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Photography
Maps from 1942 of the never-was Nazi invasion of North America
Dec 15th
These diagrams from the March 2, 1942 issue of Life detailed the Nazi invasion of America shortly after the attack on Pearl Harbor. Check out such alternate reality battles like the bombing of Detroit and invasion of Norfolk, Virginia.
These maps were created as a follow-up to an article about an American defeat in WWII by pioneering science fiction author Philip Wylie, who wrote the proto-superhero novel Gladiator. These maps were made in the early days of US involvement in World War II, so there was a sense that this invasion was a real possibility. You can read more about these maps at Ptak Science Books. More >
Masters of Photography: Brassai
Dec 9th
“When you meet the man you see at once that he is equipped with no ordinary eyes.” Brassai (pseudonym of Gyula Halász) – 9 September 1899–8 July 1984 – was a Hungarian photographer, sculptor, and filmmaker who rose to international fame in France in the 20th century.
Gyula (Jules) Halász (the Western order of his name) was born in Brassó, Transsylvania, Kingdom of Hungary (since 1920 Brașov), in Romania, to an Armenian mother and a Hungarian father. He grew up speaking Hungarian. When he was three, his family lived in Paris for a year, while his father, a professor of French literature, taught at the Sorbonne.
As a young man, Gyula Halász studied painting and sculpture at the Hungarian Academy of Fine Arts (Magyar Képzőművészeti Egyetem) in Budapest. He joined a cavalry regiment of the Austro-Hungarian army, where he served until the end of the First World War.
In 1920, Halász went to Berlin, where he worked as a journalist for the Hungarian papers Keleti and Napkelet. He started studies at the Berlin-Charlottenburg Academy of Fine Arts (Hochschule für Bildende Künste).
There he became friends with several older Hungarian artists and writers, including the painters Lajos Tihanyi and Bertalan Pór, and the writer György Bölöni, each of whom later moved to Paris and became part of the Hungarian circle. More >
Kaliningrad
Sep 21st
The Russian exclave of Kaliningrad on the Baltic Sea is sandwiched between Poland to the south and Lithuania to the north and east.
Annexed from Germany in 1945, the territory was a closed military zone throughout the Soviet period.
In 2008, Russia threatened to deploy short-range missiles there if the United States went ahead with its plan to build controversial missile defence bases in Poland and the Czech Republic.
OVERVIEW
Koenigsberg, as the city of Kaliningrad was once known, was founded by Teutonic knights in the 13th century. It became one of the cities of the Hanseatic League and was once the capital of Prussia. The philosopher Immanuel Kant spent all his life in the city and died there in 1804.
The region was part of Germany until annexation by the USSR following World War II when it saw bitter fighting and suffered rampant destruction. The German population was expelled or fled after the war ended. More >
The night sky on fire: 2,000 firefighters battle inferno that blazed for 15 hours in China after TWO oil pipelines explode
Jul 18th
Structured Settlement Investments Firefighters today extinguished a fire that raged for more than 15 hours after two oil pipeline exploded at a Chinese Structured Settlement Investments port.
An explosion at a pipe transporting crude oil from a ship loan rates to a storage tank blew up yesterday evening, causing a blast at a second, nearby duct.
More than 2,000 firefighters and 338 mesothelioma layers engines from 14 different cities worked loan rates through the night in the north-eastern port of Dalian to put out the blaze which illuminated the sky in a strange orange glow. More >
First photos of a tribe living in rainforest trees
Jul 12th
Back in 1995, George Steinmetz, an award-winning photographer, documented clans of tree-dwelling people in Indonesian New Guinea. They had no prior contact with anyone outside their language group.
These are amazing beautiful images of the Korowai and Kombai clans living in tree houses that stand in clearings they have carved out of the forest.
PHOTOS AFTER THE JUMP More >
In memoriam: Edith Shain – Iconic WWII Nurse
Jun 26th
This past week, one of the subjects of the most iconic WWII photograph ever taken passed away.
WWII - kiss
Edith Shain, age 92, passed away at her home in Los Angeles on Sunday. 65 years ago, her embrace with a US sailor celebrating the end of World War Two became one of the most famous photos in history.
Shain was a nursing student in New York on August 14, 1945, when the surrender of the Japanese was announced. She made her way to Times Square to join in celebrations, where she let a man in a Navy uniform gather her up in his arms before giving her a kiss. The moment was captured by photographer Alfred Eisenstadt and later appeared in Life magazine.
According to the photog Eisenstadt, he had spotted a sailor walking through the crowd kissing every woman he saw. More >
Omayra Sanchez – Photographies, That Shook The World
Jun 24th
Many see this photo from 1985 as the beginning of what we nowadays call “media globalization“, because Omayra Sanchez’s agony was followed by television cameras from all over the world.
Omayra Sanchez
Despite all the footage that was recorded by those tv cameras, it was this photograph, of a shocking reality and humanity, that went down in history as the first broadcast of the pain and death of a human being.
Omayra Sanchez, 13 years old, was the victim of volcano Nevado del Ruiz’s eruption in 1985, that devasted the Armero village, in Colombia. Omayra was trapped for three days under the mud, clay and water that was left from her own house. When the paramedics, with scarce resources, tried to help her, they sadly realized there was nothing they could do, since to remove her from the deadly trap they would have to amputate her legs and the lack of a speacilist on the scene would result in her death. More >
Erik Johansson: The art of manipulation
Jun 20th
Erik Johansson, a young computer engineering student from Sweden, has been taking the blogosphere by storm by producing heavily manipulated photographs which invert aesthetics as we understand them, inspired by MC Escher and surrealist artists.
Aged just 25, and due to complete his Masters in Interactive Design in under a month, he has already been bombarded with offers of work following a wave of interest from blogs and design magazines after he published his innovative photographic work on his website.
Instead of shying away, as some photographers do, from revealing the intense levels of Photoshop work done on the images he produces, Johansson is proud of the technique he has developed and says it is “somehow different from other kinds of art”. More >
