Bedouin with Camel's Milk, Digital Image by M. Porter Swaid

The Big Apple by M. Porter Swaid

The Golden Calf

"Abstraction today is no longer that of the map, the double, the mirror or the concept. Simulation is no longer that of a territory, a referential being or a substance. It is the generation by models of a real without origin or reality: a hyperreal. The territory no longer precedes the map, nor survives it. Henceforth, it is the map that precedes the territory - precession of simulacra - it is the map that engenders the territory and if we were to revive the fable today, it would be the territory whose shreds are slowly rotting across the map. It is the real, and not the map, whose vestiges subsist here and there, in the deserts which are no longer those of the Empire, but our own. The desert of the real itself." -Baudrillard


An established factoid by now is the idea that the Calf represents idolatry. It is as widely known as any of the parables in the Diaries of the Ancients (called the Gospels and Torah). It may in fact be second only to the Apple in the Garden of Eden in terms of the Teaching Tools of Allah.



Lot's Wife is another that populates the modern imagination with things that lead to more things and still more things.




Lot's Wife, Digital Image by M. Porter Swaid

Right up there with images from the er...Greeks is it? like the Three Graces


Rainbow Cafe, Naco-Son by M. Porter Swaid
...to be continued....



Suggested reading: Jean Baudrillard: Simulacra and Simulations