Between 1868 and 1872 Scottish photographer John Thomson made a series of trips in China travelling from Hong Kong to Beijing by boat and from Shanghai up the Yangtze to the Three Gorges. 

He produced a book of over 200 photos ​ arranged as a travelouge taking Europeans into Chinese homes of rich and poor. The photo above for example was taken in the home of Mr. Yang "a gentleman enormously rich, and holding an official rank in Peking.” (Thomson was clearly enchanted with Yang’s courtyard home which he described as "a paradise.”)

 

Many of the interior windows were covered with rice paper. Thomson noted that women (who were sequestered from the men) would touch their tounges to the paper making it temporarily transparent to peer through the spots as he passed by.

Look at these images full sized. There’s a lot hidden in the details. Unlike many other early photographers he didn’t spend all his time photographing palaces and ruins. He also captured a lot of daily life including peasants, merchants, and criminals. 

It’s an extraordinary peek into a the complex layered society that would be swept away by the series of wars and revolutions that would  roil China for the much of the next 80 years. 

More early photography from China: Historical Photographs of China, Shackford Collection​, Cornell University Collection​ (search for “China") .

Golden Age
I sometimes picture the ink

flowing from the books

thrown into the Tigris

by Hulegu Khan‘s army.

You never know it’s a golden age

'til it’s over.

Frames

If I open a shutter for a day,

people disappear.

In baobab  time,

Buildings vanish.

But consider the rock.

If you are a rock, there are only other rocks.

Forever.

Tortillas con azúcar

My abuelita 

made me sugar tortillas

and hot chocolate

every morning.

She and my abuelito

would joke about death

and about the conversations they would have on the other side.

She would say,

“Every day is the end of the world for somebody."

I’m a fan of single images that tell stories. 

Sara Messigner​ is someone who notices things and sees stories all around. I love the combination of spontaneity and intensity of her images. As camera phones have become ubiquitous and everyone has become more camera-aware and it’s become increasingly difficult to make a truly candid image, yet Ms. Messigner seems to do it over and over again.

A few years before he passed, my friend Jason Polan ​and I were talking about illustrators we loved. I mentioned Joana Avillez. He stopped cold, put his hand on my shoulder and said, “dangerously cool.” And then repeated it for emphasis followed by, "She's the best." I had always wanted to work with her for Tinybop ​, or one of my many children’s book projects—not for her coolness, which I’m sure she has in spades—but for her good taste and light touch. As someone who’s enjoyed following her art ​, children’s book picks ​, and vintage photo obsessions ​ for years, she never seems to miss. Today’s NY Times posted a nice feature on Avillez ​ on her six-year journey illustrating a new edition of Joseph Mitchell’s “ The Bottom of the Harbor ​.” If you don’t know the book, Science Survey ​ explains why it was important and how Avillez’ work brings it to life. They describe Mitchell as a listener. I characterize Avillez as a noticer. This is a great match, and I can’t wait to get my copy.

I started noticing Adali Schell​’s byline on photos in the NYTimes a few years ago. I recently clicked over and found his personal work is worth the look. It has an arresting chaotic California energy about it. 

Also sidenote, hey NYTimes why not use phtographer credits, to link to all their work in the paper?

More Japanese picture books I love: 

Yoshitake Shinsuke - Kono ato doshichao [What happens next?]

This is the cutest kid’s book about death you’ll ever find. 

Kikuchi Chiki - Momiji no tegami [The Japanese maple letter]

A mouse searches for a red maple leaf. 

Miroko Machiko - Kemono no nioi ga shitekitazo [I smell a beast]

I think this book is largely about Japanese onomatopoeia but the illustrations are so great, it’s worth checking out even if we lose the language in English. 

Miroko Machiko - Okami ga tobu hi [The day the wolf flew]

A book about animals. 

Miyakoshi Akiko - Taifu ga kuru [A typhoon is coming]

A typhoon heads in on a beach day. 

tupera tupera - Takosan tokotoko doko ikuno? [Mr. Octopus where are you rushing to?]

An octopus travels in many vehicles.

Suzuki Noritake - Kechappuman [Ketchup man]

A ketchup man is unsure about being a ketchup man. 

Your cousin wants the Cantinflas Show.

But you prefer El Santo​. 

El Santo who will will battle 

throat slashers in suits, 

werewolves in sweaters, 

and Dracula ladies in short skirts.

But first you have to sit through El Chavo del Ocho.

Will it never end?

I love looking at the work of photographers whose work comes from a place far outside my experience. Camille Farrah Lenain’s photography​​ explores the lives of women hunters, a gay Algerian uncle, the occassional alligator, and wrongfully convicted men and woman. Much of her work is infused with the earthy reality of New Orleans where she seems to spend time. I’ll be eager to revisit her work over time.

