"
From photography’s earliest days, enterprising practitioners realized they could take their services directly to the people. This lead to the horse-drawn wagons called “Daguerreotype Salons” and then to portable, darkroom tents that allowed wet-plate photographers to make pictures outside. As technology advanced, the tents morphed into a single apparatus that combined both camera and darkroom, which allowed photographers to work anywhere. Afghanistan is one of the last places where street vendor photographers still use such a hand-made, wooden camera called kamra-e-faoree or “instant camera.” Observing this practice lead photographer Lukas Birk & anthropologist Sean Foley to undertake the Afghan Box Camera Project." -
Photo Technique Magazine introduction to an interview with Lukas Birk
[more inside]
posted by filthy light thief
on May 9, 2012 -
4 comments
Kevin J. Weir is an artist, making ads (
1,
2,
3,
4,
5), and more interestingly, not ads. In the latter category, he has made 3 stand-alone sites:
the Flux Machine, a tumblr of public domain images turned into animated GIFs, ranging from amusing to surreal (with an extra dash of Lovecraft), which
Cartoon Brew likened to
Terry Gilliam and
Stan VanDerBeek;
Nyan Waits, another spin-off of the
Nyan Cat meme/theme, now with more Tom Waits; and
Loud Portraits, an interactive portrait gallery.
[more inside]
posted by filthy light thief
on Apr 4, 2012 -
9 comments
Julius Neubronner, born in Germany in 1852, was the son of Wilhelm Neubronner. Wilhelm carried on the family-run pharmacy and had
introduced rapid medicine delivery by way of carrier pigeon (Google books). Julius continued the family practice, including pigeon-delivery. As a young boy, Julius was interested in the then-newly invented cameras, and his hobby and his career merged when a once-punctual pigeon took was waylaid a month. Interested to find the source of the delay,
Julius placed a miniature camera on the pigeon to see where it went. The effort was successful, and he improved upon the design,
patenting a panoramic pigeon-carried camera that resulted in
novel photos. Julius is also distinguished as an early German experimenter in amateur silent film.
His recordings, including
daily life,
historic events, and
film magic, were
restored in 1996 (Google Quickview; original PDF).
posted by filthy light thief
on Jan 9, 2012 -
15 comments
In September of 1848, Charles Fontayne and William Porter took a series of 8 panoramic views of Cincinnati by the then still new
daguerreian process, capturing a little more than two miles of the riverfront. In skilled hands, daguerreotype can capture an amazing resolution, so much that modern technology is required to view the full image.
In 2007, the 1848 Cincinnati panorama was restored, utilizing a stereo microscope, finding so much detail that the eight 6 ½ inch by 8 ¼ inch plates could be enlarged up to 170 by 20 feet without losing clarity. In May of this year,
the Public Library of Cincinnati and Hamilton County put the daguerreotype plates on display with touch-screen computer displays to see the fine details. But if you can't make it to Cincinnati, the library has
a new website where you can navigate and zoom in for a glimpse of life along the riverfront. [via
mefi projects]
[more inside]
posted by filthy light thief
on Jul 19, 2011 -
29 comments
Andres Serrano (some NSWF images) has made controversial art for decades, with his piece
Piss Christ causing controversy shortly after it was created in 1987. In 1989, the photograph initiated
outrage against the National Endowment for the Arts because of "anti-Christian bigotry". Then the piece was physically attacked
two times in one weekend, when it was first shown in the
National Gallery of Victoria in 1997. In December 2010, the
Collection Lambert museum of contemporary art in Avignon, France opened
a show called "I Believe in Miracles" that includes pieces of minimal art, conceptual art and land art, and includes
Piss Christ. The photograph had been shown in France before without disturbance, and had been shown without incident in Collection Lambert for four months, but
around 1,000 protesters marched to the museum on Saturday, and on Sunday vandals succeeded in attacking the picture, breaking the plexiglass shield and slashing the photograph.
The museum is open again, and the damaged work is still on display.
