PHOTOBOOK: HOLLYWOOD UNSEEN
‘Hollywood Unseen’ is a tribute to Hollywood film studios like Columbia, Paramount, MGM, Universal, Warner Brothers, RKO and Twentieth Century Fox. From the late 1920s to the early 1950s these studios presided over the ‘Golden Age of Cinema’, and their publicity departments created some of the most stunning and iconic images of Hollywood’s stars ever taken.
In this book, for the first time, are photographs showing the ‘ordinary lives’ of the stars, including Rita Hayworth, Gary Cooper, Humphrey Bogart, Marilyn Monroe and many more. In reality, these photographs were as carefully constructed and prepared as any classic portrait or scene, and they depicted the actors and actresses exactly as the studios wanted them to be seen.
The publicity departments cleverly formed an idealised view of the husbands, wives, children, pets, parties, premieres and hobbies of the stars. Ironically, many of the images were only used once or twice, and were then never seen again. Drawn from the extensive archive of the John Kobal Foundation, this book showcases an extraordinary collection of these hidden photographic gems. (+)
Photos: 1. Swirling patterns created by ploughs in the rolling hills of farmland in the northwest US. In this image, taken over Washington state, the diagonal line running next to the Touchet River is a road that connects the town of Prescott to the west to Waitsburg to the east Photograph: KARI/ESASatellite eye on Earth: April 2013 – in pictures
Deforestation, fires, flooding and melting ice are among the images captured by European Space Agency and Nasa satellites last month
2. A nocturnal image of the area of Phoenix, Arizona, taken on 16 March. Like many large urban areas of the central and western US, the Phoenix metropolitan area is laid out along a regular grid of city blocks and streets. The image area includes parts of several cities in the metropolitan area including Phoenix proper (right), Glendale (centre), and Peoria (left) Photograph: ISS/Nasa3. Springtime in the Bay of Biscay, off the coast of France, as in most places, is a season of abundant growth. This image, taken on 20 April, shows a phytoplankton bloom. The swirling colors indicate the presence of vast numbers of phytoplankton, tiny plant-like microorganisms that live in both fresh and salt water. Although these organisms live year-round in the Bay of Biscay, it is only when conditions are right that explosive blooms occur Photograph: Modis/Aqua/Nasa
The theatre of Epidaurus . 2500 years old & an incredible acoustic until today.
Source: Enture (reddit)
These images are from the book ‘Hungry Planet: What the World Eats’ by Peter Menzel and Faith D’Aluision. The idea behind the project is “to better understand the human diet, explore what culturally diverse families eat for a week”. These portraits feature pictures of each family with a week’s worth of food purchases.
To see all the different photos: Part I and Part II on time.com (There’re many different countries so there’s a good chance you’ll find a family from your own country.)
I wake up with a good attitude every morning, and then, well, idiots happen.
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| — | Bill Murray (via room42) |
Namie(浪江町), Fukushima, Japan.
In March of 2011, the town of Namie (which once held 20,000 residents) was evacuated due to the Fukushima nuclear power plant disaster that was brought on by the Tōhoku earthquake and tsunami. This accident was considered the second biggest nuclear accident after the Chernobyl disaster.
The World’s first playground swing…
Built 90 years ago, these photographs show what historians beleive to be the world’s first playground swing.
The play equipment is believed to have been constructed in 1923 in Wicksteed Park in Kettering, England - the first park of its kind in the UK.
It was designed by owner Charles Wicksteed, as part of his vision to inspire and encourage play as part of families’ health and well-being.Charles Wicksteed said at the time: ‘We had a Sunday School treat in the park and put up primitive swings with large poles, tied together at the top with chains.
Fortunately they were not cleared away with the other things the day after the treat and I ultimately found them so popular that instead of pulling them down I added more.
I have direct evidence from mothers how whining, pale-faced children, complaining of any food they get, have come back with healthy faces and rosy complexions, ready to eat the house out after a good play in the playground.’
“Berlin lies strewn about, Dust blows up, then a lull again… the great rubble woman will be canonized…” (Günter Grass)
Berlin, December 1948: With German cities in ruins after World War II and the country’s male population decimated, it fell to the women to clean up the rubble. The so-called “Trümmerfrauen,” or “rubble women,” worked with their bare hands and whatever tools they could find.
The Trümmerfrauen phenomenon was launched by Allied orders requiring women between the ages of 15 and 50 to report for duty. A law passed by the military government allowing local authorities to employ women in clearing rubble. Up to 80 percent of the historic centers of German cities had been destroyed by Allied bombs during the war; Liselotte Kubitza recalls emerging as an 11 year old from her shelter of three weeks to a scene of destruction in Berlin, where “[o]ne whole wall between us and the neighbouring flat had collapsed, parts of the ceiling had come down and all the windows were gone.” Once the violence ceased, unsafe buildings were torn down. Bricks and other materials were carefully sorted so they could be used again.
At one stage, it was estimated that it wouls take 25 years to clear the city rubble, with 42,000 workers continuously at work. Munich, Kiel and Stuttgart were the fastest; by 1949, Munich had cleared 80 percent of its rubble, and by 1952, Stuttgart had cleared 88 percent.
The post-war blockade of Berlin by the Soviets meant that not as much construction material could get through to the city. As a result, a higher number of workers had to turn to rubble clearance.
“We had to do something,” says Naß. “First and foremost because at the back of the mind you had that thought, ‘When my brother comes home, or when my husband gets home, it can’t be like this.’ And who else would do it? So the women did it together.” Physical hardship was the norm for Naß and her peers and they carried out their exhausting work with bare hands alone. “We had no hammers, no shovels, no buckets, no gloves,” she says.
The work though was a distraction from the bitter disappointment and emotional turmoil Berlin’s survivors felt. As a young woman who had grown up almost exclusively under the Third Reich, Frau Naß admits the end of the war threw all her beliefs into question: “We were totally disillusioned, because as girls we had gone through the Hitler Youth,” she says. “You have to imagine how you would react if the whole system you had been brought up in simply didn’t exist anymore. People just couldn’t grasp it.”
