Photographer
Arne Svenson has
sparked a bit of
controversy with his recent show "
The Neighbors," about which he says, "I turned to the residents of a glass-walled apartment building across the street from my NYC studio. The Neighbors don’t know they are being photographed; I carefully shoot from the shadows of my home into theirs. I am not unlike the birder, quietly waiting for hours, watching for the flutter of a hand or the movement of a curtain as an indication that there is life within."
[more inside]
posted by taz
on May 17, 2013 -
323 comments
The Englishman and the eel is a
photo essay of 93 images
(thumbnails here; 2 pages) and
article by London photographer Stuart Freedman that "attempts to look at (amongst other things) the significance and the decline of the eel and its fading from the changing London consciousness" with snapshots of "those palaces of Cockney culture, the Pie and Mash shops."
[more inside]
posted by taz
on Feb 24, 2013 -
30 comments
"Outcasts are my kind, they try harder. From strip joints to Burlesque theaters, I went on a quest and met the 'Legends', these dominating characters of the quintessential American art of strip tease. Hours of confidence on tapes, intimate photo sessions, they peel off and reveal the hidden layers of their life with throaty emotion. Their memories reflecting the memories of the land. Vietnam vets and bikers are their loyal patrons..."
The Living Art Of Risqué, a photo essay from Marie Baronnet, features portraits of former strippers aged 60 to 95, accompanied by short bio-vignettes in their own words.
[NSFW; nudity] [more inside]
posted by taz
on Jan 10, 2013 -
4 comments
Moscow of 1931 is a collection of hand-tinted lantern slides by Branson DeCou, an American photographer and travelogue lecturer who traveled the world for 30 years before his death in 1941. You can view more of the DeCou corpus online at the
Branson Decou Archive at the University of California, Santa Cruz where they've been attempting to sort, preserve, identify and digitize 10,000 DeCou slides received in 1971, a gift referred to the university chancellor by photographer Ansel Adams.
[more inside]
posted by taz
on Apr 14, 2012 -
16 comments
"The Secret Gestural Prehistory of Mobile Devices is cultural anthropology. It seeks to recover those moments of intuitive prehensile dexterity, when the famous and the ordinary alike felt the unconscious desire to occupy their hands for an as yet unknown purpose. Like Roy Neary's obsession with the image of Devil's Tower in Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977), this gesture was vague, uncanny and compelling. It is the intimation in images of a gestural second nature to come."
[more inside]
posted by taz
on Mar 20, 2012 -
16 comments
Surreal photographic Foodscapes by photographer Carl Warner. Strawberry hot air balloons, towers of cheese, potato boulders, green pea boats on seas of salmon, spice roads, and sugar beaches populate these intricate and luscious scenes. More dishy foodscapes
(the plate rainbow = ♥!) and other wonderful visual tricks at his
Flash site in the "Fotographics" section (look for the fabulous forest of boots and the white cotton winter wonderland!).
[more inside]
posted by taz
on Feb 2, 2008 -
28 comments
Photographs of the dancers, actresses, cafe-life figures and prostitutes who were the subjects of Toulouse Lautrec's paintings, including such luminaries as
Sarah Bernhardt, "
La Goulue" (Louise Weber;
remember this?), and
Jane Avril, who was the model for
this last, iconic, Lautrec poster. View pages of the art matched up with photos,
here,
here, and
here, and
go to this page to rummage around in even more collections that include photos of Lautrec, his friends and family, street and location scenes, and lots of other tidbits.
[Spanish language site; NUDITY]
posted by taz
on Jul 5, 2007 -
10 comments
The Third View project is a fascinating presentation of "rephotographs" of over 100 historic landscape sites in the American West that presents original 19th-century survey photographs, photographed again in the 1970s, then once again in the '90s - from the original vantage points, under similar lighting conditions, at (roughly) the same time of day and year.
[Flash, and you'll probably need to allow pop-ups; a little more info inside...]
posted by taz
on Jun 15, 2007 -
13 comments
The Hidden Messages in Water? Masaru Emoto claims that water has the ability "to absorb, hold, and even retransmit human feelings and emotions. Using high-speed photography, he found that crystals formed in frozen water reveal changes when specific, concentrated thoughts are directed toward it. Music, visual images, words written on paper, and photographs also have an impact on the crystal structure." The theory may be
suspect, but the
photos are beautiful.
posted by taz
on May 11, 2005 -
115 comments
Tragic Beauties: antique wax mannequins. "
Unlike the frozen, lifeless mannequins of today, these European busts were posed for, many at the turn of the century, by flesh and blood women". (I'm not sure how
this one found it's way in there.)
posted by taz
on Aug 29, 2004 -
22 comments
Nice Flash presentation of images on his site from photographer Hans Neleman's books "Night Chicas", "Moko-Maori Tattoo", "Body Transformed", and "Silence". NSFW, fer shure. (Note that you can switch
from slideshow mode to manual with controls on the right.)
