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You’ve probably seen Bruce Davidson’s photos of the gritty 1980s NYC subway, which were collected into a book published in 1986.
Earlier this year, Time posted some previously unpublished photos of the NYC subway taken in 1981 by Christopher Morris, an admirer of Davidson’s.
The NY Times has a bunch of photos by Seth Casteel of babies undergoing infant survival swim training.
Zoe was being introduced to “self-rescue,” in which babies are taught to hold their breath underwater, kick their feet, turn over to float on their backs and rest until help arrives.
The self-rescue idea is pretty amazing. You take kids who can’t talk and can barely walk and teach them how to float on their backs. I didn’t really believe it until I saw it:
Bonus summer PSA: drowning doesn’t look like drowning.
I’ve seen the waterfalls and the hot springs and the rocky desolation, but I didn’t know that Iceland was also this:
I mean, come on. Photos by Max Rive, Menno Schaefer, and Johnathan Esper. Many more here. (via mr)
The IPPAWARDS has been judging an iPhone photography competition since 2007 and they recently announced the winners of their 2014 competition.
Impressive stuff. I’ve been saying recently that the iPhone 5s is the best camera in the world. Looking back on the 2008 winners, it becomes apparent how much more comfortable photographers have become wielding this increasingly powerful device. (via the verge)
Speaking of WWI, the landscape of the Western Front in Europe still shows the scars from the war 100 years on.
The latest installment of the In Focus series on WWI is Aerial Warfare.
Great series so far, really enjoying it. Start from the beginning if you haven’t seen it yet.
Photographer Alec Soth is interviewed by his young son Gus about his job, art, and leaving his family for work.
This is completely charming and awesome and heartbreaking. (via @polan)
Clayton Cubitt took photographs of The Beautifully Frightful Wooden Children of Gehard Demetz, now on display at Jack Shainman Gallery in Chelsea. From the gallery’s description of the project:
With impeccable craftsmanship, Demetz builds figures and reliefs of children and rural, often religious, architectural forms. While his subjects often take the forms of adolescent or very young children who are at the precipice of self-realization, their grave expressions and powerful stances suggest something much less innocent than their ages might suggest. Situated on plinths, these life-size works are elevated above their natural stature, allowing them to confront adults at eye level with a fierce or introspective gaze far beyond their years. Rather than being carved from a single large block of wood, these sculptures are built up from smaller rectangular units-mimicking classic building blocks-with gaps in their structures like pieces missing from their bodies or lost fragments of their being.
Back in January, an astronaut on the International Space Station took this photograph of the Korean Peninsula, which shows the stark difference in nighttime light levels in North Korea compared to the neighboring countries of South Korea and China.
I remember seeing a satellite photo several years ago, thought it was fake, then heard it had been photoshopped to accentuate the darkness, and dismissed the whole thing as a hoax. I can’t believe the whole country is that dark. (via in focus)
From Annalisa Hartlaub, a series of self-portraits portraying “culture and counterculture for the past 10 decades”. Here is her representation of the 1960s (culture on the left, counterculture on the right):
In the latest installment of his ten-part series on WWI, Alan Taylor covers the technology used in the war.
When Europe’s armies first marched to war in 1914, some were still carrying lances on horseback. By the end of the war, rapid-fire guns, aerial bombardment, armored vehicle attacks, and chemical weapon deployments were commonplace. Any romantic notion of warfare was bluntly shoved aside by the advent of chlorine gas, massive explosive shells that could have been fired from more than 20 miles away, and machine guns that spat out bullets like firehoses. Each side did its best to build on existing technology, or invent new methods, hoping to gain any advantage over the enemy.
It’s fascinating to observe both sides using trial and error with things like tanks, testing out what works and what doesn’t. Look at this kooky German cannon for instance:
Nothing about that looks efficient.
Alan Taylor has started doing weekly round-ups of interesting photos at In Focus. This is my favorite from last week’s batch, the head of Mick Jagger, destined for a wax museum in Prague.
