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
Art
In documenting the rough corners of 1970s New York, Jill Freedman brought out with her photography something old-school lurid, like the flashbulb exposures of Weegee and Brassaï in the decades before, always offering a startlingly and very human view on her street subjects. When in 1971 the photogra
Art
The New York Public Library is asking for quiet with its current exhibition, Echoes of Silence, the first to consider the early works of the architectural photographer Philip Trager — but silence isn’t a word that comes to mind when looking at a Trager photograph. One is drawn instead to the photogr
Art
Stock photography is a rapidly growing, global industry — and thanks to mass proliferation on the internet, a billion-dollar one, too. But let’s not kid ourselves: we look down on these hypercommercial images and consider them akin to junk food: cheap, ubiquitous, and easily digestible.
Art
Next to Baruch College on East 25th street is the intriguing red-lit entrance of The Carlton Arms Hotel. The check-in desk sits in a foyer that is a feat of spectacular kitsch excess — think the Scharf Shack and Pewee’s Playhouse rolled into one. The hotel, which has the zany energy and personality
Art
Convention-flouting DIS magazine is launching a new stock photography website called DISimages.com next week, and they’re really hoping their images pop up everywhere — from the Huffington Post’s front page to a weed dispensary’s brochures.
Art
Perhaps the consummate bard of the American landscape, Mark Twain depicted in his writing a countryside both tamed and wild. He once wrote, "The Mississippi River will always have its own way; no engineering skill can persuade it to do otherwise." The same description could be applied to the waterwa
Art
Even though, like most people, I use Twitter publicly, I still often get the feeling that my tweets exist in a kind of social media bubble — that they're shielded from the rest of the world, read only by the people whose feeds they might happen to pop up in. That is, of course, just the imaginary fe
Art
Published on The Verge yesterday is a long feature article on the history of the American arcade, which kicks things off with this line: "The defining feature of a 'real' arcade, however, is that there aren’t really any left." Photographer K. Shamlian would beg to differ. His images of an aging Sovi