Remembering Marshall McLuhan on his birthday π
π· Bernard Gottfryd, Toronto, 1965
"All media exist to invest our lives with artificial perceptions and arbitrary values."
Coffee with Marshall McLuhan βοΈ
Photo: Leonard McComb for Life Magazine, 1967
Today we're celebrating the great Edmontonian's birthday π
"Media are means of extending and enlarging our organic sense lives into our environment."
- Marshall McLuhan
π· Lee Friedlander, Philadelphia, 1961
"We look at the present through a rear-view mirror. We march backwards into the future."
- Marshall McLuhan
π· Neil Young by Danny Clinch, 2005
"There are no passengers on spaceship earth. We are all crew."
Marshall McLuhan was born on this day in 1911.
π· Yousuf Karsh, 1974
Marshall McLuhan by Manuel Bidermanas
"Far from regarding technological change as inevitable, I insist that if we understand its components we can turn it off any time we choose. Short of turning it off, there are lots of moderate controls conceivable."
"The winner is one who knows when to drop out in order to get in touch."
- Marshall McLuhan
π· Glenn Gould by Alfred Eisenstaedt
"He came from a long line of bullshitters, par excellence."
- Philip Marchand on Marshall McLuhan, whose birthday is today π
π· Brian Griffin, 1979 @NPGLondon
"The future of the book is the blurb."
- Marshall McLuhan
Highly recommended: Philip Marchand's fine book Marshall McLuhan: The Medium & The Messenger amzn.to/3hWIX1b
More - much more - coffee with Marshall McLuhan βοΈβοΈβοΈ
π· Leonard McComb, 1967
"The 'message' of any medium or technology is the change of scale or pace or pattern that it introduces into human affairs."
- Understanding Media
"When we put our central nervous system outside us we returned to the primal nomadic state."
- Marshall McLuhan
π· iPhone launch, Tony Avelar, 2007
"New media are new archetypes, at first disguised as degradations of older media."
- Marshall McLuhan
π· Wayne Miller, 1967
Remembering Marshall McLuhan on his birthday π
"We read the 21st-century media through his eyes."
- B. W. Powe
Caricature by David Levine
Wayne Miller @NewYorker, October 15, 1966
"In television, images are projected at you. You are the screen. The images wrap around you. You are the vanishing point."
- Marshall McLuhan
Another portrait of Marshall McLuhan by Yousuf Karsh
"He said a lot of wild and silly things, and a quite high proportion of truly brilliant things."
- Mitchell Stephens
"Colour is not so much a visual as a tactile medium."
- Marshall McLuhan
π¨ Jack Bush, Light Grey, July 1968
"The most human thing about us is our technology."
- Marshall McLuhan
π· Lewis Hine self-portrait, New York, 1908
"The artists of our culture, 'the antennae of the race,' had tuned in to the new ground and begun exploring discontinuity and simultaneity."
- Marshall McLuhan, Laws of Media
π· Neil Young by Julie Gardner, 2014
"The criminal, like the artist, is a social explorer."
- Marshall McLuhan
π· Reggie & Ronnie Kray by David Bailey
bromide print, April 1965 @NPGLondon
Marshall McLuhan by John Reeves, 1967
"Suppose he is what he sounds like, the most important thinker since Newton, Darwin, Freud, Einstein & Pavlov, studs of the intelligentsia game."
- Tom Wolfe, "The new life out there", New York Herald Tribune, 1965
"Advertising is the greatest art form of the twentieth century."
- Marshall McLuhan
π· January Jones & Jon Hamm by Annie Leibovitz, 2009
β’ β’ β’
Missing some Tweet in this thread? You can try to
force a refresh
Happy birthday to Nobel laureate Orhan Pamuk π
π· Ara GΓΌler
"His books are multi-layered, allegorical, sometimes fanciful, Proustian in their attention to detail and Borgesian in their dazzling complexity."
- Sarah Lyall
Orhan Pamuk by Sophie Bassouls, 1990
"Books, which we mistake for consolation, only add depth to our sorrow."
It's so great that other photographers have continued Philippe Halsman's #jump! tradition. Here's Orhan Pamuk by Alex Majoli.
This was taken at Cannes in 2007, when Pamuk was a member of the Festival Jury.
Celebrate the Richard Avedon Centennial ππ―
π· Irving Penn, Vogue, August 23, 1993
"He was small, dark & electric with his own sort of vitality. Crackling. Sparks seem to fly out of him. He flashes his fingers like tiny rapid moths."
- Ginette Spanier
On Richard Avedon's Centennial, my favourite portraits
Carson McCullers & Tennessee Williams, April 25, 1950 #Avedon100
On Richard Avedon's Centennial, my favourite portraits
Buster Keaton, 1952 #Avedon100
I'm listening to Concerto Italiano play Bach's Brandenburg Concertos, in their 2005 recording under Rinaldo Alessandrini.
I've always loved the cover photo; it's by Julia Fullerton-Batten. I'll start a thread of some of my favourites of her photos here. π§΅
Julia Fullerton-Batten
The Lady of Shalott, 2018
... which is, of course, a reinterpretation of John Waterhouse's 1888 painting of Lord Tennyson's poem.
Happy birthday Sofia Coppola π
π· Kate Barry
"Coppola is a true auteur β a filmmaker with a distinct worldview and sensibility and a personal set of quasi-autobiographical interests."
- J. Hoberman
Sofia with her dad on the set of Godfather 2
π· Steve Schapiro, 1974
The Coppola family by Ted Streshinsky, 1974
Eleanor & Francis Ford Coppola with their kids Sofia, Roman & Gian-Carlo
Celebrate the Red Garland Centennial ππ―
π· Bill Spilka, c. 1957
"Garland's style was understated and harmonically sophisticated; he would delineate a melody, then shade it with distinctively voiced block chords and hints of counterpoint."
- Jon Pareles #RedGarland100
Esmond Edwards' great album cover for Red Garland's "Red in Bluesville", from 1959. Edwards took the photo, & designed the album as well.
Remembering Bea Arthur on her birthday π
π· Martin Mills, 1972
"Those of us working with her knew we were working with a golden comedic touch." - Norman Lear
Beatrice Arthur with Bill Callaway & Carl Ballantine in Bruce Jay Friedman & Richard Adler's musical A Mother's Kisses
π· Jack Mitchell, 1968
Angela Lansbury & Beatrice Arthur in Mame
π· Friedman-Abeles, 1966
Arthur won the Best Featured Actress in a Musical Tony for her performance. She was Beatrice on the stage & Bea on TV.