Exposure

Rick Poynor
Exposure: Andy’s Food Mart by Tibor Kalman and M&Co
The virtue of the vernacular


Rick Poynor
Exposure: License Photo Studio by Walker Evans
The building as camera


Rick Poynor
Exposure: Drape (Cavalcade III) by Eva Stenram
Abducted in plain sight


Rick Poynor
Exposure: Mrs. E.N. Todter by Dion & Puett Studio
Art and the Ladies’ Field Club


Rick Poynor
Exposure: Rayograph with Gun by Man Ray
The poetry of the cameraless photo


Rick Poynor
Exposure: Clive Owen in character by Dan Winters
Anatomy of a publicity picture


Rick Poynor
Exposure: Assicurazioni Generali by Tošo Dabac
The textual unconscious of Zagreb


Rick Poynor
Exposure: Motion Efficiency Study by Frank Gilbreth
The ghost in the grid


Rick Poynor
Exposure: Commuter in Tokyo by Michael Wolf
How to cope with compression


Rick Poynor
Exposure: Ford Motor Plant by Charles Sheeler
The cathedral of industry


Rick Poynor
Exposure: Adamanese Man by Maurice Vidal Portman
Photography for anthropologists


Rick Poynor
Exposure: Domestic Interior by Nicole Bachmann
Design for everyday life?


Rick Poynor
Exposure: Cement Sky by Marla Rutherford
A fetish for motels


Rick Poynor
Exposure: Wintery Forest by Yang Yongliang
Building the new China


Rick Poynor
Exposure: Nurse Midwife by W. Eugene Smith
The mystery of birth


Rick Poynor
Exposure: Untitled Film Still #21 by Cindy Sherman
The photographer as performer


Rick Poynor
Exposure: Guts of the Beast by Marcus Nilsson
How to take a food picture


Rick Poynor
Exposure: Woman Mourning by Don McCullin
What are images of suffering for?


Rick Poynor
Exposure: Cabaret de l'Enfer by Harry C. Ellis
The ghoulish cavern in the villa of Ormen


Rick Poynor
Exposure: Chimpanzee by James Mollison
Looking into the face of an ape


Rick Poynor
Exposure: Operating Room by Augustine H. Folsom
Early surgery as public theater


Rick Poynor
Exposure: Francis Bacon by Bill Brandt
Portrait of the artist or photographer?


Rick Poynor
Exposure: Oildale by Rudy VanderLans
The dismal beauty of an oil field


Rick Poynor
Exposure: House #3 by Francesca Woodman
Fabricating a phantom girl


Rick Poynor
Exposure: Copacabana Beach by Thomaz Farkas
A pioneer of Brazilian photography


Rick Poynor
Exposure: Bar in Valparaiso, Chile by Sergio Larrain
The ambiguity of soft focus


Rick Poynor
Exposure: Suburban House at Night by Todd Hido
The pleasure in not knowing


Rick Poynor
Exposure: Man with a Bandaged Head
The aftermath of extreme weather


Rick Poynor
Exposure: Portrait of Space by Lee Miller
Frames within frames in the desert


Rick Poynor
Exposure: H.P. Lovecraft by Lucius B. Truesdell
The master of horror


Rick Poynor
Exposure: Morandi’s Objects by Joel Meyerowitz
The sublime in ordinary things


Rick Poynor
Exposure: Tilda Swinton by Tim Walker
The performance of a picture


Rick Poynor
Exposure: American Hermit by Alec Soth
Alone in the great outdoors


Rick Poynor
Exposure: Pirelli Calendar Model by Peter Lindbergh
The production line of glamor


Rick Poynor
Exposure: Kreuzberg Tower in Berlin by Hélène Binet
The aura of a building


Rick Poynor
Exposure: Marlene Dietrich Billboard by Brassaï
Superhuman mystique of a star


Rick Poynor
Exposure: Crashed Car by Arnold Odermatt
Fast and Furious: a retrofit


Rick Poynor
Exposure: Grace Jones by Jean-Paul Goude
Beauty, androgyny, and threat


Rick Poynor
Exposure: Beauty Salon in Kraków by David Hlynsky
The Surrealism of window displays


Rick Poynor
Exposure: Crime Scene in Paris by Alphonse Bertillon
The killing of a bank messenger


Rick Poynor
Exposure: Children at Play in the City by Shirley Baker
The freedom of the street


Rick Poynor
Exposure: Rossellini and Lynch by Helmut Newton
A primal lovers’ tryst


Rick Poynor
Exposure: Woman Mailing a Letter by Clifton R. Adams
The spell of vintage color


Rick Poynor
Exposure: James Nachtwey by Antonin Kratochvil
Portrait of a war photographer


