Waldemar Januszczak has a problem with Vanity Fair. “Vanity Fair,” he points out, is a title lifted from W. M. Thackeray’s novel; Thackeray himself lifted the phrase from John Bunyan. It is a phrase coined by Bunyan to describe a carnivalesque world of pleasures inhabited by people obsessed with themselves. Thackeray revived […]
I am–or was–not a big fan of Ryan McGinley. When I saw that he’d been interviewed in this month’s issue of The Believer, I was apprehensive because (1.) The Believer has disappointed me with its photo coverage before (last year’s piece on Ralph Eugene Meatyard turned out to be a waste of time) and […]
Three mid-February Chelsea picks from my Wednesday ramblings:
Bruce Yonemoto @ Alexander Gray Associates
Through March 15
Yonemoto’s latest work consists of photos of Asian Americans in Civil War costumes taken from Hollywood costume suppliers. The images, shot in a palette that resembles early Technicolor film, inhabit a dream space between Civil War cartes de visite, race […]
In two weeks, the Brooklyn Museum will open submissions to a publicly curated show called “Click! A Crowd-Curated Exhibition”. The museum will accept public photographs that go along with the exhibition theme, have the public vote for the best photographs, then the museum will mount an exhibit of them. The basic idea […]
Enid Crow is a photographer and artist based in Brooklyn, New York. In her images, she dons costumes–many of her own making–to explore themes ranging from spectatorship to gender relations. While Crow’s interests and techniques place her firmly within a tradition established by photographers like Cindy Sherman and Nikki S. Lee, Crow’s combination […]
The Telepresence Frame being developed by the Design Interactions department at the Royal College of Art acts as a kind of dual-purpose baby monitor and digital death mask. The gilt frame displays the vital signs of a distant loved one on life support, then records the final moments for continuous playback after death.
The whole […]
Here’s a riddle: what do you call a blog dedicated to discussing photography? Hint: it’s not “photoblog.” According to most sources, including Wikipedia, the Photobloggies Awards and the Open Directory project (DMOZ), the definition of photoblog is a blog that uses photography as its primary medium, in addition to or in place of […]
Engineers at the University of Michigan may have figured out a new way of examining covered artworks: T-rays. T-rays, or terahertz radiation, are capable of imaging art much in the way that X-rays can image bone, but without any damage to layers of paint or plaster that might cover up older works. They’re […]
I’m traveling through Thursday, with only spotty internet access. If I can find things worth posting about long-distance, and I can count on a connection for long enough to post, I will. Otherwise, keep checking back at the end of the week.
A post on MAO and the provocative imagery (a photographer of fire?) drew me to Sarah Pickering’s show “Fire Scene” at Daniel Cooney Fine Art. I knew next to nothing about her, but as I looked over her images, I became increasingly excited. Each photograph confronted me with an elaborate detective story. […]
