Virtual hacking is cool but place hacking makes it core again, brachiating across scaffolding to get the shot on your Digital SLR that maximizes your flickr stats, raking in the google adsense cash and conforming to a zerowork ethos if we get pro at it. Sleep in ruins, sell your photos of disgusting shit to tourists. Rinse off in a petrol station sink and repeat. We are the nerds that finally walked away from their computers and we are behind that scaffolding covering the building you ignore everyday when you walk by it going to work, we just loved on that place like no one has in 20 years. We are psychotopological terrorists and we will shove that masterlock up your ass.
A "reformed archaeologist" talks about
exploration of urban ruins. Modern urban ruins.
posted by Rumple
on Jan 21, 2010 -
72 comments
"Proposition. We are all archaeologists, even if we don't realize it. An archaeological sensibility - working on what is left of the past, heritage, museums, collecting culture, antiques, retro styling, family genealogy, local history, tourists visiting the past - is a vital part of the contemporary zeitgeist.
Archaeography and
Archaeographer are photoblogs that explore the connections between photography and archaeology." Mining a similar vein is
The Nonist's Archeography Project.
posted by Kattullus
on Oct 24, 2007 -
6 comments
Have I ever told you what the river is like on a hot summer night? At dusk the mist hangs in long white bands over the water; the twilight fades and the lights of the town shine out on either bank, with the river, dark and smooth and full of mysterious reflections, like a road of triumph through the midst. - Gertrude Bell writing of the Euphrates near Baghdad. Gertrude Bell -
daughter of the desert,
Uncrowned Queen of Iraq, Advisor to kings and Ally of Lawrence of Arabia.
Gertrude Bell was a
traveller and mountaineer, recruited by British Intelligence to work in the Middle East during the First World War and, who later worked for the British Government in Baghdad.
Bell's influence on Middle Eastern politics made her the
most powerful woman in the British Empire in the years after World War I. She was a archeologist, writer, translated the poetry of
Hafiz and a
photographer as well. 1909: Letters from Gertrude Bell, dated
May 14 and
May 20. She died early in the morning of July 12th, 1926, 58 years old, from an overdose of sleeping pills--whether accidental or not is not known. She is buried in Baghdad, where her grave is still visited and her memory revered.
Cherchez La Femme
posted by y2karl
on Mar 23, 2003 -
12 comments
Archaeological Collage. Neat old cityscene photographs dissolve part by part into modern shots of the same location. Slide the slider and trollies morph into cars, stoop tragedy is supplanted by stoop dalliance. This site has been my white whale: I spent many months tracking it down after losing the link, asking
here, asking
there, and finally getting an
Answer. SPOILER: In the saddest one, going left to right, you're delighted that the grand hotel survives, until in the last 10% it yields to a parking lot. *sob* (Shockwave required)
posted by luser
on Nov 11, 2002 -
9 comments
