“Hidden Mother” was a 19th century portrait trend where mothers, who were basically dressed a “ghost,” would hold their young children still while being photographed. The end result was, well… haunting and creepy.
There’s a whole Flickr group pool dedicated to the “Hidden Mother” era.
More after the jump…
The Polaroid Swinger was one of the cutest cameras ever made. It was also the first inexpensive instant camera at only $19.95. Add to this its beautiful, sleek design, with built-in flashgun and its ‘YES’/‘NO’ function in the view-finder, allowing users to know when the exposure was set, all ensured it was one of the biggest selling cameras of all time.
Before finding fame in Love Story, a young Ali MacGraw makes an early appearance in this advert for the Polaroid Swinger, from 1965.
Bonus poster, ‘Meet the Swinger’, after the jump…
With thanks to Neil McDonald
Before he began directing films, Stanley Kubrick was a photo-journalist with Look magazine, starting his career in 1946, and was, apparently, their youngest photographer on record. Kubrick snapped over 10,000 pictures, sometimes hiding his camera in a paper bag to achieve a more intimate and natural image.
Kubrick’s photographs of New York in the 1940s, have the look of gritty movie stills from some imagined film noir, revealing intriguing personal narratives, for which the viewer can compose their own script.
A selection of Kubrick’s photographs are available to buy from V and M, with proceeds going to the Museum of the City of New York.
More of Kubrick’s photographs, after the jump…
Via Flavor Wire with thanks to Tara McGinley
One Hundred & Forty Characters is a project by the brilliantly talented and award-winning photographer Chris Floyd, in which he takes pictures of people he follows on Twitter, including comedy genius Graham Linehan, the ever wonderful Miranda Sawyer, Caitlin Moran and Peter Serafinowicz:
In July 2010 I decided to begin photographing people that I follow on Twitter. The idea for this came at a moment when I realised I had not seen or spoken to any of my best half a dozen real and actual friends for over a month. Some of those people on Twitter I communicate with several times a week, in bursts of 140 characters or less, and yet I had never met any of them. As we are now well and truly living in a digital age I am aware that this state of being is only going to deepen and the traditional forms of friendship, although they will not go away anytime soon, are going to have to make more room for the new way of doing things. Where Facebook might be considered as the place in which you tell lies to all the people you went to school with, I had begun to think of Twitter as the place where you tell the truth to all those that you wish you’d gone to school with. The project rolled on indefinitely for almost a year but when, one day, I counted up the number of subjects to date and came to a number in the mid one hundred and thirties, I immediately knew where this had to end. So here they are. My new friends. 140 characters. No more and no less.
One Hundred & Forty Characters will be on show at the Host Gallery, 1 Honduras Street, London EC1Y 0TH between the 3rd & 17th November 2011.
Check here for details and to see more of Chris Floyd’s brilliant work check here.
@msmirandasawyer
“I like this picture because it represents my whole family. Although there’s only me and my son in it, he’s wearing a T-shirt that says Smiley on it, which is my husband’s name; and I’m five months pregnant with our daughter. So there’s four people in there, not just two.
“I look quite mad in it, which I like too. That crazy, rictus grin: I was hot, and fat, and tired and my son was playing up. The only solution was to turn him upside down and make him laugh. I notice that in another one of the 140 Characters pictures, another small boy is being held in the same way. It’s a default solution for boys, it makes them normal again, like rebooting a computer, or reprogramming Buzz Lightyear to his factory settings.”
“The beauty of Twitter is that it is only as useful as the person who is using it wants it to be. It is such a simple and flexible service that everyone who uses it does so in a different way. Not only that, but it’s a meritocracy. Not only that, but Karma seems to have something to do with it. If you use it for good, you will be rewarded, if you use it for evil, you will be blocked. As a result, it’s leading to some remarkably civil conversations between ideological enemies. If the inventors of Twitter never win a Nobel Prize, they wuz robbed. Because as far as I’m concerned, they have enabled us all to take a major evolutionary step at a crucial moment. At a time when the human race faces not one but several extinction threats, we suddenly get the ability to talk to one another.”
