Errol Morris: Two Essential Truths About Photography

in Art, Film, Video - Arts & Culture | December 29th, 2011

In this video cre­at­ed by the Guardian, writer and award-win­ning doc­u­men­tary film­mak­er Errol Mor­ris talks about the nature of truth, art, and pro­pa­gan­da in pho­tog­ra­phy. He draws exam­ples from the pho­tographs of Abu Ghraib and the Crimean War, both cit­ed in his book Believ­ing is See­ing, and he asks the view­er to con­sid­er a most fun­da­men­tal ques­tion: how does a pho­to­graph relate to the phys­i­cal world? Unlike a ver­bal or writ­ten state­ment, a pho­to­graph can­not be true or false. It sim­ply is.

Then comes anoth­er argu­ment worth con­sid­er­ing — the idea that all pho­tographs are posed. By way of exam­ple, Mor­ris cites an instance where a pho­tog­ra­ph­er (in this case Roger Fen­ton) omits an ele­phant stand­ing out­side the frame. And it leads Mor­ris to sug­gest  that we should­n’t take pho­tos at face val­ue. Rather we should do our due dili­gence to find out whether there isn’t always a metaphor­i­cal ele­phant loom­ing beyond the frame. As Mor­ris states, a pho­to­graph decon­tex­tu­al­izes every­thing. It reveals to us a two dimen­sion­al real­i­ty that’s “been torn out of the fab­ric of the world.”

This video is part of the Guardian’s â€śCom­ment is Free” series, in which the world’s top thinkers, news­mak­ers, and peo­ple with sto­ries to tell are inter­viewed. For more med­i­ta­tions on pho­tog­ra­phy, give some time to Errol Mor­ris’ speech at the Har­vard Book­store. Find the tran­script here.

Eugene Buchko is a blog­ger and pho­tog­ra­ph­er liv­ing in Atlanta, GA. He main­tains a pho­to­blog, Eru­dite Expres­sions, and writes about what he reads on his read­ing blog.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Wern­er Her­zog Los­es a Bet to Errol Mor­ris, and Eats His Shoe (Lit­er­al­ly)

“They Were There” — Errol Mor­ris Final­ly Directs a Film for IBM

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The Blade Runner Sketchbook Features The Original Art of Syd Mead & Ridley Scott (1982)

in Art, Books, Film | December 29th, 2011

Coin­cid­ing with the release of Blade Run­ner in 1982, David Scrog­gy pub­lished the Blade Run­ner Sketch­book, a book with 100+ pro­duc­tion draw­ings and art­work for Rid­ley Scot­t’s clas­sic sci-fi film. The sketch­book fea­tures visu­al work by Scott him­self, artist Men­tor Hueb­n­er, and cos­tume design­er Charles Knode, but most notably a slew of draw­ings by artist, futur­ist, and illus­tra­tor Syd Mead.

As Comics Alliance notes, this sketch­book has been out of print for years and scant few paper copies remain avail­able for pur­chase. So dig­i­tal ver­sions have filled the void online, and now comes this: a ver­sion that lets you rev­el in the Blade Run­ner art­work in full-screen mode. Enter the sketch­book by click­ing the image above or below. (The book itself is host­ed at Isuu.com). Once you get there, click the images and they’ll fill your screen.

Enjoy, and while you’re at it, don’t miss some relat­ed items:

The Mak­ing of Blade Run­ner

Blade Run­ner is a Waste of Time: Siskel & Ebert in 1982

More Free eBooks

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The Mind & Art of Maurice Sendak: A Video Sketch

in Art, Literature | December 28th, 2011

Like the chil­dren in his books, Mau­rice Sendak, at age 83, is doing the best he can to nav­i­gate a fright­en­ing and bewil­der­ing world. “We all have to find our way,” Sendak says in this reveal­ing lit­tle film from the Tate muse­ums. “If I could find my way through pic­ture-mak­ing and book illus­tra­tion, or what­ev­er you want to call it, I’d be okay.”

