Our 33 Favorite Photobooks by Women and Non-binary Photographers in 2021.
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Entries for November 2021
The Omicron variant was “already spreading in western Europe before the first cases were identified in southern Africa”. Again, we should be thanking Botswana & South Africa for raising the alarm so quickly here.
A look at how The National Gallery made frames by hand for six massive paintings by Titian. The gold gilding process was interesting…I’d never seen that done before.
Bell Pepper Time Lapse: From Seed to Fruit in 115 Days
Watch as a single seed is plucked from a red bell pepper, planted in soil, and eventually grows into a fruit-bearing plant. I love how plant leaves in time lapse videos always look like they are flapping madly, trying in vain to reach the nourishing light.
This is one of many such time lapse videos on Boxlapse’s YouTube channel — their most popular videos include dragonfruit, tomatoes, and oyster mushrooms.
Artist Sophie Calle took a job as a hotel maid and “with a camera and tape recorder hidden in her mop bucket, she recorded whatever she found in the rooms that she had been charged with cleaning.” Fascinating project (and artist).
Most People Don’t Know How Bikes Work
How do you steer a bike? You turn the handlebars to the left to go left, correct? Actually, you don’t: you turn the handlebars to the right to go left…at least at first. And also? Bikes don’t even need riders to remain upright…they are designed to steer themselves.
If you’d like to play around with your own bicycle geometries, try this web app for analyzing bicycle dynamics.
Mesmerizing Liquid Eyes
“Abstract shots of liquid experiments that aim to mimic the visual complexity of human eyes” is what it says on the tin and I cannot improve upon it in an effort to get you to watch the video. Some of these really do look amazingly like eyes.
TIL that the person who taught Jack Daniel how to make whiskey was an enslaved Black man named Nathan “Nearest” Green. Green went on to become the first master distiller for the Jack Daniel Distillery (but was written out of the story until recently).
Arctic Snow Goggles
For thousands of years, Yupik and Inuit people have made snow goggles from various materials (bone, wood, whale baleen) to help protect their eyes from the sun and, more importantly, from the sunlight reflected off the Arctic snow. The narrow slits also help with the wearers’ visual acuity. Clive Thompson explains in this piece for Smithsonian:
This style of eyewear can even improve vision, as Ann Fienup-Riordan discovered one day in 2010. An Anchorage-based anthropologist who works with the Yupik people to develop exhibits and books about their culture, she had recently undergone surgery on her retinas, and “the vision in my right eye was still pretty fuzzy,” she says. But when she held the Yupik goggles up to her eyes? “I could see!”
What was going on? It turns out the slit focuses the light, much as a pinhole camera does. As a result, far-off objects appear sharper “and your vision was much, much better,” Fienup-Riordan says. Long before the invention of eyeglasses with glass or plastic lenses, Alaska’s indigenous inhabitants, including the Yupik people, devised their own corrective eyewear. Phillip Moses, a tribal member in Toksook Bay, calls them “Yupik prescription sunglasses.”
Snow goggles were probably the first wearable corrective device to be invented.
A long profile of legendary director Hayao Miyazaki, who is coming out of retirement (again) to make a new film. “He still draws the majority of the frames in each film, numbering in the tens of thousands, himself.”
TIL that the Chevy Suburban has been in production under that same name since 1935. The concept of the “suburb” seems so tied to the 40s and 50s that the name feels almost prophetic to me.
South Africa is being unfairly punished for having one of the world’s best Covid variant detection systems in the world. They should be lauded for warning the rest of us about what is already out there circulating.
Goofy 18th-Century Self-Portraits by Joseph Ducreux
Joseph Ducreux was a French painter active in the latter part of the 18th century — he was a portraitist in the court of Louis XVI and continued his career after the French Revolution. But Ducreux is increasingly remembered for his series of self-portraits that were surprisingly informal for the age in which they were painted. To contemporary eyes, they almost seem to have been painted for use in memes, a purpose for which they certainly have been used.
Jack Dorsey has stepped down as Twitter CEO (again). He will also give up his seat on the board.
An Enslaved American in Paris
In this excellent piece for the NY Times, African American historian Martha S. Jones travels to Paris to search for the signs of someone who came to France as part of a delegation to broker a peace to end the Revolutionary War, an enslaved woman named Abigail who was owned by Founding Father John Jay.
I’ve searched for Abigail a long time now, nearly 10 years. I first puzzled over her life and death as a newcomer to Paris when I stumbled upon the city’s many tributes to American founders. Exiting the Musée d’Orsay and heading to the Right Bank across the Passerelle Léopold-Sédar-Senghor, with the bateaux-mouches tourist boats passing below, I met up with a 10-foot-tall bronze likeness of Thomas Jefferson, another U.S. founder, plans for his Virginia estate, Monticello, in hand.
Hiking along the 16th arrondissement’s rue Benjamin-Franklin, I ventured to the tiny Square de Yorktown to discover that the figure seated high atop a stone plinth was Franklin himself. Fresh from people-watching from a sidewalk table at cafe Les Deux Magots, once the haunt of the 20th-century luminaries James Baldwin and Richard Wright, I made my way around the corner on rue Jacob. Pausing at number 56, I read the pink marble plaque that marks the site of the Hôtel d’York, where three of the men who shaped America’s independence — U.S. Peace Commissioners Benjamin Franklin, John Adams and John Jay — finalized the Treaty of Paris.
