Berenice Abbott

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Manhattan Skyline: I. South Street and Jones Lane, Manhattan. March 26, 1936.

I love Berenice Abbott’s photographs of New York in the 1930s which capture the city in transition from a world of 19th century brownstones to the more familiar high-rise skyline. Dover Publications produced their own collection of her photos which I used as one of my key references when drawing Reverbstorm. The NYPL Digital Gallery has a huge selection online, including many which didn’t make the Dover book.

Previously on { feuilleton }
Eugene de Salignac
Luther Gerlach’s Los Angeles
The Bradbury Building: Looking Backward from the Future
Edward Steichen
Karel Plicka’s views of Prague
Atget’s Paris
Downtown LA by Ansel Adams

William Rimmer’s Evening Swan Song

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Evening: Fall of Day by William Rimmer (1869–70).

This curiously sexless figure is a good example of a work by an artist whose reputation may not have been as elevated as many of his contemporaries but who nonetheless created an image which speaks to future generations. Rimmer (1816–1879) was an American artist who produced a number of pictures along these pre-Symbolist lines. This particular drawing (a blend of crayon, oil and graphite on canvas) became hugely familiar in the Seventies when it was chosen by Led Zeppelin as the basis for their Swan Song label logo (below).

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The Lagoon Nebula

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Gas and Dust of the Lagoon Nebula by Fred Vanderhaven.

The Pink Lagoon, NASA’s Astronomy Picture of the Day.

This beautiful cosmic cloud is a popular stop on telescopic tours of the constellation Sagittarius. Eighteenth century cosmic tourist Charles Messier cataloged the bright nebula as M8, while modern day astronomers recognize the Lagoon Nebula as an active stellar nursery about 5,000 light-years distant, in the direction of the center of our Milky Way Galaxy. Striking details can be traced through this remarkable picture, processed to remove stars and hence better reveal the Lagoon’s range of filaments of glowing hydrogen gas, dark dust clouds, and the bright, turbulent hourglass region near the image center. This color composite view was recorded under dark skies near Sydney, Australia. At the Lagoon’s estimated distance, the picture spans about 50 light-years.