April fool! We considered putting up some horrible photos and telling you it was the up-and-coming photographer of the decade. But we just couldn't bring ourselves to do it. So we'll let you enjoy someone else's prank:
Back in 1957, the BBC program Panorama offered a lengthy profile of a family that was successfully growing spaghetti on trees. Unusually warm weather and the near extinction of the spaghetti weevil had produced conditions ripe for a bountiful pasta harvest.
Watch the YouTube video:
Hundreds of people called the BBC wanting to know how they could grow their own spaghetti tree. According to the Museum of Hoaxes, operators replied "Place a sprig of spaghetti in a tin of tomato sauce and hope for the best."
You can read about other pranks that made the Museum of Hoaxes -- including NPR's story on Richard Nixon's second run for President -- here.
Mountains really can be moved. Or removed, at least. In one type of surface mining, entire mountaintops are razed to extract coal, and the byproducts are dumped into nearby water sources. This method is particularly associated with the Appalachian mining industry, and has had a devastating impact on mountainous ecosystems. Last week, however, the Environmental Protection Agency announced its plan to review coal miners' permits, which could potentially reduce the practice. Read the related NPR story here.
For full screen, click on the four-cornered arrow icon in the viewer's bottom right.
In the summer of 2007, photographer Daniel Shea set out to cover the coal industry of Appalachia. As he puts it:
"What began as an interest in the modern coal mining process known as mountaintop removal quickly evolved into an extensive survey of the social, political and, perhaps most importantly, cultural implications of extracting coal from the Appalachian Mountains. What I found over the course of the trip was that these coal-mining processes had quickly developed into one of the most destructive and pervasive forms of modern industry in the world." Ultimately, he says, "I consider this body of work to be art about a political issue, not political art."
To read more about the project in the artist's own words, check out his site.
American photography legend Helen Levitt died yesterday at the age of 95. Best known for her witty, candid shots of everyday New York life, she was one of the most influential street photographers to date. NPR host Melissa Block interviewed Levitt in December 2001. Read Block's essay here.
Although not widely known by the general public, Levitt has a devoted following among photographers and photography lovers. She worked among the likes of Walker Evans and James Agee and trained with the French photo legend Henri Cartier-Bresson.
In the 1930s and '40s, Levitt would wander the streets to document the lyrical quality of daily city life. In an era of social radicalism, she set out to make commentary on the plight of the working class. But after seeing the photographs of Cartier-Bresson for the first time, she realized that photography could be art, and that realization informed her work for the rest of her life.
James Agee described her portfolio as "a major poetic work." In fact, "poetic" is how her photos are most often described. Rather than capturing pithy moments, Levitt told timeless stories with vignettes of children playing, of people crammed into phone booths, of roosters in the street.
She lived a quiet, modest life, and died peacefully in her sleep. But her legacy has a long life ahead.
In 1960, Julius Shulman took a photograph that to this day remains the paragon of architectural photography. Case Study House #22 (below) shows the dreamlike, cinematic Los Angeles that has been etched into our collective conscious. Even at the age of 98, Shulman continues to take photographs with the help of his working partner Juergen Nogai. The two met about 10 years ago, and Shulman came out of retirement to work with the like-minded Nogai.
For full screen, click on the four-cornered arrow icon in the viewer's bottom right.
If you have an idea of what California looked like in the 1960s and '70s, Shulman is probably partially responsible for it. He has set the industry standard on many levels -- for both architects and photographers alike.
Despite a lifetime behind the lens, however, Shulman and Nogai both eschew the term photo shoot. "Shoot?" says Shulman, laughing. "Look at me. Do I have a gun? I'm a photographer." Nogai explains: "People are not thinking anymore; they're just shooting." Some would agree that the digital age has enabled a decrease in deliberation. If you can fill up a memory card with 1,000 images until you get the perfect one, after all, why stop to carefully compose?
