tagged w/ Photos of the Day
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Eve Arnold, who came to be regarded as a grande dame of postwar photojournalism for her bold, revealing images of subjects as diverse as Marilyn Monroe and migratory potato pickers, died on Wednesday in London at the age of 99. Born in Philadelphia on April 21, 1912, Ms. Arnold had lived in Great Britain since 1961.
Her death was announced by Magnum Photos, the photography cooperative to which she had belonged for more than a half-century. She was among the first women Magnum hired to make pictures. Ms. Arnold was a leading light in what is considered to be the golden age of news photography, when magazines like “Life” and “Look” commanded attention with big, arresting pictures provided by photographers who included Henri Cartier-Bresson, Gordon Parks, Robert Capa and Margaret Bourke-White.
Acclaimed for capturing celebrities in intimate moments after winning their trust, Ms. Arnold developed a particular rapport with Marilyn Monroe, the subject of a book of Arnold photographs. Foreshadowing the celebrity portfolios of photographers like Annie Leibovitz, Ms. Arnold captured Joan Crawford squirming into a girdle, Malcolm X collecting fistfuls of dollars at a rally in Washington and James Cagney and his wife doing an impromptu dance in a barn.
But other pictures, just as memorable, were of the unfamous. Among the more than 750,000 Ms. Arnold made were pictures in a South African shantytown, a Havana brothel and a Moscow psychiatric hospital. She documented a small Long Island town, Miller Place, and the first minutes of a baby’s life. She was an official photographer on 40 movie sets.
Her many honors include the Order of the British Empire and the Lifetime Achievement Award of the American Society of Magazine Photographers. She was a Fellow of the Royal Photographic Society and named a “Master Photographer” by the International Center of Photography in New York, considered by many to be the world’s most prestigious photographic honor.
This piece includes a number of high-resolution black-and-white photographs, as well as two documentary short films.
http://disembedded.wordpress.com/2012/01/06/eve-arnold-legendary-photographer-of-illuminating-images-dies-at-99/Eve Arnold, who came to be regarded as a grande dame of postwar photojournalism for... more
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Originally created in support of charity, the popularity of the Dieux Du Stade Calendars has been credited for the increased fame of the Stade Français rugby team, as well as for rugby in general, in France. During the calendar’s 10 years, the basic concept hasn’t changed: the calendar features nude and semi-nude photographs of members of Stade Français, the Paris-based domestic French rugby team, and in more recent years, it includes players from other rugby union clubs. Photographed by Francois Rousseau, in his 3rd collaboration with Dieux Du Stade, the theme for 2012 tells the story of “survivors of a lost world, trying to get on board a ship.”
This piece includes a number of high-resolution color photographs, a photo-gallery and a two-minute documentary short film.
http://disembedded.wordpress.com/2012/01/02/calendar-dieux-du-stade-2012-nude-athletes-for-a-cause/Originally created in support of charity, the popularity of the Dieux Du Stade... more
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“White” is a beautiful three-minute black-and-white short film by Luxembourg filmmaker Vitùc, with background music by Max Richter. “White” is full of wonderful inspirational imagery of a lot of snow, a lot of fun, peace and pleasure. Even if it’s raining and quite warm outside where you live, this little film is sure to make you feel like it’s beginning to be a “White Christmas.” Here’s wishing you and your family a happy holiday season!
This piece includes a number of stunning high-resolution photographs and the inspirational short film.
http://disembedded.wordpress.com/2011/12/24/white-a-holiday-winter-wonderland/“White” is a beautiful three-minute black-and-white short film by... more
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The death of Christopher Hitchens on Thursday night, of complications from esophageal cancer at the age of 62, ended one of the greater intellectual careers of the last 40 years. Born in Portsmouth, England, and educated at Balliol College, Oxford, Hitchens started his career as a Trotskyite at “The New Statesman,” working along with noted authors, Martin Amis and Ian McEwan, who would become his lifelong friends. In the early 1980s, he moved to the United States, becoming a citizen in 2007, and began working for liberal magazine “The Nation,” writing some of his earliest attacks on the conservative government and American foreign policy.
