Water Street, (DUMBO) Brooklyn (February, 2010)
(See more photos from the “Literature Versus Traffic” project @ luzinterruptus)
Archive for the ‘Photography’ Category
Travel Photo of the Day: Brooklyn (DUMBO), New York – Literature Versus Traffic
Posted in Books, Brooklyn, DUMBO, New York City, Photography, U.S. Travel on February 28, 2010| Leave a Comment »
Water Under the Bridges: Joshua Derr’s Photographs of DUMBO, Brooklyn
Posted in Architecture, Brooklyn, DUMBO, New York City, Photography, Urban Affairs on December 15, 2009| Leave a Comment »
“Despite a six-day-a-week work schedule, Derr always makes time to take pictures. His images of DUMBO, Cobble Hill, Carroll Gardens, Red Hook, and Brooklyn Heights can be seen on Flickr — and purchased through Imagekind — and have appeared in the Gothamist, the New York Times, and Brooklyn Heights blog. They’ve also been published on dumbonyc.com and used in the promotional materials of Arts at St. Ann’s and the DUMBO Neighborhood Association. . . .
“‘DUMBO was rough when I arrived,’ he begins. ‘There is a building complex on Sand Street that is owned by The Watchtower where about 900 staff live. When I first moved in, the area was not as refined as it is now, with galleries, shops, and brand name stores. Before, there were art collectives and there was more of an artist presence in the community. Right up the street there was the Between the Bridges Bar, which looked like a dive. I guess something was lost, and something gained.’
“Among the losses, Derr says, is DUMBO’s once-gritty feel—the abandoned warehouses and factories, broken concrete, and glass shards that used to litter the ground. He is saddened, he says, by the destruction of numerous art deco structures, one of which, the Purchase Building, was knocked down to create a parking lot that now houses the Brooklyn Flea each Sunday.” (more @ The Brooklyn Rail, via Dumbo NYC)
Travel Photo of the Day: Tarnow, Poland (9/11-Related Graffiti)
Posted in American History, Europe, Foreign Travel, New York City, Photography on September 11, 2009| Leave a Comment »
Stencilled graffiti on wall in Tarnow, Poland “celebrating” anniversary of destruction of World Trade Center towers on 9/11 (May, 2008). [Click image to enlarge]
Travel Photo(s) of the Day: Graffiti, Italian Style (Roma)
Posted in Europe, Foreign Travel, Jewish Life, Photography, Religion on June 9, 2009| Leave a Comment »
Anti-Nazi and Anti-Papal graffiti, Rome, Italy (May, 2009) [Click images to enlarge]
The Unburied: Corpses Having Sex, Coffee Table Book on Cadavers
Posted in Art & Artists, Books, Education, Europe, Health & Medicine, Human Behavior, Museums & Exhibitions, Performing Arts, Photography, Science & Technology, Sex & Gender on May 7, 2009| Leave a Comment »
“Visual explorations of how the human body works have had us riveted since before Leonardo da Vinci sketched the famous Vitruvian man sometime around 1487. That fascination is the focus of what may be one of the most gruesome coffee table books ever.
“Dissection: Photographs of a Rite of Passage in American Medicine 1880-1930 contains hundreds of pictures of medical students posing with the cadavers they were learning to dissect.
“These photos were something of an underground genre, says author John Warner, a professor of medical history at Yale. You wouldn’t see one in a doctor’s waiting room, but they were taken and treasured, and sometimes even passed around as Christmas cards.” (more @ NPR) [Click image to enlarge]
Meanwhile, in Berlin:
“A controversial German anatomy artist is facing protests over his latest plastination exhibition after unveiling a work showing two corpses having sexual intercourse.
“Gunther von Hagens, whose latest exhibition, Cycle of Life, opens in Berlin tomorrow, has defended the exhibit saying that it combines the two greatest taboos of sex and death and is a lesson in biology, but is ‘not meant to be sexually stimulating’.
“The exhibition has drawn angry protests from a cross-party group of politicians as well as church representatives. They have called for the work to be withdrawn, saying it is pornographic and an insult to the dead. . . .
“Von Hagens developed the plastination method several years ago after discovering a method for preserving bodies by replacing their fat and water deposits with injections of silicon, which then harden.
“His popular exhibitions, which have travelled the world, have included corpses playing chess, high jumping, and horse riding. Others have shown a dead pregnant woman and foetuses at various stages of development.” (more @ Guardian.UK)
Related: Prof In Corpse Sex Plan
La Dolce Vita: NSRG Traveling to Italy
Posted in Actors & Acting, Education, Europe, Foreign Travel, Performing Arts, Photography, Plays & Playwrights, Theater on May 6, 2009| Leave a Comment »
Posting will be spotty between now and the first week in June. I’ll be in DUMBO next week to see my son in “Sine Wave Goodbye” at the Ontological-Hysteric Theater and to attend my daughter’s commencement at Fordham University where she’s receiving her M.S. in TESOL Education. On the 17th my wife and I are off to Italy for two-plus weeks: Venice, Naples (Pompeii, Herculaneum), Sorrento & the Amalfi Coast, Rome. While in Italy I’ll post my impressions — especially of the food — on Twitter (you can follow my feedings either through the Twitter widget on the NSRG home page or directly on my Twitter page). Arrivederci!