As a kid I learned aobut shortwave number stations from Keith Wyborny a satellite engineer who ran a local radio club. Keith was smart...  very smart ; he was also full on rock and roll. Every few years he would tell us he was leaving for Antarctica for six months and would ask us to write while he was gone (“Send your letters to Ken Waszkiewicz. Please don’t forget. It gets lonely down there.”) and then roar away on his motorcycle. Six months later he would return with amazing homemade electronics. His Wybornator device was a modem that that ran 4x the speed of any modem we could buy and allowed us to dial anywhere in the world for free. We were pretty sure he was in the CIA (or working for the Russians… we could never decide).  

Keith always kept a long list of numbers stations for us to tune into. Resolving through the static a woman's voice would read numbers. She didn't hurry. She didn't explain. Then: groups of five digits, in German, in Spanish, in English, in Czech, repeated with the patience of someone who had all night and nowhere else to be. Then a short 3 tone melody. Then nothing. Then she would begin again. Sometimes she would cough or you could hear a baby crying. Those little markers of humanity made everything more mysterious.

These stations persist today. After the start of the war with Iran in 2026, a number Farsi-language began broadcasting encrypted messages starting with "Tavajoh!" (the Persian word for "Attention!") followed by the rhythmic reading of random numeric groups. Transmissions primarily occur on the 7910 kHz and 7842 kHz frequencies (USB mode), operating on a fixed daily schedule (typically 02.00 UTC and 18.00 UTC).

The Conet Project

In 1997 the English label Irdial-Discs released The Conet Project: Recordings of Shortwave Numbers Stations , compilations of these broadcasts, captured by hobbyists over years of patient listening. They are, depending on your temperament, boring or haunting, but for me they always reminded me of the mysterious Mr. Wyborny. 

For decades Lisa Ross has been travelling through the Uyghur Homeland and making work observing delicate and quickly dissapearing cultural and religious practice there. She often focuses on shrines to Sufi saints  some of which have been maintained in very remote locations for centuries.  She discusses her work in this video:

Grab her book , it’s beautiful, but it also exposes the fragility of a culture rapidly being subsumed. I find it heartbreaking.

Cy Twombly is a favorite of those of us with art history degrees for a reason. His body of work is simultaneously thinky and emotional. It draws you in, but the more you investigate, the more you start to see connections to other art and literature of the period. Twombly once famously said that he would sit thinking for a few hours before making a painting in 15 minutes. 

He didn’t talk much about his work (the word “enigmatic” is often used to describe him), but people in his circle clearly adored him and always mentioned his intellect. If you’ve ever done deep dives on Twombly, you might have noticed that stories about him often featured unusually good photography. 

What I didn’t know at the time was that the person making those photos was often his wife, an Italian Baroness named Tatiana Franchetti, an heiress from a family famous for its art patronage. In addition to being his benefactor, she was an accomplished photographer and artist in her own right. 

The NY Times featured her photography and posted a cache of her photos. You should check them out. Each is excellent. 

More Franchetti’s work. Bastian Gallery , Rosebery’s , 

More on Twombly and Franchetti: Paris Review , On their relationship

Like intimate art experiences and a bit of artworld intrigue? The Soloviev Foundation occassionally holds guided tours of small portions of its banger art collection. Go to the menu on the foundation’s home page to book a guided tour. I’ve been to a few of these. They’re usually lightly attended, and each time I’ve seen very different portions of the collection. Very cool.

Soloviev is an unusual billionaire/philanthropist if only for his tattoos and 22 children.

I love studying movies through scene by scene screencaps. Breaking down films to frames both exposes the artificiality and the art of moviemaking. 

These are a few sites I frequent for these:

deep fried movies - no fuss, but limited selection.

caps a holic - gets into the nitty gritty of the source material, often housing screencaps from multiple sources.

scene still - focuses on high resolution images. 

film grab - large library, includes ads but is not too obnoxious about them.

There are lots of ways to fall in love with Berlin, but for me it was when I happened upon Kleingartenverein Kissingen, it's one of Berlin's Gartenkolonien. These are supersized public gardens where residents don't just keep plots for kitchen gardens, but build out little cabins with outdoor picnic areas often with hammocks strung between trees. Officially they're Kleingärten, "small gardens," and Berlin has something like 71,000 of them. They're a holdover from the city's nineteenth-century Armengärten movement "gardens for the poor" meant to feed everyone, no matter how little they had. Over time the plots clustered into what became known as Laubenkolonien, colonies of garden huts.

The people I met there told me gardens allotments are coveted with long waiting lists and often passed down within families. Even though many have little houses people are strictly forbidden from living there full-time — they're for weekends and long summer evenings only. Wander in on a weekend, and they're part social club, part ecological refuge, part time travel.

If you find yourself in Berlin, go seek them out, you won’t be sad.

I’ve been following Olivia Bee’s work since the days of Flickr. Her photography has an earthy grainy 70’s quality I love. She was ridiculously talented even as a teen and her first book, Kids in Love, was an instant classic. The book channels the feeling of being a teenager somewhere out in America in a time before everyone was glued to their phones. It reminds me that we were once obsessed only with each other and how that world felt intensly lived. 

Now a decade or so later she and her husband run a farm in Oregon. She continues to make evocative editorial and personal work, and still seems intensely connected to her people and the land around her.