A prolific author, Hitchens left behind a massive body of critical writing, with more than a dozen books and hundreds of essays targeting everyone from the British Monarchy to Bill Clinton to George Orwell to God, usually with wit and more often than not, vicious and cutting remarks. Even those who hated his politics could not help but admire his skill as a writer and ability to craft a sharp turn of phrase, and many called him a friend.
Perhaps his most famous book was “The Missionary Position,” a scathing attack on Mother Teresa and her Missionaries of Charity church, an organization that he called a cult. Hitchens described Mother Teresa as a “fraud” and accused her of glorifying poverty to enrich herself and the Catholic church, rather than truly helping the poor. The book infuriated Roman Catholics around the world, as well as politicians and celebrities who he claimed had used the charity and her reputation to mask their own evil deeds.
A later work, “The Trial of Henry Kissinger,” accused the former Secretary of State of “war crimes,” and argued that Kissinger should be prosecuted for “crimes against humanity, including conspiracy to commit murder, kidnap, and torture” for his involvement in atrocities in Southeast Asia and Central America. As a critic of the Bush administration’s use of torture, Hitchens filmed himself being waterboarded to demonstrate the cruelty of the practice. Hitchens claimed that, “The official lie about this treatment … is that it 'simulates' the feeling of drowning. This is not the case. You feel that you are drowning because you are drowning.”
Hitchens had an enviable career arc that began with his own brand of fiery journalism at Britain’s “New Statesman” and then made its way to America, where he wrote for everyone from “The Atlantic” and “Harper’s” to “Slate and “The New York Times Book Review.” He was a legend on the speakers’ circuit, could debate just about anyone on anything and won innumerable awards.
Christopher Hitchens was a wit, a charmer, a troublemaker and was a gift, if it dare be said, from God.
This piece includes color photographs, a photo-gallery and two documentary short films.
http://disembedded.wordpress.com/2011/12/16/remembering-christopher-hitchens-1949-2011/The death of Christopher Hitchens on Thursday night, of complications from... more
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Elderly Animals: Photographs by Isa Leshko
“Elderly Animals: Photographs” by Isa Leshko is a touching five-minute documentary short film created by Mark and Angela Walley at Walley Films, about a collection of extraordinary images by the young photographer Isa Leshko. “Elderly Animals” is a portfolio of luminous photographs that are a moving expression of empathy, as well as a celebration of life. Leshko began the project after she spent a year caring for her mother who has Alzheimer’s disease. Instead of photographing her family, she found an outlet for her experience in this series of portraits of aging farm animals.
Includes photographs and the wonderful documentary short film.
http://disembedded.wordpress.com/2011/12/08/elderly-animals-on-aging-and-mortality/Elderly Animals: Photographs by Isa Leshko
“Elderly Animals:... more
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“A Year in New York” is an enchanting, emotionally moving five-minute documentary short film by videographer Andrew Clancy, accompanied by Irish singer/songwriter James Vincent McMorrow’s beautiful song “We Don’t Eat.” Sometimes words cannot do justice to life in a big city, as “A Year in New York” so entrancingly confirms. The film reveals that despite the chaos that surrounds urban life, there is a common thread of excitement and resilient optimism.
“A Year in New York” presents the viewer with a stream of quintessential New York visual imagery, from the No. 7 train rolling past Silvercup Studios' iconic film and television complex, to die-hard Rangers fans losing it at Madison Square Garden; from runners and rollerbladers cruising through city parks, to late-night, outdoor summer concerts; from blinking beacons on NYPD police cars, to the sparkling lights of the colossal Rockefeller Christmas Tree, resulting in a stunning homage to the city that never sleeps and to its lucky inhabitants.
