seeing & being seen

Penelope Umbrico, from Mirrors series

In the I’m-Loving-It category: various groups of work by Penelope Umbrico. We seem to share an interest in the visual periphery, edges, and the overlooked; much of her work, including the above mirrors, concentrates on the photographic backgrounds of catalogs, home improvement websites, etc…

Lilly McElroy throws herself at men (among other projects). From an interview on The Year in Pictures:

I started the project by placing an ad on Craig’s list looking for men who would meet me at bars blind date style and let me literally throw myself at them. This worked fairly well, but limited the # of photos I could take. Now , I go to bars with a friend/photographer and approach men who are physically larger than I am. I ask them if I can literally throw myself at them. If they say yes, I have myself photographed doing it and buy them a drink afterwards. If it seems like they want to hang out, I’ll have a drink as well. Sometimes we talk about the project and sometimes we just chat. I don’t have a specific set up for the photos. I just want them to look as much like snap shots or party pics as possible.

Lilly McElroy I Throw Myself at Men #1, 2006

Lilly McElroy I Throw Myself at Men #6, 2006

Tony Cenicola, The New York Times

Found in Mexico City: Robert Capa’s lost negatives from the Spanish Civil War (the “Holy Grail of Capa work,” according to the curator of the ICP). Will they finally resolve the controversy over the alleged staging of the falling soldier, for which no original negative has ever been found? (Indubitably staged lego version here.)

Base Hospital #33. Portsmouth, England. Hand Splint.

Masks worn during experiments with Plague. Philippines, probably around 1912.

The National Museum of Health and Medicine has been putting selected images from their photo archives on Flickr, also with the hope (as seen with the Library of Congress images) that the collective knowledge therein will help to label/identify some of the more enigmatic.

Bogdan Mohora

From the Seattle Times: an amateur photographer was awarded $8000 after being arrested for photographing an arrest.

“Being arrested for simply being a witness to police activity was frightening and humiliating,” Mohora wrote in a claim he later filed against the city. “It bothers me to think that police can abuse their authority by arresting innocent witnesses and then not even make standard police reports to document what happened.”

[ACLU staff attorney Aaron Caplan] said the public has a right to observe and document police activity that occurs in a public location.

Wow. From Czech animator Zdeněk Miler, an apparently famous mole protagonist takes on the camera.

Death by glass window.

Philip Toledano, from Portraits of Gamers series

I have a reasonably long-standing interest in virtual landscapes and screen cultures, and there was an interesting article in the NYTimes this week about a Frontline documentary concerning growing up in increasingly virtual environments, screen identity, etc… I haven’t seen the documentary yet, but reliable sources tell me the show was an example of fantastic documentary work, and, even better, if somewhat ironically, it can be watched in its entirety online for us TV-less-but-internet-addicted folk.

I was reminded of Philip Toledano’s portraits of video gamers - work that looks at the side of the computer display that I tend to ignore in my own work - the faces engaged with the screen.

Woman putting on her lipstick in a park with Union Station behind her, Washington, D.C. [ca. 1943]

The Library of Congress has put some of their photographic archives on Flickr. From the Flickr explanation:

The key goals of this pilot project are to firstly give you a taste of the hidden treasures in the huge Library of Congress collection, and secondly to show how your input of a tag or two can make the collection even richer.

You’re invited to help describe photographs in the Library of Congress’ collection on Flickr, by adding tags or leaving comments.

Interesting. Take the comments on above photo, then:

I love the shoes and the hat. It’s too bad we aren’t as stylish on a daily basis.

Unless I am mistaken, the park is just north of the US Capitol at C Street between New Jersey and Delaware Ave. I’m not sure if it has a name. Trees now obscure the view.

Isn’t this what is now known as the Senate swamp?

Bain News Service, publisher. G. Washington’s teeth. [between 1910 and 1915]

and insightful comments** on above image:

Awesome.

Those must be George Washington’s horse’s teeth.

**Despite all appearances, I do actually love this idea. Democratization of knowledge, vision, etc., à la Google Image Labeler.