Currently browsing the "art" tag.

Sean O’Hagan on the fading art of street photography

For The Observer this weekend, Sean O’Hagan wrote a passionate piece extolling all that’s great about street photography – and mourning its passing in an age where concerns about terrorism and privacy continue to push photographic art further out of the public eye.

O’Hagan – best known for his articles about music – is writing a series of pieces on photography for the newspaper, but this is one of the best yet.

Weird and strange results from home-made lenses

Fred Licht, California-based photographer of buildings, people and things, has an intriguing hobby: he makes his own lenses.

Fred is one of the Wonderful Machine collective, a nationwide collaborative project by photographers in cities around the US.

His lens-making hobby was highlighted recently on the Wonderful Machine blog – a site worth watching because it aggregates and highlights some of the fabulous work being done by members of the team.

In Neil Binkley’s blog post, Fred is quoted saying:

“My desire to explore optics as a creative tool began with my longstanding interest in 19th century photography. Many of the images from that period have a distinct “look” (as well as other sensibilities) and I began by purchasing lenses from that period of time. I quickly realized that this was not giving me the look that I wanted and I began to research the field of photographic optics. It turns out that nearly all of the lenses that we use today (with the exception of zoom lenses and a few other formulas) were designed in the 19th century and have not really changed.”

If Fred’s antics in lens experimenting aren’t enough for you, go explore the Homemade lens group on Flickr, where there are nearly 600 more people interested in mixing up their own optics.