Photography
Now that I live in the US and fly domestically therein, I no longer get to have airline food. Turns out in my seven years abroad the carriers decided to stop serving actual food on domestic travel. How quaint. My flight last Friday on Jet Blue from JFK to LA provided cookies and crisps and nuts (allergy sensitive beware) but no actual food. No aging stewardess to ask “feather or leather,” which is indeed a sad thing since airline food has a whole design aesthetic. Think about it – the parameters—must be stacked on shelves on trolleys (so food can be no higher than 3 inches). Everything must slot perfectly on the tray. Then of course back in the days of real cutlery, you had the likes of Joe Columbo designing the place settings for Alitalia.
To savor the flavor (okay or at least the style) check out Airlinemeals.net – either that or fly trans-continentally. Airlinemeals has photos of food through the ages on flights and photos by fliers with ratings—not to mention some stylish old airline advertising. Though if you’re planning on flying and shooting your own food, I have a tip – special meals—in particular the Asian vegetarian (code AVML) is excellent on United. Real curry served with actual Indian sweets and naan bread. Another tip from our friend, frequent flier and travel editor Steve Wood—bring your own hot sauce. Tabasco makes it all taste better.
Jennifer Kabat
Posted on Saturday, 1st of April 2006 Permalink
Starting with just a few photographs found in a Paris street, Frederic Bonn and Zoe Deleu’s Look At Me project now contains close to 600 fascinating images either lost, forgotten or thrown away. All of the photographs are from a time before the spontaneity and disposability of the digital image, when you’d only use up a frame of film and flash cube on a posed family moment. There is something interestingly voyeuristic about viewing this collection, the subjects are nearly all looking at the photographer (and hence you), waiting for the shutter click. What we see is an intriguing glimpse into unknown lives that has earned recognition in the Financial Times, The New York Times, Design Week and across the web. Link.
Gary Butcher
Posted on Saturday, 25th of March 2006 Permalink
Your Hidden City is a photography contest over at the architecture blog Tropolism. All the photos have been uploaded to a public Flickr pool, which means that we can see all the entries – over a thousand of them. It’s a real mixed bag but there are some great images such as Sgoralnick’s new look at an iconic building, perceptmaker’s cute graffiti, cscott_sf’s kitsch bears and Duchamp’s concrete poetry (above). Good luck to the judges…
David Rainbird
Posted on Tuesday, 14th of March 2006 Permalink
Matthew Knight has conceived and built the Visual Dictionary – an archive of single words photographed in the real world. Anyone can register and upload their images, which are then moderated before being added to the dictionary. There are about 500 words so far and no real application for them but it’s early days. I noticed that images remain the copyright of the respective owners – which in theory might limit their future use. (via Eyeteeth)
David Rainbird
Posted on Thursday, 9th of March 2006 Permalink
I’ve wanted to post this since buying a friend the book for Christmas. Now David’s broken the taboo I think it’s safe to share…
L.A. based designer, Bodhi Oser, had no big idea other than he thought it might be funny to print out different sized ‘FUCK’ stickers and take photos of the signs he defaced. He was right. And by offering free templates and selling sticker packs on the website he has garnered enough photos for a book and the acclaim of fuckers everwhere. Link.
Gary Butcher
Posted on Tuesday, 7th of March 2006 Permalink
A recent US government publication reports that 1.8 million Shopping Carts go missing in the US every year and since 1999 Julian Montague has spotted about 200 of them. At The Stray Shopping Cart Project he’s documented them all in an attempt to classify the species.
For anyone interested in this new pastime, Montagu’s book The Stray Shopping Carts Of Eastern North America: A Guide to Field Identification is available for pre-order from Amazon. (via Obsessive Consumption)
David Rainbird
Posted on Tuesday, 21st of February 2006 Permalink
The Flickr HDR Group (High Dynamic Range) grows daily, showcasing images that have been merged from similar pictures taken with multiple exposure settings.
Meanwhile Martin Krzywinski has started a Flickr group for HDTR. The T stands for Time, which means that HDTR images are created from multiple time-lapsed exposures. The image above is of Burrard Bridge in Vancouver 7:20am to 5pm on 9 December 2005.
David Rainbird
Posted on Monday, 20th of February 2006 Permalink
If you’ve stumbled across any framed texts in public places around London lately, Jeremy Kunze is probably the culprit. They are literally framed texts, because graphic designer Jeremy has been collecting text messages, then framing and leaving them in spaces that relate to the original message, for example a text conversation about a tennis match is hung on the net.
He’s also collaborated with his partner Jane to create Jane & Jeremy – a website of their creative projects. The thrift-chic clothes, arty photographs and handmade books are all available to buy. My favourite is the collection of kisses from films – like the end bit of Cinema Paradisio in book form.
David Rainbird
Posted on Friday, 17th of February 2006 Permalink
You have most probably already seen the transparent desktop thing, Link. And you may have even chanced across the toy cars parking thing, Link. But now there’s a new way to waste your time. Grab a glossy magazine, a camera and have fun. Link.
Gary Butcher
Posted on Monday, 23rd of January 2006 Permalink
There’s that book, and now there’s the Flickr set to match, with some digital examples that surpass the printed. Why not add your own? Link
Gary Butcher
Posted on Friday, 6th of January 2006 Permalink
