Thursday, February 11, 2010

Random Shots From All Over



This photograph by Sean Doerr, used by the New York Times to illustrate the decline of Detroit, shows the once glamorous Michigan Theater, now used as parking garage.




This picture from TMZ.com purports to show a young John Kennedy on a wild cruise. It's a fun pic, but it sure looks fake to me.




From The New York Public Library's current show on Eugene Smith - one of a series of pictures shot from Smith's New York apartment.




And leading off our street fashion round-up - a golden glow from Garance Dore in Brazil




One of The Sartorialist's favorite subjects, Lapo Elkann. You either love or hate his style, but I think it's pretty cool.




A sassy moment (and costume) in Paris caught by Tommy Ton.




And lastly, from a series of pictures by Aaron Gustafson shot with a large format helmet-camera while freefalling from over 10,000 feet!


6 comments:

Roger Mensink said...

That is random, for sure. The Kennedy shot looks fake, but it also looks like fun. Garance Doré shows us that shooting into the sun can work, given the right model and wear. As for Lapo Elkann, I love his style, especially as shown in this photograph.

Joe Holmes said...

The JFK photo was identified as a hoax a few weeks ago. "[T]he man TMZ identified as Kennedy was a 'paid model,' as were the naked women featured in the shot." http://www.thesmokinggun.com/archive/years/2009/1228092jfkpic1.html

Mandy said...

Large format helmet-camera???

.... AWESOME.

jdg said...

wow, that Michigan Theater photo by Sean Dorr looks just like the one Life published this month, which looks just like the one taken by Andrew Moore which was the same as the one Sean Hemmerle published in Time two years ago, which looked exactly like the one taken by Marchand & Meffre the year before, which was the exact same shot that Camilo Jose Vergara took of that theater twenty or thirty years ago when the auto industry was thriving and cities all over the country were also tearing down their big, fancy movie palaces (the Michigan was "saved" only because it was structurally entwined with the still-operating office building).

I guess I should consider myself lucky that all the fancy out-of-town photographers take pictures of the same things here in Detroit. If they ever deviated from the Standard Detroit Ruins Tour, they might discover how beautiful and amazing and green my city is, and point their cameras at the things I try to take pictures of (though I would never deny the appeal of a good ruin).

Joe Holmes said...

I think jdg raises a very good issue. Those urban ruins make gorgeous photos, but at the price of typecasting Detroit as America's own bit of hell.

I can imagine such photos being defended as art, shot with no photojournalistic intent (that would certainly be my response), but these seem to be the only images coming out of that city.

derekcooper said...

That first picture instantly reminded me of James Griffieon's photographs of Detroit, which were featured in Vice Magazine and Harper's Bazaar a while back. Or, what he's termed the feral city. He just came to visit the University of Virginia and brought up the fact that photo students have an automatic attraction to abandoned buildings (or ruin porn).

One of the things that Griffieon focuses on is the reestablishment of the natural back into the city landscape. A taking back of something that has been lost or destroyed?