[more inside]
posted by filthy light thief
on Apr 19, 2011 -
143 comments
Back on
August 15, 2010, Aesop Rock kicked off a sprawling collaboration effort, with input by 28 artists, with
an eclectic collection of videos spanning from
music videos to
odd clips and
a Kimya Dawson recording studio dance party,
works by photographer Chrissy Piper, and
lots of music, from
unreleased tracks,
remixes, and
mixtapes. There's even a post about being
manhandled by a nude model, written by the Dwarvs front-man
Blag Dahlia. Going back to the beginning of the site, the second post was
a collection of facts about bats, and the only obvious connection back to the tragic impetus for the title of this ongoing collaboration (
900 bats) --
over 900 bats were torched to prevent disruption of work on the ongoing
renovations of the historic
Bala Quila (also spelled
Bala Qila) fort in
Alwar, Rajasthan, in north-eastern India.
[more inside]
posted by filthy light thief
on Dec 16, 2010 -
4 comments
Damon Winter is a photojournalist who has worked for The Dallas Morning News, The Los Angeles Times and
now works for The New York Times. His work on
a more sports-focused beat in Dallas lead to
his update on athletes from the 1984 Los Angeles Olympics as part of the
2008 Olympics coverage. As a photographer with The New York Times, he won the
2009 Pulitzer Prize for
feature photography, for his
first time out on the road, covering campaigns (narrated slideshow, 3min 19sec). Currently, he is sharing
his photos and
writing from Port-au-Prince, Haiti, which are included in NY Times
Lens Blog (prev. Lens Blog features:
1,
2,
3,
4,
5). If that's a bit heavy, check his
photographers journal (narrated slide show, 2min 34sec) and
his article on creating
double-exposure juxtapositions from days or weeks of shooting large-form film.
[more inside]
posted by filthy light thief
on Jan 20, 2010 -
6 comments
Campaigning MP Valérie Boyer, a member of Nicolas Sarkozy's
UMP party, has put forth another controversial bill to address the role of the fashion industry media in portraying healthy body images. Boyer, who wrote a government report on anorexia and obesity, is currently proposing
"health warnings" on digitally altered photographs of people, stating that the image was "digitally enhanced to modify a person’s body image." The previous bill supported by Boyer and others came in April 2008, when France's lower house of parliament passed
a bill that would make it a crime to promote "excessive thinness" or extreme dieting,. The bill would empower judges to punish with prison terms and fines of up to €45,000 any publication (including blogs), modeling agency, or fashion designer who "incites" anorexia. That bill, which followed closely after
key members of the French fashion industry signed a government-backed charter,
came under fire from fashion designers and some politicians. French fashion and politics weren't at the front of this effort, with
Madrid's fashion week turning away underweight models in 2006, facing concerns that girls and young women were trying to copy their rail-thin looks and developing eating disorders.
posted by filthy light thief
on Sep 23, 2009 -
37 comments
"
The arc of the Milky Way seen from a truly dark location is part of our planet's natural heritage," said Connie Walker, and astronomer from the U.S. National Optical Astronomy Observatory in Tucson, Arizona. Yet "more than one fifth of the world population, two thirds of the U.S. population and
one half of the European Union population have already lost naked eye visibility of the
Milky Way." In these areas, people are effectively living in
perennial moonlight. They rarely realize it because they still experience the sky to be brighter under a full moon than under new moon conditions. "
Reducing the number of lights on at night could help conserve energy, protect wildlife and benefit human health," astronomer Malcolm Smith of the Cerro Tololo Inter-American Observatory in Chile. One study found an increased risk of breast cancer for women living in areas with the most light pollution (
abstract). Some communities are
embracing their dark skies, such as
the New Zealand community of Tekapo, possibly home to first "
Starlight Reserve," waiting on UNESCO's official approval. Not sure where to look
in the vast night sky?
Follow some guidelines, or
check the view in Chile,
Queensland, Australia, or
Texas.
posted by filthy light thief
on Jun 13, 2009 -
74 comments
