The EU yesterday [20 nov] launched the prototype of Europeana, its bold project to digitise millions of books, artworks, manuscripts, maps, objects and films from the most important libraries, museums and archives, and provide them free to download from one website... a Renaissance moment, as Europe plans to outdo commercial search engines in the staggering scope of its collection. But demand for europeana.eu was so great that by 10.30am yesterday it had to be temporarily closed after crashing under 10m hits an hour
Google announced yesterday it had done a deal with Life to put their pictures online. One of the biggest photo collections in the world that ranges from the 1880s through to the seminal moments of the 20th century ...
Re: PHOTO [blog] by Peter Marshall. Late yesterday I got back from a week in Paris, and one of the highlights of any trip there for a photographer has to be a visit to the Maison Europeene de la Photographie (MEP) ... what really struck me - yet again - was the complete difference in outlook between the MEP and our London flagship The Photographers' Gallery (PG). Of course we can hope that some things may change when the PG moves to more extensive premises ...
From the fringes to the frontline... Today, far more women work in war zones, shooting conflicts and their consequences. But if the situation is changing, it is changing slowly. Susan Meiselas - the US photographer renowned for her images of Nicaragua's 1970s civil war, - is still one of only seven women at the Magnum photo agency, out of a total of 79 international photographers...
Four years ago, National Gallery [Washington] curator Arthur Wheelock launched a fantastic show on the little-known Dutchman Gerard ter Borch. It led us to declare him a more important painter than his friend Johannes Vermeer. Now Wheelock has launched the first-ever survey of Jan Lievens ... rival of the young Rembrandt, as the two launched their careers together in Leiden... [With slide show of 12 paintings]
C'est une image petite, ancienne, un peu jaunie, et qui ne paie pas de mine. Mais elle risque fort d'exciter les collectionneurs et historiens ... un document inédit qui représente l'atelier du photographe Gustave Le Gray (1820-1884) au Caire
Mariko Takeuchi, guest curator of "Spotlight on Japan" for Paris Photo 2008. In Japanese, the word for "photograph" is "shashin". It is made up of two ideograms, "sha" meaning "to reproduce" or "reflect" and "shin" which means "truth." The Greek etymology of the word "photograph" is to write (graphein) with light (photos). Therefore, in the Japanese mind, the process itself consists in capturing the truth, or the essence of the matter and "making a copy" of it on a surface. ... Consider Japanese photography as a whole and it becomes evident that a large number of artists tend to express feelings of incomprehension and ambiguity towards reality and the world rather than attempt to decrypt it and objectively analyze it... (As a partner with Paris Photo, Lens Culture presents this essay in its entirety - 5,400 words and 14 illustrations)
"Le mystère et l'éclat", Musée d'Orsay, Paris. Jusqu'au 1er février 2009. ... l'une des plus belles collections de pastels au monde, étant le musée consacré a la seconde moitié du XIXe siècle - période qui fut le deuxieme age d'or de cette technique. ... Ces batonnets de pigments secs se prêtent mal à des représentations détaillées. La technique favorise la notation abrégée, l'ellipse, la suggestion
Even before Marcel Proust died in 1922... his monumental novel about art and memory was being dissected for wisdom on a stunning variety of topics... So it's remarkable that before now no one has focused at book length on painting, a subject that dominates his novel - Remembrance of Things Past - like almost no other. As Eric Karpeles, a painter, points out, Proust names more than 100 artists, from Bellini to Whistler, in the novel and mentions dozens of actual works from the 14th through the 20th century, making the novel "one of the most profoundly visual works in Western literature." ...
Pp. 141-261. Berg Publishers. Lee Miller's Life after Photography by Becky Conekin; the Photograph in the Application of Forensic Anthropology by Tim Thompson; Amateur Photographic Surveys and Scientific Aspiration 1885-1914 by Elizabeth Edwards; Reconsidering John Szarkowski's The Face of Minnesota by Jessica S. McDonald; ...
