Tag: Russia

All publicity is Vlad publicity

Fishing for compliments.

During Chinese President Xi Jinping’s visit to Russia this May, enjoy this honest and unbiased video in which ORDINARY CHINESE PEOPLE have DEFINITELY NOT BEEN COACHED OR COERCED into giving their opinions of Russia and particularly of its “handsome leader, like President Xi”: Vladimir Putin. Show solidarity to COMPLETELY UNPROBLEMATIC COMRADES WHO ARE IN FULL COMPLIANCE WITH INTERNATIONAL LAWS AND TREATIES by eating bread, consuming dairy products, admiring Putin’s “big muscles” (not shown in these pictures), and repeatedly, SINCERELY expressing your desire to marry him. But REMEMBER to appreciate Putin’s big muscles only in a HETEROSEXUAL MANNER because he strictly forbids any reception upon his person of HOMOSEXUAL EYE BEAMS. Pity all countries which do not have handsome, shirtless, DEFINITELY HETEROSEXUAL leaders with big muscles. Presumably photos of Xi Jinping in his budgie smugglers are to follow shortly. You will ENJOY THEM and praise the…

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FIRST THEY CAME FOR THE GIANT GREEN PHALLUSES…

CAREER SUICIDE

… and we didn’t speak out because we didn’t paint giant green phalluses. Last week there was another seizure of (very mildly) subversive art in Russia, following the Thought Police’s previous confiscation of a painting that depicted Vladimir Putin and Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev. As deadpan-hilariously described by Agence France-Presse, the painting was of “Putin playing with Medvedev’s hair. He is wearing a strappy nightie, while Medvedev has cleavage bursting out of a bra and is wearing skimpy knickers.” If I could take the liberty of correcting Agence France-Presse, though, I think this description must have been written by a straight man because busty as Medvedev is, it looks to me as if Putin is doing his hair. Ugh, men. Trust a man to sexualise a painting of two Russian politicians’ heads on the bodies of scantily clad young women when they’re just trying out hairstyles.

Personally…

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A lament for lost sartorial options

ADOXOBLOG

Some striking colour portrait photographs by Sergei Mikhailovich Prokudin-Gorskii. In some ways they look like they could have been taken last week, but they were actually all made between 1907 and 1915, just before WWI and the Russian Revolution. The splendid example above is of Alim Khan (1880-1944) the Emir of Bukhara, in 1911. Bukhara was a vassal state of the Russian Empire, though the Emir had absolute authority within its borders. It was absorbed by the Soviet Union in 1920, and Alim Khan fled to Afghanistan.

There’s just something about seeing these long-dead people in colour that connects us to them, and to history in general, in way that hardly any monochrome image can achieve. To make them, Prokudin-Gorskii developed a system of exposing three glass plate negatives rapidly in succession, with a red filter, a green, and finally a blue. These three monochrome negatives could then be projected through a lantern similarly equipped…

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