While on tour with the British Army in Afghanistan, photographer Bran Symondson became captivated by the private lives and remarkable contradictions of the life of the ostensibly British and American trained Afghan National Police; he was later commissioned by The Sunday Times and the Ministry of Defence to return to the country to document what he’d witnessed there. The resulting images — which will be on display at London’s Idea Generation Gallery beginning January 27th — explore a private, rarely seen side of a conflict that seems to be nowhere near conclusion.
Earlier this week we explored the ruins of Detroit. Wastelands, a series by UK-based photographer Dan Dubowitz, looks at similar abandoned spaces in cities in Scotland, Germany, England, Italy, Cuba, and right here in the US. “These places were all visited between 2000 and 2005, usually alone, with a camera and a notebook,” he explains. “The exposures often ran to twenty — thirty minutes during which time there was an opportunity to take in the scene and come to know these places.” Click through to check out a gallery of his work, which recently won an Honorable Mention at the Lens Culture International Exposure Awards.
People, cars, and buildings look like tiny toys in Olivo Barbieri‘s uncanny photographs. Shooting with a large format camera from a helicopter, he captures real-life urban environments, but makes them resemble tabletop constructions by tilting and shifting the lens to keep some parts clear and other parts out of focus. While Rome, Shanghai, Las Vegas, and Amman, as well as other cultural capitals, have been subjected to the Italian photographer’s unique point of view, in 2007 he hovered over New York, where he shot 6,000 images that got boiled down to 17 large-scale prints.
Lucha Loco collects Malcolm Venville‘s stunning portraits of luchadores, the masked fighters of the Lucha Libre wrestling circuit. Their elaborate outfits and masks range from the kind-of-intimidating to the simply mind-melting, with personas to match. Venville was the child of deaf parents, and became interested in the Luchador masks as a kind of unspoken language. The portraits were made with large-format film in a Mexico City studio and are reproduced in eye-popping color.
The book offers a bilingual and respectful take on the sport, with each portrait clearly identified and paired with a quotation from the wrestler. You can read longer interviews with the wrestlers on the Lucha Loco site, where the burly Dr. Death talks about making love with his mask on and gladiator Maxímo talks about the multi-generational wrestling feud that brought him to the sport.
Last month, the Aetherius Society sent out a message suggesting that there was a correlation between earth’s deadly earthquakes and “NASA’s recent bombardment of the Moon.” Is there an actual connection between space exploration and natural disasters on Earth? NASA’s Jet Propulsion Lab had this to say: “The answer is no, there is no plausible link between the two. There would be no significant change in the orbital dynamics between the Moon and Earth, so there would be no change in tidal stresses that might somehow influence stresses on faults and increase the occurrence of earthquakes.”
Airship Ventures’ Eureka passenger airship is longer than a blimp, bigger than a 747, and has a cabin that holds a mere 12 passengers. Yet already, over 5,000 people (including us!) have had the rare opportunity to take a fancy sky ride in one of the world’s three operating Zeppelins. Berthed in San Francisco, the Eureka occasionally makes its way south for Los Angeles-themed flight adventures, offering “flightseers” an opportunity to check off “ride in a Zeppelin” from their bucket lists.
Muse began their filled-to-the-rafters show at Madison Square Garden with a bang: elevated on towering platforms that were lit up like Christmas trees, the band tore into “Uprising,” the first single from their latest album, The Resistance. A Muse show is much like a rock opera — you get all the theatrics, but the music is loud enough to thrum in your chest. And, like a proper rock opera, there followed fist pumps and head banging, but without any hardcore crowd surfing.
On Monday night, the New York Public Library held their largest event of the year — its annual Library Lions dinner —at the main branch on 42nd street. Candles lined dramatic marble staircases that were strewn with rose petals as socialites and celebrity guests made their entrances. We were there rubbing elbows with Bryant Gumbel (who looks a lot meeker in person) and Henry Kissinger (who looks surprisingly vital for an old war horse). The event honored three NYPL librarians alongside Mayor Bloomberg, Hilary Knight, and Annie Proulx.
Were you at our Gods and Heroes-themed Halloween party on Saturday night? Not only did we have an amazing time (thanks in no small part to music from The Very Best Sound System, Bajah & the Dry Eye Crew, Sub Swara, DJ Kyle Hall, DJ Stretch Armstrong, $mall ¢hange, and VDRK & Bradley D.), we also helped out our friends at charity: water by donating all proceeds to help fund freshwater well projects in developing nations. And the event completely sold out!
One week each year, New York City is positively glutted with indie-music fans, bands, and industry folk for the annual CMJ Music Marathon. It’s madness. To help you navigate things, we came up with a handy guide of pared-down music picks.
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. A Muse show is much like a rock opera — you get all the theatrics, but the music is loud enough to thrum in your chest. And, like a proper rock opera, there followed fist pumps and head banging, but without any hardcore crowd surfing.
