Seth’s third installment is well timed to coincide with an upcoming event covering similar issues (albeit one is an undergraduate’s ornithology student perspective and the other a Harvard superstar entomology professor’s perspective). Click the image to the left to go to the New York Public Library’s invitation to visit with one of our favorite scientists. Click here to read more about his upcoming book (and view the three short videos at the bottom of the front page when you click through). The promo for the event at NYPL says: Continue reading
Art
In the Shadow of Books
For centuries books have held a place of honor in our collective hearts and minds, whether housed in the great libraries of classical civilizations, the libraries of the “Great Houses” of Europe, or the wooden niche in a country home.
Whether related to their historical relevance or their long beloved history, books resonate with the stories they tell, the places they carry us to and the way they make us feel. Continue reading
The Chenda melam- Traditional band of Kerala
The Chenda melam is the most widely performed keshtra vadhyas (songs or programmes based on temples festivals) of south India. Irrespective of cast or religion, the melam have been an important part of every Kerala festival for over 300 years old. The most important among these melams are Pandy and Panchari, which may extend up to 5 hours. The leading instrument in these compositions is the Chenda, a cylindrical drum that originated in Kerala. The Chenda is divided into Valamthala Chenda & Edamthala Chenda (right & left side of the instrument) or also known as “Veekam Chenda” & “Uruttu Chenda”.
Giving Wildlife a Hand
Creativity often breaks the boundaries of “Art” and flows unrestricted into the art of advertising, catching the eye and closing the deal. Using uncharacteristic restraint in avoiding all the obvious applause puns tugging at my imagination, I will just say “kudos to WWF” for using Guido Daniele’s inspired work to make their important point. Continue reading
Marketable Faces: Part Three (Melting Pot)
The fringes of society are not the only point of convergence for odd characters. Least of all in India. Confronted by a foreigner with a camera, a man of modest means, excited by said foreigner’s appearance and interest in him, might act rather queerly. Although this response isn’t strictly natural in the general sense, it is by no means posed or artificial, as the subject is acting entirely of their own accord. So when they proffer bananas in shock, or hide their face behind a cup of chai or a cigarette, that’s the reaction I capture. The most frequent response is nervously calling out to friends nearby to “get a load of this”.
Pulikkali – The Tiger Dance
Photo:- Joshi Manjummel
The Tiger Dance is an art form of Kerala in which painted men imitate a tiger and its action. Pulikali is said to have originated in the 18th century when the soldiers belonging to the army of Sakthan Thamburan, who was the King of Cochin, first performed it.
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Marketable Faces: Part Two (Men of a Certain Age)
There’s something about Indian men above the age of fifty. Their features seem to lend themselves to being photographed. When they have beards, they are twice as photogenic, and when they crack a smile, it’s twice as radiant as that of a man half their age. One of my favorite aspects of the British colonial residue (or perhaps the Indian custom rubbed off on the Brits!) is the extravagant facial hair exhibited by many Indian men of a certain age – Keralites with enormous mustaches are not as common as in Tamil Nadu, but when they do it, they do it with class.
Marketable Faces: Part One (Men in Blue)
Throughout Kerala, colorful trucks unload tons of produce and commodities every morning. Wholesalers, warehouses, and markets all maintain a steady flow of goods – and the cycle begins anew each morning. I occasionally venture into central Cochin’s main market (Broadway) to photograph the process, and the colorful people that are washed about by the endless tide of fruits and vegetables, fish and fowl.
Guardians
A trusted source of information, ideas, news, and more — the website of The Guardian is always worth a visit. Today is no exception, but above (click here to go to the original) is an exceptional example of its visual contribution to our sense of wonder about India’s diverse communities and how they worship.
High Time
…Some years ago — never mind how long precisely — having little or no money in my purse, and nothing particular to interest me on shore, I thought I would sail about a little and see the watery part of the world. It is a way I have of driving off the spleen, and regulating the circulation. Whenever I find myself growing grim about the mouth; whenever it is a damp, drizzly November in my soul; whenever I find myself involuntarily pausing before coffin warehouses, and bringing up the rear of every funeral I meet; and especially whenever my hypos get such an upper hand of me, that it requires a strong moral principle to prevent me from deliberately stepping into the street, and methodically knocking people’s hats off — then, I account it high time to get to sea as soon as I can… Continue reading
Photographic Parlor Games
Perhaps to close a recent string of links to interesting items on photography, which began here, continued here and here, and then extended just a bit here, there is an item in the Photo Booth feature on The New Yorker‘s website that:
asked Lyle Rexer which five photography books he would want to be stranded on a desert island with. Lyle is a photo critic, curator, teacher, and author of numerous books about photography, so I had a feeling he would take the challenge seriously. My suspicions were confirmed when, after three hours in our library, he was still deliberating. Knowing Lyle’s selections and his reasons for making them, I would gladly trade one of my five desert island photo books for a volume of Lyle’s photo criticism.