But what most typifies a Shulman/Nogai photograph is meticulous composition that will guide your eye endlessly, if you allow it. These photographers are notorious for the amount of careful consideration that formulates each frame. They've spent up to nine hours on assignment to leave with a mere 11 frames. Eleven perfect frames, that is.
When describing their photographic process, Nogai explained his affinity for film, as well as his concerns about changes to the medium in general. "We're living in a world where everything is 'good enough.' It's not good anymore. And for me that means a reduction in quality." He has a digital Nikon D3x and rents digital backs for his film cameras. "I'm not saying digital photography is bad," he clarified, "but that it has a place."
There's a real concern among photographers who have long been in the industry -- even among those who haven't -- that their art is dying. They long to turn off their computer monitors and hold their prints in hand. Nogai's advice to aspiring photographers is to study, create a vision and tell a story. He and Shulman have been doing so for decades, and their photographs are a testament to that.
The Prix Pictet is the world's first prize dedicated to photography and sustainability. The highly esteemed entrants must be nominated. And with nearly 70 nominees from five continents, the final image collection has a liberal scope reflecting the contest's pressing mission. This year's contest, themed "Earth," is currently under way. Last year's winning images and notable nominees have been published by teNeues in a book called water.
For full screen, click on the four-cornered arrow icon in the viewer's bottom right.
In last year's water-themed contest, Canadian photojournalist Benoit Aquin received the award for his startling series on Chinese desertification. It's the very lack of water that concerns him. From glacial melt to unsustainable irrigation to freakish flash floods, the 2008 collection reminds us of nature's merciless indifference -- but also of its ultimate vulnerability to human behavior.
A booming population on a planet of limited resources poses many questions and concerns, the most pressing being, can we sustain it? Kofi Annan, the Prix Pictet's honorary president said, "It is my hope that the Prix Pictet will help to deepen understanding of the changes taking place in our world and raise public awareness about the urgency of taking preventative action. The images submitted for the Prix Pictet confront us with the scale of the threat we face and they act to inspire governments, businesses -- and all of us as individuals -- to step up to the challenge and support change for a sustainable world."
Have a look at some of last year's notable nominees. All images (c) courtesy of the Prix Pictet Ltd., via water, published by teNeues Publishing Group
A new exhibition will be previewed Wednesday at New York's Museum of Modern Art. Into the Sunset: Photography's Image of the American West celebrates the complex mythology of the American frontier.
For full screen, click on the four-cornered arrow icon in the viewer's bottom right.
These images take us through the years; through the varying mythologies of the West; through technological innovations; through themes and artistic movements. From traditional landscapes to the open road, cowboys, littered wastelands and natural disasters, both photography and the American West have come of age together. This is not only an examination of American culture, but also a crash-course in American photography.
Many of the great pioneers -- perhaps not of the frontier, but of the darkroom -- are represented in this collection. With his monolithic camera, Darius Kinsey captures the promise of American bounty as frontier men chop down trees in 1860 Oregon. Dorothea Lange portrays the failed promise of Western expansion with her famous Depression-era black-and-whites. And the kings of color, Stephen Shore and Joel Sternfeld, photograph road signs, suburbanites and the products of industrialization. With dry humor these artists document the legacy of modernization that has left the West deserted yet again.
The exhibition will run March 29-June 8, 2009. Take a look at these images, and travel into the sunset.
Seandra is a 3-year-old SpongeBob SquarePants devotee, who was determined to take a picture of someone inside a bubble. She also happens to be homeless. Her photograph is just one of many in an exhibition called "Seeing Ourselves," currently on display at Nashville's Frist Center for the Visual Arts. The photos are from a community outreach program with Safe Haven Family Shelter, a nonprofit homeless center for families in transition.
For full screen, click on the four-cornered arrow icon in the viewer's bottom right.
