A collection of pairs of photos, one
A collection of pairs of photos, one taken just before a person’s death and one after. I wish they displayed the pairs side-by-side.
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kottke.org posts about photography
Regal
Top: Leslie Hall by Noah Kalina.
Bottom: The Rainbow Portrait of Queen Elizabeth I by Isaac Oliver. (thx, adriana)
Flickr photoset of an abandoned amusement park
Flickr photoset of an abandoned amusement park in Ohio called Chippewa Lake.
Hidden on a lakeshore in Medina County is one of the state’s most unique forgotten treasures: the abandoned amusement park called Chippewa Lake. What you’ll find there today is the tragic shell of a once-glorious family fun park, one with a history going back to the 1840s. The crying shame is that it’s been reduced to an inadequately-fenced-off stretch of acres, overgrown with every imaginable form of vegetation native to this state and festooned with faded NO TRESPASSING signs.
(via maggie)
A NY Times reporter was assaulted while
A NY Times reporter was assaulted while taking photos of some men putting up illegal posters near Madison Square Park. The rationale for his inclination not to press charges is an interesting one:
While my assailant’s actions were frightening, they resulted in part from what he interpreted as provocation: that is, my taking pictures after he had explicitly warned me not to. He did not take my wallet, cash or briefcase; something he could easily have done while I was on the ground. Nor do I recall him using much more force than was needed to wrest the camera from me. He didn’t kick me gratuitously when I was down. He did what he threatened to do, but no more.
In the greater scheme of things, my quarrel isn’t with him, anyway. It’s with the suits who made the decision in the first place to undertake an illegal marketing campaign.
Update: Maybe Rocko got his logo from the Rocky comic strip? (thx, joakim)
Interview with Errol Morris in the Columbia
Interview with Errol Morris in the Columbia Journalism Review about Standard Operating Procedure.
Somebody comes up to you and says, “I’m a postmodernist; I don’t care about truth; it’s subjective.” My answer is, “So it doesn’t matter who pulled the trigger? It doesn’t matter whether someone committed murder, or whether someone in jail is innocent or not?” I believe that it does matter. What happens in the world matters a great deal.
Morris also says that there will be a web site that accompanies the film where you can view all the Abu Ghraib photos in the order that they were taken.
You can click on a photograph and an iris opens up — you go into the photograph, and inside of the photograph is context. Take, just for example, the Gilligan photograph, the one on the box, with the wires. I rubber-band that photograph with the other ones taken at the same time, so that it becomes a group of related photographs. There’s software that allows you to reconstruct the room from the different angles of the photographs. Then I have biographies that you can click on for all the people who were in the room, and their own accounts. Plus you can see stuff that I recorded for this movie. In other words, you can really enter the world of the photograph.
Photos of people in their beds by
Photos of people in their beds by Thierry Bouet. Dumb Flash interface alert: click on “au lit” to see the beds. (thx, juliette)
Mike Johnston on the camera he would
Mike Johnston on the camera he would like to own, a decisive moment digital (DMD) camera.
So there you have it: a small, light, unobtrusive carry-around camera with great handling and world-class responsiveness, capable of being used in all manner of lighting conditions and yielding DSLR-quality results on the gallery wall. The 21st-century equivalent of Henri Cartier-Bresson’s stealthy street-shootin’ Leica.
Surveilling yourself
If you tell photographer Izaz Rony where you’ll be at a particular time, he’ll come and take your picture without you knowing it.
Using information provided earlier about their weekly routine, the photographer will arrive on the scene, and unseen, take shots of the subject. The subject will be photographed walking through the streets, going about their daily business. Without posing and artifice, the camera captures only the natural beauty of the person.
Andrew Hearst calls it “surveilling yourself”.
The Desire Paths Flickr pool. Desire paths
The Desire Paths Flickr pool. Desire paths are improvised paths built collectively by pedestrians trying to find the shortest way across the grass, like ants laying down pheromone trails to food. I’ve heard of some clever institutions who wait for desire paths to be laid down by pedestrians and then put permanent sidewalks in those places.
The Abu Ghraib article by Errol Morris
The Abu Ghraib article by Errol Morris and Philip Gourevitch which I wrote about here and was subsequently taken down is back online. For now. Get it while you can. (thx, tom)
Powerful and disturbing article by Philip Gourevitch
Later, when the photographs of crimes committed against Iraqi prisoners at Abu Ghraib were made public, the blame focussed overwhelmingly on the Military Police officers who were assigned to guard duty in the Military Intelligence cellblock — Tiers 1A and 1B — of the hard site. The low-ranking reservist soldiers who took and appeared in the infamous images were singled out for opprobrium and punishment; they were represented, in government reports, in the press, and before courts-martial, as rogues who acted out of depravity. Yet the abuse of prisoners at Abu Ghraib was de facto United States policy. The authorization of torture and the decriminalization of cruel, inhuman, and degrading treatment of captives in wartime have been among the defining legacies of the current Administration; and the rules of interrogation that produced the abuses documented on the M.I. block in the fall of 2003 were the direct expression of the hostility toward international law and military doctrine that was found in the White House, the Vice-President’s office, and at the highest levels of the Justice and Defense Departments.
Never mind liberty, it would seem that we’re giving up our humanity for security.
Update: Nuts, they took the article offline for some reason…
Update: Looks like the article is back up. For now.
Photo slideshow of an architecture office fashioned
Photo slideshow of an architecture office fashioned out of the rusted carcass of an auto repair shop.
