TWA, JFK
The photographer Max Tuohey tours the Trans World Flight Center, aka the TWA terminal at John F. Kennedy International Airport.
The Fourth
A Gordon Parks photograph.
Sad candy
Having worked in the lower depths of retail while in college, I remain alert, always, to the feeling of utter loneliness in retail spaces.
SKRWT
An easy-to-use app to fix lens distortion and other problems in iOS photographs.
Happy together
My turtles, like my people, have left my office for a new home.
My people
These people shared an office with me for years.
Joseph Mitchell the collector
Poster for a 2009 exhibit.
“Us teenagers”
Photograph: a high-school classroom, 1948. Bad spelling.
Gill Sans
A spokesgill-man for the sardine industry.
Go fish
This photograph is for sardine connoisseurs, among whom I proudly number.
Valentine’s Day
This photograph reminds me of the Webster’s Third definition of heart, the start of which Nabokov quotes in Pnin: “a hollow, muscular organ.”
Still life
With timer.
Santa’s helper
The November 17, 1961 issue of Life ran a two-page photo essay on Charles Howard’s Santa Claus school in Albion, New York.
On break
Santa in a coffeeshop, 1962.
“Some nests”
Black tree, white sky, and “some nests.”
“Notorious Dead Criminals”
The file-drawer label “Notorious Dead Criminals” is worthy of Chief Wiggum. But it belongs to the FBI.
Veterans Day
A photograph from the Library of Congress.
Water towers of New York
The photographer Ronnie Farley on New York water towers
Then and now
Thirty years married!
Demon bat-pepper
This one is the scariest I’ve faced.
Janis Joplin in Sing Out!
When I first saw this stamp, I felt a shock of recognition: I knew the photograph right away. It appeared in the September / October 1970 issue of Sing Out! (“The Folk Song Magazine”)
Who owns Vivian Maier?
From The New York Times: ”A court case in Chicago seeking to name a previously unknown heir is threatening to tie her legacy in knots.”
On Louis Armstrong’s birthday
A 1965 photograph.
“Orphaned photographs”
Chris Kearin looks at two old photographs.
At the Art Institute of Chicago
The most exciting things at the Art Institute of Chicago right now: not the big Magritte exhibit but the photographs of Josef Koudelka and the weavings of Ethel Stein.
Paint samples
Laboratory worker with paint samples. A Jack Delano photograph.
Darger and Maier
“I can imagine Maier walking up to Darger, microphone in her hand, and Darger shuffling away and muttering.”
June 6, 1944
A photograph from Life.
Memorial Day
A 1943 photograph by Esther Bubley.
Happy Mother’s Day
My mom and me, 1957.