The Frist outreach program initially began with writing workshops at Safe Haven, but the coordinators soon decided that photography was a better alternative. It allowed these families to document the uncertainty of life in progress, to express themselves and provide a humanized portrait of what it means to be homeless. Perhaps it even provided some escape. For about a month, Nashville photographer Allen Clark led a series of photography workshops for both children and parents alike, emphasizing life in the moment.
For equipment, Frist distributed a batch of Holgas, mass-produced Chinese toy cameras, first introduced in the early 1980s as an affordable option for working-class families. With poor, plastic encasing, Holgas often produce distorted images, which many photographers have actually grown to prefer.
Andee Rudloff, educator for outreach, explained the choice of Holga cameras: "They produce beautiful flaws," she said. The images present an intimate portrait of homeless life, which viewers have repeatedly concluded is far from what they had preconceived. "What's been enlightening about this exhibition," Rudloff continued, "is that [the people are] just like you and me. There isn't a certain look that a homeless person has. We're all flawed, but in a beautiful way."
Today marks the six-year anniversary of the U.S. invasion of Iraq.
Last year, Associated Press photographers Evan Vucci and Maya Alleruzzo spent four months with the army platoon Killer Blue documenting the highs and lows of life in the army. (Read the related story on Killer Blue.)
Vucci's four-part documentary presents the intimate story of these soldiers. We see them reunited with their families, then separated again; we lose two of them, and hear their thoughts after coming home for good.
"There are stories you wanna tell," says Lt. Rusty Morris, "and there are stories you don't wanna tell." Here are least some of the stories of the Killer Blue platoon.
(To view these videos full screen, click on the four-cornered icon in the viewer's bottom right.)
PART ONE: Family "You have to know each other. We're all around each other. You ate there, you smoked there, you played cards there. We were family."
PART TWO: The Fight "The army's the only job where if you get shot at in the morning you'd still have to go to work in the afternoon."
PART 3: My Friend "Pretty much what kept me going was that we only had 55 days left to go..."
PART 4: I Move On "For the people that we've lost, there's guilt...and you're thinking to yourself 'What could I have done?' "
The hunt for Earth-like planets is over: We found them on Flickr. In simple terms, a polar panoramic, or stereographic projection, is a way to map a sphere as a plane. We could throw around some ridiculous math words like azimuthal, bijective and isometry, but instead we'll stick to photos.
For full screen, click on the four-cornered arrow icon in the viewer's bottom right.
Think about it this way: Your world is in three dimensions. If you were to photograph all of your surroundings, and then project them onto a surface, it would result in a stereographic projection. The word stereography simply means the act of translating a solid body, like the Earth, into a plane -- like a piece of paper. The only drawback is that it's impossible to flatten a sphere without some weird (or really cool) distortion. In photography, the use of this method has resulted in a little collection of little planets.
Flickr user gadl has an entire set, with a detailed explanation of the process. If you want to make your own polar panorama, here is another explanation. In short: Hold your camera steady, take a panoramic series and stitch it together. Wrap it into a circle using editing software such as Photoshop. This technique can be a nice alternative to wide panoramas, which are often difficult to print. And your friends will be impressed by all of the strange and distant lands you've seen.
We want to see your attempts. Join our Flickr group, add your image to our pool, and tag it "panoramic." We'll select a few to feature on our blog on April 3.
The PBS series NOVA has teamed up with National Geographic on a project called "Extreme Ice." The series follows adventure photographer James Balog (read the Fresh Air interview here) and a team of scientists through the world's icy regions in the largest-ever photographic study of the cryosphere.
For full screen, click on the four-cornered arrow icon in the viewer's bottom right.
The documentary allows viewers to follow Balog into treacherous yet breathtaking regions where no camera has gone before. The film corresponds with the release of Balog's book, Extreme Ice Now: Vanishing Glaciers and Changing Climate: A Progress Report, published by National Geographic.