This piece includes a number of wonderful high-resolution color photographs, a magnificent photo-gallery and the entrancing documentary short film.
http://disembedded.wordpress.com/2011/11/10/a-year-in-new-york-a-beautiful-visual-symphony/“A Year in New York” is an enchanting, emotionally moving five-minute... more
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“One Hundred Portraits from the Occupation” is an emotionally moving photo-documentary by New York City street photographer Joseph O. Holmes. It is a beautiful collection of photographs that brilliantly encapsulates the blend of cultures represented by people participating in the Occupy Wall Street protests at New York’s Zuccotti Park.
Holmes describes his work here as an attempt to present his photographs without editorializing, as an effort to capture the portraits in Zuccotti Park with as little political content as possible. The balance for which he seems to strive is one that allows empathy for his subjects to shine through, but without making the portraits in any way his own political statement. His portraits vividly capture the humanity of these people, countering the hostile and dismissive portrayals with which they too often are labeled.
This piece includes a number of stunning high-resolution color photographs, a photo-gallery and a documentary short film.
http://disembedded.wordpress.com/2011/11/02/occupy-wall-street-one-hundred-portraits-from-the-occupation/“One Hundred Portraits from the Occupation” is an emotionally moving... more
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Herb Ritts (1952-2002) occupies photography’s Mount Olympus, along with the most important fashion and glamour photographers of the late 20th Century, including Horst, Richard Avedon, Bruce Weber, and Helmut Newton. His photographs are a pivotal reference in our collective cultural memory; the classical poses of celebrities and models with their clean lines and distinct forms are easily recognizable as his style.
Herb Ritts was self-taught and he took his cues from the desert landscape surrounding his home and his close proximity to Hollywood culture, evident in the graphic quality and visual simplicity of his photographs and the heightened glamour of their subjects. He inserts a sense of rigorous formalism that seems to be inspired by modernist photographers like Edward Weston, August Sander or Man Ray.
The Edwynn Houk Gallery in Zurich recently presented an exhibition of photographs drawn from the collection of the Herb Ritts Foundation. In addition, the J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles, has recently acquired 69 black-and-white images by the late L.A. fashion photographer valued at close to $1 million, given by his foundation in a single transaction that was part gift and part purchase. A Ritts exhibition is being planned at the Getty, drawing in part from the new acquisition, for April 2012.
This piece includes a number of high-resolution photographs, a photo-gallery and a documentary short film.
http://disembedded.wordpress.com/2011/10/15/the-photography-of-herb-ritts-distinctive-portraits-with-monumental-sensuality/Herb Ritts (1952-2002) occupies photography’s Mount Olympus, along with the most... more
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“A Short Commercial for Your Mind” is a tumbling, hallucinatory one-minute experimental/art short film by Daniel Mancina. A visionary litany of affirmation, the film presents a graphically cinematic rendering of something between art and life. “I’m talking to myself again, while my consciousness explodes. My mind is made up: There’s going to be trouble.”
This piece includes a number of photographs, as well as the experimental/art short film.
http://disembedded.wordpress.com/2011/10/09/a-visionary-litany-of-affirmation-a-short-commercial-for-your-mind/“A Short Commercial for Your Mind” is a tumbling, hallucinatory one-minute... more
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“Cruising” is a collection of photographs by photographer Chad States, capturing images of furtive men at their most “discreet.” States traveled to parks across the U.S. to document the culture of gay cruising, in which men meet in public locations for anonymous sex. The resulting photographs are gorgeous, a mixture of portraits, landscapes and voyeuristic tension: amid lush photographs of public parks, a figure or figures suddenly appears, barely visible through the brush. States hopes that his non-judgmental approach to a subculture many have reviled helps viewers see that these parks might be “a place to be liberated.”
