re-cover nr.103

Hamlet - William Shakespeare

These pictures were taken in the Stadsschouwburg Amsterdam in 2009.

William Shakespeare was an English poet and playwright.
Hamlet was first published around 1600.

Sir Laurence Olivier, Sir John Gielgud, Kenneth Branagh, and more recently Jude Law, among others, all played Hamlet both on stage or on screen.
The first adaptation of Hamlet to screen though was Sarah Bernhardt's five-minute film of the fencing scene in 1899.
The film The Bad Sleep Well (1960), by Akira Kurosawa, is also based upon the play.
Heiner Müller, in 1977, wrote a postmodernist version of Hamlet, Die Hamletmaschine.

"To be or not to be - that is the question"

re-cover nr.102

The Merchant of Venice - William Shakespeare

This picture was taken in the Stadsschouwburg Amsterdam in 2009.
William Shakespeare was an English poet and playwright. The Merchant of Venice was first published around 1600.

In 1914, The Merchant of Venice was for the first time adapted to cinema by Lois Weber.

"I will buy with you, sell with you, talk with you, walk with you, and so following; but I will not eat with you, drink with you, nor pray with you.".

re-cover nr.101

Solaris - Stanislaw Lem

This picture was taken in Amsterdam in June, 2010. It was shot inside the Gashouder at the Westergasfabriek, during the Holland Festival. The white open pavilion, signed by Zaha Hadid, was specially designed to house J.S. Bach’s concerts.
Stanislaw Lem was a Polish writer.Solaris was first published in 1961.

The Sci-Fi novel was adapted to the cinema by Andrei Tarkovsky in 1972, and by Steven Soderbergh in 2002.

re-cover nr.100

Les Enfants Terribles - Jean Cocteau

This picture was taken in Geneve in 2009.

Jean Cocteau was a French writer, artist and filmmaker.
Les Enfants Terribles (The Holy Terrors, English translation) was first published in 1929.
The novel was made into a film of the same name, a collaboration between Cocteau and director Jean-Pierre Melville, in 1950.
Les Enfants Terribles is also the third installment of the Opera trigoly by Philip Glass, based on Cocteau' s works.

"What uniform can I wear to hide my heavy heart? It is too heavy. It will always show.
Jacques felt himself growing gloomy again. He was well aware that to live on earth a man must follow its fashions, and hearts were no longer worn."

re-cover nr.99

Also Sprach Zarathustra - Friedrich Nietzsche

This picture was taken at the United Nations Office in Geneve, 2009.

Friedrich Nietzsche was a German philosopher.
Also Sprach Zarathustra (Thus Spoke Zarathustra, English translation) was first published in 1883.

"We love life not because we are used to living, but because we are used to loving."

re-cover nr.98

Justine - Marquis de sade

This picture was taken in Amsterdam, 2010.

Marquis de Sade was a French writer.
Justine ou les Malheurs de la Vertu (Justine or The Misfortunes of Virtue, Emglish translation) was first published in 1791.

In 1793, the rival writer Rétif de la Bretonne published Anti Justine as an answer to the de Sade's Justine.
In 1969 Klaus Kinski starred as the Marquis in a film version of Justine, directed by Jesus Franco, and titled Marquis de Sade: Justine.
In the year 2000 premiered the film Quils, based on the life of De Sade.

"In order to know virtue, we must first acquaint ourselves with vice."

re-cover nr.97

Snakes and Earrings - Hitomi Kanehara

This photo was taken in London, 2009.

Hitomi Kanehara is a Japanese novelist. Snakes and Earrings (Hebi ni Piasu, in Japanese) was first published in 2003.

"I often like to think that if sunlight reached into everywhere on the entire planet, I’d find a way to turn myself into a shadow."

re-cover nr.96

The Raven - Edgar Allan Poe

This picture was taken in Montreal in 2009.

Edgar Allan Poe was an American writer and poet.
The Raven was first published in 1845.

The Raven was translated to French by Stéphane Mallarmé, and Charles Baudelaire. The poem has also been illustrated by several artists, among them Gustave Doré and Édouard Manet.

