Art
Distilling violence into art is a tricky alchemy. Even when done carefully, it can result in a strange brew, leaving some intoxicated and moved by its heady ascetics, others feeling sick and hung-up on its inherent horror, sadness, and trauma. In On Photography, Susan Sontag famously enunciated that
Art
Like so many people who come to New York, part of what attracted me was the spectacle of the city itself. I wanted to wander streets thick with history and creative currents, to watch and become part of the human drama just outside my door. That also describes my experience of Susan Wides’s stunning
Art
If you can imagine a lovechild of Walker Evans and Larry Clark, that’s Mike Brodie. Leaving home in 2002, at 17, Brodie became infatuated with train hopping and rode freight trains on and off for seven years. Along the way, he picked up his first camera, a Polaroid, in 2004 and began photographing h
Opinion
Tourist photos are by now a centuries-old cliché, particularly in the case of those landmarks that have been photographed millions of times over. But a group of Russian photographers just found a way to spice up their shots of so cliché a subject as Egypt’s Great Pyramids — by climbing to the top of
Opinion
If your entire life were on camera, would anyone want to look at it? Last year, we reported on Memoto, a tiny camera that clips to your clothing and takes two photographs a minute for all the time it’s on. The first “lifelogging” photos from the device have just been published and they look… well, p
Books
There is a dislocated loneliness in being unmoored, in drifting away from connections and places until you become stuck somewhere again. Andrew Zornoza's Where I Stay, published in 2009 Tarpaulin Sky Press, is a both spare and sprawling interpretation of this feeling. His compact prose set to the rh
Art
The private homes of mid-century creators are vanishing. As most architects, designers, and artists who worked in the modern design movements of the 1950s and '60s are reaching their twilight years or have already passed on, the houses in which they explored their personal visions are often broken u
Art
A little over ten years ago, when I started blogging about photography, most photoblogs were presenting a single photographer’s work, one photograph at a time, usually per day. They were maintained by the photographers themselves. The scene was very small, and there was maybe a slightly naive earnes
Books
Who cares about bad graffiti or street art? The spray paint scrawls of ill-chosen tag names ("Piggy Nasty," "Pony Tail," "Tricky Trout, Jr."), reckless vulgarity (penises and boobs drawn on absolutely everything), and sad drawings that barely shape into the animal, face, or whatever they're trying t
Art
History nerds and Brooklynophiles, rejoice! The Brooklyn Historical Society, the Brooklyn Museum, and the Brooklyn Public Library have teamed up to put large chunks of their collections online. The result is Brooklyn Visual Heritage, which is pretty much what it sounds like: a website devoted to a v
Art
In his poem "America" (1956) Allen Ginsberg addresses the nation as if it were a codependent lover, asking, "Are you going to let your emotional life be run by Time Magazine?" followed immediately by the confession, "I'm obsessed by Time Magazine. I read it every week."
Art
I first spotted artist Fred Burkhart’s advertisements for nude female models plastered around local Chicago hippie, vegetarian, artist hangouts. I was 16 years old. The ads said something like: "Nude models needed for figure drawing class at Burkhart Studios. We pay $60 for three hours. Must be 18 y