A Cartier-Bresson picture taken in Shanghai, 1948, shows people storming a bank for gold in the days before the Communist forces arrived.
A 1972 photo of a Georgian family picnicking near a medieval monastery
A Photographer Whose Beat Was the World, New York Times
Henri Cartier-Bresson: The Modern Century
MoMA
April 11—June 28, 2010
“Still Life With Flowering Tobacco, 2009″
“Watermelon and Blackberries, 2009″
“Melon and Peas, 2009″
“Peaches, 2009″
In order to create her Peale-inspired still lifes, Sharon Core photographs fruit grown in her own garden in the Hudson Valley and authentic period porcelain and tableware.
Early American
November 11—December 11, 2009
Gallery at Hermés, New York
Stephen Wiltshire of London is drawing a panorama of New York City from memory. Wiltshire, who has autism, took a 20-minute ride over the city in a helicopter last Friday. Wiltshire has drawn panoramas of eight cities: Tokyo, Rome, Hong Kong, Frankfurt, Madrid, Dubai, Jerusalem, and London. The New York panorama will be his ninth [...]
Funeral—St. Helena, South Carolina, 1955
Charleston, South Carolina, 1955
Trolley—New Orleans, 1955
“It is always the instantaneous reaction to oneself that produces a photograph.” —Robert Frank
Looking In: Robert Frank’s The Americans
The Metropolitan Museum of Art
September 22, 2009—January 3, 2010
An odd excavation site has recently opened to the public on Governors Island purports to offer artifacts of an unusually modern variety, from about 1954.
That is the year, at least according to Geert Hautekiet, the man in charge of exhibiting the site, that the United States Army ordered an obscure civilian community there to be [...]
Limestone fountain spout.
Gold necklace set with turquoise, garnet, and pyrite.
Folding gold crown. Could be laid flat and packed in a saddlebag when the tribe moved from place to place.
Omara Khan Massoudi knows how to keep a secret. Massoudi is director of the National Museum of Afghanistan in Kabul. Like the French citizens during World [...]
Purely to survive, Song Dong’s parents adhered to the Cultural Revolutionary dictum of frugality in daily life, with his mother carrying conservation to extravagant lengths.
The Collected Ingredients of a Beijing Life, New York Times
Waste Not
MoMA
June 24—September 7, 2009
“Gradually I became aware of the old island here that flowered once for Dutch sailors’ eyes—a fresh, green breast of the new world.” —F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby
The Mannahatta Project
Mannahatta/Manhattan: A Natural History of New York City
Museum of the City of New York
May 20—October 12, 2009
Shahram Entekhabi, Islamic Carding, 2007
Iran Inside Out
Chelsea Art Museum
June 26—September 5, 2009
The neighborhood was like a rundown version of Paris in which life was lived outside, on the streets, amid the fading glory of its grand boulevards.
The Harlem That Was by Camilo José Vergara, Slate
Harlem, 1970-2009: Photographs by Camilo José Vergara
New York Historical Society
April 30—July 12, 2009
In the late 18th century, tattoos served as a way of identifying bodies in cases of drowning. Sailors’ tattoos also had magical associations. According to sailor tradition, tattooing a pig on the left foot and a rooster on the right will protect a person from drowning, as pigs and roosters are known for surviving shipwrecks.
Seafarers’ [...]
Edward Sheriff Curtis, Cañon de Chelly, 1904
Joel Sternfeld, After a Flash Flood, Rancho Mirage, California, 1979
Philip-Lorca diCorcia, Marilyn; 28 Years Old; Las Vegas, Nevada, 1990-92
Ready, Aim—Dream!, Slate
Into the Sunset: Photography’s Image of the American West
MoMA
March 29—June 8, 2009
“Wasting time is my concept of life. Living is nothing but consuming time until you die.” —Tehching Hsieh
The Art of Tehching Hsieh, New York Times