Enduring Images

Animals on Safari (Do they watch humans in their natural habitat?)

2007-08-21T20:09:00.000-05:00

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I'm a sucker for the whimsical, and this illustration is full of whimsy. I love how the Rhino is wearing sandals (with socks! but hey, a guy's gotta be comfortable), and that even the Fish, confined to his bowl, is able to go along; I assume his bigger pals take turns carrying him, just like the Kangaroo is stowing the Frog in her pouch and the Rhino is letting the Chameleon hitch a ride on his shoulder.

They're a well-organized tour group, each with his own task: Miss Roo is the navigator (or maybe she's holding the map for the frog to read); Rhino and the Crocodile are taking a visual chronicle of the journey; and the Fish is either birdwatching or looking out for predators (not counting his friend Croc, of course).

The artist is Benjamin Scanlon. This image unfortunately isn't on his site anymore, but there are all kinds of other great illustrations there.

Magic with Machinery

2007-08-15T19:04:00.000-05:00

Sharp Drop, by Bob Sacha
©1996-2007 National Geographic Society.
All rights reserved.

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This is from a fascinating online exhibit on the National Geographic website called New York Underground.

The caption for this photo says:

Sandhogs guide a 16-ton front-end loader into the same tunnel where a miner was killed in September 1996 when he fell off a boring machine. Twenty-four have died since work on this water tunnel began in 1970.

From another page:

City Tunnel No. 3, begun in 1970 and still under construction, is considered the most expensive public works project in the history of New York City.

According to the city website, the tunnel is expected to be complete in 2020.

All very interesting, but why do i like this photo? The colors and light are dazzling, especially in the lower left. All that light and water. What's greatest about it, though, is that it looks like the men around the front-end loader are levitating it, as if it's a ritual of some kind of mysterious, Indiana Jones-style underground cult.

Google Earth, circa 1739

2007-08-10T22:06:00.000-05:00

Detail from Plan de Paris, drawn by Louis Bretez, engraved by Claude Lucas
Credit: Kyoto University Library

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In 1734 Michel-Etienne Turgot was "Provost of the Merchants of Paris," or the city's mayor (this was the title of all mayors of Paris until the French Revolution). One of his acts as mayor was to beautify and improve the city by building fountains and improving major city streets. In 1734 he commissioned Louis Bretez to create a large overview map of the city. His stated purpose was to "satisfy the curiosity of the King's subjects and of foreigners", but I think his aim was more to show off what he had done and what a wonderful city Paris had become. It was a matter of civic pride, and perhaps personal pride as well.

When I first saw the map I couldn't imagine how Bretez had achieved such a detailed and accurate birds-eye view. I thought he must have used a balloon, but the first balloon wouldn't fly for another fifty years. What he did over the five years it took to make the map was to gain entry into every building in the city, taking measurements and sketching interior courtyards. With his expertise in perspective (he had written a book on the subject) he created a map that was accurate and showed everything to the best detail.

I lived for six months in the environs of Paris, and if I'd known about Bretez's map I would have spent as much free time as I could matching it up with the landmarks that remained from that time. Apparently there are parts of the city you can still easily navigate using Bretez's map--that's how accurate it is.

I love, love, love maps, but I've never been able to enjoy really old ones because they use a different visual language. But this Plan de Paris, being more illustrative than symbolic and so exquisitely detailed, is an old map I could stare at for hours.

Spectacular Space

2007-07-06T22:32:00.000-05:00

Central Galactic Star Bursts
Credit: NASA, HST, WFPC 2, J. Gallagher, (U. Wisconsin-Madison)

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When I saw this image I thought there was no way space could really be this colorful, that NASA must have added the colors to make the image either more beautiful or easier to understand. But nope: according to "Astronomy Picture of the Day," where this image is found:

The unusual color is a combination of the light emitted from the young, hot, blue stars and their associated emission and reflection nebulae. [Emission nebulae shine red, and reflection nebulae shine blue.]

I love the subtle variations in color, and the composition is perfectly balanced yet dynamic, with the focal point just below and to the right of center, thrusting diagonally downward, and the darker shape on the right curving up and over to the left. What really sets it off are those small stars peeking through at the top left, as if they're late to the party and are hurrying to catch up.

