Artificial Intelligence Creates Realistic Photos of People, None of Whom Actually Exist

in Photography, Technology | December 24th, 2018

Each day in the 2010s, it seems, brings anoth­er star­tling devel­op­ment in the field of arti­fi­cial intel­li­gence — a field wide­ly writ­ten off not all that long ago as a dead end. But now AI looks just as alive as the peo­ple you see in these pho­tographs, despite the fact that none of them have ever lived, and it’s ques­tion­able whether we can even call the images that depict them “pho­tographs” at all. All of them come, in fact, as prod­ucts of a state-of-the-art gen­er­a­tive adver­sar­i­al net­work, a type of arti­fi­cial intel­li­gence algo­rithm that pits mul­ti­ple neur­al net­works against each oth­er in a kind of machine-learn­ing match.

These neur­al net­works have, it seems, com­pet­ed their way to gen­er­at­ing images of fab­ri­cat­ed human faces that gen­uine humans have trou­ble dis­tin­guish­ing from images of the real deal. Their archi­tec­ture, described in a paper by the Nvidia researchers who devel­oped it, “leads to an auto­mat­i­cal­ly learned, unsu­per­vised sep­a­ra­tion of high-lev­el attrib­ut­es (e.g., pose and iden­ti­ty when trained on human faces) and sto­chas­tic vari­a­tion in the gen­er­at­ed images (e.g., freck­les, hair), and it enables intu­itive, scale-spe­cif­ic con­trol of the syn­the­sis.” What they’ve come up with, in oth­er words, has made it not just more pos­si­ble than ever to cre­ate fake faces, but made those faces more cus­tomiz­able than ever as well.

“Of course, the abil­i­ty to cre­ate real­is­tic AI faces rais­es trou­bling ques­tions. (Not least of all, how long until stock pho­to mod­els go out of work?)” writes James Vin­cent at The Verge. “Experts have been rais­ing the alarm for the past cou­ple of years about how AI fak­ery might impact soci­ety. These tools could be used for mis­in­for­ma­tion and pro­pa­gan­da and might erode pub­lic trust in pic­to­r­i­al evi­dence, a trend that could dam­age the jus­tice sys­tem as well as pol­i­tics.”


But still, “you can’t doc­tor any image in any way you like with the same fideli­ty. There are also seri­ous con­straints when it comes to exper­tise and time. It took Nvidia’s researchers a week train­ing their mod­el on eight Tes­la GPUs to cre­ate these faces.”

Though “a run­ning bat­tle between AI fak­ery and image authen­ti­ca­tion for decades to come” seems inevitable, the cur­rent abil­i­ty of com­put­ers to cre­ate plau­si­ble faces cer­tain­ly fas­ci­nates, espe­cial­ly when com­pared to their abil­i­ty just four years ago, the hazy black-and-white fruits of which appear just above. Put that against the grid of faces at the top of the post, which shows how Nvidi­a’s sys­tem can com­bine the fea­tures of the faces on one axis with the fea­tures on the oth­er, and you’ll get a sense of the tech­no­log­i­cal accel­er­a­tion involved. Such a process could well be used, for exam­ple, to give you a sense of what your future chil­dren might look like. But how long until it puts con­vinc­ing visions of mov­ing, speak­ing, even think­ing human beings before our eyes?

via Petapix­el

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Sci­en­tists Cre­ate a New Rem­brandt Paint­ing, Using a 3D Print­er & Data Analy­sis of Rembrandt’s Body of Work

Arti­fi­cial Intel­li­gence Writes a Piece in the Style of Bach: Can You Tell the Dif­fer­ence Between JS Bach and AI Bach?

Arti­fi­cial Intel­li­gence Pro­gram Tries to Write a Bea­t­les Song: Lis­ten to “Daddy’s Car”

Google Launch­es a Free Course on Arti­fi­cial Intel­li­gence: Sign Up for Its New “Machine Learn­ing Crash Course”

Google Launch­es Three New Arti­fi­cial Intel­li­gence Exper­i­ments That Could Be God­sends for Artists, Muse­ums & Design­ers

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

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The Impossibly Cool Album Covers of Blue Note Records: Meet the Creative Team Behind These Iconic Designs

in Art, Design, Jazz, Music, Photography | November 22nd, 2018

If you stepped into a record store in the 1950s and 60s, you would like­ly be drawn almost imme­di­ate­ly to a Blue Note release—whether or not you were a fan of jazz or had heard of the artist or even the label. “If you went to those record stores,” says Estelle Caswell in the Vox Ear­worm video above, “it prob­a­bly wasn’t the sound of Blue Note that imme­di­ate­ly caught your atten­tion. It was their album cov­ers.”

Now those designs are hal­lowed jazz iconog­ra­phy, with their “bold typog­ra­phy, two tone pho­tog­ra­phy, and min­i­mal graph­ic design.” Of course, it should go with­out say­ing that the sound of Blue Note is as dis­tinc­tive and essen­tial as its look, thanks to its founders’ musi­cal vision, the fault­less ear of pro­duc­er and engi­neer Rudy Van Gelder, and the ros­ter of unbe­liev­ably great musi­cians the label recruit­ed and record­ed.

But back to those cov­ers….

