yes it's advertising, but it's also art!

there is a reason why canon is my favorite.

Canon Pixma: Bringing colour to life from Dentsu London on Vimeo.

reblogged from bearpope.tumblr.com

homemade by ikea.

words cannot express how much i want this cookbook from ikea. even if it's all in swedish and i can't make any of the recipes, the photographs are so gorgeous i really don't care. check out the video below for a cool making-of. and be prepared to get hungry.

IKEA – Homemade is Best. from Forsman & Bodenfors on Vimeo.

mcdonalds hamburgers: the cockroaches of food.

Artist Sally Davies has undertaken an experiment where she literally just leaves a happy meal lying around to see how long it will take for the food to exhibit some sort of physical change. so far, after 137 days, the most that has happened is that the burger patty looks just a wee bit dehydrated. pretty amazing. i knew i was right all those years ago when i tried to convince my mother to stop feeding us mcdonalds.

check out a write up at ny magazine.
and you can see a slideshow of the progress here.

warhol photobooth

i recently went on a grand adventure to Pittsburgh to prepare for my future life there (Carnegie Mellon here I come!). While I was there, as a brief break in my apartment hunting, I stopped at the Andy Warhol Museum. To my great delight they have an old school photobooth in the basement. What you see above is my prized memento from my solo expedition to the 'Burgh (my lease, however prized, doesn't really count as a souvenir).

i have a feeling that this photobooth will become quite a considerable part of my life. how exciting!

DuBois Fort Gallery Opening

if you're in the Hudson Valley tomorrow night:



Opening Saturday @ the DuBois Fort Gallery
81 Huguenot Street, New Paltz
4 to 8pm
FREE

this exhibition will be running through June.

Historic Huguenot St.
NP Third Saturdays
Art Along the Hudson

polaroid v. fuji

what's up with polaroid's new instant film camera? i thought that when they came back with their famous instant film i would be overjoyed, but instead i'm just confused.

i became aware of polaroid's new model through a fellow photographer and friend, and i think both of us are a bit puzzled.

here's the deal: polaroid broke hearts when they announced they would be no longer producing their iconic instant film. organizations sprung up to save the film, such as savepolaroid.com. but in the midst of this fuji launched their own instant film. diehards could never fully convert from polaroid to fuji, but the instax was a wonderful compromise, because at least someone was still producing instant film.

but now, after so much turmoil, polaroid has announced that they will be producing their much loved instant film once more (thanks in part, no doubt, to lady gaga). BUT! their new cameras looks just like the fuji instax mini 7. the polaroid camera is an icon, why on earth would they change the design to mimic a less successful competitor?? this might upset me more than it should, but it also makes me more inclined to pick up an instax of my own. if polaroid is ripping them off they must be good.

shop for fuji here.
shop for polaroid here.

lady gaga directing roids.

always good to see polaroids in action.




reblogged from my dear friend adam: http://washablemarkers.tumblr.com/

bikes.

as i was using my local ATM, i noticed this beautiful tree across the parking lot. it really is spring now, isn't it? and a perfect time for bike rides!

babies can rule with iron fists.

Nina Maria Kleivan dressed her baby up like famous dictators and then photographed the results. admittedly, this can at first seem shocking and wrong. but i think on closer inspection that she has a point. Hitler was a baby once too. who knows who all the newborn children of the world will grow up to become? they're all just babies in the beginning.

you can read an interview with Kleivan here, as well as see a slide show of her infamous photos.

whitney biennial 2010.

this past week i made it down to nyc in part to check out the whitney biennial. i had heard quite a bit about it, mostly because of how many women were included this year.

my impression of the show had very little to do with the amount of women (although it is exciting to see so many ladies represented), but more to do with the amount of video. i have nothing against video art, but i find it rather exhausting. and when you have almost an entire floor of video installations in the whitney it gets a little overwhelming. i felt that the amount of videos detracted from the overall show. too many videos start to take away from each other. chances are most people are skipping most of those dark rooms in favor of something they can look at in their own time (the light helps too).

my favorites from the show are as follows:

James Casebere, whose large scale photos of handcrafted communities were at once beautiful, and a reminder of things that are wrong with our society (overdevelopment, foreclosures, gentrification, etc). bonus points for the subject matter being based in Dutchess County, NY.

i also loved Tam Tran's photographs of her precocious nephew. the composition paired with subject matter was spot on, and she took something that could be very boring to photograph and made it interesting.

Nina Berman's documentation of a severely disfigured veteran made me extremely uncomfortable and for that i commend her. her shots feel voyeuristic because they are so personal. the heartache that is felt by the two people she photographed is startlingly clear. the portrait studio wedding picture is especially moving.


my last pick for best in show is Hannah Greely. her recreation of a typical dive bar booth is comforting in its familiarity and simultaneously confusing because of its intentionally fabricated nature. details look right from far away, but up close things seem slightly amiss. the handcrafted pay phone attached to the back of the bar is especially good.

so most of my favorites were photographers, and i might be a bit biased in choosing them as the standouts, but that's what blogging is all about after all.

now here are some of the artists i was least impressed with:
Maureen Gallace
Jesse Aron Green
Rashaad Newsome
Charles Ray


i think the biennial is also worth a look, but overall i wasn't that impressed this year. maybe next year they can have both women and excitement.

eureka!

why is it so hard to curate your own artwork?

i am currently preparing to exhibit some of my photography at a local gallery, and i have complete control over what i choose to show and how i choose to show it. it's an amazing opportunity. but through my brainstorming i realized that it is not going to be as easy as i thought it would be. the familiarity i have with my work is great in terms of being able to easily recall everything that i have at my disposal. however, because it's all so personal i'm having trouble seeing the forest for the trees, so to speak. after much deliberation i think i may have finally had an ah-ha moment. but who knows if tonight's eureka will mean anything tomorrow.

new orleans.

last week i went on a wonderful adventure to new orleans, partly to visit my TFA brother, and partly to see what happens at Mardi Gras.
i came back to new york after a slight case of food poisoning with a head cold and a lot of pictures.

despite my illness i had a great time in new orleans and i would love to go back one day to see more. i thought everything about it was beautiful- even the ugly parts. and besides Willie Mae's which did a number on my stomach, the food was great too. and who doesn't love a city with drive thru daquiris? and the oldest bar in america? truth be told, during my stay in NOLA i had more experience with the bars in the area than the restaurants, and that right there is reason enough to go back! i wouldn't trade in my Pimm's Cup at the Carousel bar for anything, but i am a bit disappointed that i never got a cup of gumbo. well, as fas as i'm concerned it's never a bad thing to have a reason to keep traveling.

for pictures click here.

levittown.

yesterday i went down to long island to see the house i grew up in. the last time i was there i was packing up whatever i had left when i moved out. this time i went to see what kind of a state the place was in, having been more or less left to its own devices for a few years. i ended up taking almost 100 photos. here are just a few:


more can be seen here!