Tuesday, August 27, 2013

Thematic Photographic - Muted Colors

Carmi at the blog "Written, Inc." posts a photographic challenge each week at Thematic Photographic. This week, the theme is "Muted colors."


Here's a scene in muted colors. A place with a hint of fantastical decay, decrepitude. The arched and graceful vintage windows. The dappled light, the mottled plaster wall, the mauve-grey leaves of a potted plant. Muted. Romantic. Ancient.


A faded fresco, all pastel putti and pearly-flanked goddesses, reclining amid the glaucous and bosky shrubbery of an ancient glen, like a misty Tiepolo fragment.

Where are we, some charming but crumbling palazzo along a Venetian canal, imbued with history and the aura of the past?

No - it's all a stage set, a falsehood, a fabrication.


We're in a downtown Los Angeles bar; a cocktail lounge. The archaic windows are salvaged from the wrecking ball; the plaster wall is trompe l'oeil artistry; the mural is computer printed and pasted on drywall.

It's a twentieth-century office building wearing a mask of false history, a pretend atmosphere meant to provide instant neighborhood ambience for a downtown condominium renovation. In addition to the somewhat steam-punkish décor, there are flat screen monitors and a rocking DJ to draw the hipster crowds.

What do you want, anyway. Musty old muted colors? Or $3 beers for Happy Hour?

7 comments:

  1. Musty old muted colors? Or $3 beers for Happy Hour?

    Yes, please. Death to the either/or!
    ~

    ReplyDelete
  2. The colours in that first photo!
    $3 beer sounds good...

    ReplyDelete
  3. Beautiful shots! I especially love the first and third - they make me want to visit those spots.

    ReplyDelete
  4. Well, the scene painters have got those colours to a T!

    It all looks a lot of fun, anyway!

    ReplyDelete
  5. I'd go for the middle one; a few years ago it would have been the $3 beers!

    ReplyDelete