Once a climate change skeptic, Balog here presents stirring time-lapse images of melting bodies of ice. By placing cameras throughout the Arctic and programming them to shoot one frame every daylight hour for three years, he and his team were able to capture unprecedented footage of the world in flux. The gathered evidence points to extreme melting in polar regions. But it also suggests that the effects of climate change are occurring at a much more accelerated rate than previously thought. Extreme Ice explores the potential implications of this undeniable "big melt."
To learn more about the process, check out this YouTube video:
Extreme Ice premieres on March 24. To view more of Balog's photography, as well as video and notes from the field, check out the Extreme Ice Survey Web site.
If you know any thoroughbred Irish folk, you may have heard before, "Why celebrate St. Patrick's Day when I'm Irish every day of the year?" Green beer and plastic hats are, after all, really something of an American institution. But today is not only an excuse to drink whiskey and wear green; it's also a day to recognize the patron saint of Ireland, and the mystic culture of the Emerald Isle.
For full screen, click on the four-cornered arrow icon in the viewer's bottom right.
Shane Lavalette is a recognizable name in the world of contemporary photography. He has a highly trafficked photoblog, as well as a new publication, Lay Flat, which we recently mentioned. He's finishing up a degree in fine art photography and spent some time on the western coast of Ireland at the Burren College of Art in County Clare.
Sli na Boirne (The Burren Way) is a 27-mile stretch through the landscape of Ireland's Burren, where this series was taken. Ireland declared the area a National Park and Special Area of Conservation, and it's a top tourist destination, known largely for the majestic Cliffs of Moher.
"Though the threat of the overgrowth, which would eventually turn the Burren into a forest-like landscape, is an important aspect of this body of work," writes Lavalette, "my photographs hope ultimately to expose the meaning in the landscape, the poetry of the place and its people." Lavalette has the tendency to capture beautifully the quiet modesty of everyday life, and this series is no exception.
Andy Freeberg goes to art museums to observe not the art but the people who guard it.
For full screen, click on the four-cornered arrow icon in the viewer's bottom right.
One guardian bears an uncanny resemblance to a Vermeer subject, another has pink hair that nearly matches her dress. These women are the focus of "Guardians: Russian Art Museum Guards," a dryly humorous, but also heartwarming collection of photographs taken in various Russian galleries. It gives us pause to contemplate the lives of these women and how they relate to the artwork on display. In fact, the artwork becomes peripheral as the focus settles upon these comfortably seated, musing characters.
On his Web site, Freeberg offers tidbits about these guardians of art. "A woman in Moscow's State Tretyakov Gallery Museum said she often returns there on her day off to sit in front of a painting that reminds her of her childhood home," he writes. "Another guard travels three hours each way to work, since at home she would just sit on her porch and complain about her illnesses, 'as old women do.' She would rather be at the museum enjoying the people watching, surrounded by the history of her country."
The collection is currently on display at the Blue Sky Gallery in Portland, Ore. Perhaps someone else will take the next step and capture the guardians of Freeberg's art.
In the enormous expanse that is America, it's easy to forget what goes on outside of the big cities. But, oddly enough, that's where most of America resides. Even if we're not tied to the land, many of us have relatives or ancestors who were. That's why photographer Paul Mobley set out on his rural adventure: to put faces to the men and women who help nourish this country.
For full screen, click on the four-cornered arrow icon in the viewer's bottom right.
Mobley traveled over 100,000 miles to capture these portraits, and editor Katrina Fried collected the corresponding first-person narratives from the farmers. The result is the first series of modern American farmers ever published, with 200 images supplemented by Fried's oral history.
From cattle ranchers in Montana to orange growers in Florida, American Farmer: The Heart of Our Country catalogs the current landscape of American farming. These individuals exude such simple reverence for both the land and an endangered lifestyle; in turn, Mobley shows real reverence for his subjects. "Visit after visit, Mobley came to know the independent farmer's spirit from both behind the lens and across the dinner table." Take a look at the men and women he encountered, at faces of the people we often take for granted.
