MAGNA NATION - A MODERN ODYSSEY: January 2012

Saturday, January 21, 2012

These boys look like trouble. You can tell by the way they grease back their hair, toke their smokes and snap their fingers… Legendary New York photographer Bruce Davidson documented a gang of “troubled teenagers coming of age” in 1959 Brooklyn, capturing the young almost-underbelly of a conservative, “innocent” society. They called themselves the Jokers. See them look tough, get tattoos, get into fights, dance to records, nuzzle with their gal pals and loiter cinematically. Spotted by the Retronaut, indulge yourself with this look back in time, with a tinge of glamorous masculinity and teenage angst.

Image credit: Bruce Davidson

NYC A DAY IN THE LIFE

Here at theMET, we're always looking for creative projects that catch our eye. More than anything, we love posting about work that pushes boundaries, showing our audience something that has been changed, flipped or spinned into something magically different. Then, we see it as our job to find out the story behind such projects. What inspired the artist or photographer to start down that path? What do they hope others get out of their work?

A few days ago, when Met member Mark Huckabee put up a post called Astounding Animated Gifs, we knew we had to dig deeper. We got in touch with Jamie Beck and her partner Kevin Burg to ask them about their "cinemagraph" technique where they combine still photographs and video to create these magnificent mini films. (Did you know that the project is a combination of Kevin's background in motion graphics and Jamie's street photography?)

Before we go into that more, enjoy these lovely cinemagraphs that they sent directly to us.

What's been the response like, so far, on your animated gifs? How has the internet responded?
The online response has been really wonderful. When we first started creating these together we felt it was a new form of photography adapted for a digital age. You never know if people are going to feel the same way you do but with the incredible response it seems people also respond to this form of storytelling

STREET PEOPLE

Photographer Lee Jeffries worked as a sports photographer before having a chance encounter one day with a young homeless girl on a London street. After stealthily photographing the girl huddled in her sleeping bag, Jeffries decided to approach and talk with her rather than disappear with the photograph. That day changed his perception about the homeless, and he then decided to make them the subject of his photography. Jeffries makes portraits of homeless people he meets in Europe and in the US, and makes it a point to get to know them before asking to create the portraits. His photographs are gritty, honest, and haunting.