Heather Ogden is a principal dancer for the National Ballet of Canada and The Heather Project is a series of short videos shot by Christopher Wahl that shows how beautiful and demanding ballet can be. (via cup of jo)
The Daily Overview offers up an interesting satellite photo every day. The site’s name is inspired by the Overview Effect:
The Overview Effect, first described by author Frank White in 1987, is an experience that transforms astronauts’ perspective of Earth and mankind’s place upon it. Common features of the experience are a feeling of awe for the planet, a profound understanding of the interconnection of all life, and a renewed sense of responsibility for taking care of the environment. ‘Overview’ is a short film that explores this phenomenon through interviews with five astronauts who have experienced the Overview Effect. The film also features important commentary on the wider implications of this new understanding for both our society, and our relationship to the environment.
The Planetary Collective made a short documentary about the Overview Effect:
(thx, pavel)
Photographer David Liittschwager captured the little ecosystem of life contained in a splash of seawater magnified 25 times:
It’s the microscopic equivalent of the Hubble Deep Field image and worth seeing larger. Here’s part of the larger image:
Liittschwager took the photo for National Geographic, but it also might be contained in his book, A World in One Cubic Foot, in which he took photos in locations all over the world of the life that passed through 1 cubic foot of space in 24 hours.
For A World in One Cubic Foot, esteemed nature photographer David Liittschwager took a bright green metal cube-measuring precisely one cubic foot-and set it in various ecosystems around the world, from Costa Rica to Central Park. Working with local scientists, he measured what moved through that small space in a period of twenty-four hours. He then photographed the cube’s setting and the plant, animal, and insect life inside it — anything visible to the naked eye. The result is a stunning portrait of the amazing diversity that can be found in ecosystems around the globe.
Prints of this image are available at Art.com in sizes up to 64”x48”. (via colossal)
Swedish artist Hans Jörgen Johansen makes photographs of mold landscapes, grown in his studio from flour and bread.
Over at In Focus, Alan Taylor has posted the first part of a 10-part photographic retrospective of World War I.
Represented in this first installment is early color photography (many more of which can be found here), dazzle camouflage, and a photo I’ve never seen before of an aerial view of the trenches of the western front. Can’t wait to follow along with the rest of it.
The very first Kickstarter campaign I ever backed was Rachel Sussman’s project to photograph the oldest living organisms in the world.
I’m researching, working with biologists, and traveling all over the world to find and photograph continuously living organisms that are 2,000 years old and older. I started the project 5 years ago, and have since photographed nearly 25 different organisms, ranging from the Bristlecone Pine and Giant Sequoias that you’ve surely heard of, to some truly unusual and unique desert shrubs, bacteria, a predatory fungus, and a clonal colony of Aspen trees that’s male and, in theory, immortal.
Her goal was to compile the photographs into a book. Almost four years later, the book is out. Looks like it was worth the wait. The trailer does a nice job explaining what the book is all about:
Asher Svidensky’s photographs from Mongolia of apprentice eagle hunters are fantastic. (FYI, they hunt with eagles, not for them.) Among Svidensky’s subjects is a 13-year-old girl, Ashol Pan:
At the end of the photographing session, I sat down with her father and the translator to say my goodbyes, and I asked him this:
“How did it feel watching your daughter dressed in Kazakh uniform, on a mountain top, sending the eagle off and calling it back again?”
“Very good”
“And honestly… would you have considered truly training her? Would she become Mongolia’s first ever female eagle huntress?”
I expected a straightforward “No” or a joking “Maybe”, but after a short pause he replied:
“Up until two years ago my eldest son was the successor of the eagle hunting tradition in our family. Alas, two years ago he was drafted to the army, and he’s now an officer, so he probably won’t be back with the tradition. It’s been a while since I started thinking about training her instead of him, but I wouldn’t dare do it unless she asks me to do it, and if she will? Next year you will come to the eagle festival and see her riding with the eagle in my place.”
From the father’s answer I realized that the idea of women’s participation in keeping the tradition is a possible future, but just like many other aspect of Mongolian life, it’s an option which women will need to take on by themselves.
(via @rebeccablood)
For the past couple of months, Amit Gupta has been playing around with taking moving self-portraits with a camera mounted on a drone. Here’s an early effort. This past weekend, Amit’s efforts crossed over into the realm of art. This is beautiful:
In the comments at Vimeo, Alex Dao dubbed this type of photograph a “dronie”. We’ll see if that catches on.
