February 25, 2013

A powerful piece of public art on an unexpected spot. From the artist’s website:

Powerful New National Monument Marks Nelson Mandela’s Capture Site

In 1962, on 5 August, an otherwise ordinary piece of road […] suddenly took on profound consequence. Armed apartheid police flagged down a car in which Nelson Mandela was pretending to be the chauffeur. Having succeeded in evading capture by apartheid operatives for 17 months, Mandela had just paid a clandestine visit to ANC President Chief Albert Luthuli’s Groutville home to report back on his African odyssey, and to request support in calling for an armed struggle. It was in this dramatic way, at this unassuming spot, that Nelson Mandela was finally captured, and proceeded to disappear from pubic view for the following 27 years.

The sculpture [on this spot], by artist Marco Cianfanelli, significantly comprises 50 steel column constructions – each between 6.5 and 9.5 metres tall – set into the Midlands landscape. The approach to the site […] leads one down a path towards the sculpture where, at a distance of 35 meters, a portrait of Nelson Mandela, looking west, comes into focus, the 50 linear vertical units lining up to create the illusion of a flat image.

February 18, 2013
Photos from yesterday’s climate rally in DC. I hope it’s the beginning of something, time is becoming an issue.
A Beginning
It’s my first post on Backspaces, a cool new platform that is like Instagram for photo/text stories.
http://www.backspac.es/billcrandall

Photos from yesterday’s climate rally in DC. I hope it’s the beginning of something, time is becoming an issue.

A Beginning

It’s my first post on Backspaces, a cool new platform that is like Instagram for photo/text stories.

http://www.backspac.es/billcrandall

February 11, 2013
This painting, by my late father when he was in art school at Pratt, hung in our house when I was growing up. It’s a wonderful, somewhat surrealist work with great sense of light, depth, and sly details like the nude couple under a tree in the far left background. Time has not been kind to it, there is pretty serious flaking of the paint around the edges. Finally got out some krazy glue and spray varnish today, hoping to restore some structural integrity so I can get it up on the wall.

This painting, by my late father when he was in art school at Pratt, hung in our house when I was growing up. It’s a wonderful, somewhat surrealist work with great sense of light, depth, and sly details like the nude couple under a tree in the far left background. Time has not been kind to it, there is pretty serious flaking of the paint around the edges. Finally got out some krazy glue and spray varnish today, hoping to restore some structural integrity so I can get it up on the wall.

January 26, 2013

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At an intersection in DC’s Adams Morgan neighborhood that I pass through practically every day, where now there’s a rather bland bank-and-plaza combo, there used to be the largest cinema in the city. The Knickerbocker was built by a theater magnate by the name of Harry Crandall (no relation as far as I know). For you Washingtonians - from this angle, looking northeast toward 18th and Columbia, notice the BB&T bank building in the background. The building a little to the left, next to the trolley, has the current Starbucks.

In January 1922, a snowstorm collapsed the entire roof of the Knickerbocker during a packed screening of the comedy “Get Rich Quick Wallingford”, killing more than 90 people and injuring more than 130 others.

Today, 91 years later almost to the day, as a light snow fell on DC, the Washington Post had a great series of images from the snowstorm and the theater tragedy:

How the Knickerbocker Storm Got Its Name

Here’s a nice shot of the Knickerbocker Theater in 1917:

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Harry Crandall went on to build the Lincoln Theater, which still stands at 12th and U Streets, and the Tivoli Theater in Columbia Heights, which after many years of decrepitude is restored and an anchor of the revitalized neighborhood. My dad said he remembered going to see movies there when he lived in Mt. Pleasant in the late 1950s.

Harry Crandall committed suicide in 1937.

January 25, 2013
"I prefer winter and fall, when you feel the bone structure of the landscape - the loneliness of it, the dead feeling of winter. Something waits beneath it, the whole story doesn’t show."

— Andrew Wyeth   (via thatkindofwoman)

(Source: fortheloveofmegan, via shebelievedshecould)

January 24, 2013
And now, in Icelandic art-rock news

#sr7 2013 from Sigur Rós on Vimeo.

Glad to see Sigur Ros has a new album coming so soon. I do love me some Sigur Ros but really, Valtari was only ok. Even as a purely atmospheric record I thought it was a mild letdown. And now Kjartan (the keyboardist) has officially left the group, so it will be interesting which direction they go in. Jonsi’s solo stuff was all lush and fluttery, this teaser would indicate the opposite approach.

A bit more from the band’s online Q&A today: http://pitchfork.com/news/49290-sigur-ros-preview-new-aggressive-music-in-tour-video-kjartan-sveinsson-leaves-the-band-for-good/

January 22, 2013
Ok, this is not normally my kind of thing, a little surprised at myself actually: I grabbed the long lens a few minutes ago to get a shot of the moon. Well not just the moon, apparently the little guy on the right is Jupiter. Closest visual proximity until 2026 I read somewhere. Yeah, it would be a little sharper if I could’ve found my tripod (but that REALLY isn’t my kind of thing!). Alright, goodnight moon, you too Jupiter.

Ok, this is not normally my kind of thing, a little surprised at myself actually: I grabbed the long lens a few minutes ago to get a shot of the moon. Well not just the moon, apparently the little guy on the right is Jupiter. Closest visual proximity until 2026 I read somewhere. Yeah, it would be a little sharper if I could’ve found my tripod (but that REALLY isn’t my kind of thing!). Alright, goodnight moon, you too Jupiter.

6:44am  |   URL: http://tmblr.co/ZY9ibycM1soY
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January 12, 2013
H Street NE

H Street NE

January 11, 2013
One and a-two

Today I was giving my photo classes their new assignment, “Two-fer” - basically instead of looking for *a* subject, look for two subjects and try to create relationships, contrast, or juxtaposition between them. I pulled some of my own pictures to give them ideas, turns out I do the two-fer thing myself more than I realized. Some are more obvious than others, and we talked about playing with the two components either roughly in the same visual plane (side by side), or using them more as layers (front to back).

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One (non-)example was a picture from my book The Waiting Room - Photographs from Belarus. I had gotten on a trolleybus in Minsk with a friend and quickly made this shot of a girl standing at the rear:

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I felt at the time like I got the shot, and she didn’t seem to mind or maybe didn’t know I took it. But my inner photo nag wanted more, as it tends to. I remember how I thought - like I’m asking my students to think - ok, good, that’s one nice element, but how do I add another, relate her to something else, some kind of contrast… maybe to an older person on the bus for example. So I quickly moved back a bit, trying for that two-fer. Found the older guy like I wanted in the seats but, alas, my friend happened to be standing there in the middle (to my friend AK, it’s ok :))), you couldn’t have known!). It’s not a bad picture, but not the simple duality that I wanted.

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The scene changed a moment later anyway. So the two-fer didn’t quite work out, but the first one made my book in the end.

I hope this is helpful to anyone looking for ways to mix up their compositions. One subject is ok, but think about going for two!

January 6, 2013
The Birds, Fairhaven, MD
This was cool and weird. Glad to get a photo, but it doesn’t really convey the sheer number of birds swooping low over my mom’s backyard, which overlooks the Chesapeake Bay.

The Birds, Fairhaven, MD

This was cool and weird. Glad to get a photo, but it doesn’t really convey the sheer number of birds swooping low over my mom’s backyard, which overlooks the Chesapeake Bay.