Monthly Archives: January 2013

Train Dreams

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Train Dreams offers us a view of a vanished and forgotten pioneer America through its protagonist Grainier. He lives through much of the twentieth century but his twentieth century is rather different from that you’ll find in the History Channel. The Great War, The Beatles, Roosevelt, Hiroshima, Martin Luther King and D-Day never happened in …

Down the Rabbit Hole

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Length doesn’t always equate with depth. One of the best works of fiction I’ve read in the last year clearly prove that point The novella ‘Down the Rabbit Hole’ by Juan Pablo Villalobos tells its tale from the point view of a Mexican child, Tochtli, who’s father just happens to be on the verge of …

Shot in New York

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  Sometimes a photo is about so much more than what it depicts. Such is the case with William Klein’s 1954 image. What we literally have is an image of child pointing a toy gun at the photographer. The look on his face is one of aggression, his face screwed up like a man about …

Home Scary Home

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For many of us the word home brings up ideas of something cozy and welcoming, a flickering far places, the tail of a wagging dog, the smile of a loved one or perhaps comfortable armchair. Not so Todd Hido. I don’t know what an earth was going on in his family but his haunting images …

All at Sea.

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Alessandro Puccinelli likes water quite a bit. It’s inspired him to create this stunning array of seascapes that capture every facet of the sea, from violent storms to becalmed surfaces. The calmer images remind me a little of Roman Loranc or Hiroshi Sugimoto, while the color work bares the hallmark of another sea obsessive, JMW …

Diego Uchitel: Polaroids

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Following in the footsteps of Guy Bourdin and Carl Molino, Argentinean born fashion photographer Diego Uchitel has done a cool collection of Polaroid images featuring everyone from Sofia Coppola to David Bowie. I’m a sucker for this kind of low res feel, particular when contrasted with the highly finished photo shopped imagery we see in …

Hero

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The return of David Bowie got me searching for old clips of the Thin White Duke performing some of his timeless back catalogue. It’s hard to beat him when he’s on form.    

2012 in review

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The WordPress.com stats helper monkeys prepared a 2012 annual report for this blog. Here’s an excerpt: 19,000 people fit into the new Barclays Center to see Jay-Z perform. This blog was viewed about 77,000 times in 2012. If it were a concert at the Barclays Center, it would take about 4 sold-out performances for that …

The Great Photographer Smackdown

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For some reason best known to the curators at the Tate Modern they’ve decided to hold a joint exhibition on to vastly different but highly influential photographers with distinct philosophies of their trade. The result of course is that people feel honor bound to pick a favorite. Klein is up first and his work is …