I'm a firm believer in the gray area between the extremes of black and white, of finding a happy medium, of embracing the Golden Mean. But when it comes to art - whether it's traditional, photography, film, animation, or fashion - black and white is beautiful.

An excellent piece of artwork: Angels and Devils, by M.C. Escher. I love the idea, how it's done, and the fact that the majority of people I point it out to usually only see one figure until I point out that there are two. I love this picture, the theme's a big one for me.

There's a great animated film: not the usual Shrek breed, but one that looks like you've picked up a comic book and it came to life. What I like even more for some reason: it's completely black and white. I picked out a clip from my copy of the movie - check out the strobe light in the club scene :) The city/train are nice as well. It's a French film called Renaissance.

And finally: photogaphy. One of my favorite photographers is Philippe Halsman. His work is sharp, contrasted, dark, yet quirkily amusing. Here's his famous portrait of Salvador Dalí (it took 28 attempts to get the jumping Dalí, three thrown cats, and one bucket of tossed water exactly how they wanted it).

And another photograph, In Voluptas Mors, which is very noir in my opinion.

Another interesting side of Halsman's photography, is his "jumpology". Basically, he'd get people to jump for his sessions, with the idea being "when you ask a person to jump, his attention is mostly directed toward the act of jumping and the mask falls so that the real person appears." You can read more on this (and see a few photos from Philippe Halsman's Jump Book) here.

Well, I'm sure I could go on, but I'll leave it at that.
The next post should hopefully be from Kuwait :)

<3,
-m