In books like In the Night Kitchen, Where the Wild Things Are and Out­side, Over There, Sendak has explored the wonders–and terrors–of child­hood. “No one,” wrote Dave Eggers recent­ly in Van­i­ty Fair, “has been more uncom­pro­mis­ing, more idio­syn­crat­ic, and more in touch with the unhinged and chiaroscuro sub­con­scious of a child.”

Sendak’s own child­hood in Brook­lyn, New York, was a time of emo­tion­al trau­ma. His par­ents were Pol­ish immi­grants who had trou­ble adjust­ing to life in Amer­i­ca. On the day of Sendak’s bar­mitz­vah, his father learned that his entire fam­i­ly had been killed in the Holo­caust. He remem­bered the sad­ness of look­ing through fam­i­ly scrap­books. “The shock of think­ing I would nev­er know them was ter­ri­ble,” Sendak told the Guardian ear­li­er this year. “Who were they?”

This ear­ly sense of the pre­car­i­ous­ness of life car­ried over into his work. As the play­wright Tony Kush­n­er wrote of Sendak in 2003:

Mau­rice, among the best of the best, shocks deeply, touch­ing on the mor­tal, the insup­port­ably sad or unjust, even on the car­nal, on the pri­mal rather than the mere­ly prim­i­tive. He pitch­es chil­dren, includ­ing aged chil­dren, out of the famil­iar and into mys­tery, and then into under­stand­ing, wis­dom even. He pitch­es chil­dren through fan­ta­sy into human adult­hood, that rare, hard-won and, let’s face it, trag­ic con­di­tion.

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Watch Terry Gilliam’s Animated Short, The Christmas Card (1968)

in Animation, Art, Comedy | December 24th, 2011

In 1968, Ter­ry Gilliam was a young Amer­i­can car­toon­ist liv­ing in Lon­don. He was hav­ing trou­ble mak­ing a liv­ing from mag­a­zine work, so his friend John Cleese sug­gest­ed he get in touch with Humphrey Bar­clay, who was pro­duc­ing a slight­ly sub­ver­sive tele­vi­sion show for chil­dren called Do Not Adjust Your Set.

Sub­ti­tled “The Fair­ly Point­less Show,” it fea­tured a group of pre­vi­ous­ly unknown actors includ­ing Eric Idle, Michael Palin and Ter­ry Jones, and attract­ed a cult fol­low­ing among adults. Bar­clay looked at Gilliam’s port­fo­lio and decid­ed he would fit right in.

For one ear­ly assign­ment, Gilliam was asked to pre­pare some­thing for a spe­cial show to be broad­cast on Christ­mas day, 1968, called Do Not Adjust Your Stock­ing. Look­ing for inspi­ra­tion, he decid­ed to vis­it the Tate Gallery. In The Pythons Auto­bi­og­ra­phy of the Pythons, Gilliam remem­bered the project and how it fig­ured into his emerg­ing artis­tic style:

I went down to the Tate and they’ve got a huge col­lec­tion of Vic­to­ri­an Christ­mas cards so I went through the col­lec­tion and pho­to­copied things and start­ed mov­ing them around. So the style just devel­oped out of that rather than any plan­ning being involved. I nev­er analysed the stuff, I just did it the quick­est, eas­i­est way. And I could use images I real­ly loved.

The result (above) is a hilar­i­ous free-asso­ci­a­tion­al send-up of tra­di­tion­al Christ­mas card motifs. In addi­tion to being aired on the show, The Christ­mas Card was incor­po­rat­ed into Gilliam’s short debut film from 1968, Sto­ry­time, which is part of our col­lec­tion of Free Movies Online.

