Islam is not about perfection. Allah is alone in His perfection. Islam—the submission to the will of Allah, obeying His commandments, and following the teachings of the prophet, peace be upon him—is about striving for perfection. It’s not a race; it’s a lifelong journey. And like many journeys, there are detours, false starts, breakdowns: it’s not always smooth sailing.
So what do you do when you falter on the path to Allah? Continue reading “baby steps”
Arimoto Shinya’s ariphoto series (and zines) documents his encounters with Tokyo wildlife: grinning elderly men with missing teeth; punks, goths, and heshers; hippy bikers; dog walkers; cosplay girls; homeless; I could go on. The tagline on his website sorta says it all: “TOKYO, SEEN BY MY EYES, IS AN ECOSYSTEM WITH MAGNIFICENT CIRCULATION.” I was excited to get in on an honest to goodness Japanese photo zine, and now that I have it in my hands, well…
Continue reading “Arimoto China – ‘ariphoto selection vol. 8’”Nothing Ever Happens 1 and 2 are small, one-page zines from Nathan Pearce‘s series of the same name, and currently available from Halfmoon Projects. I don’t know about you, but if guns, keggers, 2 dbl cheeseburgers for $3.99 at Donnie & Connie’s Burger Haven, brush fires, grinning dogs, and velvet paintings of Jesus, peace be upon him, are part of the “nothing” that ever happens, I’d be interested to see what “something” looked like…
Continue reading “Nathan Pearce – ‘Nothing Ever Happens’”I’d seen Lomography’s ActionSampler camera before, but was never particularly tempted by it. Then I got Nathan Pearce‘s set of zines and saw the interesting work he does with it, so I started looking. After a little bit of hunting and hesitating, I found a brand new, second version, mislabeled as the “Cyber Sampler” for less than 1/3 of the retail price, so I jumped on it.
Continue reading “Enter the ActionSampler”After three decades as a photojournalist, covering presidential races and other newsworthy events for UPI, Time, and Newsweek, Arthur Grace followed up on a feeling he had and spent a couple of years visiting State Fairs in California, Colorado, Florida, Indiana, Kansas, Minnesota, North Carolina, Ohio, Texas, and Virginia, mostly in 2003 and 2004. If anything, the result captures just how similar we all are…
Continue reading “Arthur Grace – ‘State Fair’”Phaidon’s 55 series is pretty good: small books, well printed, with good, short, biographical essays and all the major works form a bunch of different photographers. I’ve seen them in Half Price and different places, and always avoided them, largely because “perfect bound” softcovers leave the gutter side of images virtually unreadable. But the “New-Format” hardback versions are side sewn and somewhat easier to view. To be honest, when I jumped on this Daido Moriyama book, I didn’t realize it was one of the series; had I known, I probably would’ve skipped it and been happy with my Tales of Tono reprint.
And I would’ve missed out on a great little book, for very little money.
Continue reading “‘Daido Moriyama’”I picked T J Clark’s Farewell to an Idea: Episodes from a History of Modernism on Richard Pickup’s recommendation , and after reading the first paragraphs of the Introduction, I’m glad I did. Funny, dense, serious, accessible, it’ll require some close, careful reading, an exercise of some mental and rhetorical muscles I haven’t used in awhile, and I look forward to it.
Continue reading “T J Clark – ‘Farewell to an Idea’”
