Art
Time Travel Along Fifth Avenue, with Photos from the Early 1900s and Today
In 1911, photographer Burton Welles published Fifth Avenue, New York, from Start to Finish.
Photography
Books
Photographing a Steinway Piano Being Put Together
At the Metropolitan Museum of Art is an example of the first 88-key piano model built by Steinway & Sons in 1868, its rosewood case containing an inventive cast-iron frame held aloft by three ornate legs.
Art
Catherine Opie's Intimate Photographs of S&M
LOS ANGELES — If you visited LA this summer, it would have been hard for you to ignore the presence of Robert Mapplethorpe.
Art
A History of Russia in a Massive Photo Archive
Prepare to get swept away in a stream of over 150 years of photographs capturing all sorts of scenes of Russian life.
Art
Acts of Cruelty Captured by Citizens
New Documents at the Bronx Documentary Center is not necessarily the most conceptually elaborate exhibition, or the most aesthetically alluring, but it is the one show I've seen this year that makes crucial sense of our contemporary compulsion to document sociopolitical upheavals and state-sponsored
Art
Danny Lyon's Prescient Visions
“We are frail flowers in the field,” wrote Danny Lyon, the politically active, compassionate photojournalist, after leaving New York for Bernalillo, New Mexico, in 1969.
Art
Traces of the Past in Images of Today's Busy African Metropolises
PHILADELPHIA — In Akinbode Akinbiyi’s photograph, the pyramids of Giza, built over 4,500 years ago, are captured through a mess of fencing, with the tight rows of rigid iron rods obscuring the ancient wonders.
Books
The Uncanny Nature of Fake Flowers
The 73 photographic plates in Robert Voit's The Alphabet of New Plants each frame a different floral detail, from bursting blooms to twisting branches.
Art
Using a Retro View-Master to See Modernist Architecture in 3D
Since 1997, the Knoxville, Tennessee–based View Productions has created a series of reels highlighting 20th-century design and architecture, particularly forms that are difficult to capture in two dimensions.
Art
The Stark Beauty of Japan's Soaring Cormorant Population
Japan has a problem with cormorant overpopulation.
Art
Creating a Skeletal Symmetry from a 19th-Century Collection of Imperfect Skulls
Robbers, prostitutes, and fallen tightrope walkers: the craniums in the Hyrtl Skull Collection in the Mütter Museum at College of Physicians of Philadelphia are fractured remains of imperfect lives.
Art
Photographing the Forgotten Vietnamese Widows of Japanese WWII Soldiers
When we talk about Japan and Vietnam in the 1940s, we discuss World War II, invasions, colonialism, and other monumental events that unfolded in this part of the world, but sent ripples across the globe.