Spectacular--and, yes, colorful--space.

Ancient History in Black and White

2007-06-26T21:07:00.000-05:00

Tower of David, by Norberto Kahan

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I came across this image when I was looking at a web site about an installation in Jerusalem by Dale Chihuly, at a historic site I'd never heard of, the Tower of David.

The Tower of David is the name of both Jerusalem's citadel and a specific tower in the fortress compound. The citadel was first built in the 1st century BC, expanded by Herod the Great, further added to by the Muslims in 638 AD, and then rebuilt by the Crusaders in the 11th century. The tower itself is a minaret added to the citadel compound by the Ottoman Turkish in the 17th century. Today it contains the Museum of the History of Jerusalem.

I discovered the name of the artist when I found that my mom had a book about the installation. Nothing more about him is known.

I've featured this image because I'm a sucker for architectural renderings, especially those that give an aerial view, like this one does. Expertly rendered and accurate, it's beautiful in its own way.

Boom!

2007-06-22T23:42:00.000-05:00

from Onion Head Monster: Investing in the Stock Market, by Paul Friedrich

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Don't worry; the explosion depicted doesn't end in death, dismemberment, or multiple third-degree burns. I honestly don't know what it represents--it's from an online comic, and in the panel before, Onion Head Monster and Jet Pack Jane are running toward each other, while the following panel shows Jane sitting on the ground with stars circling her head. I guess they had one doozy of a collision.

Onion Head Monster is the creation of Raleigh, North Carolina-based alternative-comics artist Paul Friedrich. The world he has created is best described by this young fan:

Onion Head Monster is a comic strip from the bizarro world mind of Paul Freidrich. Usually found in US zines, OHM first appeared with "Onion Head Monster Attacks Ant City" which has been the primary gimmick of his comic series. Here, though he had to battle the Evil Sea-Monkey for the right to attack the city in the first place, in a duel of Gojira-like proportions. Of course Gojira or Mosura never had such great lines as, "Tonight you sleep with the ducks!" Or at least I don't think they do. They don't translate the roars.

In later adventures OHM has done such things as destroy Ant City (who apparently have the same rebuilding crew as Tokyo does in the Gojira movies) to the tune of Buddy Holly's "Raining in my Heart", have a cheese fight with an evil overlord over the affections of a woman, do battle against the robots of the evil Dr. Strangegutt while subsequently fighting off ApeRat and surviving nuclear annihilation at the hands of lobsters from a Las Vegas mob, and battle a giant tube of toothpaste (with toothbrush weapon, naturally).

In this story, OHM is working for Exploris--a children's museum in Raleigh--explaining the benefits of investing in the stock market. In this part of the story, Jet Pack Jane is warning Onion Head Monster that stock prices sometimes go down, but after they collide he assures her that holding on to stocks through the ups and downs is a good idea.

I love the surreal whimsy of Friedrich's art. And this panel...well, i guess it does a good job of representing how some of my days go. Not that my days end in--or even experience at any point, violent explosions. But again, this isn't a violent explosion; it's just the result of two cartoon characters conking their heads together.

Elegant Venice

2007-04-14T13:23:00.000-05:00

Ponte d'Olio, by Judy Kiel

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My first exposure to Venice when I was a kid was when I watched the Fred Astaire/Ginger Rogers musical "Top Hat," which mostly takes place there. Well, not there exactly, but a sound-stage, Art-Deco version of there, all pearly-white and pristine.

The real Venice may not be pristine, but parts of it are pearly white, or at least they appear to be in these photos by Judy Kiel (of which the one above is my favorite). Elegant, too, it would seem, because elegant is what these photos are.

I couldn't find any information about the Ponte d'Olio--not on the Web, not even in guidebooks about Venice. It's just one of--what, dozens? hundreds?--in the city; not even worth mentioning, apparently. According to Ms. Kiel, its name means, literally, the "Oil Bridge."

What do I like about this particular photo? Well, one of the criteria that make me like a photo, particularly a landscape or cityscape, is if it makes me want to go to that place. And this one does that to me. I really want to cross that bridge, and I really want to go stand in one of those windows above it (one without bars to block the view) and watch other people cross the bridge, and perhaps gondolas go under it, if that's what they do.

