Bronze Portraits

Inspiré des bustes en bronze, le photographe français Lionel Arnaudie nous propose de découvrir sa série de portraits sobrement appelée sobrement « Bronze Portraits ». Dix clichés très réussis, pour un rendu visuellement surprenant à retrouver en images dans la suite de l’article.

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British Library adds one million images to Flickr

Image taken from page 582 of ‘The United States of America. A study of the American Commonwealth, its natural resources, people, industries, manufactures, commerce, and its work in literature, science, education and self-government’. By various authors [1894]

In what could well become one of the most interesting image collections on the web, the British Library has announced it has uploaded over one million images to Flickr from 65,000 books spanning from the 17th to the 19th century…

Covering a huge range of subjects, the collection includes images of book illustrations, diagrams and maps as well thousands of decorative elements such as borders and illuminated letters. Each image is tagged by year of publication, its unique library book code – indicating the source of where it came from – and the author of the publication (where relevant).

By way of an introduction to this selection of often strange and wonderful imagery, the library’s digital research team has curated a small number of images in a Flickr set from which some of the images included here are taken.

Image taken from page 93 of ‘On the Domesticated Animals of the British Islands: comprehending the natural and economical history of species and varieties; the description of the properties of external form, and observations on the principles and practice’

Image taken from page 78 of ‘Songs for Little People’. With illustrations by H. Stratton

The images have been uploaded to Flickr Commons “for anyone to use, remix and repurpose,” wrote Ben O’Steen on the library’s Digital Scholarship blog on Friday.

O’Steen also explained the additional part to the project, which will rely on the input of users. This follows on from the launch of the British Library Labs’ Mechanical Curator tumblr blog, where “randomly selected small illustrations and ornamentations, posted on the hour”.

Image taken from page 298 of ‘On English Lagoons’. Being an account of the voyage of two amateur wherrymen on the Norfolk and Suffolk rivers and broads. With an appendix, the log of the wherry “Maid of the Mist”. Illustrated, etc

“We are looking for new, inventive ways to navigate, find and display these ‘unseen illustrations’,” he says. “The images were plucked from the pages as part of the ‘Mechanical Curator‘, a creation of the British Library Labs project. Each image is individually addressible, online, and Flickr provies an API to access it and the image’s associated description.

Image taken from page 295 of ‘The Works of G. J. Whyte-Melville’. Edited by Sir H. Maxwell. With illustrations by J. B. Partridge, Hugh Thomson, and others

“We may know which book, volume and page an image was drawn from, but we know nothing about a given image. The title of [the] work may suggest the thematic subject matter of any illustrations in the book, but it doesn’t suggest how colourful and arresting these images are.”

Image taken from page 25 of ‘The Pied Piper of Hamelin’. Originally published in “Dramatic Lyrics,” no. 3 in the series “Bells and Pomegranates”

Next year the library plans to unveil a “crowdsourcing application” which will enables users to help describe what the images portray.

“Our intention is to use this data to train automated classifiers that will run against the whole of the content,” says O’Steen. “The data from this will be as openly licensed as is sensible (given the nature of crowdsourcing) and the code, as always, will be under an open licence.

“The manifests of images, with descriptions of the works that they were taken from, are available on github and are also released under a public-domain ‘licence’. This set of metadata being on github should indicate that we fully intend people to work with it, to adapt it, and to push back improvements that should help others work with this release.”

Image taken from page 297 of ‘To the Snows of Tibet through China’, with illustrations and a map

“There are very few datasets of this nature free for any use and by putting it online we hope to stimulate and support research concerning printed illustrations, maps and other material not currently studied. Given that the images are derived from just 65,000 volumes and that the library holds many millions of items.”

The library is welcoming questions about the project, and can be reached via email labs@bl.uk and Twitter twitter.com/bl_labs. O’Steen can be reached on Twitter at @benosteen.

Image taken from page 109 of ‘Saturdays to Mondays’, being jottings from the notebooks of K. F. Bellairs on some phases of country life, yachting, etc

“We want to collaborate with researchers and anyone else with a good idea for how to markup, classify and explore this set with an aim to improve the data and to improve and add to the tagging,” says O’Steen. “We are looking to crowdsource information about what is depicted in the images themselves, as well as using analytical methods to interpret them as a whole.”

The British Library Flickr phtotstream is at flickr.com/photos/britishlibrary.

Image taken from page 124 of ‘Death’s Doings’; consisting of numerous original compositions, in prose and verse, the contributions of various writers; principally intended as illustrations of twenty-four plates designed and etched by R. Dagley

Link About It: This Week’s Picks : Reuters’ 2013 in photos, Time’s person of the year, Miami’s new museum and more in our weekly look at the web

Link About It: This Week's Picks


1. Building 88 Ways Looking to literally turn reality on its head, photographer Víctor Enrich challenged himself to digitally manipulate a Munich building into 88 different forms for a staggering series of photographs. Enrich is known…

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Polar Bear Photography

Basé à Seattle, le photographe Paul Souders a récemment remporté le prestigieux Wildlife Photographer of the Year avec une image magnifique d’un ours polaire immergé dans l’eau. Ce cliché fait en réalité parti d’une série d’images centrées sur cet animal, réalisée par l’artiste autour de la baie d’Hudson.

