The Dorothea Lange Digital Archive: Explore 600+ Photographs by the Influential Photographer (Plus Negatives, Contact Sheets & More)

in Archives, History, Photography | October 20th, 2020

Short­ly before her death in 1965, one of the New Deal’s most famous pho­tog­ra­phers, Dorothea Lange, spoke at UC Berke­ley. “Some­one showed me pho­tos of migrant farm­work­ers they had just tak­en,” she said. “They look just like what I made in the ‘30s.” We can see the same con­di­tions Lange doc­u­ment­ed almost 60 years lat­er, from the pover­ty of the Depres­sion to the intern­ment and demo­niza­tion of immi­grants. Only the cloth­ing and the archi­tec­ture has changed. “Her work could not be more rel­e­vant to what’s hap­pen­ing today,” says Lange biog­ra­ph­er Lin­da Gor­don.

As an Amer­i­can, it can feel as if the coun­try is stuck in arrest­ed devel­op­ment, unable to imag­ine a future that isn’t a retread of the past. Yet activists, his­to­ri­ans, and ther­a­pists seem to agree: in order to move for­ward, we have to go back—to an hon­est account­ing of how Amer­i­cans have suf­fered and suf­fered unequal­ly from eco­nom­ic hard­ship and oppres­sion. These were Lange’s great themes: pover­ty and inequal­i­ty, and she “believed in the pow­er of pho­tog­ra­phy to make change,” says Erin O’Toole, asso­ciate cura­tor of pho­tog­ra­phy at the San Fran­cis­co Muse­um of Mod­ern Art. 

Among famous Bay Area col­leagues like Ansel Adams and Edward West­on, Lange is unique in that “her archive and all that mate­r­i­al,” says O’Toole, “stayed in the Bay Area,” held in the pos­ses­sion of the Oak­land Muse­um of Cal­i­for­nia. Now, more than 600 high-res­o­lu­tion scans are avail­able online at the OMCA’s new Dorothea Lange Dig­i­tal Archive, which also “con­tains con­tact sheets, film neg­a­tives and links relat­ed to mate­ri­als as addi­tion­al resources for the many cura­tors, schol­ars and gen­er­al audi­ences access­ing Lange’s body of work,” Emi­ly Mendel writes at The Oak­land­side. 

The dig­i­tal archive will like­ly expand in com­ing years as the dig­i­ti­za­tion process—funded by a grant from the Hen­ry Luce Foun­da­tion—con­tin­ues. The phys­i­cal archive is vast, includ­ing some “40,000 neg­a­tives and 6,000 prints, plus oth­er mem­o­ra­bil­ia.” These were inac­ces­si­ble to any­one who couldn’t make the “huge trek to OMCA,” Lange’s god­daugh­ter Eliz­a­beth Partridge—author of Dorothea Lange: Grab a Hunk of Light­ning (2013)—remarks. The project is “the most impor­tant thing,” says Par­tridge, “that has hap­pened to her work since it was giv­en to the muse­um decades ago” by her sec­ond hus­band Paul Tay­lor. 

The online archive-slash-exhib­it divides Lange’s work in four sec­tions: “The Depres­sion,” “World War II at Home,” “Post-War Projects,” and “Ear­ly Work/Personal Work.” The first of these con­tains some of her most famous pho­tographs, includ­ing ver­sions and adap­ta­tions of Migrant Moth­er, the posed por­trait of Flo­rence Thomp­son that “became a famous sym­bol of white moth­er­hood” (though Thomp­son was Native Amer­i­can) and “moved many Amer­i­cans to sup­port relief efforts.” We can see how the icon­ic pho­to was tak­en up and used by the Cuban jour­nal Bohemia, the Black Pan­ther Par­ty news­pa­per, and The Nation, who imag­ined Thomp­son in 2005 as a Wal­mart employ­ee.

In the sec­ond cat­e­go­ry are Lange’s pho­tographs of Japan­ese intern­ment camps, unseen until rel­a­tive­ly recent­ly. “When she final­ly gave these pho­tos to the Army who hired her,” Gor­don notes, “they fired her and impound­ed the pho­tos.” Lange’s skilled por­trai­ture, her uncan­ny abil­i­ty to human­ize and uni­ver­sal­ize her sub­jects, could not suit the pur­pos­es of the U.S. mil­i­tary. “She used pho­tog­ra­phy,” O’Toole says, “as a tool to uncov­er injus­tices, dis­crim­i­na­tion, to call atten­tion to pover­ty, the destruc­tion of the envi­ron­ment, immi­gra­tion…. The protests that are hap­pen­ing today would be some­thing she’d be pho­tograph­ing in the streets.”

Maybe in a dig­i­tal age, when we are over­whelmed by visu­al stim­uli, pho­tog­ra­phy has lost much of the influ­ence it once had. But Lange’s images still inspire equal amounts of com­pas­sion and curios­i­ty. As Amer­i­cans con­tend with the very same issues, we could do with a lot more of both. Enter the Dorothea Lange Dig­i­tal Archive here. 

via Austin Kleon

Relat­ed Con­tent: 

How Dorothea Lange Shot, Migrant Moth­er, Per­haps the Most Icon­ic Pho­to in Amer­i­can His­to­ry

478 Dorothea Lange Pho­tographs Poignant­ly Doc­u­ment the Intern­ment of the Japan­ese Dur­ing WWII

Yale Presents an Archive of 170,000 Pho­tographs Doc­u­ment­ing the Great Depres­sion

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

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Watch Ridley Scott’s Controversial Nissan Sports Car Ad That Aired Only Once, During the Super Bowl (1990)

in Film, Television | October 19th, 2020

Every com­mer­cial is a fan­ta­sy, but car com­mer­cials are more fan­tas­ti­cal than most. Just look at the set­tings, with their roads, whether remote or urban, com­plete­ly emp­ty of not just oth­er cars but obsta­cles of any kind: stop signs, street-crossers, speed traps. This leaves the hero­ic every­man behind the wheel free to take on the straight­aways and curves alike just as he sees fit. But what the stan­dard car com­mer­cial offers in dri­ver wish ful­fill­ment, it lacks in dra­ma: how to tell a sto­ry, after all, about a fea­ture­less char­ac­ter who faces no obsta­cles, sub­ject to no desires beyond those for com­fort and speed? Com­mis­sioned to direct a com­mer­cial for Nis­san’s 300ZX Tur­bo, Rid­ley Scott found a way.

“I’m in a Tur­bo Z,” says the nar­ra­tor of the result­ing spot “Tur­bo Dream,” first broad­cast dur­ing Super Bowl XXIV in 1990. “These guys are after me, but they can’t catch me.” These mys­te­ri­ous pur­suers first chase him on motor­cy­cles, then in an F1 race car, and then in an exper­i­men­tal-look­ing jet. (We’re a long way indeed from Hov­is bread.)

But “just as they’re about to catch me, the twin tur­bos kick in.” Those twin tur­bocharg­ers con­sti­tute only one of the cor­nu­copia of fea­tures avail­able for the 300ZX, then the lat­est mod­el of Nis­san’s “Z‑cars,” a series acclaimed for its com­bi­na­tion of sports-car per­for­mance, lux­u­ry-car fea­tures, and high tech­nol­o­gy. The lin­eage goes all the way back to 1969, when the com­pa­ny intro­duced its Japan­ese Fair­la­dy Z in the U.S. as the 240Z.

For most of the 1960s, “Japan­ese sports car” would have sound­ed like a con­tra­dic­tion in terms. But by the 1990s many once-loy­al Amer­i­can dri­vers had been enticed to defect, not least by the promise of the Z‑car. Tak­en by sur­prise, the colos­sal U.S. auto indus­try did not react char­i­ta­bly to its for­eign com­peti­tors, and the 1980s wave of eco­nom­ic anti-Japan­ese sen­ti­ment swept Amer­i­ca. Hol­ly­wood wast­ed no time cap­i­tal­iz­ing on these feel­ings: count­less action movies began fea­tur­ing cor­po­rate-raid­ing Japan­ese vil­lains, and one of the least shod­dy among them was Black Rain — direct­ed by a cer­tain Rid­ley Scott, who in Blade Run­ner had already real­ized one vision of a thor­ough­ly Japan­i­fied Amer­i­ca.

Black Rain had come out just four months before the broad­cast of “Tur­bo Dream,” and any­one who’d seen the film would sure­ly be remind­ed of its open­ing motor­cy­cle race. The spot did draw a back­lash, but the anger had noth­ing to do with Japan: “The com­mer­cial was protest­ed by groups like the Insur­ance Insti­tute for High­way Safe­ty, the Amer­i­can Acad­e­my of Pedi­atrics, the Nation­al Asso­ci­a­tion of Gov­er­nors’ High­way Safe­ty Rep­re­sen­ta­tives and oth­ers,” writes Jalop­nik’s Jason Torchin­sky. “The issue was that the ad was thought to glo­ri­fy speed­ing,” and the com­mer­cial nev­er aired again. The 300ZX itself would go on for a few more years, until the Amer­i­can SUV trend and the ris­ing yen-to-dol­lar ratio tem­porar­i­ly retired it in 1997. When they bring the new­ly unveiled Z Pro­to to mar­ket, Nis­san could do worse than enlist­ing Scott to come up with anoth­er tur­bocharged fan­ta­sy.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

See Rid­ley Scott’s 1973 Bread Commercial—Voted England’s Favorite Adver­tise­ment of All Time

Wes Anderson’s New Com­mer­cials Sell the Hyundai Azera

Film­mak­er Cre­ates a Lux­u­ry-Style Car Com­mer­cial to Sell a 21-Year-Old Used Hon­da Accord

Cars: Past, Present & Future (A Free Course from Stan­ford)

Bob Dylan’s Con­tro­ver­sial 2004 Victoria’s Secret Ad: His First & Last Appear­ance in a Com­mer­cial

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities, the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall, on Face­book, or on Insta­gram.

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The 100 Most Influential Photographs: Watch TIME’s Video Essays on Photos That Changed the World

in Photography | October 19th, 2020

We live in a cul­ture over­sat­u­rat­ed with images. Videos of vio­lence and death cir­cu­late with dis­turb­ing reg­u­lar­i­ty, only rarely ris­ing to the lev­el of mass pub­lic out­rage. Social media and news feeds bom­bard us not only with dis­tress­ing head­lines but with pho­to­graph after photograph–doctored, memed, repeat­ed, then dis­card­ed and for­got­ten. It’s impos­si­ble to do oth­er­wise than to for­get: the sheer vol­ume of visu­al infor­ma­tion most of us take in dai­ly over­whelms the brain’s abil­i­ty to sort and process.

As if insist­ing that we look and real­ly see, the judges of the Pulitzer Prize have giv­en the award for fea­ture pho­tog­ra­phy almost exclu­sive­ly to images of tragedy in recent years. In most cas­es, the con­flicts and dis­as­ters they depict have not gone away, they have only dis­ap­peared from head­line news. Whether we can say that pho­tog­ra­phy is los­ing its pow­er to move and shock us in the over­whelm­ing sea of visu­al noise is a sub­ject for a much longer med­i­ta­tion. But I can think of few recent images com­pa­ra­ble to those in the TIME 100 Pho­tographs series.

Of course the say­ing “time will tell” isn’t just a pun here: we can only know if a pho­to will have his­toric impact in hind­sight, but in near­ly all of the 100 pho­tos featured—which have been giv­en their own mini-doc­u­men­taries—the impact was imme­di­ate and gal­va­niz­ing, inspir­ing action, activism, wide­spread, sor­row, anger, appre­ci­a­tion, or awe. The emo­tion­al res­o­nance, in many cas­es, has only deep­ened over the decades.

The image of Emmett Till’s face, bat­tered into unrec­og­niz­abil­i­ty, has not lost its pow­er to shock and appall one bit. Although the spe­cif­ic con­text may now elude us, its details still mys­te­ri­ous, we can still be moved by Jeff Widener’s pho­to­graph of a defi­ant Chi­nese cit­i­zen fac­ing down the tanks in Tianan­men Square. Alber­to Korda’s 1960 por­trait of Che Gue­var­ra became not only icon­ic but a lit­er­al icon.

What will we see fifty, or 100, years from now, on the oth­er hand, in “Oscars Self­ie” (2014), by Bradley Coop­er? The pho­to seems to me an eeri­ly cheer­ful por­tent from the point-of-view of 2020, just a hand­ful of years lat­er, with its well-groomed, smil­ing, mask-less faces and lack of social dis­tanc­ing. It is an image of a gen­uine­ly sim­pler, or at least a pro­found­ly more obliv­i­ous, time. And it was also just yes­ter­day in the scale of TIME’s list, whose ear­li­est pho­to dates to almost 200 years ago and hap­pens to be the “first known per­ma­nent pho­to­graph.”

TIME itself, once a stan­dard bear­er for pho­to­jour­nal­ism, shows us how much our inter­ac­tion with pho­tog­ra­phy has changed. The so-called “turn to video” may have been most­ly hype—we con­tin­ue to read, lis­ten to pod­casts, and yes, pour over strik­ing pho­tographs obses­sive­ly. But hard­ly any­thing these days, it seems, can pass by with­out a mini-YouTube doc­u­men­tary. We may not need them to be emo­tion­al­ly moved by these pho­tographs, yet tak­en alto­geth­er, these short videos offer “an unprece­dent­ed explo­ration,” writes TIME, of how “each spec­tac­u­lar image… changed the course of his­to­ry.”

Watch all of the 21 short doc­u­men­tary videos cur­rent­ly avail­able at TIME’s YouTube chan­nel, with more, it seems, like­ly to come.

Relat­ed Con­tent: 

The Sto­ry Behind the Icon­ic Pho­to­graph of 11 Con­struc­tion Work­ers Lunch­ing 840 Feet Above New York City (1932)

The First Pho­to­graph Ever Tak­en (1826)

The First Faked Pho­to­graph (1840)

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

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How Some of the World’s Most Famous Cheeses Are Made: Camembert, Brie, Gorgonzola & More

in Food & Drink, Travel | October 19th, 2020

Atten­tion cheese lovers!

Do you sali­vate at the thought of a Cheese Chan­nel?

Care­ful what you wish for.

Food pho­tog­ra­phers employ all man­ner of dis­gust­ing tricks to make junky pan­cakes and fast food burg­ers look irre­sistibly mouth­wa­ter­ing.

Food Insid­ers’ Region­al Eats tour of the Ital­ian Gor­gonzo­la-mak­ing process inside a ven­er­a­ble, fam­i­ly-owned Ital­ian cream­ery is the inverse of that.

The fin­ished prod­uct is wor­thy of a still life, but look out!

Despite the delib­er­ate­ly gen­tle motion of the cus­tom-made machin­ery into which the milk is poured, get­ting there is a stom­ach churn­ing prospect.

Per­son­al­ly, we don’t find the smell of that ven­er­a­ble, veined cheese offen­sive. The pun­gent aro­ma is prac­ti­cal­ly music to our nose, stim­u­lat­ing the cil­ia at the tips of our sen­so­ry cells, alert­ing our tongue that a rare and favorite fla­vor is in range.

Nor is it a mold issue.

Mar­co Inv­ernizzi, man­ag­ing direc­tor of Trecate’s hun­dred-year-old Caseifi­cio Si Inv­ernizzi, exudes such deep respect for Peni­cil­li­um roque­for­ti and the oth­er par­tic­u­lars of Gorgonzola’s pedi­gree, it would sure­ly be our hon­or to sam­ple one of the 400 wheels his cream­ery pro­duces every day.

Just give us a sec for the visu­als of that griz­zly birth video to fade from our mem­o­ry.

With the excep­tion of a close up on a faucet gush­ing milk into a buck­et, the peek inside the Camem­bert-mak­ing process is a bit eas­i­er to stom­ach.

There are curds, but they’re con­tained.

The cheese at Le 5 Frères, a fam­i­ly farm in the vil­lage of Bermonville, is made by old fash­ioned means, ladling micro-organ­ism-rich milk to which ren­net has been added into per­fo­rat­ed forms, that are topped off a total of five times in an hour.

The steamy tem­per­a­tures inside the arti­sanal brie mold­ing room at Seine-et-Marne’s 30 Arpents caus­es Food Insid­ers’ cam­era lens to fog, mak­ing for an impres­sion­is­tic view, swagged in white.

Near­ly 20 years ago, Mad Cow dis­ease came close to wip­ing this oper­a­tion out.

The cur­rent herd of friend­ly Hol­steins were all born on 30 Arpents’ land. Each pro­duces about 30 liters of milk (or slight­ly more than one dai­ly wheel of brie de Meaux) per day.

Get the scoop on Swiss Emmen­taler, Italy’s largest buf­fa­lo moz­zarel­la balls, and oth­er world cheese MVPs on Food Insider’s 87-video Cheese Insid­er playlist.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

An Ani­mat­ed His­to­ry of Cheese: 10,000 Years in Under Six Min­utes

How to Break Open a Big Wheel of Parme­san Cheese: A Delight­ful, 15-Minute Primer

Does Play­ing Music for Cheese Dur­ing the Aging Process Change Its Fla­vor? Researchers Find That Hip Hop Makes It Smelli­er, and Zeppelin’s “Stair­way to Heav­en” Makes It Milder

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, the­ater mak­er and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