“Their bold use of col­or, inti­mate pho­tog­ra­phy, and metic­u­lous­ly placed typog­ra­phy came to define the look of jazz” in the hard bop era, and thus, defined the look of cool, a “refined sophis­ti­ca­tion” vibrat­ing with rest­less, sul­try, smoky, classy, moody ener­gy. The rat pack had noth­ing on Blue Note. Their cov­ers “have today become an epit­o­me of graph­ic hip,” writes Robin Kin­ross at Eye mag­a­zine. (And lest we fetishize the cov­ers at the expense of their con­tents, Kin­ross makes sure to add that they “are no more than the vis­i­ble man­i­fes­ta­tion of an organ­ic whole.”)

Flip over any one of those beau­ti­ful­ly-designed Blue Note records from, say, 1955 to 65, the label’s peak years, and you’ll find two names cred­it­ed for almost all of their designs: pho­tog­ra­ph­er Fran­cis Wolff and graph­ic design­er Reid Miles. Wolff, says pro­duc­er and Blue Note archivist Michael Cus­cu­na in the Ear­worm video, shot almost every Blue Note ses­sion from “the minute he arrived.”

“One of the most impres­sive, and shock­ing things” about Wolff’s pho­to shoots, “was that the aver­age suc­cess rate of those pho­tos was real­ly extra­or­di­nary. He was like the jazz artist of pho­tog­ra­phy in that he could nail it imme­di­ate­ly.” Once Wolff filled a con­tact sheet with great shots, it next came to Miles to select the per­fect one—and the per­fect crop—for the album cov­er. These sat­u­rat­ed por­traits turned Blue Note artists into immor­tal heroes of hip.

But Reid’s exper­i­ments with typog­ra­phy, “inspired by the ever present Swiss let­ter­ing style that defined 20th cen­tu­ry graph­ic design,” notes Vox, pro­vid­ed such an impor­tant ele­ment that the let­ter­ing some­times edged out the pho­tog­ra­phy, such as in the cov­er of Joe Henderson’s In ‘n Out, which fea­tures only a tiny por­trait of the artist in the upper left-hand cor­ner, nes­tled in the dot of a low­er-case “i.”

Miles pushed the excla­ma­tion point to absurd lengths on Jack­ie McLean’s It’s Time, which again rel­e­gates the artist’s pho­to to a tiny square in the cor­ner while the rest of the cov­er is tak­en up with bold, black “!!!!!!!!!!!”s over a white back­ground. It’s “star­tling­ly get­ting your atten­tion,” Cus­cu­na com­ments. On Lou Donaldson’s Sun­ny Side Up, Miles dis­pens­es with pho­tog­ra­phy alto­geth­er, for a strik­ing black and white design that makes the title seem like it might up and float away.

But Miles’ type-cen­tric cov­ers, though excel­lent, are not what we usu­al­ly asso­ciate with the clas­sic Blue Note look. The syn­the­sis of Wolff’s impec­ca­ble pho­to­graph­ic instincts and Miles’ sur­gi­cal­ly keen eye for fram­ing, col­or, and com­po­si­tion com­bined to give us the pen­sive, mys­te­ri­ous Coltrane on Blue Train, the impos­si­bly cool Son­ny Rollins on the cov­er of Newk’s Time, the total­ly, wild­ly in-the-moment Art Blakey on The Big Beat, and so, so many more.

Reid Miles had the rare tal­ent only the best art direc­tors pos­sess, says Cus­cu­na: the abil­i­ty to “cre­ate a look for a record that was high­ly indi­vid­ual but also that fit into a stream that gave the label a look.” Learn more about his work with Wolff in Robin Kinross’s essay, see many more clas­sic Blue Note album cov­ers here, and make sure to lis­ten to the music behind all that bril­liant graph­ic design in this huge, stream­ing discog­ra­phy of Blue Note record­ings. To view them in print for­mat, see the defin­i­tive book, The Cov­er Art of Blue Note Records: The Col­lec­tion.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Stream a 144-Hour Discog­ra­phy of Clas­sic Jazz Record­ings from Blue Note Records: Miles Davis, Art Blakey, John Coltrane, Ornette Cole­man & More

The Ground­break­ing Art of Alex Stein­weiss, Father of Record Cov­er Design

Enter the Cov­er Art Archive: A Mas­sive Col­lec­tion of 800,000 Album Cov­ers from the 1950s through 2018

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

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The Captivating Story Behind the Making of Ansel Adams’ Most Famous Photograph, Moonrise, Hernandez, New Mexico

in Photography | November 19th, 2018

Ansel Adams cap­tured many an Amer­i­can land­scape as no pho­tog­ra­ph­er had before or has since, but in his large cat­a­log you’ll find few pic­tures as imme­di­ate­ly strik­ing as — and none more famous than — Moon­rise, Her­nan­dez, New Mex­i­co. Orig­i­nal­ly tak­en from the shoul­der of a high­way pass­ing through the com­mu­ni­ty of Her­nan­dez in 1941, the shot cap­tures the moon ris­ing above a clus­ter of hous­es, a church with a grave­yard, and a moun­tain range in the back­ground. All of those might seem like pret­ty stan­dard ele­ments of a remote part of Amer­i­ca in that era, but the sheer visu­al impact Adams draws from them shows what sep­a­rates a road-trip snap­shot from the work of a ded­i­cat­ed pho­tog­ra­ph­er.

