un regard oblique

11.12.07

*Portrait photographs 1920-1930, LoC:

Adolf Hitler leaving Landsberg imprisonment on December 20, 1924
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Jack Johnson 1928
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Jack Dempsey 1922
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Duke Kahanamoku 1928
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Rockwell Kent 1929
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Josephine Lucchese, colorature soprano 1926
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Stereograph of man with device designed for flying
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Tina Modotti
Edward Weston 1923
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Erich Maria Remarque 1929
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*Zelda Fitzgerald 1928
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Clara Bow 1929
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Dancer, Harlem, 1925
J. Van DerZee
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Edward Weston and Marguerite, 1922
Imogen Cunningham
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Dorothy Davenport Reid 1923
Dorothy Davenport at wikipedia
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Sioux veterans of the Battle of Little Big Horn on battleground 1926
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John Burroughs 1921
wikipedia
Wakerobin
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Lillian Gish 1922
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Klamath woman 1923
Edward Curtis

Man Ray, Mina Loy, Tristan Tzara, Jean Cocteau, Ezra Pound...
image here

10.12.07

Exclusive debutantes in silhouette

6.12.07

...it’s a soundproof booth, and the inside of it is kind of this sacred space. When you go inside, you close the door. You’re in Grand Central terminal, and it’s completely silent. The lights are low. And you sit across from, say, your grandmother for forty minutes, and you talk. And most people ask the big life questions, like “What are the most important lessons you’ve learned in life?” or “How do you want to be remembered?” “What did your mom sing to you when you were a kid?”

And then, at the end of forty minutes, two CDs have been burned. One goes home with you, and the other stays with us and goes to the American Folklife Center at the Library of Congress to become part of an oral history of America.

StoryCorps at Democracy Now!
StoryCorps

5.12.07

the inconceivable "other side"

3.12.07

Man at Pilgrimage Play Amphitheater
LAPL

Adelaide Ristori

Sourdough's Home

Top of Starved Rock

29.11.07

Blasphemers, using, in both instances, bears:

Wong/Cracked
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Batting/GuardianUK

originating path link McLemee/CT

25.11.07

Tread-softly (Cnidoscolus stimulosus)

...I can't swim,
So I'll just walk: bramble, spike,
And blame, without a single quenching

Drop of dew. Not a field — a ravine —
I mean a raving: You.

Sarah Hannah
Verse Daily

24.11.07

The Hungry Heart

6 reels of joy > Billie Dove > Allure > Self-Styled Siren > Boynton

22.11.07

"All of the believers are shown to be cruel, horrible men who do things such as kidnap children and murder people," McCaffrey said. "They perform torture on a mass scale - all to keep everybody oppressed and under this fake God."

CNSNews article on Catholic boycott of Philip Pullman's The Golden Compass, in which Pullman's quoted out of context in order to make him appear basically Satanic, basically.
Philip Pullman's website:

His Dark Materials seems to be against organised religion. Do you believe in God?

I don't know whether there's a God or not. Nobody does, no matter what they say. I think it's perfectly possible to explain how the universe came about without bringing God into it, but I don't know everything, and there may well be a God somewhere, hiding away.

Actually, if he is keeping out of sight, it's because he's ashamed of his followers and all the cruelty and ignorance they're responsible for promoting in his name. If I were him, I'd want nothing to do with them.

16.11.07

New Hitherby
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Sylvia Townsend Warner

Margot Fonteyn and Michael Somes 1940

"SWOON is not me. I’m not Swoon."

13.11.07

Here's Jason Kottke's putrid little "Shorpy" writ black against the night, and all the greed contained therein large and contrasted in proof.
And I'd like to say "fuck you all" in all sincerity, seriously and completely. Scammy worthless assholes.

The whole realm of staged (to whatever extent), yet true photography, which commonly is perceived as "pictures from the real", is manipulated to some extent even without the extensive use of Photoshop: think of Justine Kurland, Taryn Simon, Jeff Wall, Gregory Crewdson, most of all view camera portraiture and so on. Even composing an image from various photographs taken in different locations is not really new – although it has become easier with digital tools. Coming back to US orthodoxy, maybe, for example, Robert Frank and Garry Winogrand were perceived as being not so manipulative. But how does that orthodoxy work with, say, Richard Avedon, or Duane Michals?

Having said this, I think this is a hollow debate. Whereas I myself prefer to work in the realm of "straight" photography – meaning not to photograph or manipulate digitally – I think it doesn't really matter if you do it or not. As long as the final image is good and not self-indulging the technical process ("how the hell is it done?"), I think the new tools just add to the possibilities of photography as a medium.

A Conversation with Kai-Olaf Hesse
Jörg Colberg/Conscientious