"Deep into that darkness peering, long I stood there wondering, fearing,
Doubting, dreaming dreams no mortal ever dared to dream before;
But the silence was unbroken, and the darkness gave no token,
And the only word there spoken was the whispered word, "Lenore
This I whispered, and an echo murmured back the word, "Lenore!"
Merely this, and nothing more."

re-cover nr.95

Querelle de Brest - Jean Genet

This picture shows a detail of a Paul McCarthy's work, taken at MoMA, NYC, 2009.

Jean Genet was a French writer.
Querelle de Brest (Querelle of Brest, in English) was first published in 1953.

In 1982, Rainer Werner Fassbinder released Querelle (his final film), based on Querelle de Brest.

"There is a close relationship between flowers and convicts. The fragility and delicacy of the former are of the same nature as the brutal insensitivity of the latter."

re-cover nr.94

All Yesterday's Parties: The Velvet Underground in Print, 1966-1971 - Clinton Heylin

This picture was taken at a Moon & Sun concert at SMART Project Space, Amsterdam 2009.

Clinton Heylin is a British author. All Yesterday's Parties: The Velvet Underground in Print, 1966-1971 was first published in 2005.

The Velvet Underground was an American rock band formed in New York City. Active from 1965 to 1973, their best-known members are Lou Reed and John Cale. The band is named after a book by Michael Leigh. Their debut album featured the late German singer Nico, with whom they often colaborated.
They were the house band for Andy Warhol's Factory and his Exploding Plastic Inevitable events.

re-cover nr.93

Die Linkshändige Frau - Peter Handke

This photo was shot at Place des Arts, Montreal's Underground City, 2009.
Peter Handke is an Austrian writer.
Die Linkshändige Frau (in English, The Left-Handed Woman) was first published in 1976. The novel was adapted to cinema in 1978, and directed by Handke himself.

re-cover nr.92

The Beautiful Boy - Germaine Greer

This picture was taken in Amsterdam in 2009.
Germaine Greer is an Australian writer and academic.The Beautiful Boy was first published in 2003.

re-cover nr.91

Sex Appeal - Edited by Steven Heller

This picture was taken in a subway station in Montreal, in 2009.
Steven Heller is an American author.
Sex Appeal: the Art of Allure in Graphic and Advertising Design was first published in 2000.

"SEX. The word is so graphic. One syllable, two soft, seductive letters ending in a hard, throbbing X.(...) No wonder SEX sells."

re-cover nr.90

Rebecca - Daphne du Maurier

These pictures were taken in London 2009.

Daphne du Maurier was an English author and playwright. Rebecca was first published in 1938.

Rebecca has been adapted to cinema in 1940 by Alfred Hitchcock.

In 2007 BBC released a TV drama, Daphne, based on the biography by Margaret Forster.

"There were no dark trees here, no tangled undergrowth, but on either side of the narrow path stood azaleas and rhododendrons, not blood-coloured like the giants in the drive, but salmon, white, and gold, things of beauty and of grace, drooping their lovely, delicate heads in the soft summer rain."

re-cover nr.89

The Fountainhead - Ayn Rand

This picture was taken in Utrecht in 2008.

Ayn Rand (born Alisa Zinov'yevna Rosenbaum), was a Russian-American novelist and philosopher.The Fountainhead was first published in 1943.
It’s commonly believed that Frank Lloyd Wright served as inspiration for the Howard Roark character in the novel.

The Fountainhead was adapted to cinema in 1949.

Two movies have been made about Rand's life. A 1997 documentary film, Ayn Rand: A Sense of Life, and The Passion of Ayn Rand (1999), based on the book of the same name by Barbara Branden.

"Sometimes, he was asked to show his sketches; he extended them across a desk, feeling a contraction of shame in the muscles of his hand; it was like having the clothes torn off his body, and the shame was not, that his body was exposed, but that it was exposed to indifferent eyes."

re-cover nr.88

Hymnen an die Nacht - Novalis

This picture was taken in Amsterdam in 2009.
Novalis was the pseudonym of Georg Philipp Friedrich Freiherr von Hardenberg, a German author and philosopher.
Hymnen an die Nacht (Hymns to the Night, in English) was first published in 1800.