Float in Space

2007-03-20T21:22:00.000-05:00

Space Station Mir Over Earth
Credit: NASA, Russian Space Research Institute
Courtesy of Astronomy Picture of the Day

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When the Walt Disney Studios made "Pinocchio" in 1940, the animators pulled out all the stops for the opening scene. Using recently-invented technology, they created one long, continuous shot, zooming in from a distant view of an Italian village, through gates and around corners, past all kinds of festive village activity, and resting finally in front of Gepetto's tiny workshop.The scene was their proudest moment, and when the film was first shown to an audience it got practically no reaction.

Another scene, on the other hand, was probably the easiest to make: move a single cel of a paddle boat slowly across a painted background, animate a few ripples in the water and some puffs of smoke, and add a ripple glass for atmosphere. The same audience that shrugged at the tour-de-force opening saw this simple scene and gave it a standing ovation.

The same thing happened to me when I saw "The Phantom Menace." In spite of its faults, the movie was visually stunning, with incredible sets and costumes and backgrounds--and of course the special effects: undersea monsters and pod races and lightsaber battles and robot soldiers pushing their way through force fields. But it was a simple scene that took my breath away--a scene near the beginning where Qui-Gon Jinn and Obi-Wan Kenobi fly toward a Neimoidian ship orbiting above Naboo. Just two or three objects in the scene, and no action to speak of, but it had such incredible depth.

That's what this picture reminds me of.

Beauty in the Desert

2007-01-10T23:01:00.000-05:00

Lengthening Shadows, by Colleen Parker

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I just finished a book by Wallace Stegner, Where the Bluebird Sings to the Lemonade Springs, in which he writes about, among other things, the visual character of the arid west and our perception of it. In a chapter called "Thoughts in a Dry Land" he writes:

Perceptions trained in another climate and another landscape have had to be modified. That means we have had to learn to quit depending on perceptual habit. Our first and hardest adaptation was to learn all over again how to see. Our second was to learn to like the new forms and colors and light and scale when we had learned how to see them.
Scale is the first and easiest of the West's lessons. Colors and forms are harder. To eyes trained on universal chlorophyll, gold or brown hills may look repulsive. Sagebrush is an acquired taste, as are raw earth and alkali flats.
[There is] a process of westernization of the perceptions that has to happen before the West is beautiful to us. You have to get over the color green; you have to quit associating beauty with gardens and lawns; you have to get used to an inhuman scale; you have to understand geological time.

I grew up near Salt Lake City, in a region perched right on the border between the Great Basin and the Rocky Mountains. The aridity Stegner talks about was something I should have been used to. Yet I always preferred the greener parts of the country, especially the hardwood hills of New England and the pine-laden Pacific Northwest. I refused to believe that I lived in or anywhere near a desert, because deserts were ugly.

It was my mom who brought about my change of heart. An artist all of her adult life, she gained her second wind when she and my dad rented a duplex out in the desert. For twelve years my dad had commuted 200 miles a day to his job at an army base in Utah's west desert. Then, when their last child (me) went off to college, they rented an on-base duplex, where they lived during the week, returning "home" on weekends.

While my dad worked, my mom spent her days painting the landscape around her. Being an artist, she was already attuned to seeing the beauty in any corner of Earth, but being immersed as she was in this landscape, she grew not just to appreciate but to love the things she painted: the dry brown grasses of the valley floors, the sage-covered foothills, and the lavender-shadowed mountains.

As I saw each successive painting she made, I began to see the desert through her eyes, and I realized it wasn't ugly at all; it was just beautiful in a different way, a way I had to learn to recognize.

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Ten years later my wife and I took a trip to California with her parents, and the drive home took us from Reno straight across Nevada on US 50, the "Loneliest Road in America." We drove 300 miles from west to east through a seemingly endless succession of mountain passes and long, narrow valleys. (The term for the geography of the area is "Basin and Range.")

At a stop for gas about halfway through the trip, my father-in-law said to me, "Isn't this the ugliest, most boring scenery you've ever seen?" I said, "Not at all. I love it." And I did, thanks to the new way of seeing that my mom had helped me discover.

My father-in-law, even though he, too, grew up in the West—albeit a slightly less arid Eastern Montana—thought I was crazy.