I Recognized Her From the Gym

News that the Lower East Side has been named one of the country's most endangered historic sites by the National Trust for Historic Preservation got me thinking about the changing face of nearby St. Mark's Place. Over the years, the stretch of 8th St was the hangout of everyone from Thelonious Monk to W. H. Auden to Jeff Buckley, but today, New York magazine sums it up thusly: "It's tacky. It's garish. It's crawling with tourists and trend-starved teenagers." Just 25 years ago, however, it was the place where you might see a still unknown Madonna leaving the gym, as Amy Arbus did:

The picture of Madonna was taken before her meteoric rise. “I stopped her on the street because I recognized her from the gym,” Ms. Arbus said. “She was the one sitting around naked in the locker room the longest. I remember looking at her and thinking that with a body like that, I would too. In the picture she looks as if she knew what was about to happen to her.”

Yaperture

Do you miss it? The feel of a photograph? Yeah, we kind of do too, so here's what we did: We drew up some code, made a website, posted it to the internets (crashed a computer or two but that's neither here nor there), and Yaperture was born—literally born, like a baby in swaddling clothes and something we are very proud of.

That's the Yaperture team (aka Andrew and Chris) talking, and that baby in swaddling clothes is a cool new site where digital photography enthusiasts are invited to share, discuss, and vote on the shots they'd like to see turned into prints -- and maybe even own those matted prints and make some money on their sale too. As in, "The photograph is back."

Naked Pictures

This slideshow essay on Slate gives some good reasons why Spencer Tunick -- the guy who stages photo-shoots of hordes of naked people -- is better at generating publicity than making art. The crux of the issue, according to Mia Fineman (and I think she gets it right):

His installations are spectacular and attention-grabbing, but as for what it all means ... well, to put it bluntly, I don't think it extends too far beyond, "Wow. That's a lot of naked people."

Lawless Leftovers

I found this cool photo of edibles confiscated from JFK (click to enlarge) on Wired via Gridskipper.  The photo is from Taryn Simon's book An American Index of the Hidden and Unfamiliar.  Caption:

The foodstuffs in this image were seized over a 48-hour period from passengers arriving from New York's John F. Kennedy International Airport in Queens, New York, from abroad.  Among the pictured items are African yams, uncooked meats, fresh eggs, okra and a South Asian lime infected with a citrus canker.

"This room is one of my favorite shots.  I spent hours arranging the contraband to get it to look like a still life," Simon said.

On that note, I'm going to go clean the fridge.