Rick Poynor
Exposure: Dysturb poster in Paris by Jeanne Frank
Taking photojournalism to the street


Rick Poynor
Exposure: American Family by Ralph Eugene Meatyard
The otherness of other people


Rick Poynor
Exposure: Bookstore in Barcelona by Gabriel Casas
A new vision of the book


Rick Poynor
Exposure: Invisible Man by Gordon Parks
The view from an electric cave


Rick Poynor
Exposure: Kuwait, 1991 by Sophie Ristelhueber
The scars of a desert war


Rick Poynor
Exposure: Newport Baths by Max Dupain
Sun, sea, and disconnection


Rick Poynor
Exposure: The Eiffel Tower by Germaine Krull
A Paris icon made abstract


Rick Poynor
Exposure: Reem-B Robot by Vincent Fournier
The mental life of a machine


Rick Poynor
Exposure: Salvation Army Barracks by Jack London
Down and out in early 20th-century London


Rick Poynor
Exposure: Flypaper and Flies by Jacques-André Boiffard
A cold eye on insect carnage


Rick Poynor
Exposure: The Gamble by Peter Kennard
The clandestine operations of power


Rick Poynor
Exposure: Pages from Fabrik by Jak Tuggener
The dark undercurrents of industry


Rick Poynor
Exposure: Head below Wires by Roger Ballen
Absurdity in the South African outland


Rick Poynor
Exposure: Surface Transit by Eva Fuka
The shock of New York in the sixties


Rick Poynor
Exposure: Rue du Temple, Paris by Gail Albert Halaban
The lure of a lighted window


Rick Poynor
Exposure: J.G. Ballard by Brian Griffin
The science fiction of the ordinary


Rick Poynor
Exposure: Brodsky, the Tie Seller in Paris
Every photograph is an enigma


Rick Poynor
Exposure: Lens bookshop in Sutton by Lloyd Rich
The rediscovery of lost moments


Rick Poynor
Exposure: Luigi Russolo’s Noise Machines
Sonic conjurors of experimental music


Rick Poynor
Exposure: Butlin’s holiday camp by Edmund Nägele
A sixties vacation in glowing color


Rick Poynor
Exposure: Cat and I by Wanda Wulz
Modernity, femininity and the feline


Rick Poynor
Exposure: Restaurant de la Réserve by Jean Gilletta
Wonder and yearning by the sea


Rick Poynor
Exposure: Berlin scene by Wolfgang Zurborn
The hidden order of the random


Rick Poynor
Exposure: Mother and Child by Philip Jones Griffiths
The gendered power relations of war


Rick Poynor
Exposure: The Colossi of Memnon by Francis Bedford
Mysterious emanations from the desert


Rick Poynor
Exposure: The Simulator by Dora Maar
The chamber of Surrealist visions


Rick Poynor
Exposure: El Paso Street by Stephen Shore
The street corner: an uncommon place


Rick Poynor
Exposure: Rise Up You Are Free by Dominic Hawgood
A post-photographic view of exorcism


Rick Poynor
Exposure: Striporama street scene by Vivian Maier
How good was the photographer nanny?


Rick Poynor
Exposure: Viktoria Modesta by Nadav Kander
Changing perceptions of impairment



Observed


A number of prominent—and progressive—initiatives that once promised to attract women and people of color to the tech industry (including Girls In Tech and Women Who Code) are closing. Three reporters at The Washington Post dig in: “The drop in support for programs that tech companies once touted as a sign of their commitment to adding women, Black people and Hispanic people to their ranks follows a right-wing campaign to challenge diversity initiatives in court.”

Celebrating Black Business month with two inspiring design legends, Kevan Hall and TJ Walker – the founders of the Black Design Collective.

Book cover design is a careful navigation between creativity and brute-force market logic. But is it also inherently racist?

Designer's weigh in on … the Olympics!

Billed as a “color trend intelligence service,” Pantone Color Insider provides global data on use of all 15,000 shades in the company color matching system. This year's color? Peach Fuzz!

Lunacy on LinkedIn.

Brian Johnson—one of the founders of BIPOC Design History,  Creative Director at Polymode, and a member of the Monacan Indian Nation — has spent years researching Indigenous design in an effort to help decolonize graphic design by speaking to the field’s racial biases. Links to his essays for Hyperallergic  (including the brilliantly-titled How Can a Poster Sing?) are here.

Bring Them Home is a documentary film that highlights a small group of Blackfoot people on their mission to establish—on their own ancestral territory—the first wild buffalo herd since the species’ near-extinction a century ago, an act that would restore the land, re-enliven traditional culture, and bring much-needed healing to their community. The film, directed by Blackfeet (Niitsitapi/ Siksikaitsitapi) siblings Ivan and Ivy MacDonald alongside filmmaker Daniel Glick, has just won a climate justice award.

