Afronauts

Scenes from the failed 1960s Zambian Space Program by Cristina De Middel.

ICP Highlights 7/29/12

[Check for two murders], 1939

Weegee
[Accident on upper roadway of Grand Central Station, New York], 1944

Weegee
Balcony seats at a murder
November 16, 1939

"Speaking of Pictures . . .," LIFE, April 12, 1937, pp. 8–9

Crewdson's Fireflies

I just discovered Gregory Crewdson's Fireflies series from 1996. It looks like some kind of Victorian spirit photography:





Reminds me of the weirdness that is fireflies flashing in unison in Southeast Asia:

You Should Have Heard Just What I Seen

Rick Rubin at home with his parents, 1986


Debbie Harry at home, 1977

This Friday from 6-8 at the KS Art Gallery (73 Leonard St) there will be a book launch and exhibition for photographer James Hamilton, one of the sweetest men I know. Come meet me there! I designed the book!

Here is Thurston's short, rapturous essay about James and a small slide show of his work on Vanity Fair's website. You can RSVP at rsvp@ecstaticpeacelibrary.com

Helen Levitt at the Met

New York [Button to Secret Passage], 1938

I was just in the Met's Drawing, Prints & Photographs hall (my favorite part of the museum) and discovered the street photography of Helen Levitt for the first time. I'm probably the last person to find out about her and of course I only do so two months after she died. Now I'm off to try and find a used copy of her famous book A Way of Seeing for considerably less than the $2500 dollars it's valued at...

Errata Editions

Just saw these new books at the Strand the other day, a (hopefully) ongoing series of reproductions of famous (and prohibitively expensive) photography books. I'm so happy to be seeing such a well designed package making good art more accessible to people:

From Eugene Atget's Photographe de Paris

From Walker Evans' American Photographs

Treehouses for the Homeless

I thought both Christo's Gates and Eliasson's Waterfalls were ugly, uninspired and over-hyped. There. I said it. Meanwhile I just stumbled across Tadashi Kawamata's Tree Huts in Madison Sqare Park never having heard of them (or that they had been installed way back in September and are coming down in February) and am in love! Madison Square Park in particular has had a series of great public art including installations by artists Mark Dion and Wim Delvoye. Here's to more great pieces being quietly installed all over the city instead of a few lame blockbusters!
























I like looking at this one next to Steichen's The Flatiron (1904):

Micro Machines

Tilt-shift photography (aka the Adult Swim effect) is great. Monster Truck rallies are exciting. Why hadn't anyone thought of putting them together before?



Check out the guy's other tilt-frame videos on his Vimeo page. [via BoingBoing] This also reignited my former obsession with Micro Machines. I was kind of a boy-failure for not being at all interested in matchbox cars but my passion for all things miniaturized could sometimes disguise my shortcomings.

PS. Also check out the Wired How-To Wiki to learn how to fake a tilt-shift photo in Photoshop without a billion dollar camera. I'm now off to eBay to try and buy micro machines in bulk...

Max Pam - Indian Ocean Journals

Photograph by Peter Beard

There are so many beautiful art books out there that you and I will never be able to afford and even if one could afford them, how often would you really look at them? On top of that, the art world makes sure that images of artwork don't make it onto the web (or at least not anywhere I can find). The fact that you can't look at the complete works of an artist over 100 years old in this day and age is ludicrous. Maybe I'll start posting images I've found that I love but would never remember to look at again. While looking for images of Peter Beard's artwork I stumbled upon someone's blog who photographs spreads of their favorite art books so that more than just the dozen people who can afford them can see them. Here's a series of spreads from Max Pam's work Indian Ocean Journals:

Teacups, Ping Pong & the Matrix

So I found this photo (click it to see it larger) by the Japanese artist Nagi Noda and really appreciated its wit and clever simplicity. Later I came across this video—also Japanese (coincidence?)—and felt the same:



It reminded me of Michel Gondry who, despite his many critics (including myself), at the end of the day makes me very happy to see him act upon his every child-like whimsical notion, and can we even begin to contemplate the multiple meanings of him making a "Sweded" remake of the trailer of his own movie? (Please also note his wearing black gloves to signify him being Mos Def):



Oh, and as long as I'm on the subject of weird Japanese kids, floating, The Matrix, whimsy and general coolness, here's one of my favorite animated shorts (From the Matrix spin-off Animatrix):