Category: Face Of The Day

by Dish Staff

The above is one of more than 170,000 portraits taken by the photographers of the government’s Farm Security Administration between 1935 and 1945. Alissa Walker spotlights a new project that makes the photos more accessible:

A team from Yale has collaborated on one of the most visually stunning interpretations of the era, called Photogrammar: 170,000 photos from the period, plotted on a map of the country. As part of FDR’s sweeping social policies of the New Deal, launched in 1935, photographers were dispatched to travel the nation, documenting the effects of the relief work. Most notable was the work of the Farm Security Administration—Office of War Information (FSA-OWI), which tapped now-legendary photographers to make most of the black-and-white photographs we’ve come to associate with the time. The archives were digitized and have now made accessible online by this group of historians, GIS experts, and data scientists.

Photogrammar not only allows you to easily search for all these gorgeous historic images, it places each of them on a map, color-coded by photographer. You can see how Dorothea Lange traveled throughout the rural South and then headed west to document the farmers of California’s Central Valley. I especially like how you can track Jack Delano’s path down Route 66. For historical relevance, you can add an overlay of a 1937 road map of the U.S., made by the Vico Motor Oil Company.

Explore the collection here.

(Photo: “Wife of Negro sharecropper, Lee County, Mississippi,” August, 1935, by Arthur Rothstein)

by Dish Staff

Sara Barnes provides context:

If you happen to find yourself in Nantes, France, be sure to head to Jardin des Plantes, a large botanical garden. There, you’ll find this adorable topiary sculpture titled Poussin endormi (Sleepy Chick) by French artist Claude Ponti. It features a larger-than-life baby bird whose relaxed pose looks like it’s in the middle of a nap.

The delightful work showcases Ponti’s great skill in crafting a topiary. He makes evenly-textured, rounded forms that are punctuated with metal details like long, thin legs and a bright yellow beak. There are even tiny eyelashes that dot the bird’s closed eyes!

The exhibition runs through October 20th.

(Photo by Jean-Pierre Dalbéra)

by Dish Staff

A Bosnian coal miner is helped by friends and relatives as he exits the Raspotocje mine in the central town of Zenica during rescue operations on September 5, 2014. Five miners were killed after a 3.5-magnitude earthquake triggered a gas explosion and tunnel cave-in, stranding their crew for 20 hours. By Elvis Barukcic/AFP/Getty Images.

A wounded Afghan man walks at the site of a suicide attack in Ghazni on September 4, 2014. A Taliban attack on a government compound killed 13 security personnel and left at least 60 other people wounded after a truck bomb triggered hours of fighting, officials said. About 20 insurgents armed with machine guns and grenade launchers were also killed during the assault on the intelligence agency base in Ghazni province, one of the most volatile regions of Afghanistan. By Rahmatullah Alizadah/AFP/Getty Images.

by Dish Staff

Children members of an ultra-Orthodox Jewish group remain at the building where the group will stay in Guatemala City on September 2, 2014. Two hundred and thirty ultra-Orthodox Jews were expelled from the town of San Juan La Laguna by Mayan indigenous leaders. By Johan Ordonez/AFP/Getty Images. More details on the controversial Orthodox group here.

by Dish Staff

An Afghan girl look through the door of her house in an old section of Kabul on September 2, 2014. Afghanistan’s economy has improved significantly since the fall of the Taliban regime in 2001 largely because of the infusion of international assistance. Despite significant improvement in the last decade, the country is still extremely poor and remains highly dependent on foreign aid. By Wakil Kohsar/AFP/Getty Images.

by Dish Staff

Sasha Bezzubov and Jessica Sucher photographed Westerners who traveled to India to find enlightenment. Alyssa Coppelman comments on their three-part series, The Searchers:

There is, of course, a difference between delving seriously into the practice of meditation—something the world’s population would no doubt benefit from—and donning another culture’s clothing in what could be perceived as an effort to zip-line one’s way to nirvana. It’s as if the holy experience is in the costume rather than in the practice, and the state of mind they’re legitimately in search of is being reduced to an inappropriate Halloween costume.—even if it’s not really the case. What role does wearing robes or a turban play in bringing the wearer closer to their goals? From the outside, some of them look like they’re wearing a Halloween costume—which is why, accurate or not, it also evokes “Columbusing,” the recently-popular term for the age-old practice of cultural appropriation. And yet, this is all a part of Bezzubov and Sucher’s examination of the subject, and it is their openness to and acknowledgment of this implicit facet that makes this series so engrossing and appealing.

See more of their work here.

 

 

 

 

by Dish Staff

David Samuel Stern creates dizzying portraits by weaving together two separate vellum prints:

This way of abstracting the images does not only offer his subjects a way to hide within themselves, but also turns digital photography into physical objects by adding geometric texture. Being poets, choreographers, artists or programmers, all of the models featured in “Woven Portraits” are creative types in their own field.

How one of Stern’s models described his reaction to first seeing the woven portrait a few years ago:

I find it interesting; it captures some kind of duality, or time/motion – reminiscent of Francis Bacon’s portraits, even in it’s literal hard edged grid. I like how the image fluctuates, it almost forces me not to focus. And in fact, while looking at it I like to actually take my eyes in and out of focus, the piece seems to encourage viewing through multiple ways of perceiving with the eye.

See more of Stern’s work here.

by Dish Staff

William Grijalvas, 10, uses an iPad during Mathis Santella’s forth grade math class at Ashley Elementary in Denver, CO, August 29, 2014. Photo By Craig F. Walker/The Denver Post.