This piece includes a number of high-resolution color photographs, a photo-gallery and a short film/music video.
http://disembedded.wordpress.com/2011/10/07/voyeuristic-images-of-furtive-cruising-in-public-places/“Cruising” is a collection of photographs by photographer Chad States,... more
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Steven P. Jobs, Apple’s Co-Founder, Former-CEO and visionary, who helped usher in the era of personal computers and led a cultural transformation in the way music, movies and mobile communications were experienced in the digital age, died Wednesday at the age of 56. The death was announced by Apple Computers, the company Mr. Jobs and his high school friend Stephen Wozniak started in 1976 in a suburban California garage. Mr. Jobs had waged a long and public struggle with cancer, remaining the face of the company even as he underwent treatment.
He underwent surgery for pancreatic cancer in 2004, received a liver transplant in 2009 and took three medical leaves of absence as Apple’s chief executive before stepping down in August and turning over the helm to Timothy D. Cook, the chief operating officer. After leaving, he was still engaged in the company’s affairs, negotiating with another Silicon Valley executive only weeks earlier.
“I have always said that if there ever came a day when I could no longer meet my duties and expectations as Apple’s C.E.O., I would be the first to let you know,” Mr. Jobs said in a letter released by the company in August. “Unfortunately, that day has come.” By then, having mastered digital technology and capitalized on his intuitive marketing sense, Mr. Jobs had largely come to define the personal computer industry and a wide range of digital consumer and entertainment businesses centered on the Internet.
This piece includes a number of photographs, a photo-gallery and three videos.
http://disembedded.wordpress.com/2011/10/05/steven-p-jobs-apple’s-co-founder-former-ceo-and-visionary-dies-at-56/Steven P. Jobs, Apple’s Co-Founder, Former-CEO and visionary, who helped usher... more
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“A Revolutionary Project: Cuba from Walker Evans to Now” is a photographic exhibition that looks at three critical periods in Cuba’s history as witnessed by photographers before, during and after the country’s 1959 Revolution. The exhibition juxtaposes Walker Evans’s 1933 images from the end of the Machado dictatorship, with views by contemporary foreign photographers Virginia Beahan, Alex Harris and Alexey Titarenko, who have explored Cuba since the withdrawal of Soviet support in the 1990s. Walker Evans's distinctive photographic style was nurtured by New York in the late 1920s, but it became more fully formed by his 1933 experiences in Cuba.
Virginia Beahan, Alex Harris and Alexey Titarenko look at Cuba in very different ways. In 2001, Virginia Beahan began a multiyear project on Cuba; Beahan’s Cuba is a land of contradictions, full of disappointments and hope, decay and rejuvenating beauty, simultaneously anchored to the past while looking beyond the present.
Through distinct vantage points, Alex Harris probed the country’s propensity for ingenuity as it underwent great transition. His 1998-2003 photographs focus on three icons of the island, the American car, the beautiful woman and the revolutionary hero, as metaphors to explore the distortions with which Cubans and Americans see one another.
Alexey Titarenko’s 2003 photographs of life in Cuba depict people persevering amid varying states of ruin: collecting food rations, fixing long-outmoded cars or playing baseball. Titarenko was drawn to Cuba following years spent photographing his home town of Saint Petersburg, a once-grand city transformed by revolution and slow decay under Communist rule. Titarenko deliberately photographed Havana in much the same way he’d photographed his native St. Petersburg, as a city that has suffered very much from communist policies and communist rule. And so his black-and-white and very dusty gray imagery removes any spark, any color from Havana, which is in fact very colorful.
This piece includes a number of black-and-white and color photographs, a photo-gallery and three documentary short films.
http://disembedded.wordpress.com/2011/10/02/a-revolutionary-project-explorations-of-cuba-from-walker-evans-to-now/“A Revolutionary Project: Cuba from Walker Evans to Now” is a photographic... more
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“Water Lilies Blooming” is a glorious time lapse four-minute short art film by photographer/filmmaker Vincenzo Di Nuzzo, which captures water lilies blooming in his own garden. This wonderful film has a beautiful soundtrack provided by Greendjohn.
