...this original RAPHAEL SORIANO home for sale in studio city is amazing....!

Sometimes a house listing comes up that I instantly am thinking "So, when is that next Lotto drawing again"? This is one of them. Between the fact that the original owners have preserved this Raphael Soriano home in Studio City, CA, to the furnishings, all the steel and glass.......MOVE ME IN!!

Raphael Soriano worked with so many incredible architects including Ricahrd Neutra, Gregory Ain, Rudolph Schindler and Joseph Eichler to name a few. He designed famed photographer Julius Shulman's home (still standing) as well....the list goes on and on.

Drool on....

please with those perforated screens.

just needs a scooter/motorcycle garage

love that office view....

that bar!!

oh, the brunches I could do here....

all images taken off of CurbedLA's site and listing here.

INDIA SONG....by photographer and artist KAREN KNORR...!

I came across these photographs by artist Karen Knorr a few weeks back that feature stunning creatures with palaces, forts and temples of Rajasthan serving as the backdrops. I haven't been able to get them out of my head and thought you might like them stuck in yours as well! Not only are the animals themselves so vibrant and interesting, but juxtaposed within these palace walls dripping with so much age, tiles, history, carvings, colors and lightwells make them all the more fascinating.

From Lise Funderberg of Architectural Digest:

Since the 1970s, artist Karen Knorr has produced photographs that pose thorny questions about power, class, and the aesthetics of beauty. While appropriating landscape and still-life genres for her compositions, she often layers in a good dose of humor. In her “Gentlemen” series, for example, she pointed up the “boys’ club” nature of British government by captioning staid portraits of men in swank London gentlemen’s clubs with excerpts from parliamentary speeches. In “Muses and Majas,” she placed live nudes in galleries of the Louvre beneath their painted counterparts. Knorr’s recent project, “India Song”—recently released in book form (Skira, $45), with images accompanied by a Q&A with the artist—explores similar themes, but this time in the palaces, forts, and temples of Rajasthan, the state in northwest India known for its exquisite architecture and interiors, some dating from the 13th century.
Knorr disrupts viewers’ expectations by digitally inserting into those rooms live animals from the same region. The animals often seem to own the chambers they occupy even as their vitality contrasts with the eroded splendor of past civilizations. It’s a pleasure to think about the ideas behind these images, especially after reading about the project in the book’s opening essay, but Knorr will have to forgive viewers if they put aside the intellectual aspects from time to time to simply drink in the spectacular tiles, carvings, and murals that fill the architectural spaces she has chosen as her stage.

my first visit to THE ROCK....!

We have lived in San Francisco for over seven years now and up until a few weeks ago I had never been to Alcatraz Island. Is that weird? I kindof thought so....It is pretty much up my alley in that it has decaying, abandoned buildings, history, mystery and is the place for colonial nesting seabirds....who knew?!

A good friend came into town and wanted to hit up the island, so I finally was forced to commit to a date/time and a ticket purchase (you have to buy these weeks in advance sometimes).  The day started off ominous, chilly and gloomy.....pretty appropriate given that we were headed to a haunted island that housed bad boys, right?

on our way over on the boat was this chilly little feathered nugget

watch tower

I was excited to jump behind my lens and capture the juxtaposition of the beauty against decay.....the reason for the structures for being there versus the sea and salt air taking it's tole on the materials....eventually breaking them down and driving them back to the ground in some cases. 

 

 

solitary confinement cells

The do a great audio tour that borders on the campy....an actual old inmate's gruff voice guides you through the buildings.....in and out.....so you can experience breaks into the fresh air....quickly turning back around and inside the cold buildings. The guide is spotted with stories and first hand accounts of s**t that goes down inside....I recommend it - at least once.

all images by janel holiday interior design - be cool and ask for permission prior to using, k?