4 more from ‘One Hundred & Forty Characters’, after the jump…
With thanks to Trevor Ward
Duggie Fields is one Britain’s best and most influential artists, whose work hangs in galleries across the world and has influenced art, design, fashion, music, film, and now photography. Over the past few years, Mr Fields has been using his mobile phone to photograph and document the well-traveled streets and over-looked locations around his home in Earls Court. Now, he has collected these beautiful poetic moments together in a book called Just Around the Corner. Dangerous Minds contacted Mr Fields to ask him how the project started?
‘The photographs started a few years back once I got my first mobile phone that had a good camera and didn’t have to self-consciously think about taking a camera out…The phone was just always with me…So the frequency of taking photographs almost daily became a natural occurrence with no plan or scheme as to what…Like a diary of images, starting just around the corner in the area I live in and have lived in for over 40 years, and in which I constantly find things I haven’t noticed before, and still can find beautiful.’
Where did the title Just Around The Corner come from?
‘The title came because it was the description of where the first “Facebooked” were….I started putting them on Facebook as it is easy to do and easier to put there than my website. Soon they started getting followers ‘Liking’ them from all over, which encouraged me to put them together eventually for the book whose title was obvious.’
What inspires you and are there certain themes you find yourself returning to?
‘Themes started with the local architecture combined with the gardens, trees, plants of my immediate neighborhood but then spread to corners across London. Really just everywhere I happened to be going, from parks, to street-markets to car-boot sales. Varying also with the seasons from spring to summer to the snow. They have influenced my painting and are in turn influenced by them. Now from just around the corner they echo organically further in the digital world.’
To order a copy of Duggie Fields fabulous book Just Around The Corner check here.
Previously on Dangerous Minds
When Duggie Fields, Divine and J.R. had Christmas together
Color photographs and footage of London’s Carnaby Street from 1968. Doesn’t look all that swinging, does it?
TV’s dumb, sometimes unintentionally dumb, as can be seen from Mike Sacks’ Photos of TV. Sacks is the author of the “laugh-out-loud/piss-yourself-funny” Your Wildest Dreams, Within Reason and has a fun collection of photographs from TV, over at his home page.
Check here for more of Mike‘s photos.
Previously on Dangerous ~Minds
Your Wildest Dreams, Within Reason
With thanks to the brilliant Steve Duffy!
It was his art teacher who first suggested he should pick up a camera. “My paintings were shite. I had a wee camera but didn’t really use it much till I went to college where I did this design for print course thing at the GCBP (Glasgow College of Building and Printing). Most of the photographers who were there at the time thought I was studying photography I spent so much time in the darkroom.”
That’s when Brian Sweeney found he had more than just a natural talent for photography. A talent that would lead him to become one of the most sought after, award winning photographers in the Europe.
It was probably something that as always there in the background, as he explained in this exclusive interview with Dangerous Minds:
“A-ha, the background. Funnily enough, I met up with some old schoolfriends of mine recently, who informed me I was always an arty-farty little bastard. I do remember being told by the headmaster that school was for learning and not a bloody discotheque - I’ve always loved that word ever since during that period we were all dressing up as Dexy’s Midnight Runners, something I still haven’t grown out of yet - well, that 80s period anyway.”
It was his fascination with music and fashion and soccer that led Sweeney to start documenting the clubs he and his friends hung out in.
“I’d always been around bands from an early age. We were going into night clubs like Lucifers (now the Sub Club) and Fury Murrys to see a lot of later Factory bands. Then Acid House kicked off and I was sort of there shooting DJs, my mates etc, the scene basically for fun…..then ID, The Face, Melody Maker needed shots of the regional scenes and my name popped up quite a lot, so I started shooting for them up here [in Glasgow]. It just sort of kicked off…I then started shooting for all the labels, just in the right place at the right time. Everything happened very quickly from being on the dole and arsing around nightclubs to well earning money and shooting celebrities and arsing around nightclubs in London.”
Arsing about or not, Sweeney is a legendary figure in the photographic world, known for his professionalism, enthusiasm and boundless energy, going from one location to the next, fashion shoots, adverts, documentary work, magazine work - his creativity never stops. Sweeney’s been described as the equivalent of Hunter S Thompson with a camera - but only far more talented - while his looks have been described as like a grizzled Santa’s helper or a more handsome Billy Bob Thornton, take your pick.
