Category: Face Of The Day

Wilfred de Bruijn, a Dutch man living in France for 10 years, after a brutal homophobic attack in Paris:

According to de Bruijn, he was attacked with his boyfriend in the 19^th arrondissement of Paris on Saturday night simply because they were gay. France’s gay rights groups say the savage beating comes as homophobic incidents are on the rise.

They blame the increasingly radical and stubborn anti-gay marriage movement.

Hours after being subjected to the beating, De Bruijn put the photo on his Facebook page. It has since been shared thousands of times across social media.

“Sorry to show you this,” the victim wrote. “It’s the face of homophobia. Last night 19^th arrondissement, Paris, Olivier and I were badly beaten just for walking arm in arm.

“I woke up in an ambulance covered in blood, missing tooth and broken bones around the eye.

“I’m home now. Very sad.”

Marriage equality will come to France in a matter of weeks.

Sage Sohier describes the impetus for her project About Face, portraits of people with facial paralysis caused by either Bell’s palsy, tumors, strokes, accidents, or congenital nerve damage:

Most people I photograph are acutely aware of their imperfections and try to minimize them. Some have confided in me that, in their attempt to look more normal, they strive for impassivity and repress their smiles. They worry that this effort is altering who they are emotionally and affecting how other people respond to them. While most of us assume that our expressions convey our emotions, it seems that the inverse can also be true: our emotions can, in some ways, be influenced by our facial expressions.

(“8-Year Old Girl with Brown Hair” from the show About Face, at the Foley Gallery in New York, April 17 – May 24.)

If Dalí were a bird, he’d be an Inca Tern:

Found along the rocky Pacific coastline, from northern Peru south to central Chile, the uniquely plumaged bird is easily recognizable for its dark grey body, its red-orange beak and feet and, of course, that curling white mustache. Sadly, its population has decreased at a rapid rate due to the loss of suitable nesting areas. They’re only an estimated 150,000 left, classifying them as near threatened.

(Photo by Maks Rozenbaum)

An Afghan soldier belonging to the Field Artillery Division of the Afghan National Army (ANA), Kandak 6, checks the barrel of the D30 Howitzer gun prior to a test fire during a training session of ANA soldiers at Forward Base Honaker Miracle at Watahpur District in Kunar province on April 17, 2013. Budget cuts and war fatigue in Western capitals mean the 100,000 soldiers left serving in NATO’s International Security Assistance Force are packing up and taking off as the mission prepares to close next year. By Manjunath Kiran/AFP/Getty Images.

A moving video image of a woman holding the Royal Dutch Shell logo is projected at the Qatar Business and Investment Forum 2013 on April 16, 2013 in Berlin, Germany. Through its oil and gas revenue, which have allowed Qatar to bring in the world’s highest income per capita as well as have one of the lowest unemployment levels in the world, the Persian Gulf country is able to invest outside of Arab countries in industries as diverse as fashion, media, petrochemicals and banking. By Adam Berry/Getty Images.

Details on the portrait above, which is part of a series:

The project, called Eyes as Big as Plates, started off as a play on characters and protagonists from Norwegian folklore, but for Norwegian photographers Karoline Hjorth and Riitta Ikonen the series has become something more about, as they put it, “exploring the mental landscape of their neighborly and pragmatic Finns.”

The models in the photographs are captivating, not only for the strange organic headwear or clothing they wear in the photographs, but equally for the character they project through the images. Who are these quirky and fascinating people who trek across the cold wilderness, willing to dawn strange clothes and convey so much through their expressive eyes? What stories do they tell when not behind the lens? In a sense, the mystery behind the people in the images transforms them back into the folkloric images they were originally intended to be.

More images here. If you’re in New York, check out the exhibit’s closing reception at Recess Redhook, Pioneer Works on April 24th.

(Eyes as Big as Plates # Agnes II, © Karoline Hjorth & Riitta Ikonen.)

A description from Juxtapoz:

[Françoise Nielly]’s colorful portraits, created using thick strokes of oil on canvas, are based off simple black and white photographs. According to her bio, Nielly ‘takes a risk: her painting is sexual, her colors free, exuberant, surprising, even explosive, the cut of her knife incisive, her color pallete dazzling.’