The Jazz Loft Project

The Jazz Loft Project is an archive project profiled in a multimedia production from The New York Times. The production features photography and audio content from the archive of W. Eugene Smith, captured from the unique perspective of his loft building (via Micha).

From 1957 to 1965, the photographer W. Eugene Smith exposed 1,447 rolls of film to record the goings-on inside his loft building, as well as scenes from street life visible from his windows. He also made 4,000 hours of audio recordings that captured random conversations, phone calls, radio programs and, above all, many legendary musicians of the day, who came to the building to hang out, rehearse and jam.

Spring Cometh

All the blogs seem to be posting pictures of spring bursting in. So, here I am, leaping on the bandwagon. The above image is of the just-emerging flower buds in Cologne, taken during a weekend trip with my lovely sister. The image below taken during a Saturday afternoon walk through Amsterdam with Herr Pfeiffer. We walked one hour to get fresh bread. Yeah.

The inner world of Mastic villages

Mastihohoria (Mastic Villages) is a series of photographs by Stratis Vogiatzis dedicated to the villages of the Greek island of Chios.

The Inner World concerns inner spaces which Stratis photographed for almost three years. Stratis with this project has recorded and revealed the unaffected and transparent treasures of a genuine people’s culture which lost the battle of time and hide away from fear. He doesn’t enter the place for self- pleasure, neither does he have an ulterior motive. He goes in like a pilgrim entering a righteous and holy place of worship in order to be able to understand and feel. He strips himself of everything and puts himself into the other person’s place in order to see what the others would never see by themselves. In this way he leads us into the inner world of the homes whose decoration reflects the pain and loss as well as the inspiration of life.

Thus he leads us, in a selective and mystical way, inside the houses whose decoration reflects the souls of the people who live or used to live in them. There where the rooms and their ornamentation are not a showy deception or a deliberate covering up of the truth, but a humble staging of the need for moderation, of the burden of deprivation, as well as the playful enthusiasm for life which, together with faith and hope, have nurtured the people’s culture for whole centuries. The simple and essential things of this culture, those which we would probably come across in the findings of an ancient settlement. There where we recognize our true identity with a sense of awe and enthusiasm.

— Dimos Avdeliodis, Director

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cRtLgH2wau8&hl=en_US&fs=1&]

A New Glimpse of Jane

The 18th century novelists and writers were very popular in the trenches in the Great War. And yes, Austen was used in the fever chart that the War Office drew up to treat shell-shocked soldiers. She was put top of that chart, in terms of how therapeutic her works could be in a dire situation where a man was grievously wounded and needed to be read to. Austen's novels were thought to be the most comforting.

— Claire Harman, author of the book Jane's Fame in an NPR interview (thanks Dad!)

Twenty Ten: Spotlight on African journalism

The recently launched website Twenty Ten provides an African perspective of football, its social and cultural role in Africa and the upcoming World Cup in South Africa. The site showcases photography, text, radio and multimedia content created by African journalists. I highly recommend the multimedia production Our Soweto pitch by Samantha Reinders, the photo series Arab representation by Mohamed Abdou and the radio broadcast Football and academics by Rosemary Mroba Gaisie.

To Fall Asleep...

The English expression “to fall asleep” is apt because the transition between waking and sleeping is a gradual drop from one state of being into another, a giving up of full self-consciousness for unconsciousness or for the altered consciousness of dreams. Except in cases of exhaustion or with the aid of drugs, the movement from one world to another is not instantaneous; it takes a little time. Full waking self-consciousness begins to loosen and unravel.

— Siri Hustvedt, in the NYT article All-Nighters: Failing to Fall (via The Literary Piano)

Captured

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JOvZAxAN9ng&hl=en_US&fs=1&] Over the weekend I watched this documentary about the artist Clayton Patterson, self-appointed visual historian of the Lower East Side subculture since the early 1980s. He started documenting daily life through photography and picked up video in 1986 when the handheld camcorder came onto the scene.

"Realizing the unlimited potential of video he quickly rode a new wave into a world of politics and activism, employing documentation as a tool to combat corrupt authority, corporate takeover, and eventually gentrification."

- Rebel with a Lens in The Brooklyn Rail

He amassed over 100,000 photographs and over 10,000 hours of video, mostly famously his footage of the police brutality in the Tompkins Square Park riots. In a New York Times multimedia feature, Patterson describes some of his photos and the now-gone scene.

Art in Motion

Smart Project Space has teamed up with Goethe Institut Amsterdam for a film series dedicated to German experimental film.

3 March Bauhaus Bauhaus films experimented with color, shapes and music and were the result of a creative dialogue between the influential art movement and the new medium represented by cinema. Works by Werner Graeff, Heinrich Brocksieper, Kurt Kranz, Viking Eggeling, Hans Richter and Kurt Schwerdtfeger.

17 March Berlin: Die Sinfonie der Großstadt (Berlin: Symphony of a Great City) & Melodie der Welt (Melody of the World) Two films by Walter Ruttman, pioneer of modern multimedia art.

31 March Menschen am Sonntag (People on Sunday) A semi-documentary film by Robert Siodmak aims to experiment and thrive off of momentary improvisation.

The Moment Devoted to Pastries

"...he set down a plate of sugar-covered crescents, the cornes de gazelle. No one was the least bit hungry anymore, but that is precisely what is so good about the moment devoted to pastries: they can only be appreciated to the full extent of their subtlety when they are not eaten to assuage our hunger, when the orgy of their sugary sweetness is not destined to fill some primary need but to coat our palate with all the benevolence of the world."

— Gourmet Rhapsody by Muriel Barbery

Transporting Love

Today is Valentine's Day and I find myself reading Alain de Botton's book Essays in Love. By chance, instead of being on one of the less love-y chapters, such as 'Romantic Fatalism', 'Intermittances of the Heart', or 'Romantic Terrorism', this morning I was at the chapter 'Speaking Love' where de Botton analyzes the difficulty his experience of first trying to articulate sentiments of love for his girlfriend Chloe.

There seemed to be no way to transport love in the word L-O-V-E without at the same time throwing the most banal associations into the basket. The word was too rich in foreign history: everything from the Troubadours to Casablanca had cashed in on the letters. Was it not my duty to be the author of my own feelings? Would I not have to fashion a declaration with a uniqueness to match Chloe's? I felt disconcertingly aware of the mundanity of our situation: a man and a women, lovers, celebrating a birthday in a Chinese restaurant, one night in the Western world, somewhere toward the end of the twentieth century. No, my meaning could never make the journey in L-O-V-E. It would have to seek alternative transportation.

World Press Photo winners announced

World Press Photo has announced the winners for the 2010 contest. The main prize goes to the Italian photographer Pietro Masturzo for a single from his series entitled From the Roofs of Tehran.

"The picture depicts women shouting in protest from a rooftop in Tehran on 24 June. The winning photograph is part of a story of the nights following the contested presidential elections in Iran, when people shouted their dissent from roofs and balconies, after daytime protests in the streets. The story as a whole was awarded first prize in the category People in the News."

Other favorite series include Marco Vernaschi's photos from Guinea Bissau, Tommaso Ausili's images from a slaughterhouse in Italy, Pieter Ten Hoopen's series on Hungry Horse, Montana, and Fang Qianhua's photos of contaminated oranges in China. All of the winning images can be viewed in the online gallery.