Posts tagged photography
photo 
Wooden whales
Wooden whales
via FFFFOUND!
I simply liked these whales in shades of wood (provenance unknown—but isn't that the way with whales?), combining both a handmade/natural and graphic-design aesthetic. And these lines I read yesterday in the Literary Review, from a piece on Philip Hoare's Leviathan, or, The Whale: "Right now, as you read this, whale oil lubricates the Hubble Space Telescope, 'while the Voyager probe spins into infinity playing the song of the humpback to greet any friendly aliens—who may wonder at our treatment of the species with which we share our planet.'"
Nate
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photo Little India, Singapore
Little India, Singapore
from "Little India, Singapore," by williamcho, 1 September 2008 :: via the Intelligent Travel flickr pool
It is, after all, backpacks week at Culture Making. I don't think of the Prince of Wales as being much of a backpacker (except in the sense of toting your watercolors across the deer park). But then again I don't much think of Braveheart when I want to check my email, either.
Nate
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AP Photo by Karim Kadim, from "Scenes from Iraq," The Big Picture, 3 September 2008
AP caption: "A painter decorates a security wall sealing off the southern section of the Shiite enclave of Sadr City in Baghdad, Iraq on Wednesday, Aug. 6, 2008." I love the particular choice of scenery, which I'd guess is as foreign to Baghdadis as ... well, as this particular type of wall itself.
Nate
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photo G. SALE
G. SALE
"G. SALE," Beaverton, Oregon (2008), photo by the blogger
This is a sign one of my neighbors set out up the street earlier this summer. I was impressed by its somewhat manic brevity—and how, in the context, the first letter is really all that's needed. (At the time I also happened to be reading John Berger's novel G., whose cover in the paperback I had was in the same burgundy-and-golden-brown range—a lovely random convergance of cultural artifacts, of life and lit).
Nate
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"Red Earth," by Erika Larsen, Women in Photography
From Larsen's series of photos of child hunters. She writes, "[f]or them, the thrill is learning to follow their instincts and being immersed in nature. All these children have something in common, they are at home in nature." And yet hunting is, as ever, a deeply cultural activity, full of specialized equipment, specific rituals, and purposeful tradition.
Nate
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from Alphabet Truck, by Eric Tabuchi, 2007 :: via lens culture
I'm always a fan of sets of photos of similar objects (typologies, they call them?). Even better: typographic typologies! How does the car-trip game go, "I spy with my little eye ..."
Nate
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photo Color wheel, by Tori
Color wheel, by Tori
from "Creative Color Wheels," Tori's Pics :: via FFFFOUND!
I like this because it shows simple response to what nature presents us: a catalog of noticing and arranging that gets to the heart of a sort of simple everyday creativity we can all, with a bit of intention and a bit of patience, practice.
Nate
:Doctored photographs are the least of our worries. If you want to trick someone with a photograph, there are lots of easy ways to do it. You don’t need Photoshop. You don’t need sophisticated digital photo-manipulation. You don’t need a computer. All you need to do is change the caption.
—Errol Morris, documentary filmmaker, NYTimes.com
"Eiffel Tower, Paris," by Mojca Vilfan :: via Intelligent Travel
I like how this is an upside-down perspective, but also from above. And -- totally tangentially -- the patterns in the sand remind me of: the story of Jesus and the Woman Caught in Adultery; the propensity of elephants (at least bored zoo elephants) to pick up sticks with their trunks and doodle in the dust; and, bringing it back home, Andy's elegant description of the ever-widening circle of bare earth made by his kids' dragging feet beneath the swing in his yard.
Nate
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"Fruteria on the corner of Billinghurst and Mansilla" (Buenos Aires, Argentina), by Thomas Locke Hobbs, 1 August 2008
Of this photo, my friend Thomas writes: "Talk about a special pineapple! The straw that outlines the shape of this fruta elegida reminds me of a shimmering believer from some El Greco painting." Indeed. I love the amount of care that must go in to the daily arranging and rearranging of these displays -- click through to the original photo to see it in its full-sized glory.
Nate
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"Untitled" (Stedelijk Museum 1, 2008), by Pasquale Ottaiano :: via FILE Magazine
I'm not sure I'm as into this particular painting as this young woman in the photo, but I love the depiction of art-contemplation -- and the bodily symmetry: is the art falling into her, or is she falling into the art? I also appreciate the fact that she's away from the museum description on the wall, taking it in on her own (well, and the bench-placement-department's) terms.
Nate
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"Billboards no.02," giclee photo print on aluminum (2008), by Branislav Kropilak :: via Cool Hunting
I love Kropilak's beautiful (though admittedly severe) photos of the infrastructure of advertising, a reminder that bilboards aren't just about the surface.
Nate
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"Tarzan and Jan," Baden Württemberg, Germany, by Jan Von Holleben, from the series Dreams of Flying (2001-2007) :: via Flak Photo
I love this series of photos because even though it's a simple and obvious visual joke, it gets at one of the wonders of being a kid, the simultaneous limitation (after all, you're just a kid) and creative possibility.
Nate
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photo A sea of technology
A sea of technology
detail from a photo by Jae C. Hong (AP), from "Obama's Berlin speech appears to resonate with crowd," Los Angeles Times, 25 July 2008
Like most of you, I saw, and didn't give much thought to, the now-pretty-much-cliche'd photo-from-behind of Obama giving his speech to the crowd in Berlin this week. But when I went back to it and zoomed in, I had the following thoughts: 1) Hey laptop-guy, way to improvise! 2) I'll bet you 500 billion Zimbabwe dollars that this is the most front-page coverage Angola has gotten in the US since, ever; and 3) everybody's holding up a digital camera! I suppose that shouldn't be that surprising, but up close it's like this sea of technology superimposed on (or rather, above -- can you imagine this photo with old-style, press-to-face viewfinder cameras?) the expected sea of humanity.
Nate
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from The Prayer Book of Claude de France, illuminated pocket manuscript, c.1517, at The Morgan Library & Museum, New York City :: via BibliOdyssey
The hands in the photo seem to be mainly for demonstrative purposes but I love the gesture all the same.
Nate
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photo Underground beauty
Underground beauty
from "Tunnel of Beauty," by Jeff Shinabarger, 21 July 2008
Photo by Brian Murphy of a tunnel in Atlanta where graffiti artists have created what Jeff Shinabarger calls "a free haven of true and raw creative talent." Part of a collaboration between Brian and Jeff—and, in a real way, with the unseen graffiti artists themselves.
Andy
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NASA photo :: via the Boston Globe's The Big Picture blog.
A photo from the Apollo 16 mission, Charles Duke's family portrait. I love the juxtaposition of the iconic and the personal -- and the plastic bag protecting the photo.
Nate
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“Mona Lisa Fever”, by Rehan Shaikh, 2008 :: via FILE Magazine
A prime example of the way that digital cameras are changing the way we look at things—it isn't as real when you aren't watching it on a screen.
Nate
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"Sections of a Happy Moment," by David Claerbout, 2007, at Galerie Micheline Szwajcer, Antwerp and Yvon Lambert, Paris and New York :: via lens culture
I love how the game and social, inter-generational connection emerges in spite of a not-that-hospitable brutalist urban setting.
Nate
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"Billboard Homes," by Andrew Phelps, 2006, from the book Higley :: via lens culture
Nate
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