This piece presents a number of stunning high-resolution color photographs, as well as the remarkable HD short film.
http://disembedded.wordpress.com/2011/09/29/water-lilies-blooming-hear-me-with-your-eyes/“Water Lilies Blooming” is a glorious time lapse four-minute short art... more
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A bankruptcy judge in Florida ruled earlier this week that a number of rare photographs taken by Joseph Jasgur in 1946 of Norma Jeane Dougherty, who went on to become the iconic Marilyn Monroe, will be sold at auction to settle the debts of the late photographer. The photographs have not been widely distributed and the collection has been locked up in court battles for more than two decades. The sale is significant because it’s very rare to see something where you can buy a copyrighted image of Monroe, especially images from her very first photo shoot. The photographs include a black-and-white headshot of the future Marilyn Monroe wearing a jaunty beret, another of her in a halter top and a color picture of her smiling in a striped bikini on the sand. Jasgur was hired by the Blue Book modeling agency to shoot the then-unknown Norma Jeane.
This piece includes a number of high-resolution photographs from the collection, a photo-gallery and two documentary short films.
http://disembedded.wordpress.com/2011/09/24/marilyn-monroes-first-photo-shoot-superstars-early-modelling-photos-revealed/A bankruptcy judge in Florida ruled earlier this week that a number of rare... more
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“Jack Smith: A Feast for Open Eyes” is a retrospective celebration of the underground films, art and photography created by the legendary American artist, filmmaker and actor Jack Smith (1932-1989). Working in New York from the 1950s until his death in 1989, Smith resolutely resisted and upturned accepted conventions, whether artistic, moral or legal. Irreverent in tone and delirious in effect, Smith’s films are both wildly camp and subtly polemical. Smith was described by Andy Warhol as the only person he would ever copy and by John Waters as “the only true underground filmmaker.” While Smith is best known for his contributions to underground cinema, his influence extends across performance art, photography and experimental theater.
This piece includes a number of high-resolution photographs, a photo-gallery and two films, including the full version of Smith's rarely seen trippy, sexually decadent 1963 underground film classic, “Flaming Creatures.”
http://disembedded.wordpress.com/2011/09/22/the-decadently-delirious-art-of-jack-smith-a-feast-for-open-eyes/“Jack Smith: A Feast for Open Eyes” is a retrospective celebration of the... more
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The disaster that occurred on September 11, 2001 was the worst in the history of New York City. Not only were nearly 3,000 people killed in Manhattan, at the Pentagon and in Shanksville, Pennsylvania on that morning; they were victims of a premeditated act of mass murder that pioneered the use of hijacked passenger jets as suicide bombs and then reordered and distorted the decade that followed.
For those in the immediate vicinity, the horror was immediate and unmistakable; it occurred in what we have learned to call real time, and in real space. Those farther away, whether a few dozen blocks or halfway around the world, witnessed the horrors through the long lens of television.The sense of grief and shock, a terrible roaring in the mind of every American, made it impossible to assess the larger damage that Osama bin Laden and his fanatics had inflicted, the extent to which they had succeeded in shattering our self-possession. In the years after 9/11, many still can hardly erase the vision of the wreckage of the two towers, the twisted steel and sheets of glass, the images of men and women leaping from ninety-odd stories up and the knowledge that thousands lay beneath the ruined buildings.
This piece includes a number of high resolution color photographs, a photo-gallery, audio, a documentary short film and the full version of the movie, “The Saint of 9/11.”
http://disembedded.wordpress.com/2011/09/10/september-11-never-forget/The disaster that occurred on September 11, 2001 was the worst in the history of New... more
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On March 11, 2002, 88 searchlights were trained straight skyward in two brilliant, four-mile-high beams. They were two of the most powerful beams of light ever created, illuminating the New York night, visible throughout the city and up to 60 miles away. Relief workers nearby, who had been plowing through rubble for six months, stood and wept. The art installation was both an act of commemoration and a symbol of resilience. It was the first attempt to fill the void in the city’s skyline and it neatly bypassed the debate over whether the site should be rebuilt or left as consecrated ground. The tribute ran every night from dusk till dawn until April 14, 2002, and has returned for a single night each subsequent September 11th.
