Broccoli Revisited

London Burning

I just posted this GIF on tumblr ... but it's just too beautiful not to post everywhere.

(from the commons)

Animated Found Images

I think I miss snow ...

Images from Getty Footage - they have nice little storyboard images for every video.

AMNH: Picturing the Museum

When I first moved to London I quickly snagged a job doing front of house at the Natural History Museum. Although the job itself was pretty dull and the pay was far from sustainable, one of the few things that made it worth doing was the experience of being in such an aesthetically rich environment after hours when nobody was around. When nobody is around, the museum itself becomes odd and surreal - and heaven forbid you should get lost in the maze of a basement where you don't know if you'll run into a dark room of dusty bones or the friendly folks at IT.

The American Museum of Natural History Research Library has an amazing collection called Picturing the Museum, with images from the forties documenting the museum staff at work and the displays they worked on. The collection is great, not only for the the quality of these old images, but also for some of the bizarre scenarios they create (and for bringing back whatever few fond memories I have of working in a museum).

Via BoingBoing

Who needs colour? - My search for MacPaint

Image Source: Mac Daniel

I've been frantically searching the web for some kind of MacPaint clone or ROM of some kind. The search has lead me to all kinds of interesting sites, including this long history of interactive design on Étienne Mineur's blog, and a nice MacPaint Primer on MacDaniel's Advice.

Finding a clone or even an old disk image is a lot more difficult than you'd think, considering most of the results from my search were of forum threads either asking for some kind of clone or discussing what were the best alternatives. I did, however, manage to find what I was looking for.


I found a disk image of MacPaint 1.5 and Mini vMac, a fairly simple Mac emulator. I say fairly because I'm not that proficient when it comes to computers, but I still managed to get it up and running. There's a good Mini vMac guide on E-Maculation.com that I'll be pouring over for the next few days, there are a lot of other programmes available besides MacPaint that I'm sure will be fun.

I still have a lot of experimenting to do, but I managed to knock out the above illustration (and screen-grabbed, not yet sure how I'm going to save these images) just to make sure it was all working. I'm really looking forward to it, though, as the aesthetic is something I really enjoy.

*The disk images available for download are only there for those who own/ed the original programmes but have since lost or damaged them. Technically these programmes still belong to Apple but have since been discontinued, which is why they are so difficult to come by.*

Portraits of Artists

The Smithsonian Institute's Portraits of Artists photo set on Flickr.

Copyright lasts ... FOREVERRRR!!!

An interesting discussion is going on on Flickr about copyright law after a member of the 100 Years Old community had a problem while (not?) scanning family photos (that were over 100 years old) at a Wal-Mart in the US. Apparently copyright lasts forever!

It's an interesting discussion personally — considering my interest in old photography — and politically (for the online community) — considering Flickr's licensing options and the possible resulting problems. I'm all for fair use and creative commons, but I also understand how having images of friends and family used freely by others can be a bit disconcerting for some. Really it's about giving credit where credit is due.

But what do you do when the image's source is untraceable? The internet is full of images and bits of text that just float around (like many of the cat GIF memes I posted a few days ago), do they just become products of the internet, destined to wander around freely coming and going as they please like digital nomads? Meh ... something to think about, although I'm sure it's been discussed before.

Via BoingBoing.

George Eastman House

George Eastman House photostream on Flickr.

George Eastman House, an independent nonprofit museum, is an educational institution that tells the story of photography and motion pictures—media that have changed and continue to change our perception of the world. (From the Profile)

Square America

Square America is a site dedicated to preserving and displaying vintage snapshots from the first 3/4s of the 20th Century. Not only do these photographs contain a wealth of primary source information on how life was lived they also constitute a shadow history of photography, one too often ignored by museums and art galleries. Or at least that's what I tell people- more accurately, the site is a catalog of my obsession with vintage photographs. (from the site)

This is a great site for images as there are tonnes of them and more are uploaded almost every day!

Black and White and Royalty Free!

Getty images has some great promotional and editorial type images in their Retrofile section. They're (mostly) all staged stock images from the 40s and 50s and can be lots of fun depending on what you may want to use them for. The preview images come with a watermark in the top corner, but as they are royalty free I imagine they can be downloaded for free if you're registered with Getty.

Amazing Punch Machine

Incorporates old photography/film and animated gifs!


Source: Eyje.com

Very Low Quality JPGs

An interesting example of my last point from the last post.

These are very low quality jpgs from Fake is the New Real.



Via I Heart Photograph.

Black and White

I've always enjoyed going through my dad's old photos from when he was a young man in the 50s, along with the large collection of his cartoons documenting the family's life from as far back as the 60s (when my older half-sister was born), but it wasn't until my mother inherited a box of even older photos from her mother that I began to fixate on antique photos (I hesitate to use the word vintage, it can be - and is - applied to so much now that it's lost a lot of meaning to me). Not the process - I never went for photography in school - but the aesthetic, which greatly inspired me during my last year at uni.



Now, I haven't done much work since I left Montreal, my current apartment is tiny and London rent is too high for me to rent anything beyond a home, and I've given myself the excuse that as long as I'm studying something art related it's ok if I don't pick up a pencil or brush ... for the time being, anyway. What I do try to do, however, is I keep my eyes open for old photos (and as time goes on, I find myself attracted to contemporary photography with a similar aesthetic, but I won't be getting into that here, at least not now), either on the web, or IRL (Thursday antiques market is a treasure trove).

One site that has a great selection of high quality images is Shorpy Photoblog. Their images are mostly from the 20s and 30s and they're mostly professional images of such good quality that they at times look contemporary.


Another good source is Flickr. I learned about The Library of Congress' photostream through a friend's blog. The National Library of Congress is the US national library (based in Washington, DC), and are sharing their images through Flickr to make their images more accessible to the public. Their images vary much more in quality (though the digital copies are top notch) and often have crop marks or captions, which add to the aesthetic IMO.



The aesthetic I keep referring to is the lack of clarity, the haziness, that occurs physically through the older photo processes and psychologically thanks to the effect photography has on our memory. Even though we have no memories of these older images, we look at them as a record of a moment and compare them to our own photos of our own memories. These older photos belong to someone else's memories and I, anyway, can't help but try to recreate it in my own mind - reality doesn't look like this to me, so what would it have looked like really? The uncertainty of old photographs, I believe, tap into our sense of the sublime - that part of our aesthetic sense that has to grasp something conceptually that we know we can never fully grasp - and the pleasure we get in the unknown.

An interesting net toy is the Vintage Photo Converter. This Japanese application lets you upload your photos and then "converts" them into an image that looks like it's "over 100 to 150 years old." It's actually quite fun to experiment with because the effect isn't bad at all. As a result you realize what makes an old photo isn't just the effect but the composition, poses, props, etc.


You can use it to play with that expectation of memory and understanding of what a contemporary photograph should look like. But there are many other better or more interesting ways of getting a similar effect, such as using an old camera, a polaroid, a lomo, playing with image copying (which degrades the image quality), etc. I could go on and on, but then the post will grow into something else, and nobody will ever want to navigate through it all. Besides, the more I hold back the more posts I'll have for the future!

Give yourself a hand!

I enjoy this.


Via Via