Only Dead Fish

Sergey Prokudin-Gorsky

Funny how the strangest things make an impression. Sergey Prokudin-Gorsky was a Russian photographer who developed some of the earliest techniques for colour photography that involved taking a series of monochrome pictures, each through a different colored filter, and projecting them using correctly-colored light to reconstruct the original color scene. Between 1909 and 1915, he travelled and documented a pre-revolution and pre-First World War Russian Empire using a specially equipped railroad car darkroom provided by Tsar Nicholas II. Prokudin-Gorsky's original intention was to help educate Russian school-children, but we are left with a vivid and strangely evcocative collection of images, many of which look like they could have been taken yesterday.

When I was 14, I learnt Russian at school and got to travel to Moscow and Leningrad not long after Brezhnev had died - an experience which has stayed with me ever since.

More here. Via the WORD newsletter of all places.

Flying Over Britain, Looking For Love

I love a good data visualisation. At the end of last year, Flowing Data published a list of the 5 best data visualisations of 2008, featuring a couple that I hadn't seen before but which are quite exceptional, so are worth posting:

1. This short film, from the BBC's Britain From Above series, visualises the 7,500 aircraft that crowd into Britain's skies every day in a quite mesmorising way:

2. 'I Want You To Want Me' from Jonathan Harris and Sep Kamvar (of We Feel Fine fame), visualises the world of online dating. Data is collected from various dating sites every few hours. Dating profiles are represented by individual balloons...floating...hoping to find their match:

 

Someone Once Told Me

 

Photographer Mario Cacciottolo has a neat project going called 'Someone Once Told Me', summed up simply as "Black and white photographs, a new one every day, each person writes a message of something someone once told them". And he's done one of me. The message I used is actually something I read from Paul Arden, which I was pointed to by something Paul Isakson wrote on his blog ages ago.

Mario interviews each subject to get the backstory and each image is accompanied by some narrative which explains this. In mine, he's called me "rather suave and impeccably cool" which rather leads me to suspect he's got me confused with somebody else (especially as there's no mention whatsoever of a dodgy goatee). Anyway, don't let that put you off - it's a great project so go visit the site, take a look at the rather lovely video montage below and if you fancy being featured there's more about the origin of the idea and Mario's contact details here.

The End

A Flickr set by graphic designer Dill Pixels of classic movie end frames. Images that mark the end of films but the beginning of our memories of them. Love it. The End.

One Careful Owner

3rd place winner in the 2008 15 Second Film Festival:

One Careful Owner from 15 Second Film Festival on Vimeo.

Touching Strangers

Photographer Richard Renaldi spends a year asking total strangers to touch, and then takes their picture. Some appear like they've known each other for years, some look like they're about to die with discomfort. All rather, well, touching.

More here.

Make Your Own Money

Image courtesy

Regular readers will know of my mild obsession with Sleeveface related ideas. Well here's the credit crunch version - make your own money.

Image courtesy

Image courtesy

Exactitudes

Coincidentally, the day after reading about Random and Directed copying in Mark and Alex's piece, I happen across this project from Dutch photographer Ari Versluis and profiler Ellie Uyttenbroek who since 1994 have documented a record of "people's attempts to distinguish themselves from others by assuming a group identity". Exactitudes (a mash up of 'exact' and 'attitude') frames groups of people in a stark studio setting that emphasises the uniformity in various social groups in a quasi-anthroplogical way. Fascinating.

"Everyone Has A Story To Tell"

"I simply ask people to write in my journal. What they write is up to them.". David, a copywriter from Salt Lake City walks up to strangers, gives them his moleskin notebook ("I only use moleskin notebooks"), and asks them to write about whatever they want. Quite a few of them do.

"There are so many people out there with such diverse backgrounds and perspectives...it’s absolutely fascinating to me. Have you ever looked at a person and thought, “I wonder what their story is? How did they get to where they are? What are their dreams?” I do. All the time...This is my chance to get to know some of them, even if it’s just a glimpse, and share their stories that would otherwise go untold."

Write In My Journal. Simple, quirky, and another interesting narrative form.

Fashion Without The Fashion

Nice photo gallery over at Wallpaper of fashion show venues without the fashion models. Funny how the context is so different without all the razzamataz, but also how beautiful they are in there own right.

Raf Simons:

Paul Smith:

Prada:

Dries Van Noten: