Lost & Found: What I’m looking at this week #004
The curiosities, long reads, images and think pieces I’ve enjoyed this week
Lost & Found issue 4! A few more beautiful and absurdist things I found online recently. A few minutes’ respite from the Social Media rage engine.
By the way, thank you for the lovely, thoughtful comments on my Philosophy of Flat Photography piece. I enjoyed digging into an idea and interacting with interesting people on the nature of the frame and the aesthetic. I’m keen to explore elements of this further in future articles.
Ok, on with Lost & Found. Enjoy this edition and please share anything you’ve come across recently that you found interesting in the comments.
Here is my latest selection:
Martin Parr Documenting ‘People At Large’
Two selections from Flashbak today, for no other reason than I love their content and they seem to have neurally hijacked me. This first pick is a selection of wonderfully funny, saturated, Pop Art-like photographs by Martin Parr of people doing the things that people do and the glorious, beautiful strangeness of it all. I love the image of the two ladies with shopping trolleys leaning up against a pebbledash wall.
Markus Brunetti’s Beautiful Dead Flat Photographs of ‘Holy Houses’
This caught my eye because Markus Brunetti’s photographs have a deliciously flat, perpendicular aesthetic that gently dusts valium onto my optic nerve. His images are so clean, level and neatly aligned that the cathedrals, monasteries and other ‘holy houses’ featured almost look like beautiful illustrations.
The Curious Tale of Vegetable Lamb of Tartary
Public Domain Review have published an investigative article on the pervasive medieval rumour that lambs grew out of vegetables on the subcontinent. “The floral body differs across manuscripts but often branches symmetrically, with two or four pods sprouting miniature, happy lambs.” Sumptuously illustrated (and written) article that pieces the curious story together.
‘Photographs on Fabrics’ in a 1947 Edition of LIFE Magazine By Nina Leen
Joyful pictures by Nina Leen of people wearing fabrics with photographic prints on them in 1947. I think this passage from the original article in LIFE magazine sums it up nicely: “Until now anyone claiming to have seen a dinner dress decorated with life-size photographs of the wearer would have been met with breath-sniffing suspicion or clinical alarm”.
Syd Shelton’s Street Photography in West Belfast During The Troubles
Photographs taken by Syd Shelton during the Troubles in Northern Ireland. They were shot in 1979 in West Belfast among the Catholic community and have a stark, contrasty, bleak, beautiful, grainy, abandoned feel. These images are poignant, sensitively observed and moving. Syd allows light and humour into his frame.
To finish off, an image from my photography archive.
A town in the Great Karoo called Merweville where we stopped, one beautiful day, to stretch our legs.
‘It’s a Beautiful Day’
That’s it for now.
If you missed the last edition, you can find that here.
Please share any thoughts and discoveries below.