom right, with snow capped mountains above, perhaps, and above them a massive dark sky that looks like a wave that's going to come crashing down.
November 21, 2025 at 10:33 PM
markculham.bsky.social
Painting by William Ward Gill of the same view from Pont Aberglaslyn as the photograph in the quoted post. The relative positions of the mountain peaks are so similar they must have been in a very similar position.
November 21, 2025 at 9:50 PM
markculham.bsky.social
📷 William Williams Black & white photograph of the view up the river from Pont Aberglaslyn showing the river rushing past as it goes under the bridge which he is probably standing on. Trees on steep slopes on either side and rocky mountains peaks up ahead.
November 21, 2025 at 9:45 PM
markculham.bsky.social
📷 William Williams Black & white photograph of a man leaning on a wooden rail looking down at a pond with water lilies in what appears to be a formal garden. Trees in the background. Brings Monet to mind hence the next photograph.
November 21, 2025 at 9:17 PM
markculham.bsky.social
detail 📷 William Williams A detail from the photograph in the quoted tweet zooming in on the view down the far end of the canal where we see a number of men walking along the pavement and over a bridge, and a gondola making its way between boats. The buildings on the right side of the canal swing round to the left following the bend in the canal taking up the whole of the background apart from some sky above.
November 21, 2025 at 7:14 PM
markculham.bsky.social
📷 William Williams (cropped) A thread of three black & white photographs of Venice focusing on the canals. Here are a few moored gondolas close to us followed by the water of the canal then some ornate buildings on the other side. I've cropped a landscape orientated photograph into a portrait one. It seems to make more of the two wooden mooring posts on the right.
November 21, 2025 at 6:13 PM
markculham.bsky.social
📷 Edgar Richard Williams Black & white photograph of a snowscape high up in the mountains. In the lower half we see a man with a rucksack using an ice-pick like a walking stick. He is elegantly poised on a slope looking ahead to what I presume is a glacier then, above that, snow covered mountains and sky. A rope leads from him out of the picture bottom right.
November 21, 2025 at 4:09 PM