Raskopal - Raskopal

Forough Farrokhzad - To my sister

Sister, rise up after your freedom, why are you quiet? rise up because henceforth you have to imbibe the blood of tyrannical men.

Seek your rights, Sister, from those who keep you weak, from those whose myriad tricks and schemes keep you seated in a corner of the house.

How long will you be the object of pleasure In the harem of men’s lust? how long will you bow your proud head at his feet like a benighted servant?

How long for the sake of a morsel of bread, will you keep becoming an aged haji’s temporary wife, seeing second and third rival wives. oppression and cruelty, my sister, for how long?

This angry moan of yours must surely become a clamorous scream. you must tear apart this heavy bond so that your life might be free.

Rise up and uproot the roots of oppression. give comfort to your bleeding heart. for the sake of your freedom, strive to change the law, rise up.

I fidanzati (Ermanno Olmi, 1963)

Pierre Boucher, Femme-fleur, inversion négatif-positif, solarisation et photogramme, 1937

“I have a longing for life, and I go on living in spite of logic. Though I may not believe in the order of the universe, yet I love the sticky little leaves as they open in spring. I love the blue sky, I love some people, whom one loves sometimes without knowing why. I love some great deeds done by men, though I’ve long ceased perhaps to have faith in them, yet from old habit one’s heart prizes them. I love the sticky leaves in spring, the blue sky — that’s all it is. It’s not a matter of intellect or logic, it’s loving with one’s inside, with one’s stomach.”

— Fyodor Dostoevsky, The Brothers Karamazov

Happy 88th, Otar Iosseliani.

With Michel Piccoli in 2012. Photo by Fabio Lovino.

Sculpting In Time (Introduction), Andrei Tarkovsky

zoleikha with her handmaidens after her second dream of yousef / yousef and zoleikha united after potiphar's death, 16th c., iran

Shadow, Osaka, Photo by Daido Moniyama, 1995

Emili Godes (1895-1970), Papallona, c. 1930