For an update of Gilliam’s twist­ed take on Christmas–a dark­er rework­ing of his Malev­o­lent San­ta theme in The Christ­mas Card–look below for a draw­ing Gilliam post­ed a few days ago on his Face­book page. And as the man says, you bet­ter watch out!

via Bleed­ing Cool

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Ter­ry Gilliam: The Dif­fer­ence Between Kubrick (Great Film­mak­er) and Spiel­berg (Less So)

Ter­ry Gilliam (Mon­ty Python) Shows You How to Make Your Own Cutout Ani­ma­tion

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Helen Mirren Tells Us Why Wassily Kandinsky Is Her Favorite Artist (And What Acting & Modern Art Have in Common)

in Art | December 16th, 2011

Russ­ian abstract painter and art the­o­rist Wass­i­ly Kandin­sky was born in Moscow on Decem­ber 16, 1866 (Decem­ber 4 on the Julian cal­en­dar), and raised in Odessa, where he took an ear­ly inter­est in music. As a young man he stud­ied eco­nom­ics and law, but in 1895 his life was for­ev­er changed when he attend­ed a Moscow exhi­bi­tion of paint­ings by the French Impres­sion­ists. Kandin­sky was deeply struck by one of Mon­et’s paint­ings from the series Haystacks at Giverny. He lat­er recalled his epiphany:

That it was a haystack the cat­a­logue informed me. I could not rec­og­nize it. This non-recog­ni­tion was painful to me. I con­sid­ered that the painter had no right to paint indis­tinct­ly. I dul­ly felt that the object of the paint­ing was miss­ing. And I noticed with sur­prise and con­fu­sion that the pic­ture not only gripped me, but impressed itself inerad­i­ca­bly on my mem­o­ry. Paint­ing took on a fairy-tale pow­er and splen­dor.

Kandin­sky quit his job as a law pro­fes­sor and ded­i­cat­ed him­self to paint­ing. He emi­grat­ed, first to France and then to Ger­many, where he moved fur­ther and fur­ther away from fig­u­ra­tive paint­ing. He was among the first to cre­ate works that were com­plete­ly abstract, or non-objec­tive. In his 1910 trea­tise, Con­cern­ing the Spir­i­tu­al in Art, Kandin­sky declares that the ele­ments with­in a paint­ing should not cor­re­spond to any out­er object, but only to the artist’s “inner need.”

In obser­vance of the artist’s 145th birth­day, we present two videos with dif­fer­ent per­spec­tives on his work. Above, actress Helen Mir­ren talks with the Muse­um of Mod­ern Art about what Kandin­sky, and art, mean to her. Below, a trio of scholars–Beth Har­ris, Juliana Kreinik and Steven Zucker–discuss Kandin­sky’s 1913 mas­ter­piece, “Com­po­si­tion VII,” for the Khan Acad­e­my’s Smarthis­to­ry series. “Com­po­si­tion VII” was paint­ed by Kandin­sky in Munich over a peri­od of four days–but only after he had made more than 30 prepara­to­ry sketch­es, water­col­ors and oil stud­ies.

Relat­ed Con­tent

MoMA Puts Pol­lock, Rothko & de Koon­ing on Your iPad

Jack­son Pol­lock: Lights, Cam­era, Paint! (1951)

John Berger’s Ways of See­ing: The TV Series

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A Panoramic Virtual Tour of the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History

in Art, Museums | December 15th, 2011

These days, you can take a vir­tu­al tour of paint­ings at the MoMA, Met, Uffizi Gallery, Her­mitage, Rijksmu­se­um, and Nation­al Gallery and oth­er major muse­ums, thanks to Google’s Art Project. And don’t for­get the Sis­tine Chapel and the Dead Sea Scrolls.

Now let’s add one more to the list — a panoram­ic vir­tu­al tour of the Smith­son­ian Nation­al Muse­um of Nat­ur­al His­to­ry. You can vis­it the whole muse­um on your own, walk­ing from room to room, check­ing out fos­sils of count­less dinosaurs, spec­i­mens of ear­ly sea life, exhibits on the ice age, and much more. Begin the gen­er­al tour here, or find a more tar­get­ed area of inter­est here.

