Lara Zankoul & Naeema Zarif (Photo credit: CC Beirut)

We get the week underway with our weekly Stroll on the Strange Side with this ‘Triple S’ post, beginning with the . . .

Spooky!

Yesterday, ‘confirmation’ of ghostly activity was reported in a tavern in New Jersey.  The connection to this blog is that you can view it!  Click the link to read about and see an ‘orb’ bounce around and run down a hallway.  Make that two – you can see two different videos of orbs on the move.

The writer of the article, Kelly Roncace, is a professional ghostbuster of sorts (“paranormal investigator,” to be politically correct) and she says: “a certain traveling, flashing ball of light that was captured may be the real thing. . . definitely an energy orb.”

We’ll take that with a pinch of something else beginning with ‘S’ . . .

Surreal

Lara Zankoul ain’t no ghostbuster; however, she must be a devotee of Dali and Magritte, for she’s that rarity among photographers: a Surrealist.

Lebanese newspaper Al-Shorfa ran an interview with the winsome Miss Zankoul but, unfortunately, they do not do her talents justice: only one photograph adorns the interview.

Not a problem: Zankoul has a portfolio online and it’s a Surrealist sensation.

She has a whole section on ‘Tea cups’, a bigger and better one called ‘Expressions’, and a few images of levitating persons and one of a very unfortunate girl who woke up in the wrong place.

Amazingly, Zankoul does all this as a hobby – and, man, that’s just surreal!

Shadowy

Transitioning from colourbursts to shades of grey – make that shades of black, shadow black:–

Photographer Romain Laurent says that his “series is about the ‘surreal impression’ he felt while walking around on pitch black streets for hours over several nights,” in A Study of Shadows in Manhattan During the Blackout. 

This third element of our weekly ‘triptych’ of a kind unites the first two elements: not only are Laurent’s photographs about ‘surreal impression’, they are downright spooky, showing the ghostly side of what appears to be a modern-day ghost town.

A couple of the photographs here, such as this one, are genuinely top-class, evocative, well-balanced images in their own right and that should not be overlooked as a consequence of their novelty appeal or because they are part of a themed set.

Enjoy our ‘Triple S’ Post!