Visual Mutterings

In a rather obvious nod to my blog name, I am going to entertain you with a collection of those visuals that  have recently caught my eye. Yes, I also know that this is what Pinterest is for but bear with me, will you?;) Incidentally, how many of you are on Pinterest? Do you think it will be as popular as Twitter or is it enjoying more of a seasonal popularity?

While you ponder upon that, here are the visuals below:

While I have had my doubts about Sonam Kapoor's acting skills (loved her in Delhi 6 though), I have  been a big admirer of her fashion sense since she debuted in 2007. At the cost of stating the obvious, she is one celebrity who has always consistently experimented and innovated with her fashion appearance; I may not necessarily always agree with her fashion presentations but I nonetheless appreciate the fact that she strives to ensure that her looks are deliberately distinct from one another, constantly mixing it up. While this recent Harper Bazaar India cover is undoubtedly styled and I find the pose a tad awkward, I nonetheless love the juxtaposition of red and purple - and those fantastic turquoise and gold danglers. I *need* those earrings!

I have extensively extolled about photographer, Dayanita Singh over here and when I found her photo-novel, House of Love, I couldn't help but marvel at her ingenuity once again; playing homage to and  exploring the relationship between text and image, House of Love is a photo-novel, consisting of nine photographic chapters. The novel is also interspersed with text such as Vikram Seth's poetry, assorted quotes, and essays by Aveek Sen at the end. The title, House of Love, is in actual reference to Taj Mahal, which is one of the photographic representations of the iconic symbol. Each of the photographic chapters is a stand-alone story in its own as well as a running episode. As you 'read' the novel, intuitively  gauging the mood and narratives from pictures, you realise you cannot read it enough  number of times. 

My first introduction to the world of graphic novels happened through Iranian-born French author, Marjane Satrapi's novel, Persepolis; it completely and fundamentally redefined how I viewed the art of story-telling and that too through comic strip visuals (you can read more about why graphic novels are not necessarily always synonymous with comics over here). While I have been reading graphic novels on and off for the past several years, I haven't been able to follow up with Satrapi's work...so it was with great pleasure that I chanced upon her most recent novel, Chicken with Plums and returned to appreciating her unique turn of wit and phrase and the ability of comic strip visuals to convey nuanced narratives. Chicken with Plums has also been turned into a film so I would like to see the transition of the graphic novel visuals into cinema frames!

Discovering a lovely new blog is always a joy and for me, these days, it is an even greater one to find a photo-blog! Land of Cheese is a Hong Kong photo-blog and this post happens to be a color-coded ode to Hong Kong's subway stations. I simply loved the colors in this post and this image was my particular favorite!



Did anything riveting particularly catch your eye this week?