Finally, we made it to the court cards. I have to say that I greeted them with a real sense of relief- this project, though we were dedicated, took a while to really get off the ground, and though we've been pretty diligent about it in the last four months or so, we've been working … Continue reading Page of Blades

The ten of blades, as my father used to always tell me, is "not necessarily a card of violent death". Not necessarily... Where the nine of blades is about anxiety and fear in the form of anticipation, this is the card where the worst has already happened. The *only* good thing about this card is … Continue reading Ten of Blades

The Nine of Blades. Traditionally depicted as a woman in bed, dressed in her nightclothes with her hands over her face as she weeps, nine swords hanging point down on the wall over her bed. It's a rather unambiguous card- worry, anxiety, dread. Bad news that comes unexpectedly. The dark night of the soul. That … Continue reading Nine of Blades

The Eight of Blades, as it turns out, is yet another card that Stephanie and I interpret just a little bit differently. Who knew? The traditional image of the Rider-Waite deck is of a woman in white, bound and blindfolded, surrounded by swords, and standing on what is either the top of a hill or … Continue reading Eight of Blades

The Seven of Blades was, like the Five, one of the cards that Stephanie and I tend to read a little differently. For me, the seven is all about making the best of a bad situation, and not in the "lemons into lemonade" sense, but in the "loot the body before the vultures land" sense. … Continue reading Seven of Blades

I am ever so tardy in posting this particular update, but what the hell. Without further ado, the Six of Blades- This was a difficult set to shoot, on several levels. We used two locations- a park on the shores of Lake Merritt, in Oakland, and the Alameda beach (where we had previously shot the … Continue reading Six of Blades

It was a few weeks ago that Stephanie and I shot the photographs for the Five of Blades- just as Indian Summer really set in to the Bay Area. We had a somewhat difficult time finding a good location- as Stephanie says in her blog, we interpret this card differently in our own understandings of … Continue reading Five of Blades

When Stephanie decided to begin this project, she decided to begin with the suit of swords, for a number of reasons. But the first quick consequence of this was that the third image we were shooting was for the Three of Blades. For those not familiar with the tarot, the three of swords is typically … Continue reading Three of Blades

As I mentioned in a previous post, Stephanie Whiteside and I have been working on a project together exploring the cards of the tarot through photography. Thus, I would like to present: Images from the Two of Blades. The two of swords, in the Rider-Waite deck (which is very often the basis for tarot images … Continue reading Two of Blades