This piece includes a number of color photographs, a photo-gallery and a three-minute documentary short film.
http://disembedded.wordpress.com/2011/09/09/on-the-10th-anniversary-of-911-tribute-in-light/On March 11, 2002, 88 searchlights were trained straight skyward in two brilliant,... more
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The best view in New York belongs to the fearless ironworkers who are stacking the top floors of the new 1 World Trade Center. The top of 1 World Trade Center, as it stands in mid-August, is just shy of 1,000 feet above Lower Manhattan, higher than anything else on the island’s southern end.
Even among the most elite class of ironworkers that specializes in raising high steel, the 40 or so men who are performing the most dangerous work at 1 World Trade are a kind of special forces. Some of them were among the first wave of volunteers on Sept. 12, 2001, brought in to extract steel from the ruins of the twin towers and who have returned to the site as members of the plumb-up gang. The ironworkers’ almost classically curved human forms of arms, legs and backs express the perseverance that has powered the rise of this new tower, a structure whose symbolic importance is undisputed even if its cost and commercial justification remain dubious.
This piece includes a number of high-resolution black-and-white photographs, a photo-gallery and the two-minute documentary short film, “The Sky Cowboys.”
http://disembedded.wordpress.com/2011/09/08/ironworkers-at-one-world-trade-center-the-sky-cowboys/The best view in New York belongs to the fearless ironworkers who are stacking the top... more
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“Rolling Stone and the Art of the Record Review” is an exhibition of over 80 original illustrations presently on view at New York City's Museum of American Illustration. If landing on the cover of “Rolling Stone” is a perennial dream for rock musicians, a close second would be getting their likenesses on the front page of the review section, where for decades the lead review has been accompanied by a distinctive illustration of the artist.
The art featured in this exhibition spans four decades, representing music legends such as The Beatles, The Rolling Stones, Bruce Springsteen, Steven Tyler, Whitney Houston, Neil Young, Bob Dylan, Joni Mitchell and many others. It has from the very beginning been a belief at “Rolling Stone” that art is the best way to present new and legendary albums and their reviews to the world. These are artists who continue to highlight the history of the music industry.
This piece includes a number of high-resolution color illustrations from the exhibition, as well as a gallery of additional illustrations.
http://disembedded.wordpress.com/2011/09/04/an-artistic-history-of-music-rolling-stone-and-the-art-of-the-record-review/“Rolling Stone and the Art of the Record Review” is an exhibition of over... more
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In 1970, Les Arts Décoratifs, Paris, presented a selection of competition cars, “Bolides Design.” A special jury chose the models with the idea of the car as a design object, a work of art, showing that “art and technique, each at their own level, are the expression of man and his relationship with design.” The Ralph Lauren collection can be seen from the same perspective.
For its first presentation in Europe, the Ralph Lauren Car Collection was recently on exhibition at Les Arts Décoratifs. Among the major car collections in the world, that of iconic American fashion designer Ralph Lauren stands out more than any other as synonymous with excellence. With this collection of the most prestigious sports cars from the 1930s to present day, Ralph Lauren shows that the automobile is a major art form created by the industry’s biggest names: Bugatti, Alfa Romeo, Bentley, Mercedes-Benz, Jaguar, Porsche and of course, Ferrari, the high point of this unique collection.
This piece includes a number of high-resolution photographs, a photo-gallery and two videos of the collection, “The Art of the Automobile: Speed, Style and Beauty.”
http://disembedded.wordpress.com/2011/08/31/the-art-of-the-automobile-speed-style-and-beauty/In 1970, Les Arts Décoratifs, Paris, presented a selection of competition... more
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