Few pho­tog­ra­phers in the his­to­ry of the medi­um have been quite as ded­i­cat­ed as Adams, whose tech­niques we’ve pre­vi­ous­ly fea­tured here on Open Cul­ture. But as much as his delib­er­ate­ness and patience have become the stuff of pho­to­graph­ic leg­end, Moon­rise was very much a seat-of-the-pants achieve­ment.

Adams was dri­ving around the west with his son Michael and friend Cedric Wright at the behest of Sec­re­tary of the Inte­ri­or Harold Ick­es, who had com­mis­sioned Adams to pro­duce large-for­mat pho­tographs for the Depart­ment of the Inte­ri­or’s new muse­um. Toward the end of one not par­tic­u­lar­ly pro­duc­tive day on the job came the big moment. As Adams him­self tells it in Exam­ples: The Mak­ing of Forty Pho­tographs:

We were sail­ing south­ward along the high­way not far from Espanola when I glanced to the left and saw an extra­or­di­nary sit­u­a­tion — an inevitable pho­to­graph! I almost ditched the car and rushed to set up my 8×10 cam­era. I was yelling to my com­pan­ions to bring me things from the car as I strug­gled to change com­po­nents on my Cooke Triple-Con­vert­ible lens. I had a clear visu­al­iza­tion of the image I want­ed, but when the Wrat­ten No. 15 (G) fil­ter and the film hold­er were in place, I could not find my West­on expo­sure meter! The sit­u­a­tion was des­per­ate: the low sun was trail­ing the edge of the clouds in the west, and shad­ow would soon dim the white cross­es.

While an expe­ri­enced pho­tog­ra­ph­er today prob­a­bly won’t have used the same gear as Adams, they’ll cer­tain­ly rec­og­nize the dread­ful feel­ing of being about to lose a pre­cious image. What came to the res­cue of Moon­rise was­n’t any piece of Adams’ equip­ment — he nev­er did find that light meter — but the fact that he’d already spent so much time immersed so deeply in the prac­tice of pho­tog­ra­phy that he could set up and load his cam­era as if by pure instinct. Then, when he remem­bered that he knew the lumi­nos­i­ty of the moon (250 foot can­dles, for the record), he could cal­cu­late the prop­er expo­sure for the image he’d already visu­al­ized in his head: one with a bright moon and just enough light on the ground to make the cross­es in the church­yard glow.

You can learn more about the mak­ing and nature of Adams’ best-known pho­to­graph, prints of which com­mand high prices at auc­tion to this day, in the three videos here: first Adams’ own descrip­tion of his process mak­ing it, then a short by the Ansel Adams Gallery exam­in­ing a rare “mur­al-sized” print from the ear­ly 1970s, then a look into the pic­ture’s back­sto­ry by Swann Auc­tion Gal­leries. The tale of the pic­ture’s tak­ing, dra­mat­ic though it is, does­n’t quite con­vey the full extent of the pho­to­graph­ic work it took to cre­ate the image known to every­one famil­iar with Adams’ work (and many who aren’t famil­iar with it): he also had to go through quite a bit of tri­al and error in the devel­op­ment process to imbue the sky with just the right dark­ness. If any pho­tog­ra­ph­er could pro­duce Moon­rise, Her­nan­dez, New Mex­i­co, Ansel Adams could. But we might reflect on the fact that even a mas­ter like Ansel Adams only had one Moon­rise, Her­nan­dez, New Mex­i­co in his career — and even he almost missed it.

via Petapix­el

Relat­ed Con­tent:

226 Ansel Adams Pho­tographs of Great Amer­i­can Nation­al Parks Are Now Online

How to Take Pho­tographs Like Ansel Adams: The Mas­ter Explains The Art of “Visu­al­iza­tion”

200 Ansel Adams Pho­tographs Expose the Rig­ors of Life in Japan­ese Intern­ment Camps Dur­ing WW II

Ansel Adams, Pho­tog­ra­ph­er: 1958 Doc­u­men­tary Cap­tures the Cre­ative Process of the Icon­ic Amer­i­can Pho­tog­ra­ph­er

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

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“A Great Day in Harlem,” Art Kane’s Iconic Photo of 57 Jazz Legends (with a Detailed Listing of Who Appears in the Photo)

in Jazz, Photography | November 12th, 2018

Image by Art Kane, via Wiki­me­dia Com­mons

Six­ty years ago, Art Kane assem­bled one of the largest groups of jazz greats in his­to­ry. No, it wasn’t an all-star big band, but a meet­ing of vet­er­an leg­ends and young upstarts for the icon­ic pho­to­graph known as “A Great Day in Harlem.” Fifty-sev­en musi­cians gath­ered out­side a brown­stone at 17 East 126th St.—accompanied by twelve neigh­bor­hood kids—from “big rollers,” notes Jazz­wise mag­a­zine, like “Thelo­nious Monk, Charles Min­gus, Count Basie, Son­ny Rollins, Lester Young, Art Blakey, Horace Sil­ver, Dizzy Gille­spie, Cole­man Hawkins and Pee Wee Rus­sell to then up-and-com­ing names, Ben­ny Gol­son, Mar­i­on Mac­Part­land, Mary Lou Williams and Art Farmer.”

