Images

[ellarien]

The student union bookstore has posters, of course, and today I noticed that they had a couple of the lovely Kinuko Craft designs -- the covers for A Song for the Basilisk and The Book of Atrix Wolfe, I think. I was almost tempted, and would have been more so if it hadn't been windy and raining outside. Afterwards, though, it occurred to me that I really don't decorate my home with pictures of people, apart from small family photos (and the 8x10 of Richard Basehart as Admiral Nelson on the top of the bookcase near the computer), and never have; it's landscapes and flowers all the way, and a few animals, just like the pictures in my parents' home and just like my own photos. (I was a bit boggled when I first encountered American SFF cover art and realized the images were supposed to depict actual characters from the books, too; I'm much more comfortable with the more abstract or landscape-based UK designs.)

Am I weird? Or does anyone else think there's something rather uncomfortable about the idea of a stranger's face looking at you from your bedroom or living room wall every day?

Comments

[lil-shepherd.livejournal.com]

Er... we have an black and white etching of a fossil horse skull (probably eohippus) behind glass dominating our living room wall. It's an aquatint by Peter Freeth (called "The Dream of Charles Darwin" for some reason)so we are plainly odd. (We bought it at an RA summer exhibition.)

We don't have photographs of people (though we do have quite a lot of professional cat photos) but we do have: a small portrait of an old Native American - an amateur piece, very modern, very simple - that we fell in love with at a local art club show, the page (original artwork) from "The books of Magic" showing the Trenchcoat Brigade meeting, an original Fangorn of a fairy, and an original SMS illo from Interzone with a woman's head. Though it currently isn't on display, because it needs reframing, we have a load of miso_no_tsuki's fan art from our Professionals fandom days. Oh, and the dining area has two cheap prints by an artist we don't know of nearly naked men and wild stallions in a sort of pseudo-classical style. They are lovely and we would pay a lot for originals by this artist, but we don't know who he or she is. We used to collect fantasy art, and may do so again if we see anything we want to bid on. Most of it is on the stair walls. We also have a wall of sort of superior tourist tat ethnic things...

Posters, again, we don't do, mainly because we don't have room, but fantasy art and signed prints - oh yes.

Incidentally, we have seen author Colin Greenland stand for over twenty minutes in front of Jim Burns's cover painting for Take Back Plenty featuring the heroine of that book, muttering, "Oh, it's her. He's got her. That's exactly her..."

Edited for typos.

[ellarien]

My apartment has several walls that won't take nails, including the long one in my bedroom so I have a few posters around to break up the blankness; they fall off periodically with alarming crashes. There are also a couple of smaller ones that got framed when I moved into my first grown-up home

I may be indeed a little odd about the portrait thing; when I try to examine the idea, what I get is the same sort of mild visceral distaste I used to get from first-person narrative, though I grew out of that one by my teens.

[green-knight.livejournal.com]

It took me a very long time before I would take photographs of people other than friends and family; and I now do it with a tele lens that allows me to maintain anonymity on both sides.

The American cover things with 'must have protag' weirds me out as well, particularly as so many protags are badly portrayed; and I would like to see more interesting scenery and less well-dressed heroines on horsback.

[ellarien]

I don't even do friends and family very much; my mother doesn't like to be photographed, though lately I've been making a point of getting a few shots of her each summer.