Manet exhibit eyes impact of photography
10/22/2012
An Ohio museum’s exhibit of works by French Impressionist Edouard Manet demonstrates how the advent of photography influenced portrait painting in the mid-19th century.
“Manet: Portraying Life,” at the Toledo Museum of Art,” compares the revolutionary impact of photography, which influenced Manet’s works, to the effect modern technology such as smartphones have on how individuals depict one another today through social media such as Facebook.
“Known for portraits of friends and celebrities of his era, the painter often called ‘the first modern artist’ came of age during the mid-1800s when photography first became available to the public,” according to The Associated Press. “He even kept his own collection of photos of the subjects he painted.”
The show, which opened this month, features paintings drawn from 31 lenders from Budapest to Tokyo, including some of his best-known works, according to the Toledo Blade.
Among the 39 paintings on display are “Berthe Morrisot with a Bouquet of Violets,” “Portrait of Emilie Ambre as Carmen,” and “The Railway.”
In addition, more than two dozen of Manet’s photographs of the subjects he painted are displayed.
Few scenes capture the spirit of the South more clearly than fields of ripening cotton, so thick with fluffy bolls that the whiteness dazzles the eye.
Farm Press understands the charm of cotton and is again asking readers to grab their cameras and capture the picturesque crop in all its splendor.
For the second straight year, Farm Press, which publishes Southeast Farm Press among other publications, is looking for photos that “recognize the beauty of cotton and the people who grow it.”
“Cotton is a huge part of Southern farm culture … snow-white fields ready for harvest hold promise of a good return for hard work and perseverance,” writes Slate Canon on the Farm Press Blog. “And from the time the first seedling pushes through the soil, to first bloom, to boll fill and finally to the massive pickers marching through fields leaving brown swaths in the white landscape, a cotton crop is a work of art.”
Farm Press is asking readers to send in their best cotton photos – kids in cotton fields, blooms, sunsets, pickers and strippers, anything that captures the uniqueness of cotton – to photos@farmpress.com by Nov. 1.
Color photos of 1906 SF earthquake surface
03/10/2011
Photographs discovered by the Smithsonian Institution not only show rare photographs of San Francisco amid ruins of the great 1906 earthquake, but appear to be the earliest color photos ever taken of the the city known as Baghdad by the Bay.
The images, taken by photography pioneer Frederick Ives, were part of a set of six taken in the months after the earthquake and show some of the ruins along Market Street and scenes taken from the roof of the Hotel Majestic on Sutter Street, according to the San Francisco Chronicle.
“Everything is in color – buildings and billboards, a green streetcar on Market Street and a rust-colored church on Sutter Street damaged by the earthquake,” the paper reported. “A close examination of the billboards shows one advertising women’s shoes on sale for 25 cents and another for chewing tobacco.
“The pictures also show temporary wood buildings that are unpainted. The effects of the huge fire that followed the quake are also visible, especially on the scarred walls of the Flood Building, which still stands at Powell and Market streets,” the Chronicle added. “The photos give an insight into what the city looked like 105 years ago.”