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A Master List of 1,500 Free Courses From Top Universities: 50,000 Hours of Audio/Video Lectures to Enrich Your Mind

in Online Courses | October 18th, 2020


For the past 14 years, we’ve been busy rum­mag­ing around the inter­net and adding cours­es to an ever-grow­ing list of Free Online Cours­es, which now fea­tures 1,500 cours­es from top uni­ver­si­ties. Let’s give you the quick overview: The list lets you down­load audio & video lec­tures from schools like Stan­ford, Yale, MIT, Oxford, Har­vard and many oth­er insti­tu­tions. Gen­er­al­ly, the cours­es can be accessed via YouTube, iTunes or uni­ver­si­ty web sites, and you can lis­ten to the lec­tures any­time, any­where, on your com­put­er or smart phone. We haven’t done a pre­cise cal­cu­la­tion, but there’s about 50,000 hours of free audio & video lec­tures here. Enough to keep you busy for a very long time–something that’s use­ful dur­ing these social­ly dis­tant times.

Right now you’ll find 200 free phi­los­o­phy cours­es, 105 free his­to­ry cours­es, 170 free com­put­er sci­ence cours­es, 85 free physics cours­es and 55 Free Lit­er­a­ture Cours­es in the col­lec­tion, and that’s just begin­ning to scratch the sur­face. You can peruse sec­tions cov­er­ing Astron­o­my, Biol­o­gy, Busi­ness, Chem­istry, Eco­nom­ics, Engi­neer­ing, Math, Polit­i­cal Sci­ence, Psy­chol­o­gy and Reli­gion.

Here are some high­lights from the com­plete list of Free Online Cours­es. We’ve added a few unconventional/vintage cours­es in the mix just to keep things inter­est­ing.

The com­plete list of cours­es can be accessed here: 1,700 Free Online Cours­es from Top Uni­ver­si­ties. For more enrich­ing mate­r­i­al, see our oth­er col­lec­tions below.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

1,000 Free Audio Books: Down­load Great Books for Free.

4,000+ Free Movies Online: Great Clas­sics, Indies, Noir, West­erns, Doc­u­men­taries & More.

Learn 45+ Lan­guages Online for Free: Span­ish, Chi­nese, Eng­lish & More.

200 Online Cer­tifi­cate & Micro­cre­den­tial Pro­grams from Lead­ing Uni­ver­si­ties & Com­pa­nies.

Online Degrees & Mini Degrees: Explore Mas­ters, Mini Mas­ters, Bach­e­lors & Mini Bach­e­lors from Top Uni­ver­si­ties.

 

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Mapping the Differences in How Americans Speak English: A Geographic Look at Words, Accents & Dialects

in English Language | October 16th, 2020

In the 2005 PBS doc­u­men­tary series Do You Speak Amer­i­can? jour­nal­ist Robert Mac­Neil trav­eled from fabled “sea to shin­ing sea” to explore the mys­ter­ies of Amer­i­can Eng­lish. Among the many ques­tions he addressed at the time was the wide­spread idea that mass media is “homog­e­niz­ing Amer­i­can lan­guage or mak­ing us all talk the same.” Mac­Neil, and the lin­guists he inter­viewed, found that this wasn’t true, but what accounts for the mis­per­cep­tion?

One rea­son we may have been inclined to think so is that region­al accents seemed to dis­ap­pear from tele­vi­sion and oth­er media, as the coun­try became more sub­ur­ban, and mid­dle class white Amer­i­cans dis­tanced them­selves from their immi­grant roots and from African Amer­i­cans and work­ing-class South­ern­ers. Aside from sev­er­al broad eth­nic stereo­types, many of which also fad­ed dur­ing the Civ­il Rights era, the more-or-less authen­tic region­al accents on TV seemed few­er and few­er.

A rush of media in recent decades, how­ev­er, from Far­go to The Sopra­nos, has rein­tro­duced Amer­i­cans to the region­al vari­eties of their lan­guage. At the same time, pop­u­lar treat­ment of lin­guis­tics, like MacNeil’s doc­u­men­tary, have intro­duced us to the tools researchers use to study the diver­si­ty of dif­fer­ence in Amer­i­can Eng­lish. Those dif­fer­ences can be mea­sured, for exam­ple, in whether peo­ple pro­nounce “R” sounds in words like “car,” a char­ac­ter­is­tic lin­guists call “rhotic­i­ty.”

