Category: Face Of The Day

by Chris Bodenner

A forensic expert holds up part of a human skull found in a mass grave some 10 kilometers from the Iraqi central shrine city of Najaf on May 19, 2014. The bones of 27 people, believed to be victims of the 1991 Shaaban Revolt, will have their DNA tested for identification purposes. The Shaaban Revolt was a series of popular rebellions in northern and southern Iraq in March and April 1991 after the Gulf War that was quashed by the regime of then president Saddam Hussein. By Haider Hamdani/AFP/Getty Images.

Cara Phillips’ ultraviolet portraits reveal beauty in blemishes:

When I was doing research for my first body of work, Singular Beauty, a series of interiors of cosmetic surgery offices, I came across B&W images of people with their eyes closed on doctors and medi-spa websites. I was immediately struck by the portraits, and discovered that they were made using a type of medical photography that reveals flaws beneath the skin that is invisible to the human eye.

My first thought was that the images reminded me of early post-mortem/memorial photographs, but they were also a kind of anti-portrait that was new to me. The aim of a portrait, in commercial and vernacular photography, is primarily to hide flaws — to present a two-dimensional “flawless” version of the person. Even before photoshop, photographers would hand paint negatives to enhance or improve the subject’s appearance. But these images’ function was to enhance and reveal flaws. However, the images themselves were beautiful, and I found that dichotomy intriguing and decided to push it even further.

See more of Phillips’s work here.

Photographer Donald Jusa brings us face-to-face with insects:

[W]ith his macro camera, the artist is able to capture the most minute details of the insect body. At times, the faces of these beings seem entirely foreign; as viewers, we search for marks of human feeling and features, but the multiple eyes and strange limbs transfix and confound our perceptive powers.

Unlike some macro photography cataloging the lives of insects, Jusa does not capture the  surrounding environment or even the entire body. Instead, his photographs read like strange portraits; against a colored backdrop, the miniature creatures seem absurdly to sit for the artist, proudly displaying their features.

See more of Jusa’s work here.

DL Cade finds a fun photo series:

French photographer Francois Dourlen gets creative using nothing more than his surroundings and an iPhone, but he’s not an iPhoneographer. No, his iPhone is a subject of every one of his images, a little window into the magical world of movies and television inserted creatively into drab scenes in the real world. A great set of forced perspective photographs that reminds us of the Newspaper and #mytoyplane series we’ve shared in the past, Dourlen’s images liven up the real world by turning a politician into Pinocchio or turning a green truck into a character from the Pixar movie Cars.

Check out more of Dourlen’s work on his Facebook page.

People on the memorial plaza watch a video feed of the opening ceremony for the National September 11 Memorial Museum at Ground Zero on May 15, 2014. The museum spans seven stories, mostly underground, and contains artifacts from the attack on the World Trade Center Towers that include the 80 ft high tridents, the so-called ‘Ground Zero Cross,’ the destroyed remains of Company 21’s New York Fire Department Engine as well as smaller items such as letter that fell from the hijacked plane and posters of missing loved ones projected onto the wall of the museum. The museum will open to the public on May 21. By Allan Tannenbaum-Pool/Getty Images.

A miner reacts after being affected with toxic gas while searching for co-workers who remain trapped underground on May 14, 2014 after an explosion and fire in their coal mine in the western Turkish province of Manisa killed at least 201 people. By Bulent Kilic/AFP/Getty Images.

First picture in 3 years of Mir Hossein Mousavi who is being held under house arrest – taken recently in hospital: pic.twitter.com/Ukgu5fFK62

— Saeed Kamali Dehghan (@SaeedKD) May 13, 2014

A reader flags it:

This little dog needed some help off I-680 freeway today. We're glad he's safe. #CHP #Safe #Dog #DogTreats pic.twitter.com/RTuyB6fdPg

— CHP Contra Costa (@320PIO) May 10, 2014

Vincent Cianni photographs gays in the military:

In 2009, while listening to a radio interview, photographer Vincent Cianni was moved by the story of a mother whose son was in the Army and had been discharged under “don’t ask, don’t tell.” Although he wasn’t certain how he would create a series around the story, Cianni said the mother’s sense of love and pride prompted him to call her about contacting her son.

That initial call sparked a four-year project that took Cianni around the country interviewing and taking portraits of gay service members. His initial uncertainty about how he would develop the project eventually became a book, Gays in the Military, published by Daylight. Cianni began working on it while DADT was still policy, but the movement to repeal it was at its height, and he continued the project after the policy was lifted in 2011.

See more of Cianni’s work, and information about a book signing, here. Buy the book here.