Special places: Domestic life
Hanoi panoramas
Photographer Thinh Le explains how he came to produce this portfolio of images of Hanoi:
In a previous project, while taking street photographs of my hometown, I felt limited by the confines of the conventional picture frame which could contain only parts of the many interesting activities that were happening simultaneously around me. I felt that in order to better capture the sense of these dynamic scenes, I would need to record the entire circle of view so I started using a rotational camera that could cover a complete 360-degree view. The rotational camera has radically changed my way of seeing, the ‘decisive moment’ is now stretched and is intergrated into a larger and complete frame in which every detail in the circle of view is recorded (and of equal importance, no detail is excluded). Aside from capturing the spatial relationship of the subjects within the circle of view, I also attempt to introduce cinematic elements (temporal relationship) by overlapping the beginning and end of the exposure (allowing the camera to rotate and expose more than 360 degrees) to show that the scene has changed and is no longer the same. [from the artist’s statement].»more»
Kids with cameras — Haiti
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Gigi Cohen worked with 12 children from a school for child domestic workers in Haiti. She has helped them to record their lives by photography, in one of several Kids with cameras projects. So far, in projects in Haiti, Calcutta, Jerusalem and Cairo, children have revealed the places and circumstances they live in, through websites, books and exhibitions. I’ll quote from the Haiti website:
»more»Blackpool
David Nightingale lives and works in the English seaside town of Blackpool. Each day in his photoblog Chromasia he publishes a photograph of the people, objects and places around him.
These are not the grey pictures I associate with the English seaside, thanks to David’s graphic sensibility, and his willingness to tinker with contrast and saturation.
»more»Yin Yu Tang, a Chinese home
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This web exhibition introduces a late Quing dynasty merchants’ house from south eastern China. The house was dismantled and re-erected at the Peabody Essex Museum in Massachusetts, USA.
»more»Picture Queensland
6,000 images from the John Oxley Library photo collection went online this month. These images show just a glimpse of the material in the State Library of Queensland’s historical collection. The library promises to add more to the online database as it continues the work of digitisation and cataloguing.
»more»Nicéphore Niépce’s house
Website of a French house museum — the house where one of the inventors of photography did his work. In 1827, in the attic of this house, Nicéphore Niépce took “Le point de vue de la fenêtre” (“View from the window”), the first photograph.
»more»Mies in Berlin/Mies in America
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This is a web catalogue for a pair of exhibitions at the Museum of Modern Art and the Whitney Museum, New York. You’ll need the flash plug-in to see this slick hagiography of architect Ludwig Mies van der Rohe (1886-1969) and his buildings.
»more»Horace’s villa
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Quintus Horatius Flaccus (known as Horace) lived from 65 to 8 BC and was Rome’s leading lyric and satiric poet of his age. This web site interprets his life and times through the archaeology of his house.
»more»The Queensland house
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A web essay from the Queensland Museum about the older houses of this part of the world.
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