Uncle Sisyphus

Illegal Dumping Area Off the New Jersey Turnpike, Facing Manhattan Across the Hudson River…03/1973. Photograph by Gary Miller, from the US National Archives on Flickr.

The George Washington Bridge in Heavy Smog. View toward the New Jersey Side of the Hudson River. Photograph by Chester Higgins, from the US National Archives on Flickr.

We speak of the FSA photographic project as unique in history, but there have been attempts to capture America in photographs with the same ambitious scope. One memorable example was Documerica, launched in 1972 with an eye for capturing the state of the American environment as the Environmental Protection Agency began its work. The objective was to focus on the what the environment meant to people, and the photographs range from staggering shots of polluted cities to playful moments in oil-barrel-filled empty lots, with plenty of fashion, cars, and arts and crafts. It’s a largely forgotten time capsule that is likely to prove more valuable as it’s rediscovered by future viewers. Over a hundred photographers worked on the project in the five years it existed, and around 16000 of the photographs they made are available to view on the National Archives website.

Caption: There Is Some Local Opposition to Stripping the Land in Southeastern Ohio. Most People, However, Are Employed by the Coal Companies and Are Afraid Any Demands for Reform Will Cost Them Their Jobs. Off Route 800. 10/1973 Photo by Erik Calonius, from the US National Archives on Flickr.

A large collection of the Documerica images have been posted on Flickr, sorted by photographer. There’s also a Favorites page that gathers the most popular images from the collection.

list of artists on tumblr working with text, who have been featured on visual-poetry before (regularly updated):

sergio albiac

brandon alvarado

grigor atanasov

gary barwin

marc bijl

olaf breuning

hart broudy

francesca capone

calvin ross carl

ben carrick

aldo chaparro

zach collins

a. l. crego

nathan crothers

blaine deutsch

elle dioguardi

dave dyment

amanda earl

geraint edwards

john fekner

peter fend

manuela fersen

francesco fillini

nikita gale

bethany goodwill

pia habekost

don hepster

geof huth

jantelle

emma king

austin kleon

anatol knotek

márton koppány

natalie lauchlan

woody leslie

micah lexier

natalya lobanova

wendy macnaughton

mark mcevoy

kristin mciver

misjko

mana morimoto

troy passey

michael pederson

jörg piringer

pixie pravda

alyson provax

fatima queiroz

tabitha jayne richardson

valerie roybal

stoph sauter

petra schulze-wollgast

ines seidel

victoria siemer

trevor h smith

ian stevenson

daniel temkin

michael tino

cecil touchon

anton unai

zach urbina

andré vallias

michael weißköppel

jason yang

liu yao-chung

youdhisthir maharjan

THE DAILY PIC (#1641): I’m a great lover of fine abstraction – and have almost no interest in 99% of the abstraction made today. But in Denzil Hurley’s show at Canada gallery in New York, the simple addition of a stick at the bottom of some of his monochromes seems to give them a whole new force.

As prototype placards, they become instant placeholders for the political, and a reminder that abstraction has always involved politics of one kind or another.

In their blankness, they also invoke how hopeless and empty politics can seem.

But they also have something faintly comic about them – a cartoonist’s thought bubbles held aloft on a stick. Ad Reinhardt, history’s only cartooning monochromist, might have approved.

andy warhol (via visual-poetry)

If Stranger Things was told through artworks.

Slight spoilers in “keep reading.”

THE DAILY PIC (#1602): “Manus x Machina: Fashion in an Age of Technology,” the latest splashy display at the Costume Institute of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, is overflowing with insane one-percenter extravagance: 3D-printed dresses straight from a Star Wars bar scene; haute-couture gowns that, at even one dollar per hand-sewn sequin, would add up to more than most mortgages.

But by far – by far – the most daring clothes on display are the almost unadorned black outfits at the left of today’s Daily Pic, which were on offer from Chanel in the mid-1920s. (The dress at right shows Miuccia Prada mining a similar vein in her great moment in the 1990s.)