Click the image to above to go to the International Center of Photography’s website; they carry one of the choices mentioned in Rexer’s response. Continue reading
A Photographer’s Photographer
Another interesting word or two on this exhibition (click the image to the left to go to the source) to add a different critical perspective:
Last Tuesday, The New Yorker commissioned Jessica Craig-Martin to photograph the opening of Cindy Sherman’s MOMA retrospective.
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Photographer: Artist Or Celebrity?
In two recent posts linking to stories about two very different photographers, there may have been an implied answer to the question raised in the first and repeated in different words in the second. Art critic Peter Schjeldahl– who has a good track record of mixing insider knowledge, smart observation and common sense — weighs in with his own answer:
Starting in 1982, Sherman countered a popular clamor to discover “the real Cindy,” as if she were the latest shtick-wielding show-biz celebrity.
Connecting The Madeleines
The young man working his way through the kitchen brought to mind a young man of about the same age, three decades earlier. I had the good fortune, in my early adulthood, to work in a restaurant owned and operated by a man who is one of the great chefs of his generation. I did not work in the kitchen, but in the dining room, from 1983-1985. It provided the most important education of my life, which is saying a lot because I eventually earned a Ph.D. and even that did not top the learning earned in Guy Savoy’s restaurant.
A Dry Periyar
Kerala is dry. The places I’m used to seeing so green and vibrant that they practically drip are now dry, brown and crackly. What are normally torrential waterfalls are reduced to sunbaked rock faces. Clouds occasionally float through the sky, mostly in early morning, but they haven’t shed tears throughout the season. The native plants are geared to survive this climate, as the year seesaws between dryness and enormous moisture. In the forest, untold thousands of dead leaves cover the ground, crackling with glee as trekkers pass under the trees. Continue reading
Not Your Average Madeleine
One of the most effortless pastimes is visually-cued memory. Out of nowhere you see something that reminds you of something and you are off to the races. Or you hear something. Whether the trigger is visual, auditory, tactile, gustatory, or olfactory–or any combination of those–if you have the fortune of a stock of pleasant memories then something may take you to the kind of place linked in the image above.
Today At MOMA
A completely different kind of photographer from our hero, Errol Morris, Cindy Sherman is more classically defined as an artist. With all the wonders as well as baggage that come with that term. Although artists have sometimes been heroic, the recent trend has included plenty of fashionistas. Cindy Sherman challenges; decide for yourself. A retrospective show opens today, showing 35 years of her photography. The New York Times review, titled Photography’s Angel Provocateur, has a nicely turned phrase about the show and how the viewer is:
…confronted by an artist with an urgent, singularly personal vision, who for the past 35 years has consistently and provocatively turned photography against itself. She comes across here as an increasingly vehement avenging angel waging a kind of war with the camera, using it to expose what might be called both the tyranny and the inner lives of images, especially the images of women that bombard and shape all of us at every turn.
Rock, Paper, Scissors
I grew up being taught that books are precious. Whether due to text, illustration or both, the best of them possess a piece of our living memories, passed down through generations, becoming dog-eared with loving use. In the age of eBooks and threatened libraries, the intangible qualities of a bound book are becoming even more precious.
But for many of the same factors (growth of internet research and eBooks) as well as due to progress itself, there are specific books that become obsolete almost as soon as they are moved from press to shelves. Encyclopedias, Road Atlases and Medical Journals are good examples. So what, then, is to become of those weighty tomes that a generation or two ago held pride of place in every household? Continue reading
Facts & Figures
Michael Pollan, whose ideas we have mentioned surprisingly infrequently relative to the impact they have had on our collective lives, made the wise decision to team up with one of our favorite illustrators (have we really not featured her here yet?). Continue reading
The Heart of The Matter
Playgrounds are fairly ubiquitous in most parts of the world, be they rusty swings or elaborate constructions. My own sons have clamored up wooden forts and rope bridges in upstate New York where they were born; metal piping in the shape of a plane fuselage in Costa Rica where they grew up; and inventive, child friendly park structures in Paris where we lived as well…not to mention any and all trees, stone walls and Mayan temples they would find in between.
In 2009 Japanese architectural firm Tezuka Architects teamed up with renowned Japanese crochet artist Toshiko Horiuchi MacAdam to create a play space both uniquely charming and innovative, that even the most “Global Citizen” of children would be amazed by. Continue reading
Organikos 