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Boring postcards
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Martin Parr is a key figure in the world of photography and contemporary art. Some accuse him of cruelty, but many more appreciate the wit and irony with which he tackles such subjects as bad taste, food, the tourist, shopping and the foibles of the British. Parr has been collecting postcards for twenty years, and here is the cream of his collection – his boring(...)
Boring postcards
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Martin Parr is a key figure in the world of photography and contemporary art. Some accuse him of cruelty, but many more appreciate the wit and irony with which he tackles such subjects as bad taste, food, the tourist, shopping and the foibles of the British. Parr has been collecting postcards for twenty years, and here is the cream of his collection – his boring postcards. With no introduction or commentary of any kind, Parr’s boring postcards are reproduced straight: they are exactly what they say they are, namely boring picture postcards showing boring photographs of boring places … presumably for boring people to buy to send to their boring friends. All of them are shot in Britain, taking us on a boring tour of its motorways, ring roads, traffic interchanges, bus stations, pedestrian precincts, factories, housing estates, airports, caravan sites, convalescent homes and shopping centres. Some attempt to idealize their subjects, only to fail dismally. Others lack any apparent purpose or interest … but the resultant collection of photographic images is wholly compelling. Boring Postcards is multi-layered: a commentary on British architecture, social life and identity, a record of a folk photography which is today being appropriated by the most fashionable photographers (including Parr), an exercise in sublime minimalism … and, above all, a richly comic photographic entertainment
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February 2004, London
Theory of Photography
The birth of graffiti
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The now global phenomenon of graffiti was first captured in New York by a professional photographer in early 1973. The result was Jon Naar's The Faith of Graffiti, the first and most celebrated book about this controversial new art form. Now the forty or so photographs in that book and more than one hundred additional never-before-published pictures from that landmark(...)
June 2007, Munich
The birth of graffiti
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The now global phenomenon of graffiti was first captured in New York by a professional photographer in early 1973. The result was Jon Naar's The Faith of Graffiti, the first and most celebrated book about this controversial new art form. Now the forty or so photographs in that book and more than one hundred additional never-before-published pictures from that landmark body of work are brought together in a book destined to become a classic in its own right. Presented full-frame, at high resolution, and with meticulous attention to the original color, this book brings to life the gritty, exciting New York of the early 1970s and the raw visual power of early graffiti. While today graffiti is an accepted reality of city life--by turns condemned and embraced--these early photographs recall a time when subway cars and tenement walls seemed to explode overnight into bursts of color and energy. In most cases these ephemeral works survive only in Naar's masterful photographs. Sacha Jenkins, an authority on graffiti's history, puts these photographs in a broad historical context of an emerging youth culture that now reaches into every corner of art, fashion, and entertainment. At once nostalgic and inspirational, The Birth of Graffiti opens the way to a deeper appreciation of graffiti's historical and artistic significance.
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Human obsolescence is imminent. The factories of the future will be dark, staffed by armies of tireless robots. The hospitals of the future will have fewer doctors, depending instead on cloud-based AI to diagnose patients and recommend treatments. The homes of the future will anticipate our wants and needs and provide all the entertainment, food, and distraction we could(...)
Automation and utopia: human flourishing in a world without work
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Human obsolescence is imminent. The factories of the future will be dark, staffed by armies of tireless robots. The hospitals of the future will have fewer doctors, depending instead on cloud-based AI to diagnose patients and recommend treatments. The homes of the future will anticipate our wants and needs and provide all the entertainment, food, and distraction we could ever desire. To many, this is a depressing prognosis, an image of civilization replaced by its machines. But what if an automated future is something to be welcomed rather than feared? Work is a source of misery and oppression for most people, so shouldn’t we do what we can to hasten its demise? Automation and Utopia makes the case for a world in which, free from need or want, we can spend our time inventing and playing games and exploring virtual realities that are more deeply engaging and absorbing than any we have experienced before, allowing us to achieve idealized forms of human flourishing. The idea that we should “give up” and retreat to the virtual may seem shocking, even distasteful. But John Danaher urges us to embrace the possibilities of this new existence. The rise of automating technologies presents a utopian moment for humankind, providing both the motive and the means to build a better future.
Architectural Theory
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What is it about Times Square that has inspired such attention for well over a century? And how is it that, despite its many changes of character, the place has maintained a unique hold on our collective imagination? In this book, which comes twenty years after her widely acclaimed Times Square Roulette, Lynne Sagalyn masterfully tells the story of profound urban change(...)
Times Square remade: The dynamics of urban change
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What is it about Times Square that has inspired such attention for well over a century? And how is it that, despite its many changes of character, the place has maintained a unique hold on our collective imagination? In this book, which comes twenty years after her widely acclaimed Times Square Roulette, Lynne Sagalyn masterfully tells the story of profound urban change over decades in the symbolic space that is New York City’s Times Square. Drawing on the history, sociology, and political economy of the place, ''Times Square remade'' examines how the public-private transformation of 42nd Street at Times Square impacted the entertainment district and adjacent neighborhoods, particularly Hell’s Kitchen. Sagalyn chronicles the earliest halcyon days of 42nd Street and Times Square as the nexus of speculation and competitive theater building as well as its darkest days as vice central, and on to the years of aggressive government intervention to cleanse West 42nd Street of pornography and crime. Thematically, the author analyzes the three main forces that have shaped and reshaped Times Square—theater, real estate, and pornography—and explains the politics and economics of what got built and what has been restored or preserved. Accompanied by nearly 160 images, more than half in color, ''Times Square remade'' is a deftly woven narrative of urban transformation that will appeal as much to the general reader and New York City enthusiast as to urbanists, city planners, architects, urban designers, and policymakers.
