Highlights of this week include a dynamite interview with Dyna Moe (yay Mad Men!) and an exclusive Stickers & Donuts contest (click here to go directly to the entry form!)
Usually I don’t re-post directly from SwissMiss, since that means pretty much the whole interweb has seen it already, but my favorite-favorite thing from the blogs this week is the Poladroid. Download it, and turn your photos into greeny-yellow, polaroid-edged photos. The program is super-fun, and, believe it or not, I’ve been waiting, waiting, waiting for something exactly like it!
Remember when I went to the New York’s World’s Fair Grounds? Well, I knew those pictures would be perfect in Polaroid. Don’t you think?
I’ll be back in full-force soon! In the meantime…
The photos in the “Dreams of Flying” series by Jan von Holleben are creative & fun. (They remind me of Yeondoo Jung’s work.)
The kids all look like they are doing super-cool things (like flying in outerspace) but they’re actually laying on the floor with common household items!
Go to the web-site to see all of the photos (there’s a lot more, and they’re fun to flip through).
This article from the New York Times really caught my eye, and I couldn’t resist sharing it with you, so just one more post to end the week and begin the weekend!
For those subway riders who get off before the last stop — almost everyone — the end is just a sign on the train. What’s there, anyway? It turns out there is often mystery, lonesomeness and beauty (NY Times).
This interactive “Going to the End of the Line” project includes photos, video, and audio from the “end of the line” (places most of us never see… unless we happen to live there) on NYC subways.
Note from Maria: This is another post (with an interview!) from Tricia, who recently (yesterday!) did her ultra-successful first S&D post about pencil cases. I *love* question five!
FACT! I am obsessed with critters, which is probably one of the reasons why I absolutely adore L. Bates Jaffe’s photography!
Her animal mask photos remind me of my favorite scene in Breakfast at Tiffany’s when Holly and Fred steal animal masks from the five and dime store. The above photo is from her “animal masks” collection.
I love how she plays on proportions in her “one pill makes you smaller” and “animal crackers” collections. The naked woman is literally on the brink of being consumed by a mysterious black hole!
…and her other non-critter photographs are utterly beautiful as well. The top is a sample of her “decades” project, which features a series of 18 epoch (which sounds like EPIC..har har…) inspired photos. The bottom is a portrait of a little weeee.
And now for a special Stickers and Donuts sprinkley treat: a little Mad Libish interview with L. Bates Jaffe. (JUMP TO IT!) (more…)
Some of my favorites from last week! (Links in the list below; right click to open in new window.)
I’ll be gone for a long(ish) weekend in lovely Cape Cod, Mass, but I will get a few little things up for you to read early next week. Next week will also be the debut of a guest blogger — I’ve gotten a sneak peak at her post, and I’m pretty excited!
Have a great weekend everyone!
This weekend I visited the dilapidated version of the pavilion at Flushing Meadows Park in Queens, New York, home of the 1964 World’s Fair (all my other Flushing & fair related posts can be found here).
Technically, all of the fencing and “Do Not Enter” signs currently surrounding the large structure should have kept me out, but it was one of the main reasons why I wanted to visit the fair grounds in the first place.
The pavilion was a colorful hot spot in the days of old (pictures above from jetsetmodern.com, which has tons more old pictures, and a detailed history of the pavilion), but is now falling apart.
It’s now, actually, quite beautiful in all of its misery, and it is the inspiration for lots of photographs (two at left my own, beautiful photo at right from a New York Times photography project).
Creative photographers love it, including Tod Seelie, who took photos of a dinner party inside the pavilion remains. You can read a bit about the party here (and see a gymnast hanging off the unisphere!), and view lots of great of it photographs here.
As for my friend (left) and me (right), we just like to stand around it, and imagine what it was like back in the 60s, before the internet, to see all of the cool things the World’s Fair had to offer. In our imaginations, the World’s Fair was a spectacular event. I don’t know if it’s true, but it’s fun to pretend.
We sneaked peeks instead the center of the pavilion, which was locked off.
The pavilion and two observation towers (of Men and Black fame), as seen from the unisphere.
From Thomas Allen’s Uncovered (signed, as you can see!), which made it on amazon.com’s Best Books of 2007.
The baby-board-book style collection contains dozens of photos of books cut, twisted, and coming to life (and includes my two of my favorite pictures, Bookend and Red).