These fabled places are, I recognized, whitewashed. There is no mention of the enslaved people, like Abigail, who were bound to labor in the founders’ Parisian households. No site explains that during John Jay’s time in the French capital, while he brokered the new nation’s freedom, he also dealt in the unfreedom of others.
(thx, meg)
Why We Need to Upgrade Our Face Masks — and Where to Get Them. Once more, with feeling: if you’re still using a cloth mask indoors, upgrade your mask (and wear it properly).
Watching creativity happen in real time as Paul McCartney conjures a hit song out of seemingly nowhere. “Paul really has nothing at the 30 second mark – but 45 seconds later he’s got the makings of a hit single.”
We’ve been living in a flu pandemic era since 1918. A universal flu vaccine, which is currently being pursued by many research teams, could potentially rid us of all influenza in one fell swoop.
The Omicron Variant
Last week, a worrisome variant of SARS-CoV-2 burst into the public consciousness: the Omicron variant. The concern among scientists and the public at large is substantial, but it is unfortunately going to take a few weeks to figure out whether those concerns are warranted. For a measured take on what we know now and what we can expect, read these two posts by epidemiologist Dr. Katelyn Jetelina (as well as this one on vaccines).
B.1.1.529 has 32 mutations on the spike protein alone. This is an insane amount of change. As a comparison, Delta had 9 changes on the spike protein. We know that B.1.1.529 is not a “Delta plus” variant. The figure below shows a really long line, with no previous Delta ancestors. So this likely means it mutated over time in one, likely immunocompromised, individual.
Of these, some mutations have properties to escape antibody protection (i.e. outsmart our vaccines and vaccine-induced immunity). There are several mutations association with increased transmissibility. There is a mutation associated with increased infectivity.
That sounds bad but again, we presently do not have enough information to know for sure about any of this. As Jetelina concludes in one of the posts:
We still have more questions than answers. But we will get them soon. Do not take Omicron lightly, but don’t abandon hope either. Our immune systems are incredible.
None of this changes what you can to do right now: Ventilate spaces. Use masks. Test if you have symptoms. Isolate if positive. Get vaccinated. Get boosted.
This Science piece by Kai Kupferschmidt also provides a great overview about where we’re at with Omicron, without the sensationalism.
Whether or not Omicron turns out to be another pandemic gamechanger, the lesson we should take from it (but probably won’t) is that grave danger is lurking in that virus and we need to get *everyone* *everywhere* vaccinated, we need free and ubiquitous rapid testing *everywhere*, we need to focus on indoor ventilation, we need to continue to use measures like distancing and mask-wearing, and we need to keep doing all of the other things in the Swiss cheese model of pandemic defense. Anything else is just continuing our idiotic streak with this virus of fucking around and then finding out. (via jodi ettenberg & eric topol)
What?! Fashion designer Virgil Abloh has died of cancer at the age of 41.
The WHO has named the Omicron variant of SARS-CoV-2 a “Variant of Concern”. This really doesn’t look good.
Beautifully Arranged Rock Sculptures
Jon Foreman neatly arranges rocks into colorful sculptures. He also does similar sand, leaves, debris, and shells. You can order prints on his site or check out more of his stuff on Instagram. (via colossal)
The Covid booster shot doesn’t just restore immunity against symptomatic infection, it “elevates protection well above the peak level from two doses”. Booster shot = increased safety for yourself and your community.
The Colorful Winners of the 2021 AAP Photo Competition
AAP Magazine has announced the winners of their 21st annual photo competition. This year’s theme was “Colors” and I’ve embedded a few of my favorites above (from top to bottom: Miloš Nejezchleb, Vitaly Golovatyuk, Graham Earnshaw, Joanna Borowiec, and Pham Huy Trung).
Engineering a Capable Climbing Lego Car
In this video, a simple Lego car is repeatedly modified to navigate more and more difficult obstacles until it can climb up and down almost anything. This fun exercise also doubles as a crash course in engineering and how to build a capable all-terrain vehicle as it “demonstrates what you need to consider: wheel diameter, gear ratio, 4-wheel drive, tire grip, breakover angle, weight distribution”. (via the prepared)
Is that the Three Identical Strangers with Madonna on the streets of NYC?! (Yes, and it turns out this is from Desperately Seeking Susan.)
Grief Is Unexpressed Love
On The Late Show, Stephen Colbert asked Andrew Garfield how performing and art helps him deal with grief. The relevant bit starts at around the 4:05 mark and continues for three minutes — just give it a watch…there’s not much more I can add to what Garfield says and how he says it.
Update: Colbert is no stranger to conversations about grief — here’s his 2019 conversation with Anderson Cooper. (thx, david)
The Ten Rules of Golden Age Detective Fiction
The Golden Age of Detective Fiction describes a period between the world wars in which a certain style of murder mystery novel took hold, led by the prolific and talented Agatha Christie. Scott Stedman explains about the rise and fall of the genre in today’s issue of Why is this interesting?
