While doing a completely unrelated search for “Dinaric Alps” I came across this wonderful collection of vintage photos from an “overland trip” made by Tony Stead from England to NZ in 1962. Stead’s son has posted the images along with excerpts from his father’s written account of the journey.
In 1962, my father travelled from England to NZ. He wrote a diary (B5, hardcover, blue) and shot his first rolls of colour film.
The slides sat alongside the journals in the attic for the last few decades before being digitised.
The details of the trip are fascinating, the Intro portion is a must read. Love the tone and exposure of these. And that Land Rover makes pretty much any picture amazing.
NASA has a great collection of historical photographs detailing their exploits over the years. Break out your Epsons and clean up your source imagery folder, these are all high-res and downloadable. Your tax dollars at work.
Some vintage WWII / 40’s era Kodachromes. Always amazed at the color and detail of these. Images like these are a stark illustration of the limits of technology. Or at least of what we consider technological progress. True, photography has become more convenient and cost effective, increasing availability and enabling more people to participate. I think on the whole this is worth the cost of the death of film. But the sad truth is that the kinds of images you see above are a dying breed. In fact, I have not personally seen anything approaching this kind of quality come out recently (please correct me if I’m wrong, I’d love to see people doing stuff like this currently).
Although these shots are all beautiful, they don’t hold a candle to William Eggelston’s brilliant work which occupies the same kind of color space in my mind.
On a side note, I just got to Barcelona! One of my favorite cities, so happy to be able to relax here for a few days after our long European tour.
Bay Area photographer Lauren Crew has updated her portfolio with some great new work. I’m not quite sure what camera she is using, but I went to one of her shows in Oakland a few years ago and remember that she used mostly film, which is evident from the beautiful analog grain in some of these shots.
I picked up a few used books from the second-hand store last week and finally had some time to scan them in. These images are from Model Soldiers by Henry Harris. Growing up, one of my favorite books was The Indian in the Cupboard, and this led to a fascination with the Warhammer 40K figures at the local comic book store. This book doesn’t contain any space marines, but its meticulously modeled miniatures remind me of the tiny battlefields I was drawn to back then. The detail they manage to include at this scale is amazing.
Atelier Olschinsky shot some beautiful editorial work for Nevertheless Magazine at the 1000KM Red Bull Ring. Love this sort of washed out style, I’d call it cross process but it seems like something else. Really cool technique.
Ikko Narahara is a self-taught photographer and co-founder of VIVO, a Japanese photography cooperative he formed with five of his peers. Narahara’s work often depicts subjects in isolation from the outside world, and I love how he is able to abstract scenes of everyday life into graphic compositions, making the viewer feel an otherworldly detachment from familiar sights.
Looking at Thomas Prior’s work is like some kind of visual catharsis for me. The energy and emotion he captures in his photographs is simply captivating. See more here.
