I’m a morning person. That’s why I didn’t mind waking up even earlier than usual to get some shots for the upcoming issue of Block Club. Silo City and Allentown are beautiful places to visit when the sun is just coming up.
- Steve
We recently began working with Max Collins, the talented photographer who’s been raising eyebrows with his wheat pastings around town. (Sit at Pano’s and just try to defy those glaring eyes across the street.)
Max’s work will be featured in our Conversationalists column, the subject of which for this issue is artist Adam Weekley, who discusses art that makes him uncomfortable.
Max submitted three concepts, each of which brought to light a different facet of Adam’s thoughts on discomfort and creation. We made our choice because of Adam’s particular physical discomfort, manifested in his necktie fidgeting.
We’re excited to see where Max takes this portrait in future Conversationalists features. Stay tuned for more inside BCM30: Comfort.
-Ben
It is so sad to see a building that once had so much life and was so important to so many left to crumble and fall apart. This feeling overwhelmed me a couple of years ago when I was exploring a abandoned factory on the shores of Lake Erie. I couldn’t help but think about all the friendships that had been made, the big announcements that were shared and all the work hours that had been accrued by all those that had ever been within those walls. The building that housed all of these events and memories was now left to rot and be taken over my mother nature.
There are many instances of this here in Western New York. Luckily, we are getting smarter about saving these types of buildings rather than just tossing them in the dump. All of the buildings that have been lost over the years will never be recreated with the level of skill and craftsmanship that were used to make them.
A building that wasn’t saved was the Lewis Cass Technical High School in Detroit. The original building was built in 1917 and a addition followed in 1985. In 2002 construction started on a replacement and that school was completed in 2005. The original school was demolished in 2011 but memories of its past live on in an amazing collection of photos that combine photos of the school when it was in use with those after it was abandoned. The photos have been merged to show the same location in two very different time periods.
See more photos and read more about the history of the school here.
French photographer Laurent Chehere, once known for his award-winning commercial ad work for heavyweights like Audi and Nike, left advertising after a change of heart. Hoping to pursue more personal passions with his work, he travelled the world, documenting it in stops across Asia, South America, and everywhere in between. Along the way, “Flying Houses” was born, a whimsical collection of buildings removed from both their backdrop and grounding. It’s a fantastical effort of isolating the uniqueness of these buildings that may, more often than not, get lost in the shuffle of a brighter skyline or tidier facade.
See more of Chehere’s work here.
- Maggie
Also, while we’re on a gentle Friday Planet Earth kick: if you’ve missed the winners of August’s National Geographic Traveler photo contest, head over here and take a look.
- Maggie
Shantanu Starick is a young Australian photographer paying his way around the globe solely by use of his trade. In exchange for food, transportation, and a place to sleep, Starick offers his photography and editing skills to any subject in need of a close up. The result, then, is Pixel Trade, the lovely site where Starick catalogs the products of his photo-couch-surfing endeavor. Take a look; Starick has quite a beautiful, clever system going over there.
[Photo credit: Pixel Trade / Shantanu Starick]
- Maggie
Hashtag hilarious.
-Ben
LAW (“Lives and Works”) is a bi-annual magazine hailing from Brighton, UK. A ”portrayal of the beautiful everyday,” LAW sees style everywhere.
Our preliminary concern is documenting the overlooked and giving people a sense of belonging and recognition that perhaps they wouldn’t normally receive but in no way, shape, or form less deserve. Style tribes who may not be at the forefront of fashion but have a very particular aesthetic in their own right.
We are interested in making fashion accessible by challenging perceptions that it’s an elitist world and showing that it surrounds us all. We hope to appeal to butchers and builders, everyday boys who wouldn’t mind reading a fashion magazine, if only they could appreciate and relate to the content.
The second (hand-numbered) issue of LAW has just been released. Check it out here, or take a look at the very handsome blog LAW curates over at Brutus.
- Maggie
Photographer David Johnson has captured these beautiful shots of fireworks at the International Fireworks show in Ottawa, Canada. He accomplished this by using a form of low-exposure photography in which he refocused during each shot. View more of his work here.
-Steve
Photographer Ulric Collette explores familial similarity in his Split Face collection, released in 2011. By combining photographs of his subjects, head-on images fused at the middle in a beautiful effort of blending, Collette has created a genetics-based series of visual portmanteaus.
It’s amazing; Collette’s photos lay out every physical likeness and dissimilarity in both the small and large scale sense of appearance, and he’s almost clinical in his exploration: against a white backdrop, his subjects exist in a vacuum with no hints as to who they may be. And even so, there’s so much personality here, a split spectral sense of it in each raised eyebrow and hesitant smile. They make me imagine a colossal web of every tiny difference in personality, choice, thought and action - all manifesting outward for two very different lives lived.
“Genetic Portraits” will be on display at Centaur Theatre’s Seagram Art Gallery in Montreal through October, and you can see more of his work here.
- Maggie
“Vincent Laforet is a three-time winner at the prestigious 2010 Cannes Lions International Advertising Festival, a director, and Pulitzer Prize–winning photographer who is known for his forward-thinking approach to image-making and storytelling. In addition to having been commissioned by just about every important international publication—including Vanity Fair, The New York Times Magazine, National Geographic, Sports Illustrated, Time, Newsweek, and Life—Vincent is considered a pioneer both for his innovative tilt-shift and aerial photography and in the field of HD-capable DSLR cameras.” - Kristina Feliciano
These aerial shots are bonkers. Check out his website and his blog and his book for more.
- PS
Happy Hump Day! Treat yourself with one perfect small girl / enormous manatee encounter. Also, a special list of lesser known September holidays to keep in mind once we’ve blown through Labor Day:
- Sept 15: Felt Hat Day
- Sept 16: Collect Rocks Day
Nothing to do but to do it! What will you do with all of your rocks? (Dress them in tiny felt hats, match them to mine.) See you on the other side: October, the Eat Country Ham month.
- Maggie
Jean-Paul Bourdier’s Bodyscapes collection is a gorgeous blurring of the lines between man and earth. The California-based photographer uses traditional film, forgoing any digital manipulation to capture his models’ performance art. Meanwhile, Bourdier’s use of body paint makes for stunning color gradients and a calming sense of symmetry across the vast natural expanse. Beautiful.
- Maggie
Every four years, the Summer Olympics come and go so quickly that it feels something of a “blink (for two weeks while avoiding every single news outlet / human being) and you’ll miss it” deal. The closing ceremonies have charmed with their eccentric Britishness, and London’s spectators are now heading home, leaving us with little more than memories of our favorite Olympic victories.
But wait! For us poor blink-beholden humans, Reuters has amazingly captured every millisecond of several moments we may have missed. They’ve used eleven robotic cameras to shoot London’s athletes mid-twist/leap/lunge, producing these crisp multiple exposure photos. The shots, like their subjects, are fascinating. Something beautiful and 16-legged to look back on, fondly.
- Maggie