More Neleman at Kodak's
Legends Online (work-safe), and more from "Night Chicas"
here (almost work-safe, but if the policy is strict - don't go.)
posted by taz
on Aug 26, 2004 -
6 comments
Big Hats and Eroticism is just one of the many features of
Tallulahs.com, an excellent site dedicated to images of the
vintage nude. There's also lots of wonderful trivia and commentary, such as a
brief biography of the
Mante sisters (immortalized in the brilliant ballerina images of painter
Edgar Degas), and the story of
Liane de Pougy, convent girl turned runaway wife, turned
celebrated dancer of the French stage, turned
Romanian Princess. Or you can read about the
mystery of H. Traut,
elusive photographer of "the gentle eroticism of fairyland" whose
images graced hundreds of postcards for several years until he
seemingly vanished from the scene some time before WWI. Interested in
drawing or painting nudes yourself? Here's a page of
classical nude poses - studies in various categories that you can work from, including "
The beauty of butts" and "
seductive smoking"! Plus, you can peruse
Tallulah's own art nudes, and a fabulous
links page. NSFW, obviously.
posted by taz
on Aug 9, 2004 -
4 comments
I've been having a great time exploring the maze that is
Musarium, wandering about and peeking into into various nooks and crannies to find such exotica as the wonderfully bizarre
birdhand book, and absorbing cultural artifacts and musings, including the poetic
Visions and Icons (I really love the way the text works with the images on this), the atmospheric
Familiar Ghosts (the texts will cue you on clicking through this somewhat dream-like landscape), the time-capsule imagery of
Balkan Portraits (1906-1910), the
breathtaking portraits of photographer Steve McCurry (famous for his National Geographic portait of the Afghani girl), the subterranean monologue of
Grand Central: the View Down Under, and the shocking and heartbreaking
Without Sanctuary: Lynching Photography in America. There's a lot more, so take your time. You can use
this page to access archived material.
posted by taz
on Aug 8, 2004 -
13 comments
Wonderfully surreal. Five galleries of (literally) fantastic, mostly figurative images by Maggie Taylor. Serendipity has me reading
Perdido Street Station at the moment, and these quaintly eerie portraits seem almost as though they could have been plucked from Miéville's mythic population of bizarre Remades, uncanny constructs and outlandish alien races. Beautiful. (Click the eye.)
posted by taz
on Jun 14, 2004 -
9 comments
You have been disciplined all your life :::: Nothing Changed - Nothing Will
Words of encouragement from Piotr Szyhalski's
Electric Poster Series (Animated gif images). Artist's web site
here.
posted by taz
on Dec 4, 2003 -
12 comments
Red Dog Army: "Red Dogs line up along the edges of the art-world. They have many objectives...
Their purpose is to put art into the hands of anyone who sees them and takes them home...
They are distributed by a person or persons unknown, tracing movement in cities across the world. They inhabit their new environment sometimes for just a few minutes before being destroyed or taken in by a new art collector. Or they may remain for months, changing shape and being forced into compromising positions. Above all, they are always seen by someone. Their presence is noticed, noted and very red."
Take note, Antipodeans, and keep your eyes open; the red dog comes for you.
posted by taz
on May 3, 2003 -
6 comments
German Objectivist photographer Karl Blossfeldt (1865-1932) once said "the best constructions for industrial design have already been anticipated in nature." Do your eyes a favor and
look here.
posted by taz
on Apr 30, 2003 -
9 comments
Something nice. In a refreshingly simple and visually appealing presentation, "Places" explores the synergy between artists and the locations that inspire them. From a virtual landscape created from the surface of an agate, to a 1787 map of Mecca included in the Dala'il al-Khayrat ("Guides to Good Things"), to an 1885 photograph of a single moment captured in the reflection of a gazing ball, these eight fascinating examples seem to suggest that places are nothing so much as what our own observation reveals of them at any given time.
posted by taz
on Mar 22, 2003 -
4 comments
"Twexus does contain 15800 images today". Twexus is an enigmatic, engaging little database-driven photoart site that rewards you with new site features as your page views increase. I can't seem to tear free from the hypnotic effect of the "
symmetry" page that concerns itself with my opinion on each proffered image.
sorry, gotta go... must... return... to... twexus...
posted by taz
on Nov 21, 2002 -
15 comments
The Russian Avant-Garde Book is an online version of the MoMA exhibit, featuring 112 books originally published in Russia during the intensely creative period between 1910 and 1934, before Stalin outlawed any style but social realism. The site is separated into three chronological themes and includes examples of futurist works, constructivist graphic design, children's books, propaganda, photography and photomontage, revolutionary imagery, architecture and industry, war themes, folk art and judaica...
posted by taz
on Oct 8, 2002 -
16 comments