"Poetry heals the wounds inflicted by reason."

re-cover nr.87

Girl With a Pearl Earring - Tracy Chevalier

This picture was taken in Amsterdam in 2009.

Tracy Chevalier is an American writer.
Girl With a Pearl Earring was first published in 1999.

Girl With a Pearl Earring was adapted into a film in 2003.

Girl With a Pearl Earring is a painting by Johannes Vermeer.

re-cover nr.86

The Hours - Michael Cunningham

These pictures were taken in Amsterdam in 2008.

Michael Cunningham is an American writer. The Hours was first published in 1998.

The Hours was adapted to cinema in 2002.

"If you've really loved a book, or a movie for that matter, really loved it, what you want is that same book again, but as if you've never read it. And when you get something unfamiliar, you feel betrayed."

re-cover nr.85

Sputnik Sweetheart - Haruki Murakami

This picture was taken in the Whole Foods Market, New York, 2009.
Haruki Murakami is a Japanese writer.Sputnik Sweetheart (Spūtoniku no koibito, in Japanese) was first published in 1999.

"and it came to me then
that we were wonderful travelling companions
but in the end, we were no more but lonely lumps of metal in their own separate
orbits
from far off, they looked like beautiful shooting stars
when the orbits that these two satellite of ours, happened to cross paths, we could
be together
maybe even open our hearts to each other
but that was only for the briefest moment
the next instant, we would be in absolute solitude
until we'd burn up and became nothing"

re-cover nr.84

A Better World for Our Children - Dr. Benjamin M. Spock

These pictures were taken in the London outskirts, in 2009.
Dr. Benjamin M. Spock was an American pediatrician.
A Better World for Our Children was first published in 1994.

"I was proud of the youths who opposed the war in Vietnam because they were my babies."

re-cover nr.83

Dreams from My Father - Barack Obama

This picture was taken in Amsterdam, 2009. It shows a photo of Barack Obama by Terry Richardson featured in Purple Fashion magazine (spring-summer 2009).

Barack Obama is the 44th and current president of the United States of America. Dreams From My Father was first published in 1995.

"It's the answer spoken by young and old, rich and poor, Democrat and Republican, black, white, Hispanic, Asian, Native American, gay, straight, disabled and not disabled - Americans who sent a message to the world that we have never been just a collection of individuals or a collection of Red States and Blue States: we are, and always will be, the United States of America."

re-cover nr.82

Birthday Letters - Ted Hughes

This picture was taken in Amsterdam, 2004.

Ted Hughes was an English poet and children's writer.
Birthday Letters was first published in 1998.

The 2003 film Sylvia tells the story of Ted Hughes' relationship with the American poet Sylvia Plath.

"It was a visit from the goddess, the beauty
Who was poetry's sister - she had come
To tell poetry she was spoiling us.
Poetry listened, maybe, but we heard nothing
And poetry did not tell us. And we
Only did what poetry told us to do."

re-cover nr.81

The Poems of John Keats - John Keats

This picture was taken in Mont Royal, Montreal 2009.

John Keats was an English poet. His first volume of poems was published in 1817.

The 2009 film Bright Star, written and directed by Jane Campion, is based on the last years of Keats' life.

"BRIGHT star! would I were steadfast as thou art -
Not in lone splendour hung aloft the night,
And watching, with eternal lids apart,
Like Nature’s patient sleepless Eremite,
The moving waters at their priestlike task
Of pure ablution round earth’s human shores,
Or gazing on the new soft fallen mask
Of snow upon the mountains and the moors -
No - yet still steadfast, still unchangeable,
Pillow’d upon my fair love’s ripening breast,
To feel for ever its soft fall and swell,
Awake for ever in a sweet unrest,
Still, still to hear her tender-taken breath,
And so live ever - or else swoon to death."

re-cover nr.80

Das Parfum - Patrick Süskind

This picture was taken in Barneys New York, NYC 2009. The dress is from Mary Katrantzou.
Patrick Süskind is a German writer. Das Parfum (Perfume: The Story of a Murderer) was first published in German in 1985.

The novel was adapted to cinema in 2006, and it was directed by Tom Tykwer.

"The rivers stank, the marketplaces stank, the churches stank, it stank beneath the bridges and in the palaces.The peasant stank as did the priest, the apprentice as did his master’s wife, the whole of the aristocracy stank, even the king himself stank, stank like a rank lion, and the queen like an old goat, summer and winter."

re-cover nr.79

La Coquetterie - Catherine N'Diaye

This picture was taken in Amsterdam in 2009.

Catherine N'Diaye is a French-Senegalese writer. La Coquetterie ou La Passion du Détail (in English: Coquetterie or the Passion for Detail) was first published in 1987.

re-cover nr.78

The Rules of Attraction - Bret Easton Ellis

These are i-zone polaroids taken between 2003 and 2007 in Ílhavo and Amsterdam.

Bret Easton Ellis is an American author.

The Rules of Attraction was first published in 1987.

"Our lives are not all interconnected. That theory is a crock. Some people truly do not need to be here."

re-cover nr.77

Emotion Pictures - Wim Wenders

This photo was taken in Amsterdam in 2009.

Wim Wenders is a German film director, playwright, author, photographer and producer.

Emotion Pictures was first published in German (Emotion Pictures: Essays und Filmkritiken, 1968-1984), in 1986.

"I want to make personal films, not private films."

re-cover nr.76

The Image of the City - Kevin Lynch

This picture was taken in Helsinki in 2008.

Kevin Lynch was an American urban planner and author.
The Image of the City was first published in 1960.

"Where the journey contains such a series of distinct events, a reaching and passing of one sub-goal after another, the trip itself takes on meaning and becomes an experience in its own right."

"A street is perceived, in fact, as a thing which goes toward something. The path should support this perceptually by strong termini, and by a gradient or a directional differentiation, so that it is given a sense of progression, and the opposite directions are unlike."

re-cover nr.75

Down and Out in Paris and London - George Orwell

This picture was taken in Paris in 2008.

George Orwell is the pen name of the late English author Eric Arthur Blair.
Down and Out in Paris and London was first published in 1933.

"You thought it would be quite simple; it is extraordinarily complicated. You thought it would be terrible; it is merely squalid and boring. It is the peculiar lowness of poverty that you discover first; the shifts that it puts you to, the complicated meanness, the crust-wiping."

re-cover nr.74

Portrait of the Artist as a Young Dog - Dylan Thomas

This drawing was made in 2006, in Amsterdam.

Dylan Thomas was a Welsh poet, short-story writer and script writer for film and radio.
Portrait of the Artist as a Young Dog was first published in 1940. The title refers to James Joyce's Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man.

"Do not go gentle into that good night,
Old age should burn and rave at close of day;
Rage, rage against the dying of the light."

re-cover nr.73

A Clockwork Orange - Anthony Burgess

This picture is a damaged polaroid.
Anthony Burgess is the pseudonym of Jonh Burgess Wilson, a late English author, poet, playwright, composer, linguist, translator and critic.A Clockwork Orange was first published in 1962.
Vinyl is an early adaptation of the novel by Andy Warhol in 1965, starring Gerard Malanga, Edie Sedgwick and Ondine, among others.
A Clockwork Orange has been also adapted for cinema by Stanley Kubrick in 1971, starring Malcolm McDowell.

"To write is to become disinterested. There is a certain renunciation in art."

"The possession of a book becomes a substitute for reading it."

re-cover nr.72

The male cross-dresser support group - Tama Janowitz

This picture was taken in Amsterdam, in 2003.

Tama Janowitz is an American novelist and short story writer. The male cross-dresser support group was first published in 1991.

"With publicity comes humiliation."

re-cover nr.71

The Decay of the Angel - Yukio Mishima

This picture was taken in Amsterdam in 2009.
Yukio Mishima was the pen name of Kimitake Hiraoka, a Japanese author, poet and playwright.The Decay of the Angel (Tennin Gosui, original Japanese title) was first published in 1970, and is the last of a cycle of four novels entitled The Sea of Fertility.

"It was a bright, quiet garden, without striking features. Like a rosary rubbed between the hands, the shrilling of cicadas held sway.
There was no other sound. The garden was empty. He had come, thought Honda, to a place that had no memories, nothing.
The noontide sun of summer flowed over the still garden."

re-cover nr.70

Brokeback Mountain - Annie Proulx

This photo was taken in Amsterdam in 2009.

Annie Proulx is an American journalist and author.
Brokeback Mountain was originally published in The New Yorker in 1997.

Brokeback Mountain was adapted to cinema in 2005, and directed by Ang Lee.

"I wish I knew how to quit you."

re-cover nr.69

Significant Others - Edited by Whitney Chadwick and Isabelle de Courtivron

This picture was taken in Amsterdam in 2008.

Whitney Chadwick is an American art historian and author. Isabelle de Courtivron is Professor of French Studies and Head of the Foreign Languages and Literatures department at MIT.

Significant Others was first published in 1993.

"Traditional biographies and monographs have typically described creativity as an extraordinary (usually male) individual’s solitary struggle for artistic self-expression. We decided instead, to explore the complexities of partnerships and collaborations, painful as well as enriching. We chose to focus on couples (whether different or same sex) because couples are endlessly fascinating in the diversity of their interactions."

re-cover nr.68

La Condition Postmoderne - Jean-François Lyotard

This photo was taken in Aveiro in 2008.
Jean-François Lyotard was a French philosopher.La Condition postmoderne (The Postmodern Condition, in English) was first published in 1979.

"...is postmodernity the pastime of an old man who scrounges in the garbage-heap of finality looking for leftovers, who brandishes unconsciousnesses, lapses, limits, confines, goulags, parataxes, non-senses, or paradoxes, and who turns this into the glory of his novelty, into his promise of change?"

re-cover nr.66

On Love and Barley - Basho

This photo was taken in Amsterdam in 2009.

Matsuo Basho was a Japanese Haiku poet from the Edo period.
On Love and Barley was first published in English in 1985. The poems date from the second half of the 17th century.


"Departing spring -
birds cry
and in the eyes of fish, tears."

re-cover nr.65

Orlando - Virginia Woolf

This picture was taken in Amsterdam in 2009.
 
Virginia Woolf was an English novelist and essayist. Orlando was first published in 1928.
Orlando was adapted to film in 1992. The film was directed by Sally Potter, and stars Tilda Swinton as Orlando.

"She had been a gloomy boy, in love with death, ... as boys are; and then she had been amorous and florid; and then she had been sprightly and satirical; and sometimes she had tried prose and sometimes she had tried drama. Yet through all these changes she had remained, she reflected, fundamentally the same. She had the same brooding meditative temper, the same love of animals and nature, the same passion for the country and the seasons."

re-cover nr.64

The Symposium - Plato

This picture was taken at the exhibition Endless Installation: A Ghost Story For Adults by PSWAR, in SMART Project Space in Amsterdam 2009.

Plato was a Classical Greek philosopher, mathematician, and founder of the Academy in Athens. The Symposium is a philosophical dialogue written around 385 BC.
Platonic Love is derived from a concept of love in Plato's Symposium .

"How can you prove whether at this moment we are sleeping, and all our thoughts are a dream; or whether we are awake, and talking to one another in the waking state?"

re-cover nr.63

Intimacy - Hanif Kureishi

This photo was taken in Gaudí's Casa Milà, Barcelona, in 2005.

Hanif Kureishi is a Pakistani-English writer and filmmaker. Intimacy was first published in 1998.
Intimacy was adapted to film in 2001 by director Patrice Chéreau.

"It is the saddest night, for I am leaving and not coming back."

re-cover nr.62

The doors of perception - Aldous Huxley

This photo was taken in La maison Roche-Jeanneret / Fondation Le Corbusier, Paris, 2008. The house was designed by Le Corbusier, and built in 1923-24.
 
Aldous Huxley was an English writer. The doors of perception was first published in 1954. The title comes from William Blake's The Marriage of Heaven and Hell:
"If the doors of perception were cleansed every thing would appear to man as it is, infinite. For man has closed himself up, till he sees all things through narrow chinks of his cavern.".

"It is a bit embarrassing to have been concerned with the human problem all one's life and find at the end that one has no more to offer by way of advice than 'try to be a little kinder."

re-cover nr.61

Die bitteren tränen der Petra von Kant - R.W. Fassbinder

This picture was taken in Amsterdam in 2003.

Rainer Werner Fassbinder was a German film director, writer and actor.
Die bitteren tränen der Petra von Kant (The bitter tears of Petra von Kant, English translation) is a theater play first performed in 1971, and first published in 1984.
Die Bitteren Tränen der Petra von Kant is also a 1972 German film directed by Fassbinder, and based upon his play.

"I hope to build a house with my films. Some of them are the cellar, some are the walls, and some are the windows. But I hope in time there will be a house."

re-cover nr.60

Song of Myself - Walt Whitman

This picture was taken in Amsterdam in 2009.

Walt Whitman was an American poet, essayist and journalist. Song of Myself was first published in the 1855 edition of Leaves of Grass.

"Do I contradict myself? Very well, then I contradict myself, I am large, I contain multitudes."

re-cover nr.59

La Société du Spectacle - Guy Debord

This photo was taken in Barcelona, in front of MACBA, in 2005.
 
Guy Debord was a French philosopher, writer, filmmaker, and founding member of the groups Lettrist International and Situationist International (SI). La Société du Spectacle (The Society of the Spectacle, English translation) was first published in French in 1967.
La Société du Spectacle is also the name of a film made by Guy Debord in 1973, based on his book.

"In societies where modern conditions of production prevail, all of life presents itself as an immense accumulation of spectacles. Everything that was directly lived has moved away into a representation."

 

re-cover nr.58

Livro de Mágoas - Florbela Espanca

This photo was taken in Amsterdam in 2008.

Florbela Espanca was a Portuguese poet. Livro de Mágoas (The Book of Sorrows, in English) was first published in 1919.

"To be a poet is to be taller, to be bigger
Than average men!
It is to bite as if you’re kissing!
It is to give alms, although you are a beggar,
Like the king of a realm where only pain is missing!
It is to have inside yourself a flaming star,
To have the condor's mighty claw and wing!
To be hungry and thirsty for the sky!
To condense the world into one lonely cry!"

re-cover nr.57

This is Modern Art - Matthew Collings

This picture is a detail from graffiti and was taken on the streets of Amsterdam in 2009.
 
Matthew Collings is a British art critic, broadcaster and author. This is Modern Art was first published in English in 2000.
This is Modern Art was also a six-part TV series, written and presented by Matthew Collings, broadcast in 1998 on Channel 4.

"The art world is now a slave of mass culture. We have a sound-bite culture and so we have sound-bite art. You look at it, you get it - it's as immediate and as superficial as that."

re-cover nr.56

Women, Art, and Society - Whitney Chadwick

This picture was taken in Amsterdam in 2009.

Whitney Chadwick is an American art historian and author. Women, Art, and Society was first published in 1990.

"The subject of the nude in art brings together discourses of representation, morality, and female sexuality, but the persistent presentation of the nude female body as a sight of male viewing pleasure, a commodified image of exchange, and a fetishized defense against the fear of castration leaves little place for explorations of female subjectivity, knowledge, and experience."

re-cover nr.55

O Búzio de Cós - Sophia de Mello Breyner Andresen

This black and white polaroid was taken in the Groninger Museum in 2002.

Sophia de Mello Breyner Andresen was a Portuguese poet and writer. O Búzio de Cós was first published in 1997.
In 1969, João César Monteiro made a short documentary, Sophia de Mello Breyner Andresen, about the Portuguese poet.

re-cover nr.54

Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov

These pictures were taken in Amsterdam in 2003.

Vladimir Nabokov was a Russian-American novelist, short story writer and entomologist.
Lolita was written in English and first published in 1955.
Lolita was adapted to film in 1962 by Stanley Kubrick.

"The breaking of a wave cannot explain the whole sea."