A hundred and twenty year old photo
A hundred and twenty year old photo of a young Helen Keller has been found.
The photograph, shot in July 1888 in Brewster, shows an 8-year-old Helen sitting outside in a light-colored dress, holding Sullivan’s hand and cradling one of her beloved dolls.
My friend, the incredibly talented photographer, Barry
My friend, the incredibly talented photographer, Barry Stone is exhibiting an outdoor installation of large photographs of Galaxies made from flour at the BBAP in Houston.
Rob Haggart, aka A Photo Editor, does
Rob Haggart, aka A Photo Editor, does a great job introducing this video of Annie Leibovitz photographing Queen Elizabeth.
What I find interesting in photo shoot videos is not the 11 assistants or the lighting setup but watching the photographer interact with the subject.
As Rob says, “Annie really shows her tenacity in this video when she immediately tries to get the Queen to remove her crown after deciding it doesn’t look good in the first shot and not giving up on an original request to shoot the Queen on horseback inside the state apartments.”
Simultaneously fascinating and terrifying — like watching a trapeze artist at work.
2point8 points us to the portraiture and
2point8 points us to the portraiture and street photography of Arlene Gottfried:
“You get the sense that Gottfried didn’t necessarily leave her house to go get the picture wherever that picture might be, but that she lived her life with gusto and was ready for the pictures when the pictures came to her.”
Kind of a good metaphor for blogging.
Nice collection of photographs of Pakistan’s elaborately
Nice collection of photographs of Pakistan’s elaborately decorated motor vehicles.
The most striking thing in Pakistan is the vision of trucks and buses completely covered in a riot of color and design. They might spew diesel fumes, they may take up all of the winding, narrow, under-maintained road one is trying to negotiate, but they are certainly noticeable, like so many mechanical dinosaurs adorned in full courtship colors.
(via david archer)
Some bootleg scans of these were linked
Some bootleg scans of these were linked around the web last week, but here’s the real thing: photos of current Hollywood celebrities photographed in scenes from Hitchcock films. Click on the photos to see the originals.
Photos of kids with their science experiments,
Photos of kids with their science experiments, including Juicy Beans, Garlic: The Silent Killer, and Extreme Wood.
Photos of all 521 chairs at the Visual
Photos of all 521 chairs at the Visual Studies Workshop building. This would make a great poster, not unlike the Vitra Design Museum Chairs poster.
Lindsey Lohan as Marilyn Monroe
This photo shoot of Lindsey Lohan as Marilyn Monroe only serves to underscore how unlike (and inferior) Lohan is compared to Monroe. Lohan is the Meet the Spartans version of Monroe. Some of the originals are here, lots more thumbnails here. NSFW.
Update: Here’s an accompanying article. And Goldenfiddle had this to say:
This is, without a doubt, the saddest, stupidest, ugliest, most pointless thing ever. Bert Stern should be ashamed of himself.
Demo film of the Polaroid SX-70 made
Demo film of the Polaroid SX-70 made by Charles and Ray Eames but set to a soundtrack of The Cramps performing Garbageman. Wot? (via spurgeonblog)
Photos by Taryn Simon of hidden and
Photos by Taryn Simon of hidden and unfamiliar places in the US, like the marijuana crop grow room at the National Center for Natural Products Research in Mississippi. Here’s a somewhat overlapping selection of photos at Wired and another at The Morning News, which includes a great letter from Disney denying Simon access to their theme park’s underbelly.
After giving your request serious consideration, even though it is against company policy to consider such a request, it is with regret that I inform you that we are not willing to grant the permission you seek…As you are aware, our Disney characters, parks and other valuable properties have become beloved by young and old alike, and with this comes a tremendous responsibility to protect their use and the protection we currently enjoy. Should we lapse in our vigilance, we run the risk of losing this protection and the Disney characters as we know and love them…Especially during these violent times, I personally believe that the magical spell cast on guests who visit our theme parks is particularly important to protect and helps to provide them with an important fantasy they can escape to.
Richard Mosse’s Air Disaster, a series of
Richard Mosse’s Air Disaster, a series of photographs of air disaster simulations, on-the-ground training exercises for airport fire-fighting crews. BLDGBLOG has a short interview with the photographer.
The firemen have put out the fire in seconds. That’s their job, after all. They do this with decisive brevity and great courage, sometimes walking right into flames — but it doesn’t make for an easy photograph. It’s all a bit like the sexual act: the flames come up and men run in and spray everything with a high power water hose and then it’s all over.
Short interview with photographer Helmut Newton.
Short interview with photographer Helmut Newton.
Q: Your about to be published autobiography stops in 1982. What have the readers missed?
A: Nothing! People who reach their goals are very uninteresting. What could I have written about the last 20 years? I met a lot of awfully boring Hollywood bimbos. I earned a lot of money. I fly only first class.
NSFW if tasteful nudes aren’t safe to view at your place of employ. Oh, and here’s another interview with Newton with a bit more about his work.
Polaroid is going to stop manufacturing film
Polaroid is going to stop manufacturing film for their instant cameras, which they stopped making a year ago.
The company, which stopped making instant cameras for consumers a year ago and for commercial use a year before that, said today that as soon as it had enough instant film manufactured to last it through 2009, it would stop making that, too. Three plants that make large-format instant film will close by the end of the quarter, and two that make consumer film packets will be shut by the end of the year, Bloomberg News reports.
Hopefully someone else will pick up where they left off; Polaroid is willing to license the manufacturing technology to other companies. (via clusterflock)
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