Polar Bear, Hudson Bay, Canada
Polar Bear Swimming in Hudson Bay, Canada
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Polar Bear Swimming, Hudson Bay, Canada
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Polar Bear, Hudson Bay, Nunavut, Canada
Underwater Polar Bear, Nunavut, Canada
Underwater Polar Bear, Hudson Bay, Nunavut, Canada
Polar Bear, Hudson Bay, Canada
Polar Bear, Hudson Bay, Canada

Invisible Sculptures

Questionnant la fonction de la sculpture contemporaine et ses limites, Andrea Galvani est un artiste italien vivant entre New York & Mexico. Avec Invisible Sculptures, ce dernier nous propose des visuels impressionnants, cherchant notamment à camoufler des objets dans certains décors. A découvrir en images.

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2014 Sony World Photography Awards

Dans la lignée du Reuters Photos of the Year, la compétition des Sony World Photography Awards invitent chaque année les professionnels et amateurs à faire concourir les meilleures images. Alors que la compétition se termine le 6 janvier 2014, voici déjà une sélection des images les plus impressionnantes.

Be Cheerful Even in the Darkest of Times – Samantha Fortenberry

Last Summer Day – Igor Kryzhko

Bhutanese masked dancer and boy – Joyce Le Mesurier

Underground – Holger Schmidtke

The Knight and His Steed – Nicolas Reusens Boden

The sons of the Angh of Nyahnyu – Sergio Carbajo

Fashion Muslim – Simone Sapienza

Abore Sand strom – Carlos Duarte

Open Low Light – Pedro London

Bonding – Cory Kipa

Sorrow – Eugene Stulov

10-LastsummerdayIgorKryzhko
9-Bhutanese masked dancer and boyJoyce Le Mesurier
11-The knight and his steed-NicolasReusensBoden
8-UndergroundHolger Schmidtke
6-The sons of the Angh of NyahnyuSergioCarbajo
5-FashionMuslimSimoneSapienza
4-AboreSandstromCarlosDuarte
1- SorrowEugeneStulov
3-Open Low LightPedroLondon
2-BondingCoryKipa
7-Be Cheerful Even in the Darkest of TimesSamantha Fortenberry

Double and Triple Exposure Portraits

Déjà auteur de plusieurs séries dont nous avons pu parler sur Fubiz, l’artiste finlandais Christoffer Relander revient avec le troisième volet de ses images à double ou triple exposition, jouant avec talent sur la nature et les visages. De superbes créations à découvrir dans la suite de l’article.

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Abandoned Places by Bart Synowiec

Basé à Toronto, le photographe Bart Synowiec aime capturer et immortaliser des lieux et environnements oubliés, désaffectés et laissés à l’abandon. Avec une grande attention au détail, l’artiste propose de superbes images, jouant avec talent sur le contraste entre les traces de l’homme et son absence.

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Handmade in London

James Kennedy, Kennedy City Bicycles

Images from Julian Love’s Handmade London project feature in our current Photography Annual issue and the photographer has just launched the accompanying book, which contains some great pictures of contemporary artisanal activity…

The personal project, which Love finished shooting in October, has been made into a limited edition letterpress book featuring 14 people from the series.

The book is designed and illustrated by Helen Mair with letterpress and hand-stitching by Simon Goode of the London Centre for Book Arts, who also features inside the book.

Photographed in their studios and workshops, the subjects include James Kennedy (at top of post), a Clapton-based bike builder (he makes ten bikes a week); smokery owner Ole Hansen of Hansen & Lydersen; and Rob Court of bespoke neon lighting company, Creative Neon.

The complete series to date can be seen at Love’s website, handmade-london.com; shown here are eight examples of modern-day craftsmen and women who make things the old fashioned way.

Naomi Paul, Naomi Paul Ltd

Daniel Harris, London Cloth Company

Jessica de Lotz, Jessica de Lotz Jewellery

Michael Ruh, Michael Ruh Studio

Marco Lawrence, Print Club London

Camilla Goddard, Capital Bee

Simon Goode, London Centre for Book Arts

Further images of the book are here. See handmade-london.com. Julian Love is represented by the Lisa Pritchard agency.

Squiggly Figures Building in Spain

L’artiste Suso33, connu pour ses œuvres centrées sur les silhouettes et les visages, nous invite à découvrir sa dernière réalisation peinte sur un mur de Madrid. Ici, les nombreuses silhouettes peintes à la bombe sont ainsi placées afin de faire apparaitre une silhouette géante lorsque le spectateur prend suffisamment de recul.

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