On the Web: August 2006 Archives

If you're a big Candida Höfer fan, check out "Hot Library Smut" (a misleading and pandering blog entry title if there ever was one) for a great collection of decent-sized examples of her work.

How do you differenitate between her representations of these striking spaces and the spaces themselves? Do you get the same sense from standing within them as you do viewing them through Höfer's lens? Probably not, but I can't help but think that 80% of the effect is in the subject.

Jason Kottke has grabbed a few examples from the Library of Congress' "Bound for Glory" online exhibition of 1930s color photography and applied some Photoshop kungfu (color correction) to bring a sense of "taken today" to these photographs. Striking and I'm embarassed I hadn't thought of it before.

From an interview with Rinko Kawauchi, a Japanese photographer I am unfamiliiar with, comes what is possibly the world's worst interview question:

Miss Kawauchi, your photos bring me into a world of quiet contemplation, your camera captures the most intricate details of every day life, transforming the ordinary into the extraordinary and revealing a lyrical rhythm to our daily lives and surroundings. Before I go into your motifs and motivation, may I start by asking you what cameras you use?

I tried reading this question out loud to my wife but was so lost in laughter by the time I came to the actual question that I could hardly finish it. To start with such a sycophantic statement that would make even Charlie Rose or James Lipton blush only to follow with "what cameras do you use" makes me marvel that Ms. Kawauchi finished the inteview at all. Glad she did. Apparently she's "the next upcoming photographer - even in London"!