So that’s institutions from the U.S, Australia, Portugal, France and the U.K.
The Commons is catching on.
In Flickr’s words:
The key goals of The Commons on Flickr are to firstly show you hidden treasures in the world’s public photography archives, and secondly to show how your input and knowledge can help make these collections even richer.
It’s not that you couldn’t get to the images before of course. They’ve always been in the public domain. What’s different about this is that these institutions are doing the hard work for you and plonking their archives right in your lap. It’s what might be called areally good thing.
These from the (Aussie) Powerhouse Museum:
The Prospectors of Sud-Est Goldfield, Tyrrell Photographic Collection, Powerhouse Museum.
Earlier this year I blogged about V.C. Pun. Since then I visited Nepal to photograph other retired Gurkhas in legal disputes with the British government, those men who fought as part of the British army but are now not allowed to settle in the UK, as they “fail to demonstrate strong ties with the UK”. Their court cases are to be heard next week in the High Court, and there is a proper demonstration planned too.
The VC and GC Association annual gathering happens to be on now, so all three surviving Gurkha VCs are in London - V.C. Pun, V.C. Limbu and V.C. Gurung. (They can now come and go as they please, but “won’t leave their Gurkha comrades behind” to settle here. Or their families for that matter, who also aren’t allowed in. )
They’ll be at the demo I am sure and it would be worth coming down just to meet these extraordinary men, although much better to get involved too.
V.C. Pun.
V.C. Limbu
V.C. Gurung
Harilal Pun
Gyanandra Rai
Lalit Gurung M.C.
I wanted to add this snap of V.C. Pun at home with his family:
The American Museum of Natural History has a section on its website devoted to vintage photographs taken within its walls. It’s really strong stuff, straightforward, modest photography that gives the subject matter all the respect it deserves and stays very much in the background itself. There are various photographers represented over quite a long period but the whole thing hangs together really well. I particularly like the “Exhibition Preparation” section. Here are a few of the images:
Museum staff preparing African Lion Group (Bierwert, Thane L.) March 1935
Museum staff cleaning elephant skin (Bierwert, Thane L.) June 1933
Arc lamps in use for photograph, Photographic Division Studio (Unknown) 1930, approximate
Case for model exhibit, African Antelope Nyala (Yourow, Morton) 1957
Man posing with head of African Elephant (Wheelock, J. Otis) February 28, 1908
Barnum Brown and Otto Falkenbach preparing reptile Rice, H. S.; Dutcher, Irving April 1930
I wonder if London’s Natural History Museum ever did anything like this? I feel a pitch coming on. . .
I’ve shot Tate’s annual report for the second year running. As it’s just been published I thought I would put up a slideshow version here, with all the financial stuff edited out. It’s been such a great project to record a whole year at Tate.
A lot of the images are up on the main site of course, if you want to see them in non Annual Report mode.
So why the re-design of the website? With so much work on display the previous incarnation was starting to feel a bit bloated. Most of the sections were very rarely visited, with traffic concentrated on newer projects I’d added as I went along. There were about twice as many projects on display at the end as when I first put the site up. So I have amalgamated some of the older projects that were all shot around the same time: Pop Idol, Wasteland, Tribute, Ruins and Studios.
A Love of Flowers is the result. It’s a coming together of the most interesting images from these projects. At the time of their creation these projects never really felt separate, with new ideas always growing out of existing ones, so combining them like this feels far from arbitrary. One thing they all had in common was that they involved driving around, getting lost a lot, and, uh, looking at things. And learning a bunch about photography.
The title A Love of Flowers is a quotation from George Orwell’s essay about the English, The Lion and the Unicorn. I just read it for the first time. You can download it here if you like. It’s very, very clever and a bit dated. . well, ok, a lot. It seems to me to be a good title for a collection of pictures of modern day Blighty because things have changed so much, so fast since Orwell was writing. He observed that the English are not artistic, not intellectual, not bellicose, but are rather gentle, private individuals. . . with a love of flowers.
ok ok so i went to nepal for a week and never mentioned it once here. . its just that i took a new computer and, erm, couldn’t sign in to wordpress on it. yes i suck. anyway i am back now and was only ill for one day. Snaps on flickr. (Not of me being ill, of course.)
