Tom Palumbo

A favorite photographer of mine is Tom Palumbo who mainly worked in the 50’s and 60’s. As his name suggests he was born in Molfetta, Italy and came to America as a child. By the late 40’s he was working as a fashion photographer and became staff photographer for Vogue between in 1959 and 1962 …

Just add John

I’m sure many of have looked at some of the classic photographs of the last 100 years and thought if only these fabulous pictures could feature iconic actor John Malkovich how much better they would be. Well it looks like photographer Sandro Miller was reading our minds because he’s actually recreated some of the world’s …

Lost in the Dream

It’s rare to hear a rock album that feels classic without feeling derivative and irrelevant. The woozy, comedown grooves of ‘Lost in the Dream’ by The War on Drugs is just such a beast. It’s an album of long drawn out tracks that swing along without dragging. Like the last album from fellow Philadelphia native …

Schapiro’s Taxi Driver

One of the first films that had a visceral effect on me was Martin Scorcese’s ‘Taxi Driver’. I’m sure for many it’s depiction of the gritty New York streets of the seventies remains the way they see NYC now. In this film it is a dangerous, semi-lawless place where lone psychopaths are just waiting to …

Colorless Tsukuru Tasaki

Haruki Murakami is not everyone’s cup of green tea. His bizarre switches from reality to fantasy can leave more conservative readers both baffled and slightly put out. Talking cats, men being flayed in Mongolian deserts and people inexplicably trapped at the bottom of wells are a few of his more memorable flights of fancy. Yet …

Rome 56

I’ve always been a big fan of William Klein but probably my favorite images are those he took in Italy in the mid 1950’s. They are impressive in their ability to depict a culture to which Klein was a total stranger. His brilliant early work in New York were taken in neighborhoods he knew well …

Detroit 68

Once, long a go, Detroit was an industrial capital. A vibrant, multi-racial urban center that produced the cars that America drove. It’s all recorded in Enrico Natali’s book Detroit 68. First published in 1972 under the title ‘New American People’ the book depicts a city 40 years ago that was at the beginning of a …

Growing Up Black

Dennis Morris is a photographer, designer and musician previously known to me through his photographs of Bob Marley and The Sex Pistols. However he was also a fine documentary photographer as witnessed by his book ‘Growing up Black’ a chronicle of his East London neighborhood during the sixties and seventies. A snapshot of an era …

The World of Yesterday

Hong Kong in the Nineteen Fifties and Sixties is beautifully captured in Fan Ho’s The World of Yesterday. Rather than just attempt to capture candid moments Fan Ho would often find a spot and wait for the perfect light before capturing his images. The result are some dreamy and ethereal pictures that seem to hark …