Jehovah’s Witnesses

Posted By Mark on Jan 24, 2015

Breaking Sticks

Posted By Mark on Jan 20, 2015

What A Hunt!

Posted By Mark on Dec 26, 2014

Photos Of Los Angeles

Posted By Mark on Dec 23, 2014

An interesting account of the work involved in hunting down photos of the people and places in Los Angeles’s history with an emphasis on the ethnic diversity of the city and its environs: Shades of L.A.: 20 Years of Illuminating Diversity Through Photography We begin to click through silvery images of weddings and birthday parties, Thanksgivings, first television sets, interiors of pre-Prohibition Era saloons, laughing families hand-churning ice cream. But sometimes amid these happy moments are sobering indicators — placards in the frame that indicate that a couple’s frolicking occurred on a segregated beach, or a caption’s hint at the long wave of Japanese internment and relocation during World War...

Photographs And History: The Face Of Virginia

Posted By Mark on Dec 13, 2014

I do like to visit charity shops, mostly in search of weird vinyl, but anything related to photography will always catch my eye too and so it was with this recent discovery and purchase, a book titled The Face Of Virginia, a pictorial study by A. Aubrey Bodine. The man himself is described on the inside jacket thusly: Aubrey Bodine has been taking pictures for the Baltimore Sunday Sun for 35 years, and he is practically an institution in Maryland. He also has won national and international recognition for his work, including probably a thousand ribbons, medals, and trophies. One of his pictures won a $5000 prize, and fourteen of them are on permanent exhibition at the Smithsonian Institution. No mean photographer then, and a look at just a few of the photos from the state of Virginia in this book will demonstrate that superbly. His write up on Wikipedia – A. Aubrey Bodine – is very interesting too, especially for his photographic techniques and his use of darkroom tricks to enhance some of his pictures. The book’s inner covers, both front and back, are decorated with a delightful hand drawn map by Richard Q. Yardley, cartoonist and fellow worker on the Baltimore Sunday Sun. And now for a small selection of Bodine’s photos from the book, all of which are accompanied by great historical information in the publication making it well worth tracking down and checking out for yourself should you get the chance: Astronauts! The first Americans into space trained with NASA at Langley Field in Virginia as seen in this photograph from August 1959 showing off four of the Original Seven. Left to right are John H. Glenn Jr (third up and first into orbit), Virgil I. Grissom (second up), Alan B. Shepard Jr (first up), and Malcolm Scott Carpenter (fourth up). One of 6000 ships shipping cargo from Hampton Roads to nearly 350 ports (“in the free world” according to the book) every year. At the time of printing about 200000 tonnes of tobacco was exported annually. A worker showing off a Smithfield ham. According to Virginia law only the four packing companies in Smithfield were permitted to produce it and its distinctive flavour came from feeding the hogs peanuts then hanging the hams over hickory log fires for weeks. Sounds gorgeous. A collection of religious buildings. Top left is Abingdon Church. Top right is Christ Church or King Carter‘s Church (because the cost of building was paid by him). Bottom left is Ware Church. Bottom right is One-Room Shrine, birthplace of Walter Reed, the physician who discoverd the cause of yellow fever. Falls Church...

Prelude To A Bloodbath (1974)

Posted By Mark on Dec 9, 2014

Facing criticism from an increasingly hostile press that its television programming was not preparing the then-present generation of children for what many assumed was going to be the decade-to-come, the 1980s, the British Broadcasting Corporation (sometimes known as the BBC) began to toughen up its output in 1974 starting with this annual based on the popular Basil Brush TV show. In addition to connect-the-dot puzzles, brainteasers, jokes about gay diseases, and facts about fox encroachment in urban environments a number of picture stories entertained the pre-teens who were the target audience for the book all of which culminated in the cheeky puppet Basil graphically tearing his companions to...