As featured in last Friday’s New York Times (free registration required), there is a new retrospective of Diane Arbus’ spooky photography currently on display at the Metropolitan Museum after touring several other US cities. Baby-rearing blog DaddyTypes points out a centerpiece of that collection is a portrait of Gloria Vanderbilt’s infant son, Anderson Cooper. Yes, CNN’s own Anderson Cooper.
The portrait, shot for Harper’s Bazaar, is described in Patricia Bosworth’s Arbus biography:
“To dispel the growing myth that [Arbus] only took pictures of freaks, she made up a list of elegant people she wanted to photograph…As if to prove her point, she took a remarkable portrait of Gloria Vanderbilt’s sleeping baby son, Anderson Hays Cooper, for a Harper’s Bazaar Valentine issue. In this truly astonishing picture, the infant resembles a flat white death’s head — eyes sealed shut, moth pursed and moist with saliva. When Gloria Vanderbilt saw the photograph, she forbade Bazaar to publish it, but eventually she changed her mind and this stunning image opened Diane’s retrospective at the Museum of Modern Art in 1972.”
I’m in New York City through Saturday morning, and took the opportunity after meetings today at Time Warner Center at Columbus Circle to (a) experience the heavy snowfall that began this afternoon and (b) check out Cristo’s ‘Gates’ project. My brain has a hard time with these – one side sees the Zen ‘saffron’ color and feels like it makes sense – while the other side of the noggin’ sees a construction site. Anyway, the installation looks downright magical in the snow. Don’t know if these images do it justice or not, but take a look. And for a different set of ‘Gates’, visit the Sommerville Gates project.
Despite the calendar indicating it’s still the depths of winter, Sports Illustrated has it’s annual respite for all of us. The annual Swimsuit Issue launched today on SI.com. 2005 is the first year since 1997 that I haven’t worked on the production of the online version of the American icon, but it’s great to see the issue without getting sick of all the photos weeks in advance of the public release. The magazine blessed the release of close to double the number of photos in past years, although some are for magazine subscribers only. But there are tons of free video clips (it was pay-only in past years), and a smattering of VR photography by my friend Bruce Kaufman. And my friend Chris Gibbons created some very slick Flash features for the Rate-a-Photo section. Another new feature this year is a digital edition of the magazine available for download for $4.99. The application from company OliveSoftware uses their ‘ActivePaper’ technology, basically serving the assets to registered users via Flash. An interesting model, so to speak. Anyway, start clicking!
This is a how-to guide for those of us who spend time converting color images in Photoshop to black and white. Simply selecting grayscale leaves a fairly flat insipid black and white image. This process, as detailed on Design by Fire, is much like a system we used to use back in the mid-90s as espoused by experts in digital imaging at The Associated Press. Anyway, it’s a good way to do this. Check it out.