Update: More examples of dronies here.
Back in the olden days, you just tied your cameraman right to the car:
Looks almost as goofy as Google Glass. Legendary F1 driver Jackie Stewart wore this stills-only proto-GoPro at the Monaco Grand Prix in 1966 (though not during the actual race):
Stewart ended up winning that race. I believe Stewart is also the model for this contraption, which looks like a film camera counterbalanced with a battery pack?
That couldn’t have been comfortable. For some reason, neither of Stewart’s helmet cams are recognized by Wikipedia as being the first documented helmet cam, which is instead attributed to a motorcycle race in 1986:
Update: Another early use of the helmet cam comes from the world of skydiving. Here’s Bob Sinclair with a camera setup from 1961:
(thx, david)
Update: Not even a bulky taped-up helmet camera can keep Steve McQueen from looking cool:
Well, he just barely looks cool. McQueen wore the helmet during the filming of 1971’s Le Mans. While researching this, I came across another film featuring McQueen that used helmet cams to get footage: 1971s On Any Sunday, a documentary about motorcycle racing. (via @jackshafer)
Life magazine asks: Is this the happiest photo ever made?
The photo was taken by Alfred Eisenstaedt, who was covering the University of Michigan’s marching band. When some children playing nearby set off after this practicing drum major, he snapped the photo. Said Eisenstaedt, “This is a completely spontaneous, unstaged picture.”
The photographer took many notable photos — the famous V-J Day kiss in Times Square, of Marilyn Monroe, of Albert Einstein, of Joseph Goebbels — but the drum major one above and his ballet series are my favorites (particularly this one).
Smithsonian Magazine has announced the finalists in their annual photography contest. The shot above is a finalist in the Mobile category…it was taken with an iPhone 5. (via colossal)
From a large collection of photos shot on the set of 2001: A Space Odyssey, two of my favorites:
Those are a pair of smooth criminals right there.
Michael Paul Smith takes photographs of classic cars that evoke feelings of nostalgia for America in the 30s, 40s, 50s, and 60s. Take a look, these are about as Pleasantville as you can get:
But as you’ll discover browsing through Smith’s collection, the cars he photographs are scale models. Here’s the set-up for that second shot:
And here’s further evidence of Smith’s trickery:
No Photoshop here…all effects are done in-camera. As Smith notes, “It is the oldest trick in the special effects book: lining up a model with an appropriate background, then photographing it.” (via @osteslag)
Now showing at IFC Center in NYC: Finding Vivian Maier. Maier is the Chicago street photographer whose extensive and impressive body of work was recently discovered at an auction. John Maloof bought Maier’s work, started posting it to a blog several years ago, did a Kickstarter (one of the first I backed) to fund a documentary about Maier and her photos, and now the film is showing in theaters around the US and Canada.
Photographer Ernest Goh documents chicken beauty pageants in Malaysia. Gorgeous photos, gorgeous animals.
(via colossal)
National Geographic photographer Gerd Ludwig has visited Chernobyl nine times over the past twenty years. The Long Shadow of Chernobyl is a forthcoming book collecting Ludwig’s photos, which includes an essay by Mikhail Gorbachev. The publication of the book is being funded via Kickstarter. There is also an iOS app.
Aw man, the International Center of Photography is closing its museum on 6th Ave. The good news is they’re planning on reopening in another location.
At our request for an interview, Lubell issued the following statement. “The International Center of Photography has been and continues to be at the center, both nationally and internationally, of the conversation regarding photography and the explosive growth of visual communications. In advancing this conversation, ICP has decided to move its current museum to a new space. This decision reflects the evolution of photography and our role in setting the agenda for visual communications for the 21st century. ICP will announce our future sites this spring. The school will remain at 1114 Avenue of the Americas in Midtown Manhattan.”
I’m long overdue for a visit…the Capa in Color exhibition looks promising, perhaps I’ll stop in this weekend. (via @akuban)
The folks behind Cabin Porn are making a book with photography by Noah Kalina. Outstanding.
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