the daily thing:

mudwerks:

accidental mysteries: 100 Year Old Color Photographs

(Above) A fine lady from France, c. 1910.

IN THE EARLY PART OF THE 20th CENTURY, French-Jewish capitalist Albert Kahn set about to collect a photographic record of the world, the images were held in an ‘Archive of the Planet’. Before the 1929 stock market crash he was able to amass a collection of more than 72,000 autochrome plates, the first industrial process for true color photography

Autochrome was the first industrial process for true color photography. When the Lumière brothers launched it commercially in June 1907, it was a photographic revolution - black and white came to life in color. Autochromes consist of fine layers of microscopic grains of potato starch – dyed either red-orange, green or violet blue – combined with black carbon particles, spread over a glass plate where it is combined with a black and white photographic emulsion. All colors can be reproduced from three primary colors.

Via Albert Kahn Museum and City Noise.

inothernews:

HEART SORTA ON SLEEVE This so-called glass frog’s transparent body lacks pigmentation and reveals its organs in action—including a beating heart.  More than 150 species of glass frogs are found in rain forest trees across Central and South America.  (Photo: Paul Hamilton / RAEI via National Geographic)

Hang in there, little dude!

loveallthis:

El Vética.

RIP, Louise Bourgeois.

(Photo by Robert Mapplethorpe.)

From Sartore’s photography collection Rare: Portraits of America’s Endangered Species. An excerpt about Bryn:

Bryn the pygmy rabbit died in 2008, marking the end of her genetic line. This subpopulation lost its sagebrush habitat as the land was developed for agriculture. Key features of Bryn’s genetic material survive in hybrid pygmy rabbits; a breeding and reintroduction program holds out hope for her kind.

In an off-exhibit room at the Oregon Zoo, the staff was quiet, even reverent, as they brought in Bryn. She was one of two Columbia Basin pygmy rabbits left, and since both were old females, this was a solemn occasion.

A keeper placed her gently on my black velvet background, and i began to take photos. I stopped to watch her from time to time, but she didn’t move much. She wasn’t even scared. Nearly blind, missing half an ear, and with fur falling out onto the cloth, she seemed to have already given up.

The whole experience left me morose and extremely disappointed. We’d done it again, this time by converting sage habitat to agriculture in western Washington. Our photo session was one of the last chances Bryn had to be noticed. She died a few months later, and then Raphaela, the last of the breed, died as well. The Columbia Basin pygmy rabbit is now extinct, a passenger pigeon for the 21st century.

(via Metafilter)

claytoncubitt:

Phyllis Galembo, ‘Agot Dance Group’, Etikpe Village, Cross River, Nigeria, 2004, Ilfochrome, 50 x 50 inches

“Large-scale color photographs from 2005 to 2006 reflect the ritual adornment and spirituality of masquerade in Nigeria, Benin and Burkina Faso in West Africa. These portraits of masqueraders build on Galembo’s work of the past twenty years photographing the rituals and religious culture in Nigeria, Brazil, Cuba, Jamaica and Haiti, as well as the homegrown custom of Halloween in the United States.” -Tang Museum (via But Does It Float)

stilllifequickheart:

Victor Schrager

Composition as Explanation #3

2003

Charles Cushman was an amateur color snapshotter who made more than 14,000 Kodachrome slides between 1938 to 1969, “during which time he extensively documented the United States as well as other countries.” He eventually gave the slides to his alma mater, Indiana University, which has put them all online. The site is searchable by location, date, and subject.

He wasn’t a highly stylized photographer, but by virtue of the quantity of shots here, there are definite highlights to be found. Many of his snapshotty compositions look fresh viewed through modern eyes, especially considering that most casual photos of that era (at least the ’30s through the ’50s) were in black and white. Here, for example, are some lovely ladies from 1942, in a composition that Garry Winogrand probably would have liked too.

(via ck/ck.)

This is what was left of a tree that was just sort of near the blast site, 30 years ago today. Click through for many more shots.