Image and thought dump for the various projects of Jared Axelrod
Pictured: Jean-Marc Michel, 21 & Henoch Bellanton, 19
Location: Nyack, NY
Submitted By: http://fritz-andre.tumblr.com/
Photographed by: http://fritz-andre.tumblr.com/
Good Hair
“
Consider that you can see less than 1% of the electromagnetic spectrum and hear less than 1% of the acoustic spectrum. As you read this, you are traveling at 220 km/sec across the galaxy. 90% of the cells in your body carry their own microbial DNA and are not “you.” The atoms in your body are 99.9999999999999999% empty space and none of them are the ones you were born with, but they all originated in the belly of a star. Human beings have 46 chromosomes, 2 less than the common potato.
The existence of the rainbow depends on the conical photoreceptors in your eyes; to animals without cones, the rainbow does not exist. So you don’t just look at a rainbow, you create it. This is pretty amazing, especially considering that all the beautiful colors you see represent less than 1% of the electromagnetic spectrum.”
”– NASA Lunar Science Institute, We Originated in the Belly of a Star, 2012.
Real Life Laser Gun! Airsoft Gun Hacked Into Laser Blaster!
Sophie Calle began following strangers because she didn’t know what to do with herself; she had no friends. “It was a way to force myself to get out of the house without having to decide what I was doing.”
January 1980 in Paris, she followed a man for the day and then lost him in the crowd. She later attended an art exhibition to find him there, a coincidence which led her to believe it was fate. She overheard him talking to a friend about a holiday to Venice and decided to go to track him down.
She began to follow him every day, photographing him, writing down his every move together with her thoughts and feelings in a journal. If he stopped to take a photo, she would stand in the exact same spot and try to capture the image he had taken. Her work is more similar to a detective’s than a lover, as she highlights the vulnerability of the stranger while trying to examine his identity.
This project lead her into another: she requested her mother to hire a private investigator to follow her. She took him on a journey through the streets of Paris to her favourite places. She kept a journal of the things she was up to, to compare with the detectives notes for amusement.
She was intrigued with the idea of switching roles and her privacy being invaded, like the many that she had once followed, and the contrast of the scenarios the detective pieced together from following her, to the actual truth.
Hey, Grrrl
Moss Graffiti: A How To Guide
The riots also offered a glimpse into how photographs can be used out of context:
‘Sir: In last week’s article about the poll-tax riot in Trafalgar Square (‘THE MOB’S BRIEF RULE’, 7 April) there is a large photograph labelled ‘A West End shopper argues with a protester’. The woman in the photograph is me, and I thought you might like to know the true story behind the picture.
I was on my way to the theatre, with my husband. As we walked down Regent Street at about 6.30pm, the windows were intact and there was a large, cheerful, noisy group of poll-tax protesters walking up from Piccadilly Circus. We saw ordinary uniformed police walking alongside, on the pavement, keeping a low profile. The atmosphere was changed dramatically in moments when a fast-walking, threatening group of riot-squad police appeared.
We walked on to the top of Haymarket, where the atmosphere was more tense and more protesters were streaming up Haymarket from the Trafalgar Square end. Suddenly a group of mounted police charged at full gallop into the rear of the group of protesters, scattering them, passers-by and us and creating panic. People screamed and some fell. Next to me and my husband another group of riot-squad appeared, in a most intimidating manner.
The next thing that happened is what horrified me most. Four of the riot-squad police grabbed a young girl of 18 or 19 for no reason and forced her in a brutal manner on to the crowd-control railings, with her throat across the top of the railings. Her young male companion was frantically trying to reach her and was being held back by one riot-squad policeman. In your photograph I was urging the boy to calm down or he might be arrested; he was telling me that the person being held down across the railings was his girlfriend.
My husband remonstrated with the riot-squad policeman holding the boy, and I shouted at the four riot-squad men to let the girl go as they were obviously hurting her. To my surprise, they did let her go – it was almost as if they did not know what they were doing.
The riot-squad policemen involved in this incident were not wearing any form of identification. Their epaulettes were unbuttoned and flapping loose; I lifted them on two men and neither had any numbers on. There was a sergeant with them, who was numbered and my husband asked why his men wore no identifying numbers. The sergeant replied that it did not matter as he knew who the men were. We are a middle-aged suburban couple who now feel more intimidated by the Metropolitan police than by a mob. If we feel so angry, how on earth did the young hot-heads at the rally feel?’
Mrs R.A. Sare, Northwood, Middlessex Source
“In that moment, the black pride I absorbed in my home was balanced by the embarrassment, rage, paranoia, and self-restraint that often accompany blackness in the outside world of America.”
–
From Baratunde Thurston’s How to Be Black
Trill talk.
My family is pro-black. Not activist pro-black or black nationalist pro-black, but realistic pro-black. Pragmatic pro-black. Black is beautiful, you are beautiful, and you can be anything you want, but it is going to be an uphill battle and you have to struggle. Even the colorism within the family — my little brother is high yellow, I’m not, etc — was a loving, teasing thing. I have that at my foundation, but it isn’t really enough.
What I wasn’t prepared for was how reality actively goes at you for being black. Whether it’s something basic, like the black character being a certain Type, or more elaborate, like white men insisting you’re reading too much into something, it erodes. It wears on you.
It poisons a lot of things. I wonder if I got dissed because I’m me or because I’m black and me. I can’t look at any compliment that includes the words “articulate” without throwing a side eye at it. I can’t accept fulsome praise about how great I am because I have a childhood of teachers saying the exact same thing, with the clear subtext (and occasionally text) being “You’re exceeding expectations for a black child.” I have a temper, and it gets pretty bad sometimes, but I know that the moment I lash out the way I want to lash out when people do something that deserves five across the eyes, I’m going to be the Angry Black Guy.
So I hold back. I write about race on a regular basis, but I’ve never called anyone racist while doing so, barring a faceless morass of fans. I’ve cursed maybe two dozen times on my site in six or seven years, and never twice in a post, to my memory. I haven’t thrown a punch at a person in ages, haven’t raised my voice in longer. If you know me, odds are good you’ve never heard me yell, outside of trying to get a distant person’s attention.
This paranoia, this shame, none of it comes from within me. They’re imposed upon me from without and I’m left to deal with them as best I can. I cope, I survive, and I pray that being beset on a regular basis doesn’t turn me bitter and broken.
Thurston’s book is really good so far. It’s brutally funny, but it’s the saddest thing in the world, too.Whenever David Brothers writes about race, it’s Required Reading. This is no exception.
Bloodstain Pattern Analysis (BPA) - Resource for Crime Writers