Son­ny Rollins was there, one of only two musi­cians in the pho­to still alive. The oth­er, Ben­ny Gol­son, who turns 90 next year, remem­bers get­ting a call from Vil­lage Voice crit­ic Nat Hentoff, telling him to get over there. Gol­son lived in the same build­ing as Quin­cy Jones, “but some­how he wasn’t called or he didn’t make it.”

Oth­er peo­ple who might have been in the pho­to­graph but weren’t, Gol­son says, because they were work­ing (and the 10 a.m. call time was a stretch for a work­ing musi­cian): “John Coltrane, Miles, Duke Elling­ton, Woody Her­man.” And Bud­dy Rich, whom Gol­son calls the “great­est drum­mer I ever heard in my life” (adding, “but his per­son­al­i­ty was hor­ri­ble.”)

The next year, every­thing changed—or so the sto­ry goes—when rev­o­lu­tion­ary albums hit the scene from the likes of Miles Davis, Dave Brubeck, Ornette Cole­man, and Charles Min­gus. These records pushed exper­i­men­tal forms, leav­ing behind the con­fines of both swing and bebop. But Kane’s jazz class pho­to shows us, Matthew Kessel writes at Vul­ture, “a por­trait of har­mo­ny, old and new guard alike peace­ably inter­min­gling. The pho­to sug­gests that jazz is as much about con­ti­nu­ity and tra­di­tion as it is about rad­i­cal change.” The pho­to has since become a tra­di­tion itself, hang­ing on the walls of thou­sands of homes, book­shops, record stores, bar­ber­shops, and restau­rants. (Get your copy here.)

Orig­i­nal­ly titled “Harlem 1958,”  Kane’s image has inspired some notable homages in black cul­ture. In 1998, XXL mag­a­zine tapped Gor­don Parks to shoot “A Great Day in Hip Hop” for a now-his­toric cov­er. And this past sum­mer, Net­flix gath­ered 47 black cre­atives behind more than 20 orig­i­nal Net­flix shows for the redux “A Great Day in Hol­ly­wood.” The pho­to also inspired a doc­u­men­tary of the same title in 1994 (at whose web­site you can click on each musi­cian for a short bio). At the Dai­ly News, Sarah Goodyear tells the sto­ry of how Kane con­ceived and exe­cut­ed the ambi­tious project for a spe­cial jazz edi­tion of Esquire.

It was his “first pro­fes­sion­al shoot­ing assign­ment and, with it, he end­ed up mak­ing his­to­ry by almost by acci­dent.” Goodyear quotes Kane’s son Jonathan, him­self a New York musi­cian, who remarks, “cer­tain things end up being big­ger than the orig­i­nal inten­tion. The pho­to­graph has become part of our cul­tur­al fab­ric.” For long­time res­i­dents of Harlem, the so-called Cap­i­tal of Black Amer­i­ca, and a spir­i­tu­al home of jazz, it’s just like an old fam­i­ly por­trait. See a ful­ly anno­tat­ed ver­sion of “A Great Day in Harlem” at Harlem.org, and at the Dai­ly News, an inter­ac­tive ver­sion with links to YouTube record­ings and per­for­mances from every one of the 57 musi­cians in the pic­ture.

This month, to com­mem­o­rate the 60th anniver­sary of the pho­to, Wall of Sound Gallery will pub­lish the book Art Kane: Harlem 1958, a ret­ro­spec­tive with out­takes from the pho­to ses­sion and text from Quin­cy Jones, Ben­ny Gol­son, Jonathan Kane, and Art him­self. “The impor­tance of this pho­to tran­scends time and loca­tion,” writes Jones in his for­ward, “leav­ing it to become not only a sym­bol­ic piece of art, but a piece of his­to­ry. Dur­ing a time in which seg­re­ga­tion was very much still a part of our every­day lives, and in a world that often point­ed out our dif­fer­ences instead of cel­e­brat­ing our sim­i­lar­i­ties, there was some­thing so spe­cial and pure about gath­er­ing 57 indi­vid­u­als togeth­er, in the name of jazz.”

