I'm so ill at the moment, so I'm feeling all miserable and empty as I'm trying to suffer through it at work - not a great time to be taking sick days. I have a two day training course starting tomorrow which I could really do without now!
I have been wishing I could live in California a lot lately.
I have no idea where this picture is from, although Google image search did a pretty amazing job of trying to help me find a source. Unfortunately none of the links were credited either.
I've just been given some belated birthday cash... now what should I go for?
Classic brogues from Church's. They had these in store in the summer and they are still in stock on Net A Porter - am thinking they will have to go on sale after Christmas? Fingers crossed. Arghh damn! Just realised my size is sold out. Heart-broken!
Vivienne Westwood Roman 3 strap shoe. These are never going to go on sale. And they are too expensive. But I still want them!
Acne Pistol Short boots. Too expensive and possibly the least practical because of the heel.
Acne Gun boots. Again too expensive but they are simple and stylish.
All options require some additional cash from myself which at the moment is, well, difficult! So should I go for quality over quantity? And if so how do I choose? Is £350 too much for a pair of shoes, can I really justify it? The answer is probably not... I think.
Me in Berlin. Photo taken by Lewis. I think the guy in the background might not be too keen on my sunglasses!
Some more photos from the summer. I still have a few more rolls of film to develop but no money at the moment! It is so cold in London now that this all seems like a very very long time ago!
Bizarre display in our window at a weird hotel we stayed at in Kuala Lumpur
Wild mushrooms growing in Taman Negara national park
Jungle!
The canopy walk at Taman Negara is 40 metres up at its highest point. Possibly quite unsafe, and probably lucky that we didn't see the fallen section of the bridge until after we got off!
Perhentian Kecil Island, we visited my old housemate Tia who now works at the little beach bar shack in the left hand side of this picture.
Mike and Adele look pretty pissed off here but it was just windy! The boat drivers go at manic speeds between the islands.
Some beautiful little empty beaches on Perhentian Besar
Storm coming!
Malay kitty
Brilliant blue seas
Monitor lizards on Tioman Island
More nice tropical island scenery
This kid was trying to steal my sweets after she'd eaten all her own during a 5 hour bus ride - I was going to give her some until she opened her mouth and I saw that all her teeth were black and rotten.
Back in KL the amazing Petronas Towers
A less fancy view of the city
And of course some fakery
This pleated copper necklace was mostly inspired by Rebecca Horn's White Body Fan which I have posted about before. It's probably best only worn at night or on dull days as yesterday I think I nearly blinded quite a few people!
I'll try to take some more interesting pictures of it at some point!
© Mathilde Donovan
(If you'd like to post this picture elsewhere please ask me first! Thanks!)
I am enjoying reading Susan Sontag's On Photography it has lots of interesting ideas that are still relevant today. I like the idea of photographs as a souvenir of daily life, and I am most definitely guilty of in ways inventing my own past with the photos I choose to take and keep and display. Sontag says that 'photographs give people an imaginary possession of a past that is unreal, they also help people to take possession of space in which they are insecure.' A lot of what she has to say raises questions and illuminates our very image driven current world and is interesting viewed in terms of the internet and blogging.
But in the end I just enjoy collecting the world, recording my insignificant life, mostly for my own pleasure, and of of course I enjoy looking at the ways other people invent and record their own lives and experiences.
Where Sontag calls immersion in image 'the most irresistible form of mental pollution' I would like to think of it differently, sometimes I think the small frame of photography helps me to appreciate the beauty of the everyday more than I might otherwise do, even if it does knowingly exclude perhaps it provides something of a focus. I probably am guilty of an overconsumption of images and in many ways a preoccupation with image but hopefully this is something which makes my life better rather than worse.
Some of the things I've been up to lately when I haven't been working...
Birthday parties, random parties on house boats, too much alcohol, talking an awful lot of rubbish, coffee, spending money I really don't have, stealing wigs, bizarre books, trees, being cold and long walks. It turns out taking photos is a good way of making you feel like you've done a lot more than you actually have.
Oufit posts aren't really my thing - there are so many lovely ladies out there on the internets with far more exciting approaches to style and more copiously stocked wardrobes than myself. Yet at the moment I find myself with some time on my hands and some things I can leave until tomorrow so I've been having some fun with photo booth...
The skirt is an amazing vintage skirt that I have shamelessly stolen from my housemate (because she'll never ever wear it I promise). I think it's actually some kind of costume underskirt but I like it as it is... all it needs is a fastening attached at the back. It might also work better if the skirt grew by 2 inches or so round the waist, oh well you can't have it all!
And just in the interests of making this post that little bit more narcissistic here is the song I am named for, Mathilde by the inimitable Jacques Brel.
Holidays are well and truly over now, I'm back from a fantastic 3 weeks in Thailand feeling relaxed and happy and very glad to have missed all the snow! I've been something of a bum for the past few months, it has taken me that long to start feeling like myself again, but alas dwindling finances are forcing me back to work so I will be swapping my lovely studio for a carpeted cube in a city institution for a little while.
But hopefully the money I'll earn will give me the freedom to do some of the things I really want to do. I'm planning on photographing and posting a few of the projects I've been working on soon.
What are your plans for the new year?
I haven't drunk a single drop of caffeine for three weeks now. It's starting to get a bit tiresome and I am fantasising about giant lattes and downing shot after glorious shot of espresso, preferably whilst whiling the afternoon away somewhere sunny. Or at the Indian Coffee House which was probably one of my favourite places in India.
I'm not denying myself because I'm some kind of weird masochist but rather because an unfortunate stress related skin condition I have developed over the last year (thanks job!) might be exacerbated by it. This means no bread, no pasta, no wheat, nothing white, nothing too processed basically a whole lot of nothing apart from fresh fruit, vegetables, nuts, seeds, berries, brown rice and tofu. So my spare time has been mostly devoted to food hence my lack of posting lately. It is working though which is a good thing so hopefully things will return to normal soon. I am focusing on holidays and a Friday night drink.. because whilst I technically should also be foregoing alcohol I am English and it's practically law that one of my hobbies should be binge drinking. So it's alcohol or caffeine at the moment - what a choice!
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