Anthony Catalano, friend of Boro Park
For Boro Park ex-pats of a certain age, Anthony Catalano’s photographs are powerful madeleines, even more powerful than a Coke and a slice.
Jim Leddy at American Olean Tile
My dad, in a promotional photograph for American Olean Tile.
A strange strawberry
It’s like two, two, two strawberries in one.
Mickey Rooney (1920–2014)
A 1939 photograph.
At the Library of Congress
In 1941.
Recently updated
Searching Life photographs.
Santa on break
Drinking coffee, 1962.
Organization man?
Three photographs found in a paperback copy of William H. Whyte’s 1956 book The Organization Man. Was the man in these photographs an organization man?
About the picture
In a New Jersey diner.
Paterfamilias repurposing
“My dad too likes to repurpose household items as ‘supplies.’ These paper-clip cups once capped shaving-cream cans.”
Orange tree art
Our Red Sunset maple.
Halloween, 1941
“Cheese it — the cops!”
A new book from David Plowden
A photographer who captures, again and again, the Midwestern Sublime.
Orange car art
One driver, one photographer, one shadow.
Gum machines, comics, Kubrick, chins
In the comic strip Henry, in a Stanley Kubrick photograph.
Labor Day
A Margaret Bourke-White photograph.
Officemates
A photograph of the folks who share my office.
Todd McLellan, taking things apart
Todd McLellan, disassembler of objects, has a book of his work.
On Louis Armstrong’s birthday
A Gordon Parks photograph.
The Fourth of July
“Youngsters engage in frenzied bidding war for meat, meat by-products.”
Bert Stern (1929–2013)
With Aram Avakian, he created the film Jazz on a Summer’s Day (1959), a documentary about the 1958 Newport Jazz Festival. It makes 1958 look like the coolest year in history.
Father’s Day
“James Leddy, my dad, is closing in on eighty-five. I still see this same smile in his face.”
Happy Mother’s Day
“When I looked at this photograph in boyood, I thought that the object in motion was a bird.”
Studying for finals
“Unscrewing the top of your head and pouring in information doesn’t work that well: the tidying up is terrible.”
Luncheonette, 1936
On Skid Row.
Teenaged multitasking
From 1944, a tech-savvy analog native.
A better Life Photo Archive search
Arjan den Boer has created a better tool to search Google’s Life Photo Archive: Better search for LIFE Photo Archive.
Teenagers with moose, also plural
A 1947 photograph.
Red cabbage
The psychedelica of the vegetable kingdom.
Mississippi John Hurt: Sing Out!
A 1967 magazine cover.