  1. Hilton Jef­fer­son (1903–1968)
  2. Ben­ny Gol­son (1929-)
  3. Art Farmer (1928–2003)
  4. Wilbur Ware (1923–1979)
  5. Art Blakey (1919–1990)
  6. Chub­by Jack­son (1918–2003)
  7. John­ny Grif­fin (1928–2008)
  8. Dick­ie Wells (1909–1985)
  9. Buck Clay­ton (1911–1993)
  10. Taft Jor­dan (1915–1981)
  11. Zut­ty Sin­gle­ton (1898–1975)
  12. Hen­ry “Red” Allen (1908–1967)
  13. Tyree Glenn (1912–1972)
  14. Miff Mole (1898–1961)
  15. Son­ny Greer (1903–1982)
  16. J.C. Hig­gin­both­am (1906–1973)
  17. Jim­my Jones (1918–1982)
  18. Charles Min­gus (1922–1979)
  19. Jo Jones (1911–1985)
  20. Gene Kru­pa (1909–1973)
  21. Max Kamin­sky (1908–1994)
  22. George Wet­tling (1907–1968)
  23. Bud Free­man (1906–1988)
  24. Pee Wee Rus­sell (1906–1969)
  25. Ernie Wilkins (1922–1999)
  26. Buster Bai­ley (1902–1967)
  27. Osie John­son (1923–1968)
  28. Gigi Gryce (1927–1983)
  29. Hank Jones (1918–2010)
  30. Eddie Locke (1930–2009)
  31. Horace Sil­ver (1928–2014)
  32. Luck­ey Roberts (1887–1968)
  33. Max­ine Sul­li­van (1911–1987)
  34. Jim­my Rush­ing (1902–1972)
  35. Joes Thomas (1909–1984)
  36. Scov­ille Browne (1915–1994)
  37. Stuff Smith (1909–1967)
  38. Bill Crump (1919–1980s)
  39. Cole­man Hawkins (1904–1969)
  40. Rudy Pow­ell (1907–1976)
  41. Oscar Pet­ti­ford (1922–1960)
  42. Sahib Shi­hab (1925–1993)
  43. Mar­i­an McPart­land (1920–2013)
  44. Son­ny Rollins (1929-)
  45. Lawrence Brown (1905–1988)
  46. Mary Lou Williams (1910–1981)
  47. Emmett Berry (1915–1993)
  48. Thelo­nious Monk (1917–1982)
  49. Vic Dick­en­son (1906–1984)
  50. Milt Hin­ton (1910–2000)
  51. Lester “Pres” Young (1909–1959)
  52. Rex Stew­art (1907–1972)
  53. J.C. Heard (1917–1988)
  54. Ger­ry Mul­li­gan (1927–1995)
  55. Roy Eldridge (1911–1989)
  56. Dizzy Gille­spie (1917–1993)
  57. William “Count” Basie (1904–1984)

Relat­ed Con­tent:

1959: The Year That Changed Jazz

The Cry of Jazz: 1958’s High­ly Con­tro­ver­sial Film on Jazz & Race in Amer­i­ca (With Music by Sun Ra)

Hear 2,000 Record­ings of the Most Essen­tial Jazz Songs: A Huge Playlist for Your Jazz Edu­ca­tion

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness.

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The Library of Congress Makes Thousands of Fabulous Photos, Posters & Images Free to Use & Reuse

in Archives, Art, Education, Libraries, Photography | November 2nd, 2018

The his­to­ry of the ven­er­a­ble Library of Con­gress demon­strates the vast impor­tance that the founders of the U.S. accord­ed to read­ing and study­ing. It may be one of the country’s most durable insti­tu­tions, “the old­est fed­er­al cul­tur­al insti­tu­tion in the nation,” it pro­claims. While par­ti­san ran­cor, war, and vio­lence recur, the LoC has stolid­ly held an ever-increas­ing­ly diverse col­lec­tion of arti­facts sit­ting peace­ful­ly along­side each oth­er on sev­er­al hun­dred miles of shelves, a mon­u­ment to the life of the mind that ought to get more atten­tion.

Tout­ing itself as “the largest library in the world,” its col­lec­tions “are uni­ver­sal, not lim­it­ed by sub­ject, for­mat, or nation­al bound­ary, and include research mate­ri­als from all parts of the world and in more than 450 lan­guages.”

Its first mate­ri­als were, of course, books—including over six-thou­sand books pur­chased from Thomas Jefferson’s pri­vate col­lec­tion after the British burned the orig­i­nal library down in 1814. Now, it “adds approx­i­mate­ly 12,000 items to the col­lec­tion dai­ly,” in every pos­si­ble for­mat one can imag­ine.

And since its dig­i­tal col­lec­tions came online, any­one, any­where in the world can call up these vast resources with an inter­net con­nec­tion and a few clicks. Though we tend to take such things for grant­ed in our fer­vid­ly dis­tract­ed times, a lit­tle reflec­tion should remind us of how incred­i­ble that is. But before we wax too rhap­sod­ic, let’s remem­ber there’s a busi­ness end to the LoC and it’s called the U.S. Copy­right Office, that guardian of intel­lec­tu­al prop­er­ty that both ensures cre­ators can prof­it from their labors and pre­vents the free and open use of so many enrich­ing mate­ri­als long after those cre­ators have need of them.

But the Library has done its dig­i­tal users a ser­vice in this regard as well, with its “Free to Use and Reuse Sets,” a siz­able col­lec­tion of images that the Library “believes… is either in the pub­lic domain, has no known copy­right, or has been cleared by the copy­right own­er for pub­lic use.” (The use of the word “believes” seems to leave room for doubt, but if you got it with per­mis­sion from the LoC, you’re prob­a­bly safe.) Need pho­tographs of Abra­ham Lincoln—and scans of his speech­es, let­ters, and “duel­ing instruc­tions”—for that book you’re writ­ing? You’re cov­ered with this gallery. Need a col­lec­tion of clas­sic chil­dren’s books for your web­site (or your read­ing plea­sure)? Here you go.

From the graph­ic genius of vin­tage WPA and trav­el posters to icon­ic jazz por­traits by William Got­tlieb to base­ball cards to end­less­ly quaint and quirky Amer­i­can road­side attrac­tions to pic­tures of dogs and their peo­ple… you nev­er know when you might need such images, but when you do you now know where to find them. Want to know what’s in the set called “Not an Ostrich”? A valkyrie cat named Brunnhilde, for one thing, and much more here.

