Photography

Jessica Helfand|Essays

Extremely Young and Incredibly Everywhere: The Public Art of Jonathan Safran Foer

Jonathan Safran Foer published his first novel, Everything is Illuminated, to critical acclaim only three years after graduating from Princeton University, where he won the Freshman, Sophomore, Junior and Senior Creative Writing thesis …

Rick Poynor|Essays

Wisconsin Death Trip: A Psychic History

Michael Lesy’s book Wisconsin Death Trip documented awful events in Black River Falls, Wisconsin, using a town photographer’s pictures. Years later, it remains a spellbinding piece of literary and photographic alchemy.

Jessica Helfand|Essays

Scrapbooking: The New Paste-Up

"Craft-born embellishments," note one supplier of scrapbooking products, "are penetrating an unexpected market: graphic design."

William Drenttel|Essays

Stop The Plant: The Failure of Rendering

There is no single rendering ominous enough to create public fear; no image so compelling as to create political momentum; and no symbol so memorable as to unite the opposition. Whether through artistic renderings or compelling information …

Kenneth Krushel|Essays

The Gates

Much has been written about Christo and Jeanne-Claude's "Gates" project in Central Park in New York City, including an outstanding Guest Observer essay by Julie Lasky here at Design Observer. In the past few days, though, we have received …

Kenneth Krushel|Essays

The Gates

Much has been written about Christo and Jeanne-Claude's "Gates" project in Central Park in New York City, including an outstanding Guest Observer essay by Julie Lasky here at Design Observer. In the past few days, though, we have received …

Jessica Helfand|Essays

My Friend Flickr

Flickr is a digital photo sharing website and web services suite that was developed by Ludicorp, a Vancouver, Canada company founded in 2002. It’s a utopian oddity — a culture enabled by a technology that in turn enables a …

Michael Bierut|Essays

Robert Polidori's Peripheral Vision

Robert Polidori's photographs depict contemporary architecture in the context of a decidedly imperfect world.

William Drenttel|Essays

Bird in Hand: When Does A Copy Become Plagiarism?

Left: STEP Inside Design, Cover, Jan.-Feb. 2005. Right: Photograph by Victor Schrager.Every once and a while, the plagiarism of one artist's work by another crosses the line, or so I thought. I wrote a different piece for Design Observer a …

Michael Bierut|Essays

First Person Shooter

News photographs from Iraq are eerily reminiscent of video game images.

Michael Bierut|Essays

Colorama

Grand Central Terminal's enormous Colorama displays by Kodak documented a suburban fantasy world for millions of commuters.

Jessica Helfand|Essays

An Instrument of Sufficiently Lucid Cogitation

The legendary French photojournalist Henri Cartier-Bresson, who died on Tuesday at his home in the South of France, always carried a sketchbook with him. Today's obituary in The New York Times alleges that he described drawing as …