The British Library is… big. No. Let’s rephrase that. It’s not just “big”… it’s… really big. Bigger than your imagination. Even in a digital age, where terabytes of information are stored on air-conditioned servers, the British Library adds new physical documents at the rate of three million documents a year; necessitating an additional shelf space …
We are all familiar with Marshall McLuhan’s observation that “The medium is the message”; and the J. Paul Getty Museum, Getty Center offers the chance for us to reassess this, with a curated show of museum artworks dating back to the early days of when we began to notice the media “strings showing” for the first …
With retrospectives at both the Getty and LACMA and a new HBO doc about his life and work, Mapplethorpe sparked this editorial from writer/curator Simon Herbert: Given the current tone of political discourse in an election year, it’s tempting to think that we’ve hit new lows in civility; yet rewind to 1989, on the floor …
Every now and then, we take a look around the photo world on the web and round up news worthy of a visit with your morning coffee: Former Travel Photo Library boss Philip Enticknap has launched a new website to license his own Rights Managed images. Amongst the copious travel images, there is an extensive Malta collection …
It could be argued that, ever since Andy Warhol intrigued and scandalized (yes: scandalized, at the time) art audiences in the 60s with the conceit of pop culture regurgitations of mass market products (or, if one is to be entirely precise, when Marcel Duchamp’s ‘found’ urinal named “R.Mutt” outraged the Society of Independent Artists in …
By guest writer Simon Herbert Many times in our lives, we only realize the importance of something after it’s gone. That’s what our parents tend to preach to us: to value what you have in the long term; but, usually, we don’t listen, and “stuff” happens; and suddenly, when things go awry, we’re back to …
The Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division preserves millions of images that were created for publication in magazines and newspapers. Both physically, and online, one can delve into a vast visual resource: ranging from the Bain Collection (The George Grantham Bain Collection represents the photographic files of one of America’s earliest news picture agencies) …
Writer Douglas Adams once observed, “It can hardly be a coincidence that no language on earth has ever produced the expression, ‘As pretty as an airport.’” From the access roads that engorge and disgorge an infinite stream of cars; to the behind-the-scenes conveyor belts that somehow (but not always!) manage to deliver millions of bags …
If you’ve recently wandered through Penn Station, or the Atlantic Terminal, Malls, or the Borough President’s Offices in New York, chances are you will have seen rows of large-scale portraits of kids. These are the Heart Galleries: an initiative from well-respected non-profit Heart Gallery project: an important, high profile project to raise awareness of the …
Taking a gander around the interwebs to see what there may be going on in the photography world during long hot days. A few items of interest: Everyone is talking about the Sundance darling film shot ALL on an iPhone: http://www.pdnonline.com/features/techniques/video/Sundance-Favorite-Tangerine-is-a-Feature-Film-Shot-on-iPhones-14018.shtml. The reviews agree that is is well worth the time. Shot on a 5s …