London during the War

These color photos of London during WWII are pretty stunning.

Kodachrome

I came across these stunning WWII Kodachrome large format images via Metafilter. That’s some good-lookin’ propaganda, right there.

http://www.laboiteverte.fr/en/propagande-americaine-en-kodachrome/

http://pavel-kosenko.livejournal.com/303194.html?thread=22669914

http://www.shorpy.com/Large_Format_Kodachromes

London photo walk

I had about 8 free photo galleries on my list, and I managed to see 5 of them. Not bad, really, considering they were all spread around London, and I didn’t just breeze through any of them. Anyway, on my way, I took some photos of my own. It was a rare sunny winter day. Most of these are from my neighbo(u)rhood.

Update: I also meant to mention that the Angela Gorgas exhibit at the National Portrait Gallery is worth the trip down there all on its own. This photo is one of my new favorites of all time:

There are also two very good smaller (free) galleries near Old Street station. The Yvon Lambert had some really interesting large prints from Andres Serrano. His stuff borders on pornography, but there’s an almost painful intimacy to much of his work that helped it transcend the initial gross-out factor. That, and the gallery was curated really well, with photos in just the right places with respect to each other. The other gallery was Rivington Place, a larger and spacious gallery showing Santu Mofokeng’s work, which consists mostly of South African apartheid subject matter – perhaps less shocking than Serrano’s exhibit, but making no less of an impact.

Snow Day

I haven’t seen this much snow since I was very young. It’s been snowing all night and all morning, and pretty heavily at that. I snapped a few pics with my flatmate last night, we had a snowball fight and helped our neighbors roll a giant snowball for a snow man.

I’m going to get ready and go out and take a ton more.

Julian Röder

Julian Röder takes amazing photos (via). I’m really curious what his primary camera is; most of the shots have a vintagey 35mm look to them. If it’s a new digital, then he’s doing some really excellent (and consistent) digital processing. Regardless, the style, content and composition are eye-catching. Take these two from his The Summits, for example:

Photography site update

I’ve finally redesigned my photo site. Take a look and let me know what you think – it’s a work in progress, and I’m open to suggestions.

Getting Sweded

I have settled into the hotel here in Stockholm after a very long journey. I left London at 8pm yesterday, landed in Amsterdam a little after 10pm, wandered the streets of Amsterdam all night, didn’t get stabbed, flew to Stockholm around 6am, and walked around like a zombie most of the day. I hopped on the train with Tim and a couple of his coworkers to the central station, where we walked around a street market and inside a shopping mall. I bought a trendy-ish scarf at one of the three H&Ms on one block (no exaggeration). I think I’d like to also buy a nicer scarf somewhere this week, too. Stockholm’s a very fashionable place, so I think I’d do well to shop a bit – but only a tiny bit. It’s Norway-expensive here.

If anyone has any recommendations for places to see and things to do, please let me know. Here are a few pictures from the trip so far (click to super-size):

Waiting at Heathrow:

I felt very welcome at the mall:

Balloons over Stockholm (from the hotel window):

Film fan

OK, so as it was pointed out this weekend, I’m a total photo nerd. And even though my beloved old Nikon F chewed up and spat out a roll of exposed film Saturday night, I still firmly believe in the power of film over digital. Not that I’m anti-digital, but given the choice, I’d usually shoot with an old film camera. I’m tempted to turn this into a more general argument for analog over digital, but I’ll hold back. So speaking of old cameras and film, here’s a really awesome page that  lists cameras by type and shows example images from each.

(Taken with my Lubitel lomo.)

The Big Picture

Holy crap. Best new blog in a while. From the Boston Globe, The Big Picture is a relatively simple idea, executed gorgeously: few words, big, pretty pictures, tells a story. It just started this month, and already there are some really great stories and even better photos:

Daily Life in Sadr City, Iraq

The Sky, From Above

Mississippi Floodwaters in Iowa

Ethiopia in Food Crisis Once More

You really have to see these full-sized. Stunning work.

Life through an SX-70 lens

This has been blogged ubiquitously today, so much so that the original site exceeded bandwidth. It should be back up soon, but until then there are still pictures around, and more background on the story here. Mental Floss says it best:

He Took a Polaroid Every Day, Until the Day He Died

Yesterday I came across a slightly mysterious website — a collection of Polaroids, one per day, from March 31, 1979 through October 25, 1997. There’s no author listed, no contact info, and no other indication as to where these came from. So, naturally, I started looking through the photos. I was stunned by what I found.

In 1979 the photos start casually, with pictures of friends, picnics, dinners, and so on.

Sadly, the story ends abruptly. But the Polaroids live on, giving their owner’s life a warm tint as only Polaroids can – a Time-Zero flipbook of a man’s daily life from 1979-1997. It’s such a powerful piece of work to me: the thousands of neatly categorized images, the inherent nostalgia of the Polaroid color palette, the mundane alongside the intimate portraits of happiness and illness, and those who lived on and honored their friend with this exhibit – the story of a life recounted by an SX-70.