With sweeping, aerial images of swimming pools, hurricane damage, gasoline refineries and golf courses, pilot and photographer Alex MacLean is making a serious statement: that it's impossible to sustain the current American lifestyle on a planet with diminishing natural resources. His book Over: The American Landscape At The Tipping Point presents, literally, a big-picture view of man's impact on the environment.
For full screen, click on the four-cornered arrow icon in the viewer's bottom right.
Winner of the prestigious German Lead Award for 2009, MacLean presents a compelling, if not convincing, case. His work prompts us to reconsider our lifestyles "and reveals that, while the challenges we face today are not insurmountable, the future depends on our collective vision, passion and commitment." View more images from the book on MacLean's Web site.
All images are Copyright, 2008 Alex S. MacLean/Landslides Aerial Photography.
David Burnett has been photographing anything and everything for the past 35 years. He's been all over the world, has won numerous prestigious awards and has a portfolio that includes photos ranging from Vietnam to Pope John Paul II to, you guessed it, Bob Marley.
For full screen, click on the four-cornered arrow icon in the viewer's bottom right.
In 1976, Burnett was on assignment in Jamaica for Time magazine when he first photographed the reggae king at his home, Tuff Gong. Two weeks before landing in Jamaica, Burnett had never even heard of Marley. But what began as a feature on the indigenous music of Jamaica became an intimate portrait of Marley's life. He was so intrigued by Marley's persona, Burnett followed him to Europe for the famous "Exodus" tour for Rolling Stone and created a visual biography following Marley until his death in 1981.
Ultimately, of the hundreds of photographs that Burnett took, Time published only one small black-and-white; the rest have found a voice in the recently published book Soul Rebel: An Intimate Portrait of Bob Marley in Jamaica and Beyond. This collection presents a more humanized look at such a great legend, and preserves the legacy of Bob Marley in a realm beyond just music. Read and hear more about his legacy, including his family's new branding plan here.
Photography excerpted from Soul Rebel: An Intimate Portrait of Bob Marley (c) 2009 by David Burnett. All rights reserved. Published by Insight Editions. Used with permission. www.InsightEditions.com
There's no way to adequately cover the vast realm of women's history. This past weekend was the 98th annual celebration of International Women's Day. And in light of this occasion, we pulled a few images from Flickr Commons, a forum in which museums, libraries and archives can share their photographic collections with the public.
For full screen, click on the four-cornered arrow icon in the viewer's bottom right.
By no means does this gallery cover everything. But here are a few fun and interesting moments in women's history -- some momentous, others ordinary -- simply illustrating that, if anything, as cameras developed, so did women's rights.
Almost completely ignored by Galileo and Rene Descartes, Johannes Kepler introduced ideas in the 17th century that would revolutionize astronomy and the world of science. Last week, NASA launched its Kepler space telescope in the hunt for Earth-like planets.
For full screen, click on the four-cornered arrow icon in the viewer's bottom right.
With the help of other space-based telescopes such as the Hubble and Spitzer, nearly 300 planets have been discovered since 1995. Kepler will orbit the sun, observing a patch of space in the constellations Cygnus and Lyra -- a region containing more than 100,000 stars. Take a look at some of the images that Hubble and Spitzer have captured through the years. And read more about the Kepler mission here.
TGIF, because Friday means movies. Watchmen, the film adaptation of the comic book written by Alan Moore, premieres today. Be sure to check out NPR's movie review. And to coincide with the film's release, Clay Enos has released a book of black-and-white portraits that he took on set as still photographer.
For full screen, click on the four-cornered arrow icon in the viewer's bottom right.
Audio commentary from Watchmen illustrator Dave Gibbons.
To further explain the project, Enos submitted to a few questions.
Picture Show: Perhaps it's too easy to draw a comparison between your portraiture and that of Richard Avedon. Was there a direct influence there? If so, how is your work a departure?
