Pieter Hugo - Agbogbloshie
For the past year, South African photographer Pieter Hugo has been photographing Agbogbloshie, a dump of obsolete technology in Ghana. It’s a wasteland, where people and cattle live on mountains of motherboards, monitors and discarded hard drives, is far removed from the benefits accorded by the unrelenting advances of technology. It’s a haunting and dismal glimpse at what becomes of the 50 million tons of digital waste produced each year in the Western world. The exhibit, called Permanent Error, opens tomorrow at the Michael Stevenson Gallery in Capetown, South Africa and runs until September.
St. Vincent Sings INXS
From Beck’s Record Club, an informal meeting of various musicians to record an album in a day. The album chosen to be reinterpreted is used as a framework. Nothing is rehearsed or arranged ahead of time.
Infinite Garage
Raina Lee’s parents were pack rats. And when they died she inherited 35 years worth of her parents’ stuff crammed into a 3-car garage in Southern California. The garage was a mythic place where as I child I could find anything– gadgets, kitchen wares, stamp collections, bags of money, and clothes. Now that my parents are gone, I’m clearing out their mess but discovering more than ever about their lives. She’s posting her finds on her Infinite Garage project daily and selling some of it on Etsy.
Helmo Collages
It’s like a Goya monster coming over the hills or something. French design studio Helmo has made these great collages for les Pronomade(s) en Haute-Garonne, an annual street arts festival in rural France.
James Cooper
I really like James Cooper’s photos. He’s a photographer from Bermuda who takes some of the most funny and creative underwater photos you’ve ever seen. Check out more photos at his image blog.
Andrew Moore
There are lots of photo essays documenting the growing fallowness of Detroit, but Andrew Moore’s photos of Motown ruins are my favorite.
Nathalie Grenzhaeuser
German photographer Nathalie Grenzhaeuser has taken some beautiful photos of the Arctic. In the series The Construction of the Quiet Earth, she has taken dramatic photos of mining and research facilities in the Arctic Archipelago, Spitzbergen. And in The Islands you can see the relentless lonesomeness of the tiny Arctic shacks built by hunters and trappers over the past century.
For a Classy Evening
Have you tried this trick for a making your evenings a little classier:
- Get out your drink of choice.
- open 3 tabs on your favorite browser.
- On the first tab
- On another tab
- On the last (might want to go full-screen on this one)
L.A. Looks Great When You Take Away the Cars
Ross Ching shows how attractive L.A. is when you get rid of the cars in Running on Empty. Ching was inspired by a similar project of still photographs, Empty L.A., from L.A. photographer Matt Logue.
Photos of Celebrities
So there was that week in the 90s when I was the editor of US magazine and I was all, “let’s run these photos I found of celebrities!” and they were, like, “I thought you worked in the parking garage– how’d you get in here.” Well, thank God at least somebody saved a few of the photos.
Walking in L.A.
Interesting series from Brooklyn writer Ryan Bradley, where he chronicles a 70-mile walk roundtrip across the L.A. Basin. And he’s not the first to try this stunt. In 2007 British novelist Will Self walked from LAX to his downtown hotel 17 miles away.
Avedon’s Pad for Sale
The four-story townhouse where the late Richard Avedon had his studio and home for more than 30 years is now on the market for $12 million. Currently owned by Olivier Sarkozy, the half-brother of French President Nicolas Sarkozy, the ground-floor studio where Avedon made his photos has been left unchanged since the Sarkozys moved in 2005, the year after Avedon’s death. And it’s a pretty interesting studio space too. In this photo you can see how the walls of the studio curve into the floor, creating a backdrop with an illusion of unlimited space.
Cannonball
Fresno’s been hit hard by the bursting of the housing bubble, where 12% of the homes there had some type of foreclosure filing in 2009. Few have benefited from this abundance of vacant homes like skaters. Cannonball, from the great new short film blog California is a place, shows how the backyards of Fresno have become one, big skater amusement park.
New Trees
German photographer Robert Voit has taken a terrific series of photos of what he calls New Trees, examples of cellphone antennae camouflaged as trees.
Party in the Ukrainian Parliament
They are nothing if not passionate in Kiev. While debating the seemingly innocuous subject of lease renewal for a Russian naval base this week, all hell broke loose. Check out the photos of the chaos. The chamber’s speaker had to be shielded by umbrellas as he was pelted with eggs, while smoke bombs exploded and politicians brawled, reports the BBC.
Reggie Watts
This is amazing. Reggie Watts deconstructs the shite out of classic rap cliches. And the beat is irresistible. Bad words are used.
Joni Sternbach
Joni Sternbach makes beautiful large-format tintype photos, especially her Surfers series.
Hans Hemmertabandon
German artist Hans Hemmert made a tank out of balloons and then kids stomped on it.