Shooting Wide Open

Mariana Cook

If you haven’t already seen this around the net, The New Yorker has an online feature called A Couple in Chicago with a couple of photos of Obama. Mariana Cook photographed the Obamas in May of 1996 while doing a project on couples in America, and back then, Michelle was a bit leary of a career in politics for Barack:

There is a strong possibility that Barack will pursue a political career, although it’s unclear. There is a little tension with that. I’m very wary of politics. I think he’s too much of a good guy for the kind of brutality, the skepticism.

Interesting.

Speaking of Obama, I attended Grace Cathedral‘s hour-long service/vigil for the president-elect. Hymns were sung, Reverend Calvin Jones read from a 1967 speech Dr. King gave in which he rails against “power without compassion and might without morality,” and Reverend Charles Kullmann led a prayer for the president-elect’s safety, asking God to hold him in the palm of His hand and protect him while he carries out the tasks He has called on him to perform.

That may be aggrandizing a bit, and I’m not a religious person, but parts of the service were very moving. I can only imagine what effect powerful oration, otherworldly choir music and booming organ hymns had on people in a time before electronic amplification, volume knobs and personal portable music systems. Church services must really have sounded like a message from above.

Lastly, if you haven’t yet heard hundreds of people chant Om in a large gothic cathedral (this is San Francisco after all), you should get on it straight quick.

cat piano

I watched Terry Gilliam’s The Adventures of Baron Munchausen and the scene in which the Turk plays the man-piano reminded me of a strange contraption called the cat piano, which I saw on the Kircher Society blog, which is sadly no longer exists when I checked today). Too bad I learned some odd facts from that blog – for example, did you know that they used to clear clogs from Paris sewers with a gigantic ball placed before the clog? The built up water pressure would propel the ball into the clog and obliterate it.

But I digress. When a key is pressed on the cat piano, intead of a hammer striking a string, a nail jabs the tail of a cat, who yowls with increasing desperation as the “song” goes on. The cats were arranged according to pitch of voice. Apparently this was built for the amusement of a sad prince.

Ah royalty.

Inhabitat

I saw the following two videos and couldn’t wait to share.

The first is a very innovative project that straddles the line (point?) between art, design and technology. Theo Jansen makes wind-powered, almost self-animating creatures move on legs powered by what he calls a reinvention of the wheel. If you watch the second half of this video, he shows footage of a 3 ton metal creature being pushed along by one man. I think this is an invention that will definitely have many applications down the line. He also shows the creature detecting environmental conditions like high wind or water and taking measures on its own to deal with them. And all built with cheap materials like plastic tubes, plastic ties and lemonade bottles. It can even “store” wind in the bottles for later use!

The second is a fun bit of street art by Joshua Allen Harris, who installs inflatable garbage bag creatures on subway grates on New York streets so that when a train passes, the creature comes to life.

I wish there were more art projects like this – simple but inventive ideas that you can experience in everyday life without going into galleries and museums where art is cordoned off and you’re reprimanded for approaching it. It’s not abstruse – everybody gets it and is cheered by it!

Joachim Knill

Knill takes surreal polaroids with a huge camera he built himself. His style looks almost painted or drawn and, given their surreal nature, if you told me they were indeed paintings, I would be inclined to believe you. After posting rather randomly about the Bunny Suicide Comics, I was struck by the relative affordibility, ease, portability and spontaneity of being able to realize your exact vision with a pencil and paper rather than with expensive or, at the least, space- and time-consuming set ups, gear and props.

According to his website, props and lights are precisely what Knill needed to execute his photos:

Joachim Knill’s most recent work consists of 20″x30″ Polaroid photographs which he creates with the world’s largest portable instant film camera designed and built by himself. The photographs depict surreal landscapes and installations which he builds in his studio. He uses mostly natural objects… These objects are built up as a real life installation which he then captures in a single long exposure with light painting techniques.

I wonder if in this case, it wouldn’t make more sense (technique learning curve and personal inclination aside) to do a photo-realistic painting or pencil drawing. Wouldn’t it be cheaper to take a basic photo and flesh out the finer details with a brush?

I’m curious about the cost of hiring an artist to work from a photo vs the studio and post-processing expenditures necessary to complete, say, the Dave Hill look. I assume that the look is Photoshop- as well as lighting-intensive. That sort of work in PS is very similar to drawing, isn’t it? Could a painter achieve that same look? Would there be any obvious discernable difference between the two works?

Of course, many of Hill’s photos derive their value from star power, and a photo is proof that the celebrities were on location to sit for a photo, whereas a drawing no longer is, having been displaced by the availability of photos of any and every thing a person could think of. It is a bit strange to me though, that in this Photoshop age, we still perceive a photo as more realistic than a drawing.

Perhaps photography wins because of its drawing power as a record of physical objects. Being the physical creatures we are, it’s much more engaging to handle and arrange concrete objects in a three-dimensional world instead of pushing abstract images and ideas around in our minds.

Still, there’s a freedom to being able to conjure up any location, props, subject, weather, etc. that you like. Church interiors in a fictional city? Zealous priests in pursuit? All instantly possible in comics! Not to mention there’s a bonus – suspension of disbelief makes photo-realistic technique unnecessary!

Slow Wave (I just can’t help myself)

Huang Qing Jun

Lu Xiao Chuan

The gallery also has some of Michael Wolf‘s Hong Kong pictures.

Wu Jia Lin

Lin Yong Hui

Yang Yan Kang

The 798 Gallery in China shows some amazing photojournalism. The photography of Li Nan, Xie Hai Long, andWang Fu Chun is also worth checking out.

The Parke Harrisons

When will e-Ink (wiki) begin to change the photo world? I wonder what this photo would look like on a Kindle. I assume it would look higher quality than photos usually look on a computer screen, but would it, could it look as good as a well-made print?

I remember discovering e-Ink back in 2006 and jumping 6 feet in the air. It seems like the sensible eventual replacement of LCDs. More energy efficient, no pixelation, no backlight required, light and portable – all the reasons books have not died. However, color e-Ink still seems a few years away from an affordable product incarnation.

Esquire made a misguided attempt to incorporate it into a print medium last September, but using it on a disposable item with no ability to recharge the battery turns the technology into a gimmick and, as Treehugger points out, only increases the amount of e- and paper waste we produce, which defeats the whole purpose of digital ink.

It is, however, a good example of what color e-Ink photos would look like. I found a few photos on Flickr from user Philip Torrone. Click on them to go to the Flickr page, where you can see a larger version:

Looks pretty good to me. I can’t wait til we can buy color e-Ink readers and displays of all sizes for around $200! It would mean a sort of second digital revolution for the photo industry, perhaps a happy middle between digital and analog?

Until then, I dream of gigantic e-Ink wall screens where I can display a rotating series of photos which I can store in a tiny device, of “prints” from respected art photographers which look great and become affordable due to internet distribution.

Andy Riley’s Bunny Suicide Comic (Amazon) is darkly hilarious. There’s more than one way to skin a… bunny? I guess you can do anything creatively! Still, death by gnome – that’s pretty twisted!

Scout Tufankjian

Among the more reporterly hand-shaking and speech-making photos are images of Obama playing pool, in silly poses, barbequing and supporters laughing as he gets food on his clothes.

I found this photo in Manuel Guerzoni’s photo blog.