I continue to think this is all so incredibly cool and am showing off my new book to everyone today! Click here to see my other posts about Thomas Allen.
Last week, I posted about Thomas Allen’s recent work for an article about memoirs in Oprah Magazine. Allen cuts people and things from books, carefully folds them into a scene, and then photographs it all with a meaningful depth of field. His work for O Magazine took over a month of work, more than a 40 count box of X-ACTO blades, and over 700 digital samples. The completed project included 6 (amazing) photos — how’s that for hard work?!
Thomas Allen has generously given me four of the digital camera proofs that didn’t “make the cut” for the O Magazine article. These aren’t printed or published anywhere else at the moment, so I am incredibly thrilled to be the one to share them with you!
You’ll find a version of the photo above on page 182 of the August 2008 issue of O Magazine. In the final photo, the book is red, no title is visible, and you catch a glimpse of woman’s arms and legs going through the screen door and coming out the other side of the book. I actually really like the stillness of the photo above. In my mind, the open screen door and the book title generate the feeling of a peaceful summer day in the country.
A photo like the one above does not appear anywhere in the issue. It was probably abandoned in favor of something else.
Although this particular boy in the water doesn’t appear anywhere in the article, a similarly vintage family of three plays in the water of a book cover on page 179 of the magazine. The close cropping of this photo differs from most of Allen’s work — it gives a real sense that you’re in the scene, but doesn’t reveal that the pieces are cut from books.
The final version of this photo is shown below, at right; the proof that didn’t make the cut is shown above (and at left below). As you can see, three dogs were added, a new book was used, and an entirely different bed was constructed for the final photo. The two photos are very different, but work around a similar idea. Both of these were taken for a section of the O article called “Three Dog Nights” about Abigail Thomas’s memoir A Three Dog Life.
I hope you enjoyed the pictures above! If you want to see more Thomas Allen photos, I’ve spent some time hunting down the top five places where you can satiate yourself (Thomas Allen is hard to google, because about 10 other famous people share his name. Also, right click the links to open in new window):
Shape + Color recently posted Liz Wolfe’s new photography: bright colors, sweet candy, cute objects, with a touch of morbidity. (That ceramic dear isn’t just covered in sugar dots, the image is called “Diseased Deer”.)
Liz’s old work is just as fun as her old — check out this “Hand Punctured with Candy Stick.” Cute…?
I love Cleo Sullivan’s photography (I suggest you flip through all of the wonderful pictures on her web-site, as long as you don’t mind occasional nudity), especially these two photos set up like scenes from popular children’s books. (In case you didn’t have a childhood those books are Where the Wild Things Are and The Cat in the Hat).
I also really like the picture below. (All of those bright colors! And fluff!)
I absolutely adore the sweet and colorful photography at LOVEPICS. Very Stickers & Donuts!
Their free pdf magazine (it takes a little while to download), is really enjoyable to flip through (especially since the pages “flip” like a real magazine).
I was so excited to find that my favorite photographer, Thomas Allen, provided art for the newest issue of O Magazine (yeah, I read Oprah, what?!). The article, about Memoirs, includes at least six specially created Thomas Allen photographs (don’t know who this guy is? look here), some of them full pages or full-page spreads.
Above and below are examples of just pieces from full imagines in the magazine, but I suggest a full perusal at a newstand near you (just flip to page 166).
A friend just informed me of this cool photography project that attempts to take a picture of one child (12 or under) from every country, but the child must now live in NYC. So far, they’ve got 151 cutie pies.
The other night I had a dream that The Sartorialist took a picture of me. I was very excited, but then I realized I was wearing an ugly outfit, and I got worried that he’d post it as an example of what not to wear. Sometimes, I am sad at The Sartorialist because almost every photographed female is skinny and I think all sizes of people can put together smashing outfits!
But mostly, I go to The Satorialist for sexy men. Yes, I said it. I like guys who can put together outfits. Esp with bright colors. Forget George Clooney! Okay, I take that back. I love George Clooney. And he wears nice suits. But these well-dressed men range from adorable to hot, don’t they?
I suppose I am jealous of the men & women of The Satorialist, because I can put together some eye-catching outfits, but they just never seem very professional, at least compared to these guys!
