Sunken Warship Vasa- Stockholm, Sweden: November 2015. 17th Flagship on the Swedish Fleet, Sunk in 1628 during the maiden voyage. Recovered in 1961 and preserved.
A captivating primer on our fellow primates, from belligerent baboons to brilliant macaques.
by Maria Popova
“We share this planet we call home with an astonishing array of equally astonishing creatures. But, perhaps because we judge everything by our solipsistic human criteria, few elicit our admiring fascination more potently than monkeys — our fellow primates, which evolved some 35 million years ago; we share with them a distant common ancestor, from which we diverged on our separate evolutionary paths. (But, contrary to a common misconception, we did not evolve from monkeys.)
In Mad About Monkeys (public library), a wonderful addition to the best children’s books celebrating science, British illustratorOwen Davey presents a stunning and richly informative primer on these marvelous primates. However wildly different the 260 known species of monkeys may be from one another and from us, we continue to share surprising commonality with these distant cousins — from our highly networked societies to our capacity for play, that peculiar activity serving no other purpose than providing pleasure and delight.
Davey traces how their evolutionary history set monkeys apart from gibbons, lemurs, and chimpanzees — lest we forget, Jane Goodall has spent a good chunk of her career patiently debunking the popular misconception that chimps are monkeys — and how monkeys migrated from Africa to Asia to North America to develop into the distinctly different Old World and New World classes” (read more).
The West Virginia Ordnance Works (WVOW) was an explosives manufacturing
facility constructed during World War II just outside Point Pleasant, West
Virginia. Occupying 8,000 acres along
the eastern bank of the Ohio River, the WVOW was built specifically for the
production and storage of trinitrotoluene (TNT). At its peak, nearly 500,000 pounds of TNT
were produced here each day and stored in a massive array of concrete
igloos. The site was officially declared
surplus and closed in 1945, after which time much of the land was deeded to the
state of West Virginia for the creation of the McClintic State Wildlife
Management Area.
A large system of ponds and wetlands was constructed as a habitat for
waterfowl, migratory birds and other wildlife species. This area came to be known simply as T.N.T.
and developed into a popular hangout for local youth, hunters and
fishermen. In the early 1980’s, EPA and
state investigations revealed that the groundwater, soil and surface water of
T.N.T. were heavily contaminated with explosive nitroaromatic compounds
including TNT, trinitrobenzene, and dinitrotoluene, as well as arsenic, lead,
beryllium and asbestos. The site was
placed on the EPA’s National Priorities List in 1983 and extensive cleanup
efforts began in 1991. While a large
portion of the original facility has been remediated, many of the toxic and
explosive contaminants were simply buried on site. The remnants of the WVOW facility survive as
relics to our nation’s violent history, while the re-purposed landscape hides
much of its true nature just beneath the surface.
The site that remains outside
Point Pleasant is a haunting place of beauty, mystery and violence. Using an 8x10 view camera, I am photographing
the ruins of a once monumental military-industrial complex as it tangles with
the surrounding landscape of forest, fields and swamp. While certain structures offer a glimpse of
what has transpired on this site, many of my photographs refer indirectly to
violence and environmental neglect through metaphor. The repetition of specific imagery is
intended to create a labyrinth of sorts where certain motifs are experienced
over and over. The interplay of visibility and invisibility that runs
throughout these images alludes to the way in which we commonly misperceive
both contamination and beauty through strictly visual means. TNT storage igloos
are depicted in a serial typology to convey the massive scale of contemporary
weapons production, while the emptiness of the landscape, photographed with a
muted palette and diffused light, is meant to evoke a kind of post-apocalyptic
environment - one that is at times bleak and somber, yet also strangely
resilient and beautiful.
A history of British mammals ; By Barrett-Hamilton, Gerald Edwin Hamilton, 1871-1914 Via Flickr: Publication info London :Gurney and Jackson,1910-1921.
NYC-based artist Jesse Edwards gives no fucks about rules when it comes to his art (and we love it). Creating beautiful Monet-esque quality paintings, Edwards uses mostly “real shit” as his medium for inspiration. The perfect blend of technically amazing art infused with comedic, relatable undertones.
Takato Yamamoto is widely known for his “Ukiyo-e Pop” style of painting. He explores themes of darkness, bondage, vampires, metamorphosis, love and death. The perspective is always calm and serene - never depicting violence - rather, it is impending or just completed.
Takato Yamamoto usually works with acrylic paint on paper and sometimes on canvas.
He was born January 15 1960 in Akita Prefecture and graduated from the painting department of the Tokyo Zokei University in 1983.