Clay Enos: All artists work in the shadows of artists before them. I'd say comparisons with Avedon are the highest compliment. His American West series, despite its simplicity, was the work of many. He had people scouring the countryside casting his subjects, and I too benefited from a similar team effort.
I also think I'm influenced by Diane Arbus. Her work on the "fringes" of society has always inspired me. While I was making portraits of superheroes, I was equally enamored with the unsung heroes of Watchmen -- the background cast, the crew, the folks whose effort and attentions are often overlooked in our celebrity-driven culture. My work only seems like a departure in that my photos are not retouched, not cropped, very straight images. And in this era of Photoshop, that seems unusual.
PS: Can you elaborate a bit on the process of making this photographic series?
I didn't do a lot of directing of my subjects. We often worked very quickly. I was doing these portraits on the periphery and was documenting, through portraiture, the world of Watchmen.
I think part of the allure of my book is that it vacillates between fiction and reality. The aesthetic is coded with authenticity and yet it also inhabits a more artistic realm. They definitely aren't head shots. My images aren't flattering, per se, but I hope they honor the subject. There's a difference between flattery and respect. I prefer to move and make photographs in the latter space.
PS: Maybe it's not surprising, but black and white seems an interesting choice for this photo series, as it's inspired by vivid illustrations (and a color motion picture).
I joked with Dave Gibbons, the illustrator of the graphic novel, that he created these folks in black and white and John Higgins colored them. Zack Snyder, the film's director, then made it all very real, and I returned them to the page in black and white. It's testament to all those folks before me that my images can stand on their own at all. I also just love black and white.
I was making a few portraits every day. Different lighting conditions and color temperatures would have been a distraction. Plus, nothing says "art" quite like black and white. People pause to consider a black-and-white photograph. That's what I was after. These images are like meditations on the world of Watchmen. And after you see the film, they become almost a sanctuary.
PS: If you could create a masked superhero for yourself, what would he be like?
CE: He'd be cape-free, armed and probably obsessed with taking pictures of his vanquished foes. And with any luck, he'd only be marginally dysfunctional.
All images (c) Clay Enos, Watchmen Portraits, Titan Books, 2009.
Not only did Matt Eich win the College Photographer of the Year portfolio contest in 2006, but he also won the prestigious Community Awareness Award in this year's Pictures of the Year International contest for his "Carry Me Ohio" series.
For full screen, click on the four-cornered arrow icon in the viewer's bottom right.
Eich introduces this series:
"Once known for natural resources such as coal, salt, clay and timber, Southeastern Ohio has been stripped of its resources by extractive industries. When nothing was left the corporations vacated the region... leaving the remaining communities with little but their cultural identity: a product of poverty, which has forged their lifestyle in Appalachia. Communities that once struggled to get by can no longer make ends meet after the economic downturn in the United States. In 2006, Athens County had a poverty rate of 27.4 percent and had a median household income $14,000 lower than the national average."
He also agreed to answer a few questions. Picture Show: "Carry Me Ohio": an intentional reference to the Sun Kil Moon song? Does the song bear any significance in the series? Matt Eich: The song was a great influence on my understanding of this project and was at the foundation when I began piecing together disparate stories from the region into a larger body of work. While the lyrics of the song don't refer directly to a lot of the things depicted in the images, the words resonate with me as indicative of the area.
PS: Were you raised in Ohio? Can you elaborate a bit on the process of making this series? ME: I was born and raised in Virginia, only coming to Ohio for the first time when I started college at Ohio University in 2004. It is a place that has completely changed me during my time here in a way that I never anticipated. Working on this project has been my way of learning more about the community I am a part of and my place in the world at large. I met the Goins family at a town hall meeting in Chauncey, Ohio, where they lived. The family had been undergoing a lot of struggles at the time and were kind enough to open their home to me and allow me into their lives for a time.
