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Easy scrollable selection here. Website associated with the collection can be found here, and information on how the photographer, Prokudin-Gorskii, took the photographs and how these colour images were made possible is available here.

…a proverb indicating that all material conditions, positive or negative, are temporary. The phrase seems to have originated in the writings of the medieval Persian Sufi poets, and is often attached to a fable of a great king who is humbled by the simple words. Some versions of the fable, beginning with that of Attar of Nishapur, add the detail that the phrase is inscribed on a ring, which therefore has the ability to make the happy man sad and the sad man happy.

- Wikipedia

http://www.haydenplanetarium.org/universe/

http://www.flickr.com/photos/xenmate/galleries/72157623258942237/#photo_3904871491

I’ve been in an academic, photographic institution for the past two and a half years, and the names of most of those I first learned about and was inspired by are hardly ever mentioned anymore. As the course progresses, our focus shifts ever more towards the more “contemporary/conceptual” side of the medium, leaving many of the legendary image makers in its trail. The sole purpose of this blog is really for me to share things that interest me with anybody – strangers or people I know – who stumble across it. A lot of the work of the photographers that I too often simply glance at nowadays, as they have grown to be so familiar, may not be so recognisable for others. As a result, I’ve decided that I shall now attempt to make more references to their work on here in the hopes that those who have not yet met them may finally become acquainted.

The above image is by Diane Arbus, a legendary portrait photographer who pointed her lens at the weird, wonderful and outright strange elements of society.

Here is a great selection of her work.

I’ve been playing around with my new Contax G2 Rangefinder which my dad recently “passed down” to me. He’s had it for ages, and it’s still in mint condition. It’s a great little point and shoot, and is pretty much fully manual, but in a really spasticated way. For example, manual focusing isn’t done on the lens as you don’t aim with it when you look through the viewfinder, but rather with some strange metering system where you have to line up some dots. Haven’t really explored it that much as I’ve only shot one roll, but I really like it so far. More to come I guess.

My dog, she’s bloody useless sometimes:

Max D’Arche:

This is cool. Photographer Jason Hawkes, apparently one of the most respected areal photographers, has a series of photographs of London at night. I find this especially cool as it was only recently that I flew over London at night and couldn’t help but think how much more impressive a city looks after the sun has gone down.

Jason has specialized in aerial photography since 1991, is based just outside London in the UK, and works worldwide. He has produced over 35 aerial photographic books for publishers such as the BBC, Random House and Harper Collins. Jason’s clients include brands such as Nike, HSBC, NatWest, Ford, American Airlines, Rolex, Toyota, Smirnoff, Mitsubishi and BP.

Be sure to check out his other categories, for example: Industry and Patterns.

This is the second entry for Chris Jordan, which I’ve done separately on purpose as I’m equally impressed by both pieces and feel they deserve their own entries. Midway focuses on the carcases of albatross chicks found on a tiny stretch of sand and coral near the middle of the North Pacific. Untouched or altered, the photographed chicks are shown with their stomachs full of plastic junk fed to them by their parents.

These photographs of albatross chicks were made on Midway Atoll, a tiny stretch of sand and coral near the middle of the North Pacific. The nesting babies are fed bellies-full of plastic by their parents, who soar out over the vast polluted ocean collecting what looks to them like food to bring back to their young. On this diet of human trash, every year tens of thousands of albatross chicks die on Midway from starvation, toxicity, and choking.

To document this phenomenon as faithfully as possible, none of the plastic in any of these photographs was moved, placed, manipulated, arranged, or altered in any way. These images depict the untouched stomach contents of baby birds in one of the world’s most remote marine sanctuaries, more than 2000 miles from the nearest continent.

Albeit tragic, one does wonder why Albatross would feed their chicks plastic; surely they should be able to tell, either through sight, smell or sound that a piece of plastic was not once a living thing. The clue lies in what they eat, and where they hunt. Their diet is predominately made up of cephalopods, fish, crustaceons and offal, and in search for food, Albatrosses can fly hundreds, even thousands of miles, which they then consume and regurgitate upon return to their nests. Squid falls into the cephalopods category, the eggs of which, including those of fish, they look for floating on the surface of the water. As one would imagine, plastic floats, and mistaking it for food they return to feed their chicks objects such as bottle caps, lighters and bits of broken plastic. Unable to digest these items, the chicks are no longer able to feed properly and as a result die from starvation.

Chris Jordan – Midway

Depicts one hundred million toothpicks, equal to the number of trees cut in the U.S. yearly to make the paper for junk mail.

Photographer/Artist who is particularly focused on consumption and, indirectly, our impact on the environment. Running the Numbers is an impressive piece of work consisting of a series of visual representations of statistics through the use of repetition. Presented as composites of objects in the form of huge images, Jordan’s displays’ in exhibitions are designed to make the viewer examine and better comprehend the sheer volume found in his subjects.

“Depicts two million plastic beverage bottles, the number used in the US every five minutes.”

Running the Numbers looks at contemporary American culture through the austere lens of statistics. Each image portrays a specific quantity of something: fifteen million sheets of office paper (five minutes of paper use); 106,000 aluminum cans (thirty seconds of can consumption) and so on. My hope is that images representing these quantities might have a different effect than the raw numbers alone, such as we find daily in articles and books. Statistics can feel abstract and anesthetizing, making it difficult to connect with and make meaning of 3.6 million SUV sales in one year, for example, or 2.3 million Americans in prison, or 32,000 breast augmentation surgeries in the U.S. every month.

This project visually examines these vast and bizarre measures of our society, in large intricately detailed prints assembled from thousands of smaller photographs. Employing themes such as the near versus the far, and the one versus the many, I hope to raise some questions about the roles and responsibilities we each play as individuals in a collective that is increasingly enormous, incomprehensible, and overwhelming.

Depicts 2.3 million folded prison uniforms, equal to the number of Americans incarcerated in 2005. The U.S. has the largest prison population of any country in the world.

Installed at the Von Lintel Gallery, NY, June 2007

Check out his website for more of his work.