Category: Photography

Categories
Museums Photography

The “Lost Souls” of Lena Herzog

A new book of photographs by artist Lena Herzog documents the cabinets of curiosities, or wunderkammern, created during the 16th and 17th centuries. As an article from Science Friday explains:

Some of these early wunderkammern still exist today in museums and private collections. Between 2001 and 2008, Herzog visited 15 of these collections to photograph their displays. Her subjects are often infants born with genetic defects that prevented their survival, preserved as scientific specimens. Herzog’s haunting, tender images capture not only the content but also the intent of wunderkammern: as she says, “to see, and to know.”

A slide show including representative photographs and commentary by the artist is also available on the Science Friday website.

Categories
American Modern - Contemporary News Photography

The Polaroid Collection Sold, in Part

On June 21st and 22nd, more than one thousand works from The Polaroid Collection were sold. Via Photo District News:

The court-ordered auction of portions of The Polaroid Collection, which took place Monday and Tuesday at Sotheby’s, raised nearly $12.5 million for the company formerly known as Polaroid Corp. The funds raised in the sale will be used to settle debts with the bankrupt company’s creditors.

…PBE Corp. became a victim of a $3.7 billion Ponzi scheme by Minnesota businessman Tom Petters, whose Petters Group Worldwide bought it in 2005. Petters was convicted last year of fraud and money laundering, a sentence he is appealing while serving a 50-year prison term.

In the auction’s first session Monday evening, a buyer paid $722,500 for Ansel Adams’ “Clearing Winter Storm, Yosemite National Park,” which outstripped the previous record sale of $609,000 for an Adams photograph.

High profile artists including Chuck Close reached last-minute agreements with PBE Corporation (formerly Polaroid Corp.) to have their works (including the one above) removed from the sale. Some artists claimed that the auction violated the original terms of their donation agreements.

The Netherlands-based company The Impossible Project is close to a deal to purchase a portion of the collection which has been housed at the Musée de l’Elysée in Switzerland since 1990. The Impossible Project previously made news for saving one of the last Polaroid instant film production plants.

Hear more about the history of The Polaroid Collection on NPR’s Weekend Edition.

Categories
Images on the Web Photography

Explore Printing Techniques with the Graphics Atlas

The Graphics Atlas from the Image Permanence Institute at the Rochester Institute of Technology allows for dynamic exploration of printing processes, from pre-photographic to digital. Visitors can browse techniques visually, by name, or on a timeline. Detailed comparisons of different techniques help viewers learn to visually distinguish one printing process from another.

Categories
Images on the Web Innovative Technology Photography

GPS Technology Takes History to the Streets

Two new projects utilize Google Maps and historical photography to create composite views of contemporary city streets. The Museum of London‘s free mobile application, Streetmuseum, combines GPS and photographs from the museum’s collections to create an interactive visual exploration of London history.

Hold your camera up to the present day street scene and the same London location appears on your screen, offering you a window through time. Want to know more? Simply tap the information button for historical facts.

Historypin, a web-based project created by We Are What We Do in partnership with Google, pairs viewer-submitted photographs and their geographical coordinates with Google Street View, allowing for multiple snapshots of the same space throughout time. Viewers can also submit personal stories about specific places.

Categories
American Images on the Web Photography

Public Domain Images: Dorothea Lange

Happy Birthday, Dorothea Lange! Farm Security Administration photographer Dorothea Lange was born on May 26, 1895. Because she worked for the government, some of her images are in the public domain including those available from the National Archives.

Categories
Images on the Web Innovative Technology Photography

One Moment Captured Across the Globe

The Photography, Video and Visual Journalism blog for the New York Times, Lens, has revealed their interactive mosaic of photographs which were solicited on Sunday, May 2nd, from readers around the world. The mosaic takes shape as a globe covered with stacks of the digital photographs, corresponding in location to where they were captured at a single moment in time. The globe can be “spun” in any direction to explore various locations, and pictures can be searched by topic: community, arts and entertainment, family, money and the economy, nature and the environment, play, religion, social issues or work. Image-specific URLs are also available so that you can return to your favorite photographs again and again.

Categories
Images on the Web Photography

Where will you be on Sunday, May 2, at 3pm?

Wherever you are, we hope you’ll have a camera — or a camera phone — in hand. And we hope you’ll be taking a picture to send to Lens that will capture this singular instant in whatever way you think would add to a marvelous global mosaic; a Web-built image of one moment in time across the world.

Read more about this project on Lens, the Photography, Video and Visual Journalism blog for the New York Times. Submit your photographs here (link will be active after 15:00 on May 2nd).

Categories
American Images on the Web Photography

National Archives Joins Flickr Commons

The National Archives and Records Administration is now a member of Flickr Commons, a website for cultural institutions to share their photograph collections with the public. The National Archives joins the New York Public Library, the Smithsonian, the Library of Congress and many other archives, libraries and museums in sharing their collections with Flickr. Visit NARA’s photostream by clicking here.

To mark the opening of its photostream in the Commons on February 4, 2010, the National Archives has posted a new photo set containing more than two hundred photographs of the American West by renowned American photographer Ansel Adams.

Categories
American Images on the Web Museums Photography

Historical Images of New York

NewYorkHeritage.org is a research portal for students, educators, historians, genealogists, and others who are interested in learning more about the people, places and institutions of historical New York State. The site provides immediate free access to more than 160 distinct digital collections that reflect New York State’s long history. These collections represent a broad range of historical, scholarly, and cultural materials held in libraries, museums, and archives throughout the state. Collection items include photographs, letters, diaries, directories, maps, newspapers, books, and more.

A list of participating institutions may be found here; for more information about the project, click here.

Categories
Architecture Images on the Web Innovative Technology Photography

Photography Tool: Tourist Remover

Have you ever found yourself waiting for passersby to move out of your viewfinder? Perhaps while trying to photograph architecture or other works of art? A free web-based filter allows you to remove tourists and other unwanted moving objects from your photographs. The aptly titled Tourist Remover even allows up to 100 MB of storage (and more with a paid upgrade).

Read more about how the tool works here. Happy 4th of July picture-taking!