Art, Photo & Misc.
Daniel Schwartz, Sasanid and Seljuk Ruins of Bam, Iran (from the series Travelling through the Eye of History) (1995)
(via booksnbuildings)
“It is not widely known that Tarkovsky, whose films often seem to be composed as a montage of still photos, in a period effectively took photos with a Polaroid camera. These photos, taken at home and in Italy, in spite of all their technical imperfections bear witness to the same way of seeing and visual world as the great films.”
“A selection from these photos was first published in Italy in 2006, and recently a Russian photo blog digitized all the pictures.” (Source)
Jeff Wall, Morning Cleaning, Barcelona, 1999.
“I think I shot for about twelve days. The light was right only in the early morning, from about 7 to 7:35. I had only about seven minutes each day to photograph the space as a whole, because the shadow patterns change so quickly in the morning. I had to be ready for those seven minutes each morning, and during them I made the “master” views, without the figure. He was standing by, and as soon as the masters were done, I readjusted the camera and photographed him changing the end-piece of his mopsqueegee. Since he is in shadow, and since that shadow did not change shape and brightness as quickly as some of the other areas did, I had maybe twenty to twenty-five minutes to work with him each day. Once his shadow area changed, the shoot was over. That was about 8 a.m. I’d get the film back around 4 or 5 p.m. and spend some hours each evening studying it, trying to determine what I had and what I still needed, then got ready for the next morning’s shoot, getting up at 5. It is a little stressful to be shooting for digital assembly without being able to make some test assemblies because I amusually uncertain about various possible problems. Most of these have to do with hard technical things, like depth of field, focal plane, exposure and so on, things that need to be very consistent if the different pieces are going to go together properly. I had to examine all the film from each day extremely carefully, looking for problems and making certain that key pieces were compatible with others. The computer work was done later that fall, back home”.
From Michael Fried’s Jeff Wall, Wittgenstein and the Everyday (2007).
Métro Modern Style, 1933.
Illustration of the article “De la beauté terrifiante et comestible de l’architecture Modern Style”, Minotaure 3-4 (1933) by Salvador Dali, where he wanted to defend the edible values of the Modern Syle, represented by architects like Antoni Gaudi or, in this case, Héctor Guimard (Paris Métropolitain entrances).
ROBERT VENTURI & DENISE SCOTT BROWN
Las Vegas Studio:Images form the Archive of Robert Venturi and Denise Scott Brown, 2008.
“Color in the subway was different. I found that the strobe light reflecting off the steel surfaces of the defaced subway cars created a new understanding of color. I had seen photographs of deep-sea fish thousands of fathoms below the ocean surface, glowing in total darkness once light had been applied. People in the subway, their flesh juxtaposed against the graffiti, the penetrating effect of the strobe light itself, and even the hollow darkness of the tunnels, inspired an aesthetic that goes unnoticed by passengers who are trapped underground, hiding behind masks, and closed off from each other.”
Bruce Davidson, from a New York Times Review of Books excerpt of the introduction to his book Subway. (Previously.)(via blech)