The Library cur­rent­ly high­lights its “Poster Parade”—a set of posters from the 1890s to the 1960s fea­tur­ing “trav­el, com­mer­cial prod­ucts, war pro­pa­gan­da, enter­tain­ment, and more”—in col­lab­o­ra­tion with Poster House, a muse­um open­ing in New York next year. These range from delec­table art nou­veau ads to shouty broad­sides telling you to drink your milk, brush your teeth, or have “More Cour­tesy.” Sen­si­ble pre­scrip­tions, but we also need more knowl­edge, study, and thought. Start at the LoC’s Dig­i­tal Col­lec­tions here and har­vest your free to use and reuse images here.

If you would like to sup­port the mis­sion of Open Cul­ture, con­sid­er mak­ing a dona­tion to our site. It’s hard to rely 100% on ads, and your con­tri­bu­tions will help us con­tin­ue pro­vid­ing the best free cul­tur­al and edu­ca­tion­al mate­ri­als to learn­ers every­where. You can con­tribute through Pay­Pal, Patre­on, and Ven­mo (@openculture). Thanks!

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Library of Con­gress Makes 25 Mil­lion Records From Its Cat­a­log Free to Down­load

Large Archive of Han­nah Arendt’s Papers Dig­i­tized by the Library of Con­gress: Read Her Lec­tures, Drafts of Arti­cles, Notes & Cor­re­spon­dence

Get­ty Images Makes 35 Mil­lion Pho­tos Free to Use Online

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness.

 

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130,000 Photographs by Andy Warhol Are Now Available Online, Courtesy of Stanford University

in Art, Photography | October 15th, 2018

(Image cred­it: © The Andy Warhol Foun­da­tion for the Visu­al Arts, Inc.)

It’s tak­en for grant­ed that every brand or ris­ing star must estab­lish and main­tain a con­stant pres­ence on var­i­ous social net­works. Indeed, the social media star—an enti­ty famous sole­ly for col­lect­ing fol­low­ers and post­ing glam­orous pho­tos with themed commentary—may seem like a phe­nom­e­non that could only exist in the inter­net age, though writ­ers like J.G. Bal­lard saw such things com­ing decades ago.

But before obses­sive pho­tog­ra­phy sat­u­rat­ed the dig­i­tal envi­ron­ment, Andy Warhol grasped the medium’s cen­tral impor­tance in the doc­u­men­ta­tion of every­day life. It just so hap­pened that his every­day life was filled with celebri­ty actors, mod­els, artists, and musi­cians.

Warhol, writes James D. Ellis at Light Stalk­ing, “was the pro­to-hip­ster,” a rest­less moth always on the hunt for a flame. “Much like our con­tem­po­rary cul­ture, Warhol found it dif­fi­cult to sit and do noth­ing. He had to leave his house or Fac­to­ry and expe­ri­ence his imme­di­ate sur­round­ings.”

(Image cred­it: © The Andy Warhol Foun­da­tion for the Visu­al Arts, Inc.)

And he had to pho­to­graph every one of those expe­ri­ences. Warhol used his Polaroids and 35mm the way we use iPhones. A court case in the ear­ly nineties once took up the ques­tion of whether Warhol’s pho­tographs could be con­sid­ered fine art, but the artist him­self, writes Pati­na Lee at Wide­walls, “was obvi­ous­ly unde­cid­ed about their val­ue and mean­ing,” say­ing “A pic­ture means I know where I was every minute. That’s why I take pic­tures. It’s a visu­al diary.”

Warhol, Lee writes, “took his cam­era with him wher­ev­er he went, doc­u­ment­ing prac­ti­cal­ly every­thing, the high­est high class and the low­est trash (lit­er­al­ly, he took pho­tos of trash cans and of what they con­tained)…. This inclu­sive­ness is what made his pho­to­graph­ic under­tak­ings bor­der between art and mere obses­sive col­lect­ing, or as peo­ple like to cyn­i­cal­ly notice, con­sum­ing the life around him.” His con­sump­tion, and pho­tographs of trash, comes to us as trea­sure, an exten­sive record of Warhol’s New York in the sev­en­ties and eight­ies.

(Image cred­it: © The Andy Warhol Foun­da­tion for the Visu­al Arts, Inc.)

Stan­ford University’s Can­tor Arts Cen­ter and Stan­ford Libraries have col­lab­o­rat­ed to make their Warhol pho­to archives avail­able to the pub­lic—pho­tos snapped “at dis­cos, din­ner par­ties, flea mar­kets, and wrestling match­es. Friends, boyfriends, busi­ness asso­ciates, socialites, celebri­ties, and passers­by.” This “trove of 3,600 con­tact sheets fea­tur­ing 130,000 pho­to­graph­ic expo­sures” doc­u­ments Warhol’s dai­ly life from 1976 until his death in 1987 and includes can­did pho­tos of Jean-Michel Basquiat, Tru­man Capote, Bian­ca Jag­ger, Jim­my Carter, Martha Gra­ham, Kei­th Har­ing, Deb­bie Har­ry, Grace Jones, Jack­ie Kennedy, Liza Minel­li, Dol­ly Par­ton, Eliz­a­beth Tay­lor, and more.

