Photography and privacy violations

There is something of a Rear Window quality to it all…    New York photographer Arne Svenson has his neighbors outraged.  His new show, at the Julie Saul Gallery in NYC, features photos of residents in the highrise across the street, but the photos were taken without their knowledge with a birdwatching telephoto lens.  Some of the people featured in the photos are threatening to sue, and as there are identifiable features in the photos they have may have a case.

Read the full story in the Wall Street Journal.

Test your knowledge: NASA or MOMA?

The Atlantic has posted 20 photos, some of paintings in the Museum of Modern Art, NY, and some taken from the International Space Station by photographer Chris Hadfield.  See if you can figure out which is which (the answers are at the bottom).

US Holocaust Museum’s digital collection

The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum’s digital collection — so far, that’s 217,630 records — is available to search online. There are some useful searching tips on the online collection homepage or try browsing within the three set “facets”: record type (e.g., oral history, photograph, document), language, or special collection. Other special features include links to over 3,800 streamable oral history testimonies (roughly 7,600 total hours), downloadable finding aids to over 8,200 archival collections, and over 4,500 films. There is also a link at the bottom of every record, should you need it, to ask a reference question. For more information on searching the collections, click here.

Engaging topics abound on Ottoman History Podcast

Launched in Spring of 2011, Ottoman History Podcast is an online radio program dedicated to accessible and academic discussion of new topics in the history, society and culture of the Ottoman Empire and Middle East. Guests and contributors include over 40 scholars and students from a variety of disciplines. To date there are 83 podcast entries (with two more forthcoming), and each episode page not only posts the podcast, but a bibliography on the subject being discussed (for a more extensive bibliography, click here). The site also offers an image collection (organized by topic and hosted on Flickr), archival documents (tagged by topic, location, and or historic figure), historical maps, and musical selections with track lists.

Architect Oscar Niemeyer dies at 104

Brazilian-born architect Oscar Niemeyer died on Wednesday at a hospital in Rio de Janeiro, just shy of  his 105th birthday.

via BBC and New York Times; photo and written tributes at ArchDaily

Charles and Ray Eames’ Powers of Ten

A Slate essay revisits the iconic Charles and Ray Eames nine-minute film Powers of Ten created for IBM and narrated by physicist Philip Morrison. Illustrated with the video and a “Making of…” slideshow, the essay discusses the ground breaking process behind the awe-inspiring still and aerial photography that captures Chicago.

Happy Anniversary, first Web photo

Today is the 20th anniversary of the first photo to have been uploaded to the Web (pictured left). Its cultural and artistic merit speaks for itself. Read more about the story behind the photo here.

hat tip to Alex Nichols

Treasure trove of prints discovered at NY Public Library

An enormous and valuable stash of images comprising “a visual encyclopedia” of the US in the 1930s and ’40s has been re-discovered.  It comprises 41,000 photographs by Roy Stryker, the founder of the Farm Security Administration’s photography documentation project, now at the Library of Congress.  (The 175,000-image FSA collection includes the iconic Dorthea Lange “Dustbowl Family” photos as well as many other highly reproduced images.)  This initial batch of 41,000 was stored at the New York Public Library, and got waylaid as the LC project moved forward.  Incredibly these photos could be signed out by any library patron.  In 2005 it was discovered that many of these NYPL photos were not in the LC collection, so they are now being digitized and added; the first 1,000 are available here, together with the rest of the FSA material.   Read more of this great story here through the NY Times.

A Guide to Art Photography in Museums

Trying to capture images of works of art in museums is a tricky business, which prompted Robert Baldwin, Associate Professor of Art History at Connecticut College, to develop a Guide to Art Photography in Museums (pdf), which covers equipment, image file type, and other useful tips. The guide can also be found on Professor Baldwin’s website, Social History of Art, where he also posts his own digital images, sample syllabi and other teaching tools for public use (with attribution).

Start spreadin’ the news: NYC Municipal Archives Online Gallery

The New York Department of Records has digitized over 872,000 unique photographs, maps, motion picture and audio recordings and has made them available in one digital archive. You can browse by collection and category or perform simple and advanced searches. Visitors are encouraged to return frequently as new content will be added on a regular basis.