PS: The image of Hercules shivering in the cold is so unsettling. Poverty is something we don't typically associate with our own backyard -- and yet it's at the very heart of our society. Is this something that you hope to change through your work? ME: I would love for my images to change policy and the public's perception of poverty, but I try not to get too grandiose with my intentions. At this point I am happy documenting the hard-working Americans that are often forgotten and the landscape they call their home because they deserve to be remembered.
All images courtesy Matt Eich/Aurora Select, available for licensing through Aurora Photos.
There are many benefits to sharing a large room with NPR's music team, one being the sundry wall hangings. Above my desk, for example, hangs a poster for Animal Collective's new album. The best part: It's basically a large, kaleidoscopic print of David Doubilet's underwater photography. I stared at this image for weeks before thinking to contact the photographer.
For full screen, click on the four-cornered arrow icon in the viewer's bottom right.
Doubilet is well-known in the industry; his images have been published in National Geographic as well as in his own publications. At the seasoned age of 12, he began taking underwater photographs with a Brownie Hawkeye camera in a rubber bag--a regular Jacques Cousteau. Through the years he has become a master, if not the master.
These images are taken from a series called Human Elements. Although most of his imagery features sea flora and fauna, this particular series takes a look at how humans interact with the mysterious underwater universe. Doubilet works magic with light, which is hard enough to do on land, and the colors are, well, otherworldly. Take a look at his work, best viewed full-screen.
All images (c) David Doubilet, Undersea Images Inc.
Nostalgia is at the heart of Michael Eastman's Vanishing America. In the footsteps of pioneering color photographers such as William Christenberry and William Eggleston, Eastman has trekked across America to capture melancholy vestiges of pastimes and times past. From dilapidated diners, to abandoned theaters, to rusty hinges and peeling paint, historian Douglas Brinkley writes that the "sheer thrust of American Dynamism has simply left Main Street unloved."
For full screen, click on the four-cornered arrow icon in the viewer's bottom right.
This nostalgia is inherent in Americana, evident in our love of baseball, barbershops and barbecues -- things that evoke not only childhood memories, but also ideas of some vague collective past. Traces of civilization comprise this photographic collection; Eastman shows us freshly mopped floors, "no loitering" signs and illuminated lights, which you can almost hear humming. But in almost 200 pages, not one human is seen.
As Brinkley describes, "Life in these photographs has receded into the blue-light haze realm of a late-night TV show flickering under the cracks of a flophouse bedroom door." They are nondescript but familiar places. It's hard to say whether Eastman is really capturing a disappearing America, or whether he's preserving an American sentiment. Either way, his images are stunning.
All images (c) Michael Eastman, Vanishing America: The End of Main Street, Rizzoli, 2008.
Matisse, Picasso, Mondrian, Brancusi and even Louis XV were just a few of the big names at the Grand Palais in Paris last week. These may seem like hard economic times, but the money is still out there: Christie's raised nearly $500 million in its auction of fashion designer Yves Saint Laurent's personal art collection.
For full screen, click on the four-cornered arrow icon in the viewer's bottom right.
Some came to buy, or just to admire, but others came in protest. Despite public demonstrations and objections from the Chinese government, two rare Qing dynasty sculptures that had disappeared from China nearly 150 years ago were sold for $18 million each to anonymous bidders.
Laurent, who revolutionized women's fashion with the introduction of the stylish pantsuit, died last June at the age of 71. His partner, Pierre Berge, who organized the auction, said that a percentage of the money raised would be allocated for AIDS research. Read more.
Come here for a daily dose of photos from around the world, as well as commentary and questions from NPR's multimedia team. You can follow us on this blog and on Twitter. You can also e-mail us directly, join our Facebook group and/or subscribe to our podcast. And, believe it or not, we have a YouTube channel.
NPR offers up radio with a vision. Our video, photo and radio journalists bring you the world in a video podcast. Some of our most recent videos: Israel's barrier, SpongeBob and Blind Pilot.