The archive, writes San­dra Fed­er for Stan­ford News, “is the most com­plete col­lec­tion of the artist’s black-and-white pho­tog­ra­phy ever made avail­able to the pub­lic.” It was acquired by the Can­tor in 2014 from the Andy Warhol Foun­da­tion for the Visu­al Arts. Giv­en that these are all con­tact sheets, nav­i­gat­ing the col­lect­ing can be a lit­tle bewil­der­ing. The Can­tor has pro­vid­ed a num­ber of tools to help. Click on Con­tact Sheets here to explore all 3,600+ con­tact sheets. Click Neg­a­tives to see indi­vid­ual frames, like those of Kei­th Har­ing, Warhol, and Jean-Michel Basquiat at the top, Lou Reed fur­ther up, and Annie Lei­bovitz above. Or start brows­ing through pic­tures orga­nized by theme here.

(Image cred­it: © The Andy Warhol Foun­da­tion for the Visu­al Arts, Inc.)

Dig deep, and you’ll find the odd­est things, like Andy Warhol run­ning in Cen­tral Park for char­i­ty with Grace Jones and pho­tog­ra­ph­er Gor­don Parks. What­ev­er Andy did, who­ev­er he hap­pened to do it with—and a stranger cast of char­ac­ters you will not find—it’s all in this huge pho­to archive some­where.

If you would like to sup­port the mis­sion of Open Cul­ture, con­sid­er mak­ing a dona­tion to our site. It’s hard to rely 100% on ads, and your con­tri­bu­tions will help us con­tin­ue pro­vid­ing the best free cul­tur­al and edu­ca­tion­al mate­ri­als to learn­ers every­where. You can con­tribute through Pay­Pal, Patre­on, and Ven­mo (@openculture). Thanks!

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Case for Andy Warhol in Three Min­utes

Short Film Takes You Inside the Recov­ery of Andy Warhol’s Lost Com­put­er Art

Roy Licht­en­stein and Andy Warhol Demys­ti­fy Their Pop Art in Vin­tage 1966 Film

Watch Andy Warhol’s Screen Tests of Three Female Mus­es: Nico, Edie Sedg­wick & Mary Woronov

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

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In 1900, a Photographer Had to Create an Enormous 1,400-Pound Camera to Take a Picture of an Entire Train

in Photography | September 24th, 2018

Cam­eras are small, and get­ting small­er all the time. This devel­op­ment has helped us all doc­u­ment our lives, shar­ing the sights we see with an ease dif­fi­cult to imag­ine even twen­ty years ago. 120 years ago, pho­tog­ra­phy faced an entire­ly dif­fer­ent set of chal­lenges, but then as now, much of the moti­va­tion to meet them came from com­mer­cial inter­ests. Take the case of Chica­go pho­tog­ra­ph­er George R. Lawrence and his client the Chica­go & Alton Rail­way, who want­ed to pro­mote their brand-new Chica­go-to-St. Louis express ser­vice, the Alton Lim­it­ed. This prod­uct of the gold­en age of Amer­i­can train trav­el demand­ed some respectable pho­tog­ra­phy, a tech­nol­o­gy then still in its thrilling, pos­si­bil­i­ty-filled emer­gence.

A tru­ly ele­gant piece of work, the Alton Lim­it­ed would, dur­ing its 72-year lifes­pan, boast such fea­tures as a post office, a library, a Japan­ese tea-room, and a strik­ing maroon-and-gold col­or scheme that earned it the nick­name “the Red Train.”

Even from a dis­tance, the Alton Lim­it­ed looked upon its intro­duc­tion in 1899 like noth­ing else on the rail­roads, with its six iden­ti­cal Pull­man cars all designed in per­fect sym­me­try — the very aspect that so chal­lenged Lawrence to cap­ture it in a pho­to­graph. Sim­ply put, the whole train would­n’t fit in one pic­ture. While he could have shot each car sep­a­rate­ly and then stitched them togeth­er into one big print, he reject­ed that tech­nique for its inabil­i­ty to “pre­serve the absolute truth­ful­ness of per­spec­tive.”

Only a much big­ger cam­era, Lawrence knew, could cap­ture the whole train. And so, in the words of Atlas Obscu­ra’s Ani­ka Burgess, he “quick­ly went to work design­ing a cam­era that could hold a glass plate mea­sur­ing 8 feet by 4 1/2 feet. It was con­struct­ed by the cam­era man­u­fac­tur­er J.A. Ander­son from nat­ur­al cher­ry wood, with bespoke Carl Zeiss lens­es (also the largest ever made). The cam­era alone weighed 900 pounds. With the plate hold­er, it reached 1,400 pounds. Accord­ing to an August 1901 arti­cle in the Brook­lyn Dai­ly Eagle, the bel­lows was big enough to hold six men, and the whole cam­era took a total of 15 work­ers to oper­ate.” Trans­port­ing the cam­era to Brighton Park, “an ide­al van­tage point from which to shoot the wait­ing train,” required anoth­er team of men, and devel­op­ing the eight-foot long pho­to took ten gal­lons of chem­i­cals.

