The Iranian wrestler Omid Noroozi, who won the gold medal in the men's 60-kg category in London 2012, in a classical statue pose - the contrapposto - so apt for this style of Greco-Roman wrestling.
Contrapposto is an Italian term that means counterpose. It is used in the visual arts to describe a human figure standing with most of its weight on one foot so that its shoulders and arms twist off-axis from the hips and legs. This gives the figure a more dynamic, or alternatively relaxed appearance.
Today, much of the world is celebrating one of its greatest storytellers ever on the 200th anniversary of his birth. Above is my little tribute to him.
Biddulph Grange is a National Trust landscaped gardens, in Biddulph near Stoke-on-Trent, Staffordshire, England. Designed in the mid 19th century as a series of connecting compartments, Biddulph Grange Garden is one of Britain's most exciting and unusual gardens. Featuring a Chinese-inspired garden, an Egyptian garden as well as pinetum, rock-gardens and fernery.
The Royal Botanic Gardens Kew and the British Museum brought a small corner of South Africa to the heart of London. (29 April ? 10 Oct. 2010)
South Africa Landscape showed the rich diversity of plant life from Cape region.The plants were chosen to highlight the rich diversity of flora in South Africa. The plants were shipped to Britain in a refrigerated container and it took four weeks to build the landscape outside the Museum.
The Headington Shark is a 25ft-long fibreglass sculpture representing the body and tail of a large shark, apparently having dived out of the sky to crash through the roof of a Victorian terrace. It situated at 2 New High Street, Headington, Oxford and first appeared in 1986. Bill Heine, a local radio presenter who commissioned it from the sculptor John Buckley, has said "The shark was to express someone feeling totally impotent and ripping a hole in their roof out of a sense of impotence, anger and desperation."
I took this photo of the interior of the parish Church of St Jude-on-the-Hill with my mobile phone camera. The interior reminds me a bit of Jan Vermeer's or Pieter de Hooch's paintings. In their works the light often enters from a window.
St Jude-on-the-Hill is in the middle of Hampstead Garden Suburb, a model residential community planned by Henrietta Barnett for housing of all social groups, although the atmosphere there today is definitely middle class.
Semana Santa (Holy Week) is one of the most important traditional events of Andalucia. It is celebrated in the week leading up to Easter. The week features the procession of pasos, floats of lifelike wooden sculptures of different scenes of the events of the Passion or images of the Virgin Mary or other saints.
A Paso (Spanish for Pace or Step) is an elaborate float carried by costaleros and are usually followed by a band. Some have long skirts that cover the bearers entirely, giving the impression that the statue is floating on its own power.
Views of Shibboleth, a giant crack in the floor of the Turbine Hall in Tate Modern.
>> Click here to see photosWord of the Day: Shibboleth
1 a : a catchword or slogan used by members of a group but regarded by others as empty of real meaning
b : a commonly held belief
2 : a behavior or use of language that identifies a person as belonging to a group
Last Sunday we went to visit London City Hall, as part of the London Open House event. City Hall is home to the Mayor of London, the London Assembly and the GLA, who in July 2002 became tenants of this rounded glass building on the south bank of the Thames near Tower Bridge.
>> View the photos here
We also visited an architect's office and an old post office. Anyone interested in architecture should definitely look out for the Open House London event next year.
I have never seen a willow,
selling its shade to a meadow;
Elm happily gives its branch to the crow.
Wherever there is a leaf,
passion blossoms in me.
Sohrab Sepehri
The Stop the War demonstration on Saturday 5 August brought tens of thousands of people onto London's streets. This is unprecedented for a protest called with only one week's notice. The march started at noon at the Speaker's Corner, in Hyde Park, passed by the United States Embassy and Downing Street, and ended in Parliament Square.
The protestors placed children's shoes outside Downing Street and at the Cenotaph.
A three-year-long renovation and re-design of the new V&A's Islamic Gallery has created a new home for the collection. The Jameel Gallery houses over 400 objects, including ceramics, textiles, carpets, metalwork, glass and woodwork, which date from the days of the Islamic caliphate of the 8th and 9th centuries to the years preceding the First World War. The area covered stretches from Spain in the west to Uzbekistan and Afghanistan in the east, taking in important centres of artistic production in the Arab lands, Turkey and Iran.
The highlight of the Jameel Gallery is the Ardabil Carpet, the world's oldest dated carpet and one of the largest, most beautiful and historically important in the world. Made in Iran in 1539 the carpet is the centre-piece of the new Gallery, which has been redesigned so that it can be displayed horizontally at floor level, as it would originally have been. Measuring an impressive 10.5m x 5m and described by William Morris as a design of ?singular perfection?, it is a masterpiece of Islamic art.
>> See the photos here
This water sculpture by Danish artist Jeppe Hein is making a splash on the South Bank this summer, inviting visitors to join in and become part of it. Walls of water rise and fall randomly to divide the 10m? space into a series of smaller 'rooms': changing every ten seconds, they define all possible right-angled configurations of the space. As viewers walk through the 'rooms' they must interact with the patterns of rising and falling water if they are to leave the space without getting wet. Max got really wet!
>> See the larger photos here
We went up to the top of The Monument. An observation deck at the top has a great view over London. Designed by Sir Christopher Wren to mark the Great Fire of London in 1666. It is the tallest freestanding stone column in the world.
April 26 2006 marks the 20th anniversary of the Chernobyl nuclear disaster. Dutch photographer Robert Knoth has visited the area worst hit by radioactive fallout to document the toxic legacy of Chernobyl and other nuclear accident sites of the former Soviet Union. The Fallout exhibition runs from April 18 to May 14 at the Oxo Tower in London.
The thirteenth day of the Iranian New Year festival is Sizdah Bedar (meaning "thirteen outdoors"), is a day of festivity in the open, often accompanied by music and dancing. The day is usually spent at family picnics.
The thirteenth day celebrations stem from the belief of the ancient Persians that the twelve constellations in the Zodiac controlled the months of the year, and each ruled the earth for a thousand years. At the end of which, the sky and the earth collapsed in chaos. Hence, Norooz lasts twelve days and the thirteenth day represents the time of chaos when families put order aside and avoid the bad luck associated with the number thirteen by going outdoors and having picnics and parties.
At the end of the celebrations on this day, the sabzeh grown for the Haft Sin (which has symbolically collected all the sickness and bad luck) is thrown into running water to exorcise the demons (divs) from the household. It is also customary for young single women to tie the leaves of the sabzeh before discarding it, so expressing a wish to be married before the next year's Sizdah Bedar.
This is a picture I took on the London's South Bank. Inside Out, a weekend of free music, theatre and performance of every variety, takes over the South Bank on 24 - 26 March.
A year after the earthquake in Bam, the non-profit organistaion Picture People equipped selected people with Kodak one-time-use cameras to document everyday life as the city tried to rebuild. At the end of 2005, Picture People went back to Bam to follow up the project. Cameras were handed out to some of the original participants while new people were invited to join in.
>> See the project on the Picture People website
I love the snapshots by Medi, a 26-year-old Iranian living in Oslo, Norway.
His snapshots are glimpses of his life, with immediacy and honestly that transports us instantly into his world. His pictures remind me a bit of Wolfgang Tillmans' work.
Sam Javanrou is an Iranian designer who lives in Toronto, Canada. In his excellent photoblog - Daily dose of imagery - he posts photos daily. Definitely worth a visit!
