Weekend

Ladies of love

Photographing inside variousTokyo love hotels, Nathalie Doust uncovers a whole lot of weird fetishs, interesting costumes, strange rooms and a glimpse into the lives of the woman who work there.

Today

Today I'm 25.  I'm theoretically quarter life,  and no longer 'post teen'. Today I am at a 'firmly in your twenties' age.  

Today my Grandma was cremated. I only realised at 2pm and it made me feel really sad. We'll take her ashes to be with my Granddad's. She looked so nice at her funeral. They didn't do her up too much. 

Today is 18 days till I move to Japan. I am so nervous and excited. I dream about Japan a lot.

 It's been such a strange day. I had office colleagues awkwardly sing me happy birthday and I got so embarrassed I turned and faced the door slightly. 

Chocolates were left on my desk and I got lots of kisses and hugs from my friends at lunch and tonight they're coming for dinner so we can drink wine and eat good food cooked by my boyfriend who is better than me in the kitchen although I don't like to admit that. 

It's been a nice day. Birthdays make you feel like putting on your shiniest pair of shoes or a ribbon in your hair. If today was a song it would be 'new slang' by the shins. I think that's the only way i can fully explain it.

Pizazz

I wish my life was a technicolour dream, much like old children's movies. I watched the 1940 version of Fantasia the other day and it blew my socks off.

Monsters in the night

"Fantasy, abandoned by reason, produces impossible monsters; united with it, she is the mother of the arts and the origin of marvels.”

Dark and morbid with monsters creeping in the night, I love Goya. He was the first artist to paint a totally profane life size female nude in Western art. With that, the man was marked for fame and controversy. Originally painting well respected works for the Spanish Royal family he presented the sunny side of life, always a carnival or a sunny day. Eventually his work became more politically charged and he gained fame notoriety. Goya contracted a high fever and cholera mid life, he ended up deaf. During his final years, reclusive and disillusioned, he created some of the most frightening and deranged works ever seen. He looked to fantasy, the mentally insane and darker elements that existed in the world. Goya was one of the first artists to successfully portray the mentally ill without agenda or misrepresentation. He would sit in the locked off courtyard for the mentally ill taking in as much loneliness, sadness, fantasy and madness as he could handle.

Whether his art drove him mad, or his madness drove his art, I'm not quite sure. Goya stopped seeing the world as a bright cheerful place peeling away all the bright colours to find endless layers of black.