September 8, 2011

Charles Eisenmann

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Charles Eisenmann was a Gilded Age photographer who focused almost exclusively on the people of the "living museums", carnivals, and sideshows of New York's Bowery district.

The Ronald G Becker Collection at Syracuse University holds over a thousand of Eisenmann's images. Online navigation of the archive is terrible, but well worth the work. (via Ephemeral New York)

September 9, 2011

Pens

Over the past week I've twice heard twenty-somethings ponder whether kids growing up today—kids who were practically born with iPhones in hand—will still have the capacity for wonder.

Yesterday as a present for his first day of second grade I brought home an erasable gel pen for my iPhone savvy six year old. After a brief demonstration, he spontaneously hugged me, "I've been waiting for this pen my entire life!"

I think the kids are alright.

September 16, 2011

Matt Couper

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Matt Couper is an artist who among other things creates modern ex-votos. This one reads, "To the Jesus of external hard drives, please fix the permissions on my drive so I can access all my files on it. There are a lot of corrupt files and psd files that won't open and I'm start panicking. 29th of November 2006" Explore the rest, they're super.

September 25, 2011

Richard Mosse

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Richard Mosse's project Infra documents conflict in the Congo using Kodak Aerochrome, a discontinued infrared film. The film which renders foliage bright pink, heightens the surreally of an impossible to comprehend war (the Guardian reports 400,000 rapes in a single year and 5.4 million deaths over 10 years) and forces us to re-examine conflict images. When I first heard of this project (without seeing the images) I dismissed it, but the images are powerful—they would be without the exotic film stock. Mosse is a thinker who gives eloquent explanations for his choices. Ultimately Mosse does what good photographers always do, he forces us to look closely and reexamine what we think we know. (via Aperture Magazine)

September 28, 2011

Undefined (Part the Second)

A word for things that are equal parts delicious and terrible.

A word for specific feeling of seeing a long lost friend who has forgotten you.

A word for satisfaction that comes from drawing a perfect circle.

A word strange revulsion of hugging someone you thought was a dear aunt, but then realizing it was someone else entirely.

A word for days in which there is an awkwardness to everything.

A word for the strange pleasure of the first few moments in a hot car on a hot day in Texas, and another for the misery of the next few minutes.

A word for friends who used to exist for us in real life, but now only exist in pixels.

A name for the absurd rage one experiences on possessing too many remotes and not knowing which one will switch the TV to the mode you want it to be in.

A word for the exact moment in dreams when we break the bounds of gravity and fly.

A word for the pleasure of opening a book and finding a note in the margin that feels as if it was meant only for you.

A word for the strange symbiosis we have with our children, and and one for the wash of fear when it feels disconnected.

A word for all the things people know about us that we will never know ourselves.

A word for the pause in a room after one speaks out loud of the dead.

A word for seeing the past and the future simutaneously.

A word for looking but not seeing.

A name for all of you people, out there clicking away, reading things like this, thinking; alone and yet together.

Related: Undefined, Concepts that don't exist in English, Words not in English

September 29, 2011

Babar's World Has Really Cool Wallpaper

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Are there children's books now with this level of detail?

September 29, 2011

Gorey on himself

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"I really think I write about everyday life. I don't think I'm quite as odd as others say I am. Life is intrinsically, well, boring and dangerous at the same time. At any given moment the floor may open up. Of course, it almost never does; that's what makes it so boring."

-Edward Gorey

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