Guest: Sebastian Izquierdo

Underground
Berlin U-Bahn, Métro de Paris, London Underground, New York City Subway
Stockholms tunnelbana...or any other underground in the big cities of the
world. They fascinate...all these people and faces...the accidental...
the unpredictable.

I found Sebastians great photos from the Metro of Buenos Aires and
was delighted to see his interpretation of this subject.

His serie of pictures is called "Mirada Subte"









All photos: Sebastian Izquierdo
Born in Buenos Aires 1975. Picture designer and Sound designer. Film studies
and specialized in cinematography at "Sindicato de la Industria Cinematográfica
Argentina (SICA). Studied photo journalism with Tony Valdez at "la Asociación
de Reporteros Gráficos de la República Argentina (ARGRA) and also assisted
at many workshops about communication, creativity and analysis of pictures.
Participated in workshops and seminars with teachers like Daniel Ponce,
Tony Valdez, Daniel Merle and María Kusmuk.

I have participated in various joint exhibitions in my country. Some of my work
can be found at fotorevista.com.ar ; gandsasphotogallery.com.ar

Invited by Ulf Fågelhammar

Grafitti documenters: Martha Cooper and Henry Chalfant

SOUP CANS -- FAB 5 FREDDY -- BRONX 1980
Photo: MARTHA COOPER, SUBWAY ART, NYC 1980-82
image linked in from
http://www.photoarts.com/cooper/graffiti/soupcans.html

Martha Cooper and Henry Chalfant where two very influential photographers following and documenting the early grafitti culture on Bronx in New York. Martha was employed at New York Post, and Henry was a sculpturer trained at Stanford. Both was captured by the energy and nerve of the early hip hop movement.

Some interesting links to explore follow.

• Interview with Martha Cooper.
• Interview with Henry Chalfant.
• Swedish page about Chalfant.
• Some of Cooper's early photos.
• Some of Chalfant's photos #1.
• Some of Chalfant's photos#2.

Inspiration at tips from Can't Stop Won't Stop.

Street (3)

Some old street art photos from 2003.

Encyclopedia of Diderot & d´Alembert

I stumbled upon a beautiful project. First published over the course of more than twenty years (1751-1777), the 32 volumes of the Encyclopédie include 21 volumes of text with more than 70,000 articles on subjects ranging from asparagus to zodiac.

Here is one article written by Diderot about beautiful vs nice. Enlightening stuff! Try searching the translated and free texts for more enlightment. Art is a good one for example.

Beautiful / Nice
Beautiful is opposed to nice, and describes something great, noble, and regular; it is admired. As for nice, it is finely and delicately made; it appeals. The beautiful in works of spirit, supposes some truth in the subject, some elevation in the thoughts, some soundness in the expression, some novelty in the turn, and some regularity in the behavior: singularity and brightness are enough to make them nice.

Some things can be nice or beautiful, like comedy; some others can only be beautiful, like tragedy. There sometimes is more merit to have found a nice thing than a beautiful one; in such occasions, a thing only merits the epithet of beautiful because of the importance of its object; and a thing is called nice, only because of the lack of importance of its object. Care is only granted then to the advantages, and the difficulty of invention is overlooked. It is so true that the beautiful carries with it some idea of greatness, that the same object previously called beautiful, would only appear nice, if it had been done smaller.

The spirit is a maker of nice things; but the soul produces great ones. Ingenious traits are ordinarily only nice; there is beauty everywhere one notices feeling. A man that says that a beautiful thing is indeed beautiful, does not offer great proof of his understanding; one that says that the same thing is nice, is foolish, or has no understanding. Boileau, that impertinent, says that Corneille sometimes is nice.