Oliver Holms — Notes

May 18, 2025 View out a window at dusk, looking over roof tops towards the treelined horizon. There is the reflection of a woman wearing a pink scarf floating in the left centre of frame.
May 17, 2025 black and white photo of two kids cycling from right to left of frame. The kid on the left is balancing with both feet on the top tube of his bike and is hands on the handlebars. They are in a park and there is a path leading between two stands of trees and shrubs behind them.
May 9, 2025

“Be careful what you wish for, not because you’ll get it but because you’ll be turned into the thing that can get it. It’s not a process where you just ask for something and it magically appears, it’s a process that breaks you down and rebuilds you into the right tool for the job.”
—Jed McKenna talking about Francis Ford Coppola

H/t Trung Phan on Not Investment Advice | E214

May 8, 2025 portrait of extremely muscular topless man with a beard and wearing a black doo-rag, posing next to a lamppost and fir hydrant. There is a road with an NYC yellow cab and a man crossing the street behind him on the left of frame. Chip, near Columbus Circle, Manhattan. April 2025
May 6, 2025

Poems and modern memes, both, are fundamentally group cognitive technologies. Exactly half of the enjoyment, half of the use of the thing, comes in sharing the experience once you’ve had it yourself.
—Joel Dueck, from Share poems like memes

May 1, 2025
Apr 30, 2025

[…] no matter what your age is, shoot your world! Capture what you see that other don’t or can’t.
—Blake Andrews

From his excellent interview with Sebastien Boncy

Apr 23, 2025

The real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new landscapes, but in having new eyes.
—Marcel Proust

Apr 10, 2025 Bright red Chinese lanterns with gold decorations strung across a budding tree in front of a brick apartment building. Multiple strings of these traditional lanterns create a festive display, likely for Lunar New Year celebrations. The lanterns stand out vividly against the blue sky and new green foliage of the tree, with some lanterns marked "LNER" visible in the arrangement. The multi-story residential building provides a warm-colored backdrop for this cultural decoration.
Apr 9, 2025

Street Portraits: Akinyemi, Savile Row — April 2025

air and light and time and space

Apr 8, 2025

‘- you know, I’ve either had a family, a job, something
has always been in the
way
but now
I’ve sold my house, I’ve found this
place, a large studio, you should see the space and
the light.
for the first time in my life I’m going to have a place and
the time to
create.’
no baby, if you’re going to create
you’re going to create whether you work
16 hours a day in a coal mine
or
you’re going to create in a small room with 3 children
while you’re on
welfare,
you’re going to create with part of your mind and your
body blown
away,
you’re going to create blind
crippled
demented,
you’re going to create with a cat crawling up your
back while
the whole city trembles in earthquakes, bombardment,
flood and fire.
baby, air and light and time and space
have nothing to do with it
and don’t create anything
except maybe a longer life to find
new excuses
for.

Charles Bukowski

Apr 7, 2025 The interior of a historic cathedral or church featuring an ornate altar under a grand archway. The ceiling is decorated with a Renaissance-style fresco depicting religious figures, angels, and heavenly scenes with golden/orange tones. The walls are made of dark marble or stone, and the altar area includes classical columns supporting a decorative canopy. A religious statue or relic appears to be displayed within the altar space, illuminated by candlelight in the otherwise dimly lit sanctuary. Church pews are visible in the foreground, facing the altar. The architecture combines Baroque and Renaissance elements with dramatic lighting highlighting the sacred space.

Girona, Spain — September 2022.

Apr 6, 2025 A symmetrical grand staircase with dual curved staircases meeting in the center. The stairs are made of white marble or stone with elaborate wrought iron railings featuring scrollwork patterns. Large windows flood the space with natural light, creating a bright, airy atmosphere in this elegant interior. Three large black dog sculptures displayed in an art gallery. The sculptures are life-sized, depicting dogs with pointed ears and alert postures, arranged in a triangular formation on a wooden floor with white gallery walls in the background. An elegant curved staircase with ornate black wrought iron railings inside a building. The staircase features white steps and leads to a bright hallway with arched ceilings and white walls. The design combines classical architectural elements with decorative metalwork.

Ron Mueck at Thaddaeus Ropac

Apr 5, 2025

style

style is the answer to everything — a fresh way to approach a dull or a
dangerous thing.
to do a dull thing with style
is preferable to doing a dangerous thing
without it.

Joan of Arc had style
John the Baptist
Christ
Socrates
Caesar,
Garcia Lorca.

style is the difference,
a way of doing,
a way of being done.

6 herons standing quietly in a pool of water
or you walking out of the bathroom naked
without seeing
me.

from: Love is a Dog From Hell by Charles Bukowski

Apr 3, 2025

Walk until your day becomes interesting
— Rolf Potts

Apr 2, 2025 The image shows a structure wrapped in teal-colored construction scaffolding and protective netting, visible through bare tree branches against a clear blue sky. The building appears to be under renovation or construction, with multiple levels of scaffolding surrounding it. Leafless trees with light-colored trunks frame the scene, and a lamppost is visible to the right side. The perspective is looking upward through the tree branches toward the scaffolded structure.
Apr 1, 2025 This image shows an urban development scene near a railway. In the foreground is a construction site with stacked materials, temporary structures, and a container marked "BLOCK 4." Multiple railway tracks run along the right side, with overhead electrical lines and signal towers. In the background, several high-rise apartment or office buildings are under construction, with at least one visible crane. The scene is photographed during golden hour or sunset, giving warm lighting to the industrial landscape. Brick buildings are visible on the left side, and the entire area appears to be undergoing significant redevelopment with new towers rising behind the existing infrastructure.
Mar 31, 2025

Things slip out of life and out of place and the photograph’s role is to fix this bruise of memory.
— Peter Mitchell

Mar 30, 2025 Othodox Jewish man in black hat and robes riding past on a grey bike holding the handlebars and his phone in his left hand. Warmlate afternoon sunlight is streaming through the railway arch in the background behind him.
Mar 28, 2025 A blooming white cherry tree stands in full flower in a park setting, surrounded by still-bare deciduous trees. Beneath the tree are wooden picnic tables on a grassy area. A woman and small child stand under the blossoms, with a pink scooter nearby. A trash bin labeled LITTER sits in the corner of this early spring scene, with a metal fence visible in the background. To the left, two children are climbing a tree
Mar 26, 2025

“I often think that I don’t have a single new idea in my head. But the big mistake is to just wait for inspiration to happen. It won’t come looking for you. You have to start doing something: you have to build a trap to catch it. I like to do that by starting the very mundane process of tidying my studio. It may seem like it has nothing to do with the creative job in hand but I think tidying up is a form of daydreaming, and what you’re really doing is tidying your mind. It’s a kind of mental preparation. It’s a way of getting your mind in place to notice something. And that’s what being creative is really: it’s noticing when something interesting is starting to happen.”
—Brian Eno

Via @_nitch

Mar 24, 2025 view through undergrowth looking down on a Victorian railway viaduct in North London. The vegetation is framing the viaduct and there are buildings on the horizon.
Mar 22, 2025

Don’t think.
—Ray Bradbury

Mar 21, 2025 Looking down an overgrown river. The banks are covered with vegetation and trees overhang the river obscuring the sky. The water is a muddy green. There is a pool of light on the water in the centre of frame where the light is breaking through the canopy
Mar 19, 2025 looking up to the sky through the stones arches of a ruined church in Lisbon. The structure in the foreground is shrouded in scaffolding covered with white netting. Some warm coloured sunlight is hitting the nearer arch and the sky is cloudy.