Note: the tour requires Adobe Flash Play­er, ver­sion 9.0.28 or lat­er.

via metafil­ter

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HDR Skies: Beautiful Time-Lapse Film of the French Countryside

in Art, Technology | December 9th, 2011

French pho­tog­ra­ph­er Tan­guy Lou­vi­gny cre­at­ed this time-lapse film of bucol­ic Nor­mandy and Brit­tany using High Dynam­ic Range (HDR) imag­ing tech­niques.

From for­est floor to set­ting sun, Lou­vi­gny’s shots ren­der fine detail across an extreme­ly wide range of lumi­nos­i­ty. To achieve this he used the auto-brack­et­ing fea­ture of his Canon EOS 400D and 60D cam­eras to cre­ate three dif­fer­ent expo­sures for each frame in the film. (At 30 frames per sec­ond, that’s 90 expo­sures for each sec­ond of screen time.) Lou­vi­gny then merged each set of three expo­sures into one image using Pho­toma­trix Pro 4.0 soft­ware, selec­tive­ly tone map­ping each sequence to hold detail in some areas while allow­ing oth­ers to go dark.

To cre­ate the mov­ing-cam­era effects, Lou­vi­gny designed and built his own robot­ic three-axis motion sys­tem using Tetrix motors and a LEGO Mind­storms con­trol sys­tem, which he pro­grammed in ROBOTC lan­guage. This allowed him to auto­mate the tor­toise-like dol­ly, pan and tilt move­ments. Lou­vi­gny edit­ed the dig­i­tal film in Adobe Pre­miere and After Effects soft­ware. To top it off he com­posed his own music on a Roland MC-808 groove­box. For more infor­ma­tion, go to the pho­tog­ra­pher’s web­site and Vimeo page.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Invent­ing the Dig­i­tal Cam­era: A Short Por­trait of Steven Sas­son

Darren’s Big DIY Cam­era

Walt Dis­ney Presents the Super Car­toon Cam­era

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Malcolm McLaren: The Quest for Authentic Creativity

in Art, Creativity, Current Affairs | December 5th, 2011

In ear­ly Octo­ber of 2009, Mal­colm McLaren was near­ing death but did­n’t know it yet. He showed up at the 2009 Hand­held Learn­ing con­fer­ence feel­ing fatigued, but man­aged to deliv­er a provoca­tive and heart­felt speech titled, “Nev­er Mind the Bol­locks, Here’s the Txt Pis­tols,” in which he reflects on his life grow­ing up in post-World War II Eng­land and express­es dis­may over the rise of what he called “karaoke cul­ture.”

“All pop­u­lar cul­ture today,” said McLaren, “goes to great lengths to pro­mote the idea that it’s cool to be stu­pid.” He cham­pi­oned instead the “messy process of cre­ativ­i­ty” in which strug­gle, fail­ure and the acqui­si­tion of skill and knowl­edge are val­ued above instant fame. You can watch the com­plete speech above. A few days after it was giv­en, McLaren went into the hos­pi­tal and learned that he had can­cer. He died six months lat­er, on April 8, 2010. The next day Hand­held Learn­ing founder Gra­ham Brown-Mar­tin  wrote:

The talk from Mal­colm at the Hand­held Learn­ing Con­fer­ence 2009 will, I believe, stand the test of time. The speech does­n’t elab­o­rate about the peri­od of the Sex Pis­tols, New York Dolls, Vivi­enne West­wood, his impact on design, fash­ion and music cul­ture and many oth­er impor­tant achieve­ments of Mal­colm’s life that will be report­ed in obit­u­ar­ies over the com­ing days. Instead and in keep­ing with the theme of the con­fer­ence, Mal­colm dis­cuss­es in his inim­itable style–his life, learn­ing, authen­tic­i­ty vs karaoke cul­ture and what we gain from the expe­ri­ence of fail­ure. Iron­i­cal­ly, fail­ure was some­thing Mal­colm nev­er achieved. The talk was any­thing but ordi­nary, it polarised our audi­ence and instant­ly trend­ed glob­al­ly on Twit­ter but what else would you expect?

via TED/Best of the Web

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