British Art Publisher “Thames & Hudson” Celebrates 60th Anniversary
Posted in Architecture, Art & Artists, Books, Business, Europe, Jewish Life, Photography on April 21, 2009| Leave a Comment »
“During the late Thirties, some of Britain’s most distinguished architects, artists, musicians, film-makers and others, many of them Jewish, arrived on our shores with their meagre belongings having escaped from the Nazi threat in continental Europe. Many of them made their homes here and went on to leave a lasting mark on our intellectual and cultural life. Britain reaped a rich reward for its tolerance. . . .
“Among them were two refugees from Vienna, Walter Neurath and Eva Feuchtwang. . . .
“They met in London during the war, fell in love, and in 1949, 60 years ago, they pooled their passions, and set up a new art publishing imprint that would straddle the Atlantic.
“They named it Thames & Hudson, after the rivers of London and New York, and their aim was to publish reasonably priced books on art, sculpture and architecture, in which words and pictures were integrated and accessible to all. They wanted their books to educate, inform and entertain as a ‘museum without walls’. . . .
“Setting out to rebuild British culture Thames & Hudson has grown into a hugely successful company, and it remains one of Britain’s last family-held publishing dynasties.” (more @ Times Online)
R.I.P. – Helen Levitt (1913-2009)
Posted in Art & Artists, Brooklyn, New York City, Obituaries, Photography on March 30, 2009| Leave a Comment »
“Helen Levitt, a major photographer of the 20th century who caught fleeting moments of surpassing lyricism, mystery and quiet drama on the streets of her native New York, died in her sleep at her home in Manhattan on Sunday. She was 95. . . .
“Ms. Levitt captured instances of a cinematic and delightfully guileless form of street choreography that held at its heart, as William Butler Yeats put it, ‘the ceremony of innocence.’ A man handles garbage-can lids like an exuberant child imitating a master juggler. Even an inanimate object — a broken record — appears to skip and dance on an empty street as a child might, observed by a group of women’s dresses in a shop window.
“As marvelous as these images are, the masterpieces in Ms. Levitt’s oeuvre are her photographs of children living their zesty, improvised lives. A white girl and a black boy twirl in a dance of their own imagining. Four girls on a sidewalk turning to stare at five floating bubbles become contrapuntal musical notes in a lovely minor key.
“In Ms. Levitt’s best-known picture, three properly dressed children prepare to go trick-or-treating on Halloween 1939. Standing on the stoop outside their house, they are in almost metaphorical stages of readiness. The girl on the top step is putting on her mask; a boy near her, his mask in place, takes a graceful step down, while another boy, also masked, lounges on a lower step, coolly surveying the world.
“‘At the peak of Helen’s form,’ John Szarkowski, former director of the photography department at the Museum of Modern Art, once said, ‘there was no one better.'” (more @ NY Times)
Related
On Broadway: Sotheby’s to Auction Rare 1840s New York City Daguerreotype
Posted in American History, Antiques & Folk Art, Business, Collectors & Collecting, New York City, Photography on March 27, 2009| Leave a Comment »
“In the early to mid-19th century . . . the Upper West Side of Manhattan was open countryside, with large estates, white picket fences and wagons trundling along a rutted road already known as Broadway.
“Photographic evidence of that era is scant, as most studios offering the newfangled daguerreotypes were located several miles away at the island’s populated lower end and focused, literally, on that area. But one rural scene, recently discovered in New England, is going up for sale at Sotheby’s on Monday. It’s believed to date to 1848. . . .
“As the Sotheby’s picture predates the laying out of Gotham’s numbered cross streets, the exact location is unknown, but a notation on the back, signed by ‘L.B.,’ identifies it as on ‘the main road … called a continuation of Broadway.’ . . .
“Sotheby’s estimates the presale value of the daguerreotype at $50,000 to $70,000.” (more @ NPR)
Travel Photo of the Day: Krakow, Poland (Remu Shul Cemetary)
Posted in Europe, Foreign Travel, Jewish Life, Photography on March 23, 2009| Leave a Comment »
Wall built from gravestone fragments, Remu Shul (Synagogue) cemetary, Kraków, Poland.
“The Remu [also: Rema, Remuh] synagogue (acronym for Rabbi Moses Isserles) is located in Kazimierz, the Jewish quarter of Krakow, and was founded in 1553 by Israel Isserles. The Remu was considered to be the ‘Maimonides of Polish Jewry’ and was known for his universal outlook, his extensive Talmudic and secular knowledge, his manner of study, and his humility. . . .
