The Marginalian
The Marginalian

Reads tagged with “photography”

The Möbius Strip of Remembering and Forgetting: Teju Cole on How the Paradox of Photography Clarifies the Central Anxiety of Existence
The Möbius Strip of Remembering and Forgetting: Teju Cole on How the Paradox of Photography Clarifies the Central Anxiety of Existence

“Photography is at the nerve center of our paradoxical memorial impulses: we need it there for how it helps us frame our losses, but we can also sense it crowding in on ongoing experience, imposing closure on what should still be open.”

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Susan Sontag on How Photography Mediates Our Relationship with Life and Death
Susan Sontag on How Photography Mediates Our Relationship with Life and Death

“We no longer study the art of dying, a regular discipline and hygiene in older cultures; but all eyes, at rest, contain that knowledge. The body knows. And the camera shows, inexorably.”

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The Annihilation of Space and Time: Rebecca Solnit on How Muybridge Froze the Flow of Existence, Shaped Visual Culture, and Changed Our Consciousness
The Annihilation of Space and Time: Rebecca Solnit on How Muybridge Froze the Flow of Existence, Shaped Visual Culture, and Changed Our Consciousness

“Before, every face, every place, every event, had been unique, seen only once and then lost forever among the changes of age, light, time. The past existed only in memory and interpretation, and the world beyond one’s own experience was mostly stories.”

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Susan Sontag on Selfies, Selfhood, and How the Camera Helps Us Navigate Complexity
Susan Sontag on Selfies, Selfhood, and How the Camera Helps Us Navigate Complexity

“There is a dialectical exchange between simplicity and complexity, like the one between self-revelation and self-concealment.”

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Pioneering 19th-Century Photographer Félix Nadar on Gender and the Single Most Important Factor in Becoming a Successful Artist
Pioneering 19th-Century Photographer Félix Nadar on Gender and the Single Most Important Factor in Becoming a Successful Artist

“To seek honor before profit is the surest means of finding profit with honor.”

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Aristotle’s Aperture: An Animated History of Photography, from the Camera Obscura to the Camera Phone
Aristotle’s Aperture: An Animated History of Photography, from the Camera Obscura to the Camera Phone

…and how a greedy attitude to intellectual property made the camera’s primary competitor perish.

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The Emperor of Time: A Dreamlike Short Film About Motion Picture Pioneer Eadweard Muybridge
The Emperor of Time: A Dreamlike Short Film About Motion Picture Pioneer Eadweard Muybridge

A foundational story of modern culture, told from the point of view of an abandoned son and viewed through an antiquated device.

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Feathers: A Stunning Photographic Love Letter to Evolution’s Masterpiece and Its Astonishing Array of Beauty
Feathers: A Stunning Photographic Love Letter to Evolution’s Masterpiece and Its Astonishing Array of Beauty

Art meets science in a poetic celebration of Earth’s astonishing diversity.

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Patti Smith Reads Her Beautiful Letter to Robert Mapplethorpe About How He Taught Her What It Means to Be an Artist
Patti Smith Reads Her Beautiful Letter to Robert Mapplethorpe About How He Taught Her What It Means to Be an Artist

“You drew me from the darkest period of my young life, sharing with me the sacred mystery of what it is to be an artist.”

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‘Humans of New York’ Founder Brandon Stanton on Serial Obsessions, How to Build a Sensibility, the Dignity-Conferring Power of Listening, and the Value of Time
‘Humans of New York’ Founder Brandon Stanton on Serial Obsessions, How to Build a Sensibility, the Dignity-Conferring Power of Listening, and the Value of Time

“The most valuable resource you have is what you do with your time.”

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