(via stopping off place: for R.C.)

[ Imported from /// Visual Thought ]

Proof that Vermeer used optical devices?

[ Imported from /// Visual Thought ]

“Prove it — with a Kodak”

(via The Triumph of Kodakery: The Camera Maker May Die, But the Culture It Created Survives - Alexis Madrigal - Technology - The Atlantic)

[ Imported from /// Visual Thought ]

Chairs. Fugazi. … ? “These are a few of my favorite things.”? 

P.S. This poster is available on eBay for $600 in case anyone forgot to buy me a Christmas present. ;)

[ Imported from /// Visual Thought ]

[ Imported from /// Visual Thought ]

smokeandacoke:

non

[ Imported from /// Visual Thought ]

[ Imported from /// Visual Thought ]

How It’s Made: The Impossible Project (by petapixelcom)

[ Imported from /// Visual Thought ]

[ Imported from /// Visual Thought ]

Images are all around you:

This picture frame, made from an ancient Pentium II laptop, displays images sniffed out of public WiFi connections: “Many coffee shops in Vancouver feature both local art and wi-fi, so why not combine the two?”

WiFi-sniffing picture frame (via Boing Boing, via Wiretap picture frame [Free Geek Vancouver via JWZ])

Above: "Look at me! I'm Johannes Vermeer!"

My local supermarket carries gouda featuring Johannes Vermeer photo paintingbombing The Milkmaid.

Cheesy, indeed.

Above: Tom Gauld's illustration from Sunday's New York Times Magazine.

Two of photography’s most-renowned theorists were name-checked in the May 8, 2011 New York Times.

Roland Barthes appears in Ken Johnson’s discussion of the widely-circulated (and oft parodied) photograph of U.S. officials watching the raid on Osama bin Laden’s compound. Does it truly convey the “situation” in the situation room?:

… the expression of Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton stands out. She holds her hand over her mouth and appears, what? Shocked? Awed? Dismayed? She is what the French critic Roland Barthes called the “punctum,” the not necessarily conspicuous detail that gives a photograph its emotional resonance.

But Mrs. Clinton has said she does not recall what they were watching, and attributed her hand-to-mouth gesture to allergies. For all we know, the officials might have been watching a ballgame.

Barthes and Susan Sontag get a mention in A.O. Scott’s “On (Digital) Photography: Sontag, 34 Years Later” in the Magazine. If you’re in a hurry, Tom Gauld’s illustration (above) succinctly summarizes Scott’s “riff”. We are awash in images. A once precious drip has become an uncontrollable flood. How do we move forward?

Above: Dash Snow and Lise Sarfati in the New Yorker

The New Yorker generally features excellent art and photography, but this pairing of a detail of Dash Snow’s “Untitled (Hell)” (2005) and Lise Sarfati’s “Sloane #30, Oakland, CA” (2003) — illustrating Sam Lipsyte’s story “Deniers” — stood out. I’ve long loved both of these images; the third effect of this pairing conjures intense feelings of desperation and stillness.

Above: An animated GIF by Jamie Beck and Kevin Burg.

Photography presents itself as the medium best equipped to capture the small, visual moments of our everyday life. But the drawback of a photo is it’s democracy: the lens sees everything at once, without favor for the thing the photographer is seeing.

The animated GIFs of Jamie Beck and Kevin Burg combine the stillness of photos with movements captured on video to create a beautiful, elegant mix of the two media.

[ From me to You ] (Beck and Burg’s Tumblr)

(via FastCoDesign)

The May 2011 issue of National Geographic has a brief article on my “all-time favorite thing” — the camera obscura.

Included is some discussion with alpha-obscurist Abelardo Morell as well as a gallery featuring his obscura-driven work.

Also cool — a 90 second video of National Geographic staffers making their own camera obscura room. It’s a concise “how-to” video for any of you who’ve never converted a room into a camera.