When I first met him, a while back now, he had broken his arm, but was still managing to take some of the most inspired and revealing portraits I’d ever seen. Last year, he had a broken leg, but even this didn’t stop him, as he wheeled to and from locations, and when stuck in his apartment started documenting the visitors who came to wish him well. Earlier this year he made a series of short how-to-shoot films for the Guardian newspaper.
“I hate forced photography. I have to be totally immersed in something to shoot, i.e. I have to be interested in the subject matter, well for personal work…”
Sweeney has just finished a commission for legendary Glasgow indie record label, Soma, which is celebrating 20 years producing quality dance muisc by the likes of Daft Punk.
“I’m quite proud of that ‘cause I’ve been there from the beginning, so it’s nice to see we are all still going despite the parties. Lesser mortals would have fallen.
“I’m also shooting loads for Channel Four, making some short films for Harris Tweed and virals for wee indie bands. Directing some semi decent budget pop promos, and shooting shit loads of bands again.”
Then there’s the private commissions, and then work for the Daily Telegraph, Guardian, and the odd campaign “when there’s a budget for photography.”
“Christ, I just realized I shot stills and posters for 5 feature films last year. I’m just still glad to be still doing it. I’ve seen so many people give up, so I suppose I must be doing something right.”
He stops for a second.
“I was going to say I wasn’t travelling as much nowadays, but that’d be utter shite!”
This week, sees the opening of an exhibition of Sweeney’s work at the Folk Store, 11 Dray Walk, Truman Brewery, London, from Thursday 8th September for 4 weeks.
“The exhibition came about through a mate from school who arsed around with me in the early days. He runs a label called Folk and he had a space in his new store in Brick Lane in London. The label kind of matches in asthetics some of the long term projects I’ve been working on - its community and spirit ethics. So we thought it might be nice to do something together. Also it was motivational for me as I havent had a major show in London since Great Stadiums of Iceland in 2002.
“The new work is an expansion of previous projects. Since Iceland, I’ve done Spain, Sweden, Scotland, Poland and more. So the Iceland project has developed into this European thing now.”
Amongst the works on show are a continuation of the series of disused or empty soccer stadia.
“That all began in 1995, when I asked Einarr Orn of The Sugarcubes, whilst I was out shooting in Reykjavik, if that tiny wooden stand next to a football pitch was for a junior team, and he replied, ‘No, it’s a Premier League team and one of the oldest in Iceland…’ He wasn’t lying and I just became hooked on collecting these images of obscure empty football fields.
“The work on show is called Were the Antelopes Sleep. I got the name ‘were the antelopes sleep’ for pressing the wrong button on Google and the first thing that came up was ‘were do antelopes sleep?’ and I thought, that’s a good question where the fuck do antelopes sleep? Like why do we never see baby pigeons?”
Were Do Antelopes Sleep ties in with another project Sweeney is working on “again based on emptiness and obscurity…theses are the places between were I shoot the fields so I suppose the works have some train of thought. I’m just showing a few new bits and peices in view to something bigger altogether…”
As final questions, I asked him what’s so good about photography? And why?
“Photography has changed so much since I started. I could go on about models, drugs, travel, but one brilliant thing that I can say is that Digital Photography has given marginalised parts of society a voice. It’s a wonderful tool for communication if used properly.
“I just completed a course for young homeless kids in Glasgow using photography. Now we weren’t necessarily teaching them to be phtographers but what they did get from it was confidence, a new way of seeing, respect and the concept that you can actually achieve something.
“There’s too many answers to what’s good about photography. I just stumbled across it and fell in love, pretty much the way I’ve conducted my life.”
See more of Brian’s work here and here.
Selection of photographs from Were Antelopes Sleep below, for details check here.
More photos from ‘Were Antelopes Sleep’, after the jump…
The long summers of Edwardian England were a product of the 1920’s imagination, when those who had been children during that decade looked fondly back to a time of seeming innocence. This in part became a theme central to a generation of British artists and writers - Christopher Isherwood, W. H. Auden, Nancy Mitford, George Orwell, Francis Bacon, Evelyn Waugh - all Edwardian children, who produced work that reflected the loss of certainty and identity caused by the Great War.
These photographs of Edwardians in color capture some of the wistful nostalgia that the ubiquity of cameras and film usage helped develop during the century.
Previously on Dangerous Minds
Color Photographs of Russia from a Century Ago
Via How to be a Retronaut
More Edwardians in color, after the jump…
Alexey Titarenko has photographed Saint Petersburg since he was 8-years-old. In fact, he says, he has dedicated his whole life to the city. Titarenko sees his photographs as reflecting the history of his city, and Russia, over the past 20 years.
“Through the prism of my native city, I attempt to show events that occurred not only here, but throughout the country - the changes, the catastrophies, and the human tragedies, which have swept this city and the people of this land.”
In the 1990s, Titarenko was working on a series of photographs about totalitarianism, centered on the signs and statues that were crumbling around him as Soviet communism failed. Poverty spread as rationing was introduced.
“Food was rationed. To obtain food in exchange for the ration tickets, people would run from one store to another, with a desperate air, and their eyes full of sorrow. I’d place my camera at the subway entrance and take photographs.
“The activity around the station, which was located in a shopping district, overlapped with the sensations I felt when I listened to certain musical compositions, Shostakovich’s 13th Symphony in particular, the movement entitled “At the Shop”.
“The mass of people flowing around the subway station formed a sort of human tide, giving me a sensation of unrealness, of phantasmagoria, These people were like shadows, one would meet in the Underworld. I decided to express that feeling in my work, to convey my personal expressions. I had to find a visual metaphor that would enable the viewer to share my feelings as acutely as possible. That is what prompted me to try a long exposure process.”
Titarenko’s pictures were haunting, disturbing, like malevolent ghosts crowding the frame. He called the series City of Shadows,
Via My Modern Met. With thanks to Tara McGinley
More hauntings pics, and rest of documentary on Alexey Titarenko, after the jump…
Yep, what it says: 500 peeps in 100 secs by Eran Amir.
500 people holding more than 1,500 (!!!) developed pictures all around Israel, creating a smooth music video within their hands.
(Best viewed not on full screen).
Impressive.
Time Escape - a short edit of neat time-lapse photography made during Time Fest 2011 and shot by Tom Lowe, Vince Laforet, Carson Garner, Tom Guilmette, Shawn Reeder, Dustin Kukuk and Eric Kessler.
In The Cat Inside William Burroughs paid a great compliment to his favorite animals:
“My relationships with my cats has saved me from a deadly, pervasive ignorance.”
Now, isn’t that a true thing? That our relationship with animals can have such a benevolent influence. I’m spending the week looking after a friend’s dog (a cute, wee strawberry-blonde, Lakeland Terrier), who has, over the years, taught me much about myself, for which I will always be grateful.
In thanks for that, here is a small selection of some interesting people and their lovely animal companions.
James Dean and his cat, Marcus, a gift from Elizabeth Taylor, who took custody of Marcus after Dean’s death.
Frank Sinatra and Ringo.
More animal pics, after the jump…
Apparently, in Estonia the average person spends 3 to 4 hours a day watching television. A fact which photographer Andris Feldmanis has used for the basis for his latest project TV Portraits.
Feldmanis’s idea is quite simple but highly effective, as he has reversed the point of view (a bit like My Game Face or a photographic version of The Royle Family), creating portraits of people “posing for their television sets.”
“It is not a critique of mass media and its influence, it is a document of what the TV sees.”
See more here.
Via Booooooom, with thanks to Tara McGinley
More ‘TV Portraits’, after the jump…
Since 2006 photographer and artist Patrick Winfield has been creating these giant Polaroid composites.
“My work is about juxtaposing various elements to make something new, playing with the familiar to form some fantasy. A recycling of imagery to create new symbols. I draw with my camera and film or with found images and the xacto knife.”
Check more of Winfield’s work here, and his blog here.
More of Winfield’s beautiful Polaroids, after the jump…