“The adjacent Remu cemetery was used until 1799, and contains the graves of the Remu and his family. . . . After [World War II], the cemetery was restored and pieces of broken headstones which could not be matched were used to make a memorial cemetery wall.” (more @ New Cracow Friendship Society; Full photo; May, 2008)
Fading from View: View-Master 3-D Travel Reels Discontinued
Posted in Business, Collectors & Collecting, Foreign Travel, Photography, Popular Culture, U.S. Travel on March 15, 2009| Leave a Comment »
First introduced at the 1939 World’s Fair in New York, “the iconic [View-Master] reels of tourist attractions, often packaged with a clunky plastic viewer and first sold to promote 3-D photography, are ending their 70-year run after years of diminishing sales. . . .
“Scenic discs are no longer a good fit for the Fisher-Price division of toy maker Mattel Inc., a spokeswoman said, and the company stopped making them in December. Fisher-Price, based in East Aurora, N.Y., will keep making better-selling reels of Shrek, Dora the Explorer and other animated characters, spokeswoman Juliette Reashor said in an e-mail to The Associated Press.” (more @ MSN)
Related
Travel Photo of the Day: New York City (Manhattan)
Posted in New York City, Photography, U.S. Travel on March 13, 2009| Leave a Comment »
Travel Photo of the Day: Berlin (Germans On A Bridge; Naked People)
Posted in Europe, Foreign Travel, Photography, Sex & Gender on March 6, 2009| Leave a Comment »
From photographer Simon Høgsberg, a new work, We’re All Going To Die – 100 Meters of Existence, shot from the same spot over the course of 20 days during the summer of 2007, features 178 people walking across a railroad bridge on Warschauer Strasse in Berlin. One hundred meters wide, the image is scene in panels that progress by scrolling, or sliding, along the bottom of the main panel.
Also from Germany, another set of interactive photographs, “Naked People,” offers a revealing look at 24 German men and women of varying sizes, ages and occupations, whose clothing vanishes with a click of the mouse. By my admittedly loose translation, the project asserts that clothing, broadly accepted as a social signifier, offers only illusion, telling us little or nothing about a person’s true character. Finally, by confronting us — after a mouse-click — with the person now undressed, the project asks if even unclothed an individual’s character remains unfathomable. (Both series via The Daily Dish)
NEA Report: Artists & Unemployment in a Year of Recession
Posted in Art & Artists, Economy, Literature, Photography, Plays & Playwrights, Writers & Writing on March 5, 2009| 1 Comment »
“Unemployment rates are up among working artists and the artist workforce has contracted, according to new research from the National Endowment for the Arts. Artists in a Year of Recession: Impact on Jobs in 2008 examines how the economic slowdown has affected the nation’s working artists. The study looks at artist employment patterns during two spikes in the current recession – the fourth quarters of 2007 and 2008. This downturn reflects larger economic declines: a Commerce Department report last week noted a 6.2 percent decrease in the gross domestic product in the last quarter of 2008.
“Among the findings:
- Artists are unemployed at twice the rate of professional workers
- Unemployment rates for artists have risen more rapidly than for U.S. workers as a whole
- Artist unemployment rates would be even higher if not for the large number of artists leaving the workforce
- Unemployment rose for most types of artist occupations
- The job market for artists is unlikely to improve until long after the U.S. economy starts to recover” (via mediabistro)
Travel Photo of the Day: Can Tho, Viet Nam
Posted in Asia, Foreign Travel, Photography on February 20, 2009| Leave a Comment »
Near Can Tho in the south of Viet Nam, along one of the smaller canals feeding into the Mekong River, an elderly woman transports ashes bought from one family to be sold to another that will use their purchase as fertilizer (December, 2006)
Travel Photo of the Day: Hoi An, Viet Nam
Posted in Asia, Food & Wine, Foreign Travel, Photography on February 17, 2009| Leave a Comment »
Cao Lau, the celebrated Vietnamese noodle dish (usually served with pork and fried rice paper bits), according to local legend can only be made authentically in the ancient port town of Hoi An with water drawn from wells such as the one pictured here dug hundreds of years ago by the Cham people (December, 2006)
Travel Photo of the Day: Central Park, New York (The Gates)
Posted in New York City, Photography, U.S. Travel, Urban Affairs on February 16, 2009| Leave a Comment »
The Gates, an installation along 23 miles of Central Park pathways, by Christo and Jeanne-Claude, February, 2005
Travel Photo of the Day: Angkor, Cambodia
Posted in Asia, Foreign Travel, Photography on February 15, 2009| Leave a Comment »
Cambodian musicians, all victims of land mines, performing for donations on an entrance road to the Angkor Wat temple complex, Angkor, Cambodia (December, 2006) (Full photo)
Related: The Cambodia Landmine Museum
Travel Photo of the Day: Berlin, Germany
Posted in Europe, Foreign Travel, Jewish Life, Photography, Religion on February 14, 2009| 1 Comment »
Travel Photo of the Day: New Orleans, Louisiana
Posted in Photography, U.S. Travel on February 13, 2009| Leave a Comment »
Brass band, part of wedding procession through streets of the French Quarter, New Orleans, Louisiana, June, 2006
The 'Not-So-Rough' Guide 