It wasn’t until Agatha Christie introduced the world to Poirot that the genre shifted into its strictest and most enduring form: the garden variety murder mystery.
“I specialize in murders of quiet, domestic interest.” —Agatha Christie.
Agatha Christie is the most popular modern writer to ever live (outmatched in sales by only Shakespeare and the Bible). Christie is unrelenting in her ability to surprise — she killed children, popularized the unreliable narrator, introduced serial killers. Still, she was a fiercely disciplined adherent to a form created by her community of fellow writers, developed in the legendary Detection Club (including Dorothy Sayers, Ronald Knox, and the remarkable GK Chesterton). In an age sandwiched between two world wars — her stories brim with pride for a stiff British moral certitude that was impervious to the most heinous acts against it.
A central feature of many of these whodunits was that the reader had access to all the same information as the detective and could, in theory, figure things out before they did. In 1929, Ronald Knox wrote down 10 rules that made this possible:
1. The criminal must be someone mentioned in the early part of the story, but must not be anyone whose thoughts the reader has been allowed to follow.
2. All supernatural or preternatural agencies are ruled out as a matter of course.
3. Not more than one secret room or passage is allowable.
4. No hitherto undiscovered poisons may be used, nor any appliance which will need a long scientific explanation at the end.
5. No racial stereotypes.1
6. No accident must ever help the detective, nor must he ever have an unaccountable intuition which proves to be right.
7. The detective must not himself commit the crime.
8. The detective must not light on any clues which are not instantly produced for the inspection of the reader.
9. The stupid friend of the detective, the Watson, must not conceal any thoughts which pass through his mind; his intelligence must be slightly, but very slightly, below that of the average reader.
10. Twin brothers, and doubles generally, must not appear unless we have been duly prepared for them.
It’s interesting to see how these rules are applied and broken in TV and films these days. I feel like “hitherto undiscovered poisons” and “appliances which will need a long scientific explanation” (not to mention the “unaccountable intuition” of characters) are now regularly deployed, which can lead to feelings of being cheating as a viewer if it’s not done well. (via why is this interesting?)
I follow Stedman here in restating this point…Knox’s original text used a derogatory term.↩
Covid vaccination rates vs death rates in Europe. There appears to be an inflection point around 75%. (The US is currently at 71%.)
A Whole Day of Sunlight at the South Pole
From September to March each year, the Sun never sets at the South Pole. This time lapse video, taken over 5 days in March, shows the sun circling the entire sky just above the horizon, getting ready to set for the first time in months. (via sentiers)
The climate crisis demands bold action. “City governments should purchase an electronic bicycle for every resident over the age of 15 who wants one” and “shut down a significant number of streets to be used only by bicycles”.
Watch an AI Break Tetris
With nearly instant reaction times, superhuman button tapping frequency, and an inability to fatigue, an AI called StackRabbit can play Tetris better than any human player. But how much better? Well, it can play all the way to the end of the game, which…did you know Tetris ended? I didn’t. But before that happens, it plays flawlessly through hundreds of levels while the game itself is throwing up weirdo color schemes and scores from random places in its memory — the game’s creators didn’t imagine anyone or anything would get anywhere close to these levels. Also, I got surprisingly anxious watching this — it was just so fast with so much constant peril! (via waxy)
A ranking of all 63 US National Parks. Yosemite, Redwood, Olympic, and Glacier all score high, but several other well-known parks get dinged for being too crowded.
Stunning, Ultra-HD Short Films of National Parks
For the past 5 years, More Than Just Parks, an organization established by two self-professed “National Park nuts”, have been making short films about America’s National Parks and Forests. Each ultra-HD video is only 3-4 minutes long, extended trailers for the beauty and grandeur of parks like Zion, Grand Teton, and the Badlands and forests like Black Hills, Green Mountains, and Bridger Teton.
You can check out all of the videos on their YouTube channel.
An Online Collection of American Prison Newspapers (1800-2020)
Since 1800, when the first newspaper was published in a NYC prison, over 500 newspapers have been published in prisons around the country. JSTOR is hosting a growing archive of such publications: American Prison Newspapers 1800-2020: Voices from the Inside.
With the United States incarcerating more individuals than any other nation — over 2 million as of 2019 — these publications represent a vast dimension of media history. These publications depict and report on all manner of life within the walls of prisons, from the quotidian to the upsetting. Incarcerated journalists walk a tightrope between oversight by administration — even censorship-and seeking to report accurately on their experiences inside. Some publications were produced with the sanction of institutional authorities; others were produced underground.
(thx, caroline)
The Best Street Photography of 2021
The Street Photographers Foundation has announced the winners of the Street Photography Awards for 2021. What an amazing selection of photos — it was so hard to pick just a few favorites (embedded above). From top to bottom, Subhran Karmakar, Paul Kessel (like a Renaissance painting), Akib Amjad (so reminiscent of this iconic photo by Henri Cartier-Bresson), Andy Hann, and Dimitri Mellos. (via curious about everything)
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