What knots in our histories do we need to disentangle? What future relationships do we need to re-weave? Who and what is missing from the connections we make and unmake with our systems and technologies? Spend two days this month in Sweden at The Conference and "you’ll walk away with new mindsets and materials, teachings and tools, practices and parallels to help get us out of “oh fuck,” and into “now what?”  

There are only 75 Māori architects among New Zealand's roughly 2,000 licensed practitioners (and fewer than 10 Pacific Islanders), despite these Indigenous groups making up more than 25 per cent of the country's population—but Elisapeta Heta is one, and she's got something to say about this—and why it matters. "It's no wonder that our built environments don't necessarily reflect who we are as people," she observes. "There's no diversity in it because it's all been designed through the same Western lens."

Through his charitable organization, Bloomberg Philanthropies, Michael Bloomberg is giving $175 million each to Meharry Medical College in Nashville, Morehouse School of Medicine in Atlanta, and Howard University College of Medicine in Washington. These donations are believed to be the largest ever to any single H.B.C.U.

An indigenous design camp for teenagers is the first of its kind in the United States (or maybe anywhere). The goal is to teach Indigenous teens about the range of career options in architecture and design, a field where Native Americans are notably underrepresented.

The functional design elements of the new Michael Graves Design for Pottery Barn collection leverage ethnographic research across several communities, from those aging in place, to individuals with permanent, situational, or temporary disabilities, to those who are planning for the future without compromise, and those who want their homes to be welcoming to everybody, all without sacrificing good design.

“There is no doubt that domestic harmony is endangered by having a designer about,” Mr. Grange told The Daily Telegraph in 2012. “If you are good at your job you cannot avoid looking at everything and, given half a chance, affecting it. I even have an opinion about a tea towel — I just cannot help it.” British industrial designer (and Pentagram co-founder) Sir Kenneth Grange has died. He was 95. 

It's August! You may be heading out on that much-needed vacation! And how will you get there? Map lovers—and travelers all—rejoice! And look no further.

Did you know there is a way to dig in deep to stories about the Olympics that are design-focused? You do, now!

A design-focused conversation about coding, communication, and the beauty of simplicity.

TBD*—the  in-house design studio of the CCA in San Francisco—is looking for local nonprofit/civic partners needing design help this coming fall. Details here.

What does it mean to bestow a “good design” award in today’s design landscape—especially within the context of public space?

A logo conspiracy theory—about the Olympics?

The recent handoff from Joe Biden to Kamala Harris obliged the campaign's designers to launch a new Harris for President logo in just three hours: they also crafted an entire brand refresh—including ads and print collateral AND a website—all of which they built out in just over a day. More on this massive (and speedy) undertaking here.

Our friends at WXY Architecture and Jerome Haferd Studio are among four firms that have won a competition to design a series of cultural venues for historic Africatown in Alabama.

“Our mascot, Phryges, is based on the Phrygian hat, which is a powerful emblem in France on everything from coins to stamps. Phryges is gender-free, which feels appropriate because this is the society we live in. Toys should be for everyone, and not gendered.” An interview with Joachim Roncin, the designer of the Paris Olympics.

The Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM) recently announced that it would eliminate the term “equity” from its Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) language. “What organizations like SHRM may or may not realize is that abandoning the work of diversity, equity, and inclusion causes real harm and serious pain,” says Amira Barger. “By sidelining equity, SHRM’s move may unintentionally exacerbate something called ‘dirty pain.’”

“As a person who spent the first part of my career as a graphic designer and art director, I immediately saw the visual power and nearly infinite graphic possibilities of this image.” In today's New York Times, Charles Blow discusses the irrefutable power of an iconic photograph.

In New York City, The Design Trust for Public Space is looking for photographers with “unique lenses on an equitable water future for New York”. Deadline for entry is 11 August. More here.

One artist's (musical) cry for help—or at least, fewer fast-food franchises in North Adams, Massachusetts.

“My design philosophy is to make people happy and comfortable in their environment,” says the 83-year old Irish designer known simply by her first name—Clodagh. “Since I don’t know the rules, I can actually break them all the time.” 

Design for accessibility, blessedly, is on the minds of architects and builders all over the world. Given the fact that an estimated 15-20% of the population is neurodivergent, commercial buildings are increasingly working to become more welcoming, inclusive, and comfortable for all individuals.

“While designers are eager for praise and acclaim and create an aura of ostensibly cultured and intellectual pursuit, often involving awards and accolades, design itself takes no responsibility for what happens when things go wrong.” An excerpt from Manuel Lima's latest book.  



Jobs | October 04