February 2024
As we ring in the new year, we continue to look at our world with a different perspective. And to help you discover this constantly evolving world, our team at Veritas continues to create this digital annual calendar that hits your mailbox once every month, bringing with it a wave of curated information on iconic people, travel destinations, art and architecture projects, world cinema, literary works, food, technology and lots more.
While we do provide a PDF download link to the calendar, our major announcement this year is the availability of this curated information on our website, www.veritaslegal.in/calendar, to help you revisit or bookmark the information for later.
We hope you enjoy this journey and our new way of re-discovering the world.
Dakar, the vibrant capital of Senegal, beckons travelers with a rich blend of history, culture, and modernity. Nestled along the Cape Verde Peninsula on the Atlantic coast, Dakar offers a unique fusion of traditional Senegalese charm and a cosmopolitan atmosphere. The city is renowned for its colorful markets, such as the bustling Sandaga Market, where visitors can immerse themselves in the lively local trade, filled with vibrant fabrics, spices, and handicrafts. The historical Gorée Island, a UNESCO World Heritage Site just off the coast, bears witness to the painful legacy of the transatlantic slave trade, offering a poignant and educational experience for those exploring Senegal’s past.
Dakar is also a cultural hub, hosting the renowned Dakar Biennale, an international arts festival that attracts artists and art enthusiasts from around the globe. Visitors can explore the Dakar Grand Mosque, a symbol of Islamic architecture, or take a stroll through Independence Square, surrounded by colonial-era buildings. For nature enthusiasts, the impressive Dakar Monument and the scenic Mamelles Lighthouse provide panoramic views of the city and the Atlantic Ocean. With its warm hospitality, diverse cuisine, and a vibrant music scene, Dakar stands as a captivating destination for those seeking a unique African experience.
The J.LAVERACK ASTON MARTIN .1R is the world’s most bespoke, most advanced and most meticulously engineered road bike. It’s frame was conceived in the same studios as Aston Martin’s cars. The hand-built frame of the .1R is a flawless fusion of titanium and carbon fibre tubes, using manufacturing techniques more commonly seen in Formula One cars. The .1R is finished in the same herringbone-patterned carbon fibre as the Aston Martin Valkyrie, giving its sculpted tubes mesmerising symmetricity.
It takes over one thousand hours to create each .1R bicycle, including a staggering 515 hours of CNC machine time to create this high precision engineering masterpiece.
“The J. Laverack Aston Martin .1R is essentially a titanium hypercar on two wheels, elevating bespoke bike design to unprecedented heights and re-writing the rule book of their development and customization. The simple, clever genius is how we’ve fused the engineering advancements throughout the bike with a purity of performance design, delivering a viscerally exhilarating riding experience.” – Marek Reichman, Aston Martin Chief Creative Officer.
Girls in the Windows is a 1960 photograph by Ormond Gigli, a freelance photographer aged 35 at the time, who went on to be a celebrated American photojournalist with a career spanning over forty years. He has worked for the world’s leading magazines including TIME, LIFE, PARIS MATCH, COLLIERS and other international publications.
The photo depicts 41 colourfully dressed women standing in the windows of a brownstone building on East 58th Street on the Upper East Side of Manhattan, and two other women on the sidewalk near a Rolls-Royce car. It has been estimated to be the most commercially valuable photograph and one of the most collected, on account of the great number of signed copies that have been sold at auctions.
Gigli created the image on his own initiative. He wanted to preserve the memory of the distinctive brownstone houses across from his home studio that were slated for demolition. Just days before this was to happen, Gigli arranged for 40 models from an agency. They were paid $1 each (equivalent to $10 in 2024) for the entire shoot, and told to bring their own dresses and arrange their own hair and make-up. To these, he added two more women: his wife, Sue Ellen Gigli (in the second row, far right), and the wife of the demolition supervisor who allowed Gigli to use the building in exchange for including her (on the third floor, third from the left). Shouting through a bullhorn, Gigli arranged the women from his studio across the street, telling them to “pose as if they were giving someone a kiss”.
The photograph did not become commercially available until 1994, when Sue Ellen Gigli offered it to a gallery. Since then, more than 160 signed prints have been sold at auction at a total price of around $12 million.
Auction house experts have estimated it to be the most-collected and highest-grossing photograph of all time. Unlike most other fine art photographs, of which few reproductions are sold in order to create scarcity, Ormond Gigli made and signed dozen of prints of the photograph in each of 12 sizes. About 100 remain to be sold as of 2023, according to Gigli’s son and estate manager.
CREDITS
This Calendar uses references, excerpts and modifications of varied material available from numerous online sources (referenced below), including text generated in part with GPT-3, OpenAI’s large-scale language generation model and Wikipedia articles & photos, released under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share-Alike Licenses. Upon generating the draft language, the editorial team reviews, edits, and revises the language.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dakar
https://astonmartin.jlaverack.co.uk
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Girls_in_the_Windows
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