Compare these Chanels  from the Jazz Age to the heavy Edwardian gowns from a dozen years earlier, before the massive disruptions of World War I, and it’s hard to imagine what women could have made of the new styles. Chanel’s undecorated suits and dresses, in a uniform Henry Ford black, must have felt like history’s greatest fashion quake, and that’s pretty much what they were. They were not merely the latest spin on fancy frippery, like almost all the more recent items on display at the Met, but a profound disturbance in the nature of clothes.

I believe that disturbance went much deeper than the fabric it was cut from. It’s hard for us to recall, but a vast new range of far-left ideas had utterly transformed how people thought in the 1920s. From manual laborers to the academic and cultural elites, everyone was acutely aware, as we barely have been since, of modern society’s deep inequities and of new plans for solving them – plans which were actually being put into effect, however badly, in many parts of the world. Coco Chanel may not (or may) have been consciously aware of such ideas, or of how they were chaneled (sorry) by her company’s clothes. After all, she was designing for a tiny moneyed elite, like all the other haute-couture mavens in the Met show.

But unlike the patrons of today’s high fashions, when Chanel’s first millionaire clients put on her dresses they would have felt that something – maybe even their time – was up. (© The Metropolitan Museum of Art)

wendys

what i had: four for $4 burger and lemonade.

what i thought: this is the same as mcdonalds but there is a smiling girl! the guy who invented wendys was called somethng else so who is wendy. Food apparaition?

rating: 3/5. food was boring but mysterious girl warmed my heart

cook out

what i had: hot dog and shake

what i thought: holy shit. also milkshakes in america are like, solid ice cream. i was expecting nesquik

rating: 5/5. the hot dog was nauseating but cost a dollar and the cashier liked toys

steak n shake

what i had: you can only have burgers and shakes from this restaurant so thats what i got baby!! when in roam!! hasta la vista!!

what i thought: siri didnt know how to get there so we got lost on the highway at 1am. WOOPS!!! thats the american life

rating: 4/5. tasted like i was dying, but pleasantly

cracker barrel

what i had: friday fish fry up!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

what i thought: there was lots of old people in this restaurant. the waitress avoided me because my nails were painted. this is a well documented phenomneom but biscuits are definitely something different in this country than my country

rating: 2/5. scary torture cabin

costco

what i had: piza slice

what i thought: i know this isnt technicaly a restaurant but drinks were 50 cents so it gets an honorable mention. there was a crate of mayonnaise but i didnt try that.

what i had: burrito. do they make other things?

what i thought: the logo is a chilli pepper but there werent actually any chilli peppers you could have in the food? i enjoyed the dainty red basket

rating: 3/5. guess burritos just always taste good, no matter what theyre made of. i think the chipotle burritos were made using some kind of food product but im not sure.

sonic drive thru

what i had: loaded chilli cheese dog’ fourht of july baby!! happy star wars day

what i thought: very inconceivable. there is a sit in a drive in and a drive thru and the sonic drive thru person comes over to your car in roller skates. its a made up cartoon store. it doesnt exist

rating: 5/5. we spent 20 minutes googling if you tip at sonic and in the end we drove off so my guilt prevents me from assessing it poorly

taco bell

what i had: it only sells tacos in like threes so i got three tacos.

what i thought: its like a dorito with a leaf stapled to it. why is it called taco bell? also, who am i, inside?

rating: 4/5. i flung six tacos in the microwave when we got back and i enjoyed watching them roll over each other playfully -  made me think of my childhood and the political conspiracy around my birth.

sheetz

what i had: chicken nuggets at 2am

what i thought: it was interesting that about half of the items on the interactive menu ended with a ‘z’ rather than an s. while that was fun - i would not go so far as to say i died at sheetz but i certainly did not leave it in one piece due to the colossal spinning death blade embedded into the milkshake machine

These Photos of Fireflies Are Straight From a Fairytale

Each year, Tivoli, New York photographer Pete Mauney awaits the arrival of the fireflies, and for about three weeks each summer, the bioluminescent insects settle beneath the moonlight around his house on quiet evenings. He shoots almost every night.