The adver­tise­ments in which Lawrence’s pho­to­graph appeared prac­ti­cal­ly glowed with pride in the Alton Lim­it­ed, billing it as “a train for two cities,” as “the only way between Chica­go and St. Louis,” as “the hand­somest train in the world.” The whole-train pic­ture beg­gared belief: though it went on to win Lawrence the Grand Prize for World Pho­to­graph­ic Excel­lence at the 1900 Paris Expo­si­tion, Burgess notes, it looked so impos­si­ble that both the pho­tog­ra­ph­er and Chica­go & Alton “had to sub­mit affi­davits to ver­i­fy that the pho­to­graph had been made on one plate.” We in the 21st cen­tu­ry, of course, have no rea­son to doubt its authen­tic­i­ty, or even to mar­vel at its inge­nu­ity until we know the sto­ry of the immense cus­tom cam­era with which Lawrence shot it. Today, what awes us are all those small­er shots of the Alton Lim­it­ed’s inte­ri­or, exud­ing a lux­u­ri­ous­ness that has long van­ished from Amer­i­ca’s rail­roads. If we were to find our­selves on such a train today, we’d sure­ly start Insta­gram­ming it right away.

via Atlas Obscu­ra

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Behold a Beau­ti­ful Archive of 10,000 Vin­tage Cam­eras at Col­lec­tion Appareils

19-Year-Old Stu­dent Uses Ear­ly Spy Cam­era to Take Can­did Street Pho­tos (Cir­ca 1895)

See the First Pho­to­graph of a Human Being: A Pho­to Tak­en by Louis Daguerre (1838)

The His­to­ry of Pho­tog­ra­phy in Five Ani­mat­ed Min­utes: From Cam­era Obscu­ra to Cam­era Phone

Darren’s Big DIY Cam­era

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities and cul­ture. His projects include the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

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Behold Mystical Photographs Taken Inside a Cello, Double Bass & Other Instruments

in Art, Music, Photography | September 13th, 2018

“If God had designed the orches­tra,” remarks a char­ac­ter in Rick Moody’s Hotels of North Amer­i­ca, “then the cel­lo was His great­est accom­plish­ment.” I couldn’t agree more. The cel­lo sounds sub­lime, looks state­ly… even the word cel­lo evokes regal poise and grace. If orches­tral instru­ments were chess pieces, the cel­lo would be queen: shape­ly and dig­ni­fied, prime mover on the board, majes­tic in sym­phonies, quar­tets, cham­ber pop ensem­bles, post rock bands….

With all its many son­ic and aes­thet­ic charms, I didn’t imag­ine it was pos­si­ble to love the cel­lo more. Then I saw Roman­ian artist Adri­an Bor­da’s mag­nif­i­cent pho­tos tak­en from inside one. The pho­to above, Bor­da tells us at his Deviant Art page, was tak­en from inside “a very old French cel­lo made in Napoleon’s times.” It looks like the bel­ly of the HMS Vic­to­ry mat­ed with the nave of Chartres Cathe­dral. The light descend­ing through the f‑holes seems of some divine ori­gin.

Bor­da has also tak­en pho­tos from inside an old dou­ble bass (above), as well as a gui­tar, sax, and piano. The stringed orches­tral instru­ments, he says, yield­ed the best results. He was first inspired by a 2009 ad cam­paign for the Berlin­er Phil­har­moniker that “cap­tured the insides of instru­ments,” writes Twist­ed Sifter, “reveal­ing the hid­den land­scapes with­in.” With­out any sense of how the art direc­tor cre­at­ed the images, Bor­da set about exper­i­ment­ing with meth­ods of his own.

He was lucky enough to have a luthi­er friend who had a con­tra­bass open for repairs. Lat­er he trav­eled to Amiens, where he found the French cel­lo, also open. “To achieve these shots,” Twist­ed Sifter notes, “Bor­da fit a Sony NEX‑6 cam­era equipped with a Samyang 8mm fish­eye lens inside the instru­ment and then used a smart remote so he could pre­view the work­flow on his phone.” Depend­ing on the angle and the play of light with­in the instru­ment, the pho­tos can look eerie, somber, omi­nous, or angelic—mirroring the cello’s expres­sive range.

Bor­da gives the cel­lo inte­ri­or shot above the per­fect title “A Long, Lone­ly Time….” Its play of smoke and light is ghost­ly noir. His pho­to below, of the inside of a sax­o­phone, pulls us into a haunt­ed, alien tun­nel. If you want to know what’s on the oth­er side, con­sid­er the strange sur­re­al­ist worlds of Borda’s main gig as a sur­re­al­ist painter of warped fan­tasies and night­mares. Unlike these pho­tos, his paint­ings are full of lurid, vio­lent col­or, but they are also filled with mys­te­ri­ous musi­cal motifs. See more of Bor­da’s inte­ri­or instru­ment pho­tos at Deviant Art and Twister Sifter.

via Twist­ed Sifter

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Watch a Luthi­er Birth a Cel­lo in This Hyp­not­ic Doc­u­men­tary

Why Vio­lins Have F‑Holes: The Sci­ence & His­to­ry of a Remark­able Renais­sance Design

Nine Tips from Bill Mur­ray & Cel­list Jan Vogler on How to Study Intense­ly and Opti­mize Your Learn­ing

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

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