Déjà Vu - John Atkinson Grimshaw

Meta-recommendation: The Substack Recomendo by Kevin Kelly, Mark Frauenfelder, and Claudia Dawson. Each week these folks pull together a list of recommended websites, tools, products, fill-in-the-blank. I discovered this site through (once again) Tim Ferriss’s 5 Bullet Friday.

From Recomendo #394, Kevin Kelly recommended an incredible website called Artvee. At this site,  "you can browse and download high resolution copies of classical and modern art that is in the public domain.” I spent probably six hours a couple of Saturdays ago, searching through different artists’ bodies of work. I eventually came across the fantastic nocturne street scenes painted by John Atkinson Grimshaw. He framed his paintings with trees, buildings, ship masts along the edges, and often played with the placement of the moon—between tree branches, along the edges of ship masts, behind the tops of buildings–allowing the white-blue-green hues to permeate the entire scene. Seeing his paintings induced a feeling of déjà vu.

At night, I’ve walked the streets of Louisville’s Highlands neighborhood using the tools of the 21st century (my iPhone camera) to capture the interaction of the moon- and streetlights, the landscape, and the architecture in the most consciously ‘artistic’ way I could. And 150+ years prior, John Atkinson Grimshaw did just the same—he used the tools of the 19th century (paint, camera obscura) to capture the interaction of light, landscape, and architecture to demonstrate the nocturnal beauty of London, Leeds and Liverpool.

Below are pairings of the déjà vu-inducing Grimshaw paintings next to my own photos.