In the past cen­tu­ry, Ben Traw­ick-Smith of Dialect Blog writes, “Amer­i­can and British atti­tudes toward non-rhotic­i­ty diverged. Where r‑lessness was once a pres­tige fea­ture in both coun­tries,” rep­re­sent­ing in the South­ern planter class and Boston Brah­mins in the U.S., for exam­ple, “it is a mark­er of work­ing-class or ver­nac­u­lar speech in 21st-cen­tu­ry Amer­i­ca (typ­i­cal of the broad­est New York City, Boston and African Amer­i­can Ver­nac­u­lar Eng­lish­es).” In the short film at the top, you can hear sev­er­al vari­eties of rhot­ic and non-rhot­ic Amer­i­can Eng­lish in the mouths of speak­ers from 6 regions around the coun­try.

Pre­sent­ed by lin­guist Hen­ry Smith, Jr. the 1958 doc­u­men­tary details the pho­net­ic dif­fer­ences of each speak­er’s pro­nun­ci­a­tions. Lin­guists use cer­tain words to test for a vernacular’s pho­net­ic qual­i­ties, words like “water” and “oil,” which you can hear fur­ther up in a far more recent video, pro­nounced by speak­ers from dif­fer­ent states around the U.S. Region­al speech is also mea­sured by the choice of words we use to talk about the same thing, with one of the most promi­nent exam­ples in the U.S. being “Soda vs. Pop vs. Coke.” In the Atlantic video just above, see how those dif­fer­ent words break down accord­ing to region, and learn a bit more about the “at least 10 dis­tinct dialects of Eng­lish” spo­ken in the U.S.

Relat­ed Con­tent: 

A Brief Tour of British & Irish Accents: 14 Ways to Speak Eng­lish in 84 Sec­onds

What Eng­lish Would Sound Like If It Was Pro­nounced Pho­net­i­cal­ly

The Speech Accent Archive: The Eng­lish Accents of Peo­ple Who Speak 341 Dif­fer­ent Lan­guages

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

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Edward Hopper’s Creative Process: The Drawing & Careful Preparation Behind Nighthawks & Other Iconic Paintings

in Art | October 16th, 2020

Edward Hop­per paint­ed, but more impor­tant­ly, he drew. His body of work includes about 140 can­vas­es, which does­n’t make him espe­cial­ly pro­lif­ic giv­en his long life and career — but then, one of those can­vas­es is Nighthawks. Here on Open Cul­ture, we’ve pre­vi­ous­ly fea­tured Hop­per’s “sto­ry­boards” for that time- and cul­ture-tran­scend­ing paint­ing of a late-night New York din­er. But those count as only a few of the volu­mi­nous prepara­to­ry draw­ings with­out which nei­ther Nighthawks nor his oth­er major works like Automat, Chop Suey, or Morn­ing Sun Sea would have seen the light of day — or rather, the emo­tion­al dusk that infus­es all his images, no mat­ter their set­ting.

“It’s a long process of ges­ta­tion in the mind and aris­ing emo­tion,” says Hop­per him­self in the 1961 inter­view clip above.  “I make var­i­ous small sketch­es, sketch­es of the thing that I wish to do, also sketch­es of details in the pic­ture.” This process entailed no lit­tle pave­ment-pound­ing: “Again and again, he would pick up his sketch­book and head for a clus­ter of New York City movie the­aters,” writes the Los Ange­les Times’ Bar­bara Isen­berg, cov­er­ing Hop­per Draw­ing, a 2013 exhi­bi­tion at New York’s Whit­ney Muse­um of Amer­i­can Art. “Some­times it was the Repub­lic or the Palace, oth­er times the Strand or the Globe, places where he could study the lob­by, the audi­to­ri­um, the cur­tained area off to the side. Back at home, he’d pose his wife, Josephine, as an ush­erette and draw her por­trait.” After 54 such draw­ings, the result was Hop­per’s “mon­u­men­tal paint­ing New York Movie.”

The fol­low­ing year, the Dal­las Muse­um of Art opened Hop­per Draw­ing: A Painter’s Process,  a show cov­ered at the blog of Signet Art. “Hop­per worked from real life for the first step of his process, a step he called ‘from the fact,’ often draw­ing and sketch­ing on site before return­ing to his stu­dio to com­plete a piece,” says the blog. “He was metic­u­lous in his prepa­ra­tion, draw­ing and cre­at­ing exten­sive stud­ies for a new work before approach­ing the can­vas.” Only then did he bring his imag­i­na­tion into it, