Above, an old hand-colored latern-side photograph from the pyramid complex at Giza, part of a collection of surreal-looking images from the Brooklyn Museum, via the eminent BLDGBLOG.
Geoff Manaugh writes:
The shots ... exude a stage-set quality: the diffuse and hand-colored light, the foreshortened perspective, and the cut-away glimpse into a world of subterranean vaults lending an air of surreality to the whole collection.
Overall, the architecture captured in these images is a mixture of deeply shaded, geometric minimalism ... wed with moments of ornamental grandeur, as hieroglyphic bas-reliefs, revealed by passing angles of sunlight, offer whole worlds of spatial detail. Stone inscriptions become less like something you might read, in other words, and more of a spatial experience in their own right.
Indeed, the images are almost unbelievable. See more here. They make me wonder if our planet's pyramids are in fact structures generated and descended upon us from the cosmos, and if we'll ever truly understand their essence and role on Earth. I'm not kidding.
And that reminds me. In the current issue of Celeste, the Mexico City art, design, and fashion magazine, I have an essay titled "The Pyramid Project," a satire in the spirit of "A Modest Proposal." The piece calls for the construction of a new Mesoamerican pyramid for the winter solstice of 2012 -- and that it be burned and destroyed. Why? We must mediate the end of the Fifth Sun, of course, for balance and survival.
"The pyramid is the flame is the pheonix."
This Celeste issue is all about futurism and the surreal. It features work by or commentary on Alexander McQeen, Pedro Friedeberg, Rem Koolhaas, Charlie Le Mindu, Jennifer Teets, and a fashion shoot by EGR and Cesar Arellano. It's a beautiful issue, right at the zeitgeist.
Celeste, now being edited by the D.F. artist Pia Camil, is published in Spanish and is available at American Apparel stores, as far as I know. Texts appear in English in the last pages of the magazine. Its website is not currently updated.
* Previously, "For the gods, 'all is play': Paz on the pyramid," "Spring equinox at Teotihuacan."