Lego Emulation
Originally uploaded by Balakov
Mike Stimpson alias Balakov became a bit of a star on Flickr with his Lego emulations of well-known photographs. There was a bit of an uproar when Lego celebrated the company’s 50th anniversary with an advertising campaign based on the very same idea. A commercial rip-off! Nobody noticed that Mr Stimpson himself was not exactly the person who came up with the idea. Marcos Vilariño’s little book Historia dunha Fotografía de Xoguete was published by CEF Vigo back in 2001.
The appropriate comments regarding all three sets of pictures were written much earlier by Susan Sontag.
History/Memoy
Originally uploaded by 1chord & a fib
Photographs are supposed to remind us of past events. This is supposed to work even if we don’t have any first-hand experience of the respective events ourselves. Looking at the photograph we remember an event that happened before we were born. Do detailled photographs work more efficiently? How much information do we need to recognize something, how many pixels to trigger the process of remembering?
Removed Portraits
Originally uploaded by alijtihad
“The missing pictures are staff who passed away; when aborigines die, they destroy all pictures of the dead and do not mention him or her any longer. If they did they would prevent his soul from travelling on to the next existence.” What’s wrong if the aborigines are right?
Tart Cards
Originally uploaded by LOST SWARM
“Jason Atomic replaces the tart cards he stole as reference for his paintings with miniature copies of those paintings in London’s iconic red telephone boxes.”
New York Art Book Fair
Originally uploaded by precious stuff
Cool
Originally uploaded by ponylipjes
A while ago I came across Mark Menjivar’s project you are what you eat, “a series of portraits made by examining the interiors of refrigerators in homes across the United States.” The concept is quite simple, the photographs are quite simple and like so many simple things the project is striking through its simplicity.
Being interested in snapshot photography as much as in the work of educated photographers (or maybe even more) I started searching Flickr for similar pictures. No surprise, there are quite a few groups gathering this motif: here and here and here and here. There’s hardly anything left that is exclusively found in the realm of professionals nowadays, and if you see just a photograph or two the specific qualities of amateurish work are barely distinguishable.
What are you looking at?
Originally uploaded by Enjoy Surveillance
This group is about a certain location in London, where street artist Banksy stenciled What are you looking at? on the wall next to a CCTV surveillance camera.
Surveillance
Originally uploaded by solidstate_
“As you read this the satellites are taking hundreds of photos of you for their records.”
This may actually be true, at least the first part of it. If you think it matters it’s time to build your own conspiracy theory. Paranoia is a close friend.
(via Glaserei)
