Bearded Dave » Photography

Saddam’s Palaces: An Interview with Richard Mosse

Bearded Dave — Sun, 31 May 2009 18:25:24 +0000

Interesting interview with Richard Mosse and more photos from his Iraq project BREACH on BLDG|BLOG, one of the blogs that made it into my “favorites folder” a long long time ago. Well worth a visit!

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Dioramas – again.

Bearded Dave — Wed, 20 May 2009 19:13:11 +0000

Yes, nothing has old-man written all over it like dioramas, but there are some people out there who do amazing stuff with diorama scenes. I posted a link to Thomas Doyle’s diorama art a while ago and today Clementine (whose posterous blog ReflectionsOf.Me is highly recommended, by the way) posted a link to Kim Keever’s gallery page. His work is amazing, if slightly kitschy Hudson River School kind of way. Here’s a snip

Kim Keever’s large-scale photographs are created by meticulously constructing miniature topographies in a 200-gallon tank, which is then filled with water. These dioramas of fictitious environments are brought to life with colored lights and the dispersal of pigment, producing ephemeral atmospheres that he must quickly capture with his large-format camera.

Doyle’s work is equally amazing and well worth checking out. What strikes me the most is the attention to detail and, well, tininess of it all. It’s a pain in the butt to get the materals needed, but HA! – I found me a new hobby for those long and cold winter nights that will be here sooner than you’d think.

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Today it’s all about death death death

Bearded Dave — Mon, 27 Apr 2009 22:11:43 +0000

It’s a blistering 75ºF outside and today we talk about death. Isn’t it funny sometimes how all of a sudden one topic comes to the forefront of your day? The first thing I found was this blog that had been started in conjuction with an exhibition of the Justice and Police Department Archives and the Historic Houses Trust. Sadly, it’s not very well maintained, but there are some haunting, surreal vintage crime scene photos on it {NSFW & not for the squeamish). You could take one picture and write an entire book about what happened.

The really amazing thing, however, are the vintage mugshots. They are intense! There are some more pictures and background info on TrAcEy’s blog. Apparently, those mugshots were taken by the New South Wales Police Department photographers between 1910 and 1930. There are approximately 2500 of them and you can see a handful of them on the Historic Houses Trust’s searchable website. What strikes me about those portraits is how sharp and clear they are.

To round this up, we have Slate reviewing a book called Dissection, which is essentially a collection of, well, vintage photographs from the dissection room. Here’s a snip from the review:

This lost genre of photographs, Edmonson explains, dates roughly from 1880 to 1930. The images, which were taken at medical schools across the country, generally display groups of student dissectors posing with their cadavers. At times, the students—who are mostly male but occasionally female—are actively dissecting. Not surprisingly, many of the cadavers look less like human beings than pieces of meat. But in other images, especially those involving the skeletons that students used to help identify the bones and other landmarks in their cadavers, the dead are in unnatural positions, either by themselves or with students. A cadaver smokes a pipe; skeletons play cards; skeletons hug their dissectors; skeletons are even propped up to appear as though they are dissecting sleeping students.

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UPDATE: Jessica Palmer wrote a great post on this topic on :bioephemera:, which is a blog I can only highly recommend for all you science aficionados out there. Great writing on art, anatomy, and science.

Brainfreeze, Bleeding Heart Liberals, and James Nachtwey’s Wish

Bearded Dave — Wed, 08 Oct 2008 15:29:26 +0000

Hello? Did I miss something? Last time I looked it was summer. Hot. Now, all of a sudden I’m freezing my ass off. Whatever happened to fall? I always thought Global Warming would do just that: warm stuff up! Well anyway…

The Big Picture is an amazing website and its series of the Earth from Above photos, which are stunningly beautiful, the website is worth checking out not only for landscape photography, but also high-quality photojournalism. Take for example the excerpt of a longer series from James Nachtwey, recent winner of the TED Prize last year (see Boing Boing post and Nachtwey’s Wish), on XDR-TB. Now, XCR-TB ranks somewhat high in the lameness-scale, because it is “eXtremely Drug-Resistant Tuberculosis,” meaning that this one is a keeper. Watch the video and get involved.

On other fronts, being a creature of habit, the fact that the Presidential Debate took place yesterday and NOT tomorrow completely passed my radar. I only caught the last few minutes. However, I do have piece of advice – Obama a domestic terrorist? Give me a fucking break. This recent comment by Keith Olbermann that I posted on my tumblr-blog hits the nail on the head. Kind of. You know, I don’t understand what’s wrong with the Democrats. This is first class mud served on a silver platter, so why the hell do you not grab a handful (or ten) and start slinging?! This is not the time to chuckle – take off the gloves and hit back! I mean, really.

World Press Photo 08 and Hearos

Bearded Dave — Mon, 09 Jun 2008 14:29:48 +0000

I went to the World Press Photo 2008 exhibit today. It’s really worth visiting. However, the website has way more info and background than the exhibit had, so it is well worth your while checking out the website first. They way it was set up at the museum was disappointing, just some moveable walls/whiteboards with the photos attached. Lame. The second part on floor up was neat, except for this one woman who farted while I was standing next to her reading the information sheet, which was extremely gross.

As some might know, I live in a backyard apartment where it’s dark and freezing until it is 30+ºC outside – as it is now – and it turns cozy. What’s annoying me more now, however, is that the neighbor’s kids are outside in the backyard everyday now. That is in and of itself not a bad thing, but they are loud. And I mean REALLY loud. Around noon I work against a backdrop of noise that is just eating away at my nerves. I know, I could work in a cafe or something and I tried that but it didn’t work, mostly for the same reasons – too much noise. Now I tend to use Hearos (what a stupid name, btw) to block out the noise and it helps. Still, it is annoying me. Yesterday some kid was whining about something he wanted from his dad and whined “Daadyyyy! Daaadyyyy!” for more than fifteen minutes. Do you remember the grumpy neighbor that was screaming out of his window when you played too loud in the street or in the yard when you were a kid? I think I was never closer to becoming ‘that guy’ than on that particular day.

Mentioning those earplugs made me go to the website. Hm, seems like there are “Women’s Ear Plugs” called “Sleep Pretty in Pink” – who knew! Make sure to watch the trailer. And the instructional video.