Absinthe


	*Photography*

		*January 2011*


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	Thursday, January 27, 2011 – Absinthe

Absinthe is that distilled, highly alcoholic anise-flavored stuff derived from the flowers and leaves of Artemisia absinthium – wormwood – along with green anise and sweet fennel. So it is sort of green – and it used to be called la fée verte (the Green Fairy). Baudelaire, Verlaine, Rimbaud, Toulouse-Lautrec, Modigliani, Vincent van Gogh, Oscar Wilde, Alfred Jarry – they all loved the stuff. But everyone decided it was a dangerously addictive psychoactive drug – by 1915 it had been banned in the United States and in most European countries, including France. After all, Oscar Wilde drank a lot of it and described the feeling of having tulips on his legs after leaving a bar – but he was a strange dude.

And it was all nonsense. It's legal now. All that's left is the reputation – see the famous Degas 1876 painting L'Absinthe – a sad woman, an absinthe addict, sitting there with her glass of green absinthe, numb and blank. And this, down on Melrose Avenue, is an in-your-face-Edgar-Degas thing. It's the precise opposite of the Degas painting. And it's pretty cool.


	But let's assume absinthe is an addictive psychoactive drug. It must be, because all this is nearby.




	You might have to have your stomach pumped –


	And you might start seeing things, like a Cowboy Chicken –


	Or you might see faces –


	It's best to take no chances –

If you wish to use any of these photos for commercial purposes I assume you'll discuss that with me. And should you choose to download any of these images and use them invoking the "fair use" provisions of the Copyright Act of 1976, please provide credit, and, on the web, a link back to this site.

Technical Note:

These photographs were taken with a Nikon D200 – the lenses used were AF-S Nikkor 18-70 mm 1:35-4.5G ED, or AF Nikkor 70-300 mm telephoto. The high-resolution photography here was modified for web posting using Adobe Photoshop 7.0 software.


	All text and photos unless otherwise noted, Copyright © 2003, 2004, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2008, 2009, 2010, 2011 - Alan M. Pavlik

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