Urban Theory
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Increasingly we live through our personal screens; we work, play, socialize, and learn digitally. The shift to remote everything during the pandemic was another step in a decades-long march toward the digitization of everyday life made possible by innovations in media, information, and communication technology. In "The Digital Environment," Pablo Boczkowski and Eugenia(...)
The digital environment: How we live, learn, work and play now
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Increasingly we live through our personal screens; we work, play, socialize, and learn digitally. The shift to remote everything during the pandemic was another step in a decades-long march toward the digitization of everyday life made possible by innovations in media, information, and communication technology. In "The Digital Environment," Pablo Boczkowski and Eugenia Mitchelstein offer a new way to understand the role of the digital in our daily lives, calling on us to turn our attention from our discrete devices and apps to the array of artifacts and practices that make up the digital environment that envelops every aspect of our social experience. Boczkowski and Mitchelstein explore a series of issues raised by the digital takeover of everyday life, drawing on interviews with a variety of experts. They show how existing inequities of gender, race, ethnicity, education, and class are baked into the design and deployment of technology, and describe emancipatory practices that counter this–including the use of Twitter as a platform for activism through such hashtags as #BlackLivesMatter and #MeToo. They discuss the digitization of parenting, schooling, and dating–noting, among other things, that today we can both begin and end relationships online. They describe how digital media shape our consumption of sports, entertainment, and news, and consider the dynamics of political campaigns, disinformation, and social activism. Finally, they report on developments in three areas that will be key to our digital future: data science, virtual reality, and space exploration.
Social
The Hollywood sign
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Hollywood's famous sign, constructed of massive white block letters set into a steep hillside, is an emblem of the movie capital it looms over and an international symbol of glamour and star power. To so many who see its image, the sign represents the earthly home of that otherwise ethereal world of fame, stardom, and celebrity -the goal of American and worldwide(...)
The Hollywood sign
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Hollywood's famous sign, constructed of massive white block letters set into a steep hillside, is an emblem of the movie capital it looms over and an international symbol of glamour and star power. To so many who see its image, the sign represents the earthly home of that otherwise ethereal world of fame, stardom, and celebrity -the goal of American and worldwide aspiration to be in the limelight, to be, like the Hollywood sign itself, instantly recognizable. How an advertisement erected in 1923, touting the real estate development Hollywoodland, took on a life of its own is a story worthy of the entertainment world that is its focus. Leo Braudy traces the remarkable history of this distinctly American landmark, which has been saved over the years by a disparate group of fans and supporters, among them Alice Cooper and Hugh Hefner, who spearheaded its reconstruction in the 1970s. He also uses the sign's history to offer an intriguing look at the rise of the movie business from its earliest, silent days through the development of the studio system that helped define modern Hollywood. Mixing social history, urban studies, literature, and film, along with forays into such topics as the lure of Hollywood for utopian communities and the development of domestic architecture in Los Angeles, The Hollywood Sign is a fascinating account of how a temporary structure has become a permanent icon of American culture.
Signage
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During the economic boom of the 1990's, art museums expanded dramatically in size, scope, and ambition. They came to be seen as new civic centers : on the one hand as places of entertainment, leisure, and commerce, on the other as socially therapeutic institutions. But museums were also criticized for everything from elitism to looting or illegally exporting works from(...)
Museums and Universal Exhibitions
January 2004, Princeton / Cambridge, Mass.
Whose muse? : art museums and the public trust
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During the economic boom of the 1990's, art museums expanded dramatically in size, scope, and ambition. They came to be seen as new civic centers : on the one hand as places of entertainment, leisure, and commerce, on the other as socially therapeutic institutions. But museums were also criticized for everything from elitism to looting or illegally exporting works from other countries, to exhibiting works offensive to the public taste. "Whose Muse?" brings together five directors of leading American and British art museums who together offer a forward-looking alternative to such prevailing views. While their approaches differ, certain themes recur : as museums have become increasingly complex and costly to manage, and as government support has waned, the temptation is great to follow policies driven not by a mission but by the market. However, the directors concur that public trust can be upheld only if museums continue to see their core mission as building collections that reflect a nation's artistic legacy and providing informed and unfettered access to them. The book, based on a lecture series of the same title held in 2000-2001 by the Harvard Program for Art Museum Directors, also includes an introduction by Cuno and a fascinating - and surprisingly frank - roundtable discussion among the participating directors. A rare collection of sustained reflections by prominent museum directors on the current state of affairs in their profession, this book is without equal. It will be read widely not only by museum professionals, trustees, critics, and scholars, but also by the art-loving public itself.
Museums and Universal Exhibitions
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In this publication, the Indonesian architectural and urban historian Abidin Kusno explores the connections between the built environment and political consciousness in Indonesia during the colonial and postcolonial eras. Focusing primarily on Jakarta, he describes how perceptions of the past, anxieties about the rapid pace of change in the present, and hopes for the(...)
The appearances of memory : mnemonic practices of architecture and urban form in Indonesia
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In this publication, the Indonesian architectural and urban historian Abidin Kusno explores the connections between the built environment and political consciousness in Indonesia during the colonial and postcolonial eras. Focusing primarily on Jakarta, he describes how perceptions of the past, anxieties about the rapid pace of change in the present, and hopes for the future have been embodied in architecture and urban space at different historical moments. He argues that the built environment serves as a reminder of the practices of the past and an instantiation of the desire to remake oneself within, as well as beyond, one’s particular time and place. Addressing developments in Indonesia since the fall of President Suharto’s regime in 1998, Kusno delves into such topics as the domestication of traumatic violence and the restoration of order in the urban space, the intense interest in urban history in contemporary Indonesia, and the implications of "superblocks", large urban complexes consisting of residences, offices, shops, and entertainment venues. Moving farther back in time, he examines how Indonesian architects reinvented colonial architectural styles to challenge the political culture of the state, how colonial structures such as railway and commercial buildings created a new, politically charged cognitive map of cities in Java in the early twentieth century, and how the Dutch, in attempting to quell dissent, imposed a distinctive urban visual order in the 1930s. Finally, the present and the past meet in his long-term considerations of how Java has responded to the global flow of Islamic architecture, and how the meanings of Indonesian gatehouses have changed and persisted over time.
History until 1900, Asia
New retail
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about the book In the decades since the advent of the shopping mall, shopping has become synonymous with entertainment and the retail store a key player in establishing brand identity. In a growing trend, high-profile architects are designing provocative storefronts and interiors that create an aura of exclusivity, draw in customers, and attract media attention(...)
Commercial interiors, Building types
May 2005, London, New York
New retail
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about the book In the decades since the advent of the shopping mall, shopping has become synonymous with entertainment and the retail store a key player in establishing brand identity. In a growing trend, high-profile architects are designing provocative storefronts and interiors that create an aura of exclusivity, draw in customers, and attract media attention rivaling the goods within. New Retail examines this phenomenon with an overview of 24 of the most innovative retail spaces built around the world in recent years, designed by high-profile international architects as well as smaller cutting-edge firms. Projects in the book include the Carlos Miele store in New York (Asymptote), three stores for Louis Vuitton in New York and Tokyo (Jun Aoki), Selfridges in Birmingham, the UK (Future Systems), two clothing boutiques in São Paulo (Isay Weinfeld), the Mandarina Duck store in Paris (NL Architects), and the Mpries Supermarket in Austria (Dominique Perrault), among others. More than 250 color photographs as well as floor plans and site plans showcase the architectural and interior design, lighting, and often experimental materials that create these ultimate retail spaces. For the Selfridges department store, for example, Future Systems clad the building with 15,000 aluminum disks attached to a sprayed concrete surface. In New York, the interior of the Carlos Miele store by Asymptote features a sensual, sculptural white ceiling of molded high-gloss PVC-based material. Each project is accompanied by a 500-to-700-word description that explains the design concept, site, program, and significant building technologies and materials. A general introduction discusses precedents to these projects and current issues in the architecture and design of retail spaces.
Commercial interiors, Building types
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Of all the visual arts, illustration shares a unique relationship with the written word, often serving to visualize, enhance, or respond to a text. "Reading Pictures" presents a global history of this versatile art form, linking its emergence to modern developments such as the illustrated news, recreational reading, and ad-driven consumer culture. From the advent of(...)
Reading pictures: A history of illustration
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Of all the visual arts, illustration shares a unique relationship with the written word, often serving to visualize, enhance, or respond to a text. "Reading Pictures" presents a global history of this versatile art form, linking its emergence to modern developments such as the illustrated news, recreational reading, and ad-driven consumer culture. From the advent of the printing press in the mid-fifteenth century to the modernist artistic and cultural movements of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, D. B. Dowd traces the development of illustration as an integral part of the reading experience. He examines the move from ancient scrolls to pamphlets and book forms, and a return to the scroll in electronic form on smartphones and tablets. His story begins with relief prints and woodcuts in ancient China and Japan before moving to printing and platemaking in early modern Europe. Dowd discusses how book and periodical publishing rose sharply with the innovations of wood engraving and lithography, leading to a boom in cultural literacy; and how the illustrated press reached its zenith between the 1860s and 1960s, as printed entertainment and the news of the world became commonplace in every household, bringing with them advertising, propaganda, and consumer culture. Richly illustrated with more than four hundred images spanning the iconic to the unexpected, Reading Pictures reframes the story of illustration within the broader histories of race, gender, literacy, and the transmission of cultural memory. It reveals how reading and looking have become increasingly integrated, and that, as images have become ever more prevalent today with the digital revolution, what is meant by literacy has evolved.
Illustration