Matthew Gamber, Ishihara Test in Lightbrite, 2010
Digital gelatin silver print
The Ishihara Color Test is a test for red-green color deficiencies. It was named after its designer, Dr. Shinobu Ishihara, a professor at the University of Tokyo, who first published his tests in 1917.
sweet as hell
Matthew Gamber, Untitled (Chalkboard #4), 2006
Digital gelatin silver print
Matthew Gamber’s None of the Things it Contemplates series, creates beautifully marred landscapes from old chalkboards.
The temporary schematics drawn on these boards to emphasize abstract ideas are now embedded in the slate. A useful chalkboard has no history; a used chalkboard is history. What was once empty is now full of information.
“Ry? He’s an Ohio-based connoisseur of palimpsests, I guess.”
Arthur Ou, Untitled (Test Screen 1), 2008
Archival pigment print on silver rag paper, 51” x 40”
David Maisel, The Forest 3, (1986)
(Chesuncook Lake, Maine)
David Maisel’s name has come up recently, due to his beautiful Libary of Dust book and opening, but I’m partial to his aerial photography in works like The Forest and Black Maps.
The Forest depicts abandoned log flows from clear-cut zones in an area of northern Maine’s rivers and lakes. The forms of the tree trunks, set against the inky blackness of the water, serve to abstract the images. The trees have been uprooted from the earth by a machine called a “whole-tree harvester.”
i have been to that lake and i found a fossil there. it was when I was eight. i kept it on my desk as a sort of childish memento mori.
A Flickr set of over two hundred airplane cockpit photos.
Fred Ressler, Dan Doloff, 1995.
Shadow Photograph
Black & White, 8 x 12 inches
I showed an early photo to Eileen and she said it looked like Dan Doloff, an old friend. When she said this I started realizing these might be something more than random images, but I tried not to dwell on this aspect being content with the intrinsic photos. I showed another photo to my daughter, Lila, to see if someone else saw the face. Her mouth dropped open and she exclaimed “It’s me.”
Ted Serios, Thoughtographs, 1960s.
Telepathic images
Polaroid Prints, 3.25 x 5.25 inches
Serios was an unemployed alcoholic bellhop from Chicago who could allegedly project images on unexposed film by staring into the lens of a camera with intense concentration. In “carefully controlled” experiments, while chugging quarts of Budweiser, the oftentimes shirtless Serios would work himself into a sort of ritualistic froth, snapping his fingers at the moment of telepathic impact and then falling back into his chair exhausted.
A series of black and white photographs capturing Washington, DC musicians/artists and their cars by Cynthia Connolly from the mid 90’s. These originally appeared in the long gone Speed Kills fanzine. I believe I have these postcards packed away in a box, but fortunately for you several sets are still available from Dischord.
Pictured above are Jem Cohen and Guy Picciotto.
Luc Sante has a new book out published by Yeti, entitled Folk Photography. It compiles his collection of early twentieth century postcards with his writing on their importance to history.
Sante discussed the book over at Art Forum:
The title I gave the book is more poetic than scientific and is meant to suggest several things. One is the grassroots, leaderless aspect to the postcards. Around 1900, small, portable Kodak cameras became widely available; in 1905, the postal rate for postcards was reduced to a penny; and rural free delivery was advancing at this time. All of a sudden, people everywhere were able to make and send these cards, and, strikingly, you get similar kinds of compositions being made simultaneously in Washington state and New Jersey. Second, I see them, in a nonacademic way, as a link in the chain that connects Civil War and government expedition photographers of the late nineteenth century to Walker Evans and his fellow Farm Security Administration photographers in the 1930s. Third, the popular documentary impulse these cards represent is similar to the “folk” music of the era, much of which was about news (think of songs about the Titanic or about railroad crashes and murder). The postcards and the music are not only about disseminating information but also about making something of it, meditating on important events.
you forgot the “declare” tag.
Intrigue at the Museum of Natural History, as there seems to be some question about the winning photographer’s entry. Jose Luis Rodriguez’s winning photo of an Iberian Wolf (pictured above) was originally selected from 43,135 entries but is now under investigation.
The Spanish photographer snapped the Iberian wolf – a subspecies of the grey wolf – in his home country after initially fearing the animals would be too weary to capture. He called the image The Storybook Wolf, said that he had used a custom-built infrared trap to snap the creature as it jumped into the air.
But yesterday the competition organisers confirmed that they had received alleged evidence that the wolf may have been tamed and held in captivity, contravening rules that any use of captive animals must be declared upfront.
as long as he’s cheating maybe he should train a whole fleet of wolves to cascade over that thing in a big line and like, jump into an exploding car or something.
Hiroshi Sugimoto, Gorilla, 1994.
Gelatin Silver Print, 20 x 24 inches.
Sugimoto, on his Diorama series:
Upon first arriving in New York in 1974, I did the tourist thing. Eventually I visited the Natural History Museum, where I made a curious discovery: the stuffed animals positioned before painted backdrops looked utterly fake, yet by taking a quick peek with one eye closed, all perspective vanished, and suddenly they looked very real. I’d found a way to see the world as a camera does. However fake the subject, once photographed, it’s as good as real.
Erwin Blumenfeld’s frozen emulsion, circa 1944.
