Found this in the Wall Street Journal’s “Photo Journal” daily page.
The sculpture “What You see Might Not Be Real,” by Chen Wenling, was displayed at a Beijing gallery Sunday. The artwork is a critique of the global financial crisis, with the bull representing Wall Street and the man pinned to the wall representing Bernard Madoff. (Photo credit – Ng Han Guan/Associated Press)
I just finished a new website for Front Street Cantina, a Mexican restaurant with four locations in metropolitan Chicago including Geneva, Naperville, Plainfield and Wheaton.
This was the first time that I have worked with a food industry client. The Latin color palette isn’t a color-space I usually visit, but it was a fun project and I think it turned out well. The project went a long way in strengthening my PHP skills.
It’s so easy to admire Realists—anybody at Magnum or VII, the freelancers, the guys who are driven by some sort of obsession or the kids that dream of being like Cappa.
They keep their eyes wide open all day long and into the night—sharing with us only the best of everything they’ve ever seen. Thanks for doing all the heavy lifting. I really mean that.
Cheers to those who walk the walk–
“If you want to do anything new you must first make sure you know what people have tried before.”
—E.H. Gombrich
I recently saw a few photos of the Chaiten Volcano eruption which occurred about a year and a half ago. Not sure why this item went unoticed, I think it must have something to do with the media giving most of its attention to the 2008 presidential elections.
The photos are fascinating, especially the lightning image.
The Chaiten Volcano is located in Chile, the recent eruption occurred in early May 2008—the volcano’s first activity in over 9,000 years.
Lightning picture taken May 2, 2008 by Carlos Gutierrez. The other two photographs are from Reuters.
Wow! So I made my most prized internet discovery today—completely by accident too. This is no secret stuff, it just happens to be the case that I was entirely unaware of it until now. This find confirms my belief that life in the 1930s and 40s was the most beautiful in all of history. Everything was made by professional designers. Hardly anyone was overweight. If you look at these photographs, literally everything is beautiful in my opinion. Life was full of modern convenience, but the aesthetic was still “Old World”. Everything has a naturalness which stems from a lack of plastic. I hate plastic.
Anyways, I stumbled upon the Library of Congress’ color photograph collection from the 1930s through 1940s. Mostly WPA stuff. Totally incredible! I nearly cried I wanted to live in that time so badly. You can dig and dig for hours and then do it all over again. Really really great stuff! Enjoy!
I thoroughly enjoy Morad Bouchakour’s Mennonites in Mexico project. There are some very intriguing images among the set. I have always been drawn to the culture and aesthetic of the Mennonites. Something about the “Wild-Westness” and the stoicism and the piety really impresses me. I have had an easy life but through the ethnic and geographic similarities between the Mennonites and myself I am able to imagine more vividly what it would have been like to live in the “Old World” or in the “Current World” without this computer, iPhone, wardrobe, urban apartment, etc.
These photos capture me because of their ability to offer my mind so much substance to imagine a completely different scenario for my own life. In this way they are very personal, subjectively malleable and jam-packed with functional value in the imaginative sense. The images are useful to me in some way. They provide a service to my mind in a way that I appreciate much more than an image that is simply “eye candy” or “sexy” like awesome architectural photography or a well done portrait by Karsh or something.
In this way I appreciate photo-journalistic art-photography so much more than any other form. I like photographs that present an open door invitation to wander imaginatively more than I like photographs that are blatantly powerful like someone being blown up or an epic vista of some remote land or some impoverished people pulling water from a primitive well. Of course the exotic is intriguing, but so much more fascinating is that subtly-active middle area between your own experience and those experiences that are not your own.
If you enjoy these photographs you will probably also enjoy the work of Larry Towell, a Magnum practitioner on the subtle end of the spectrum. He has a soft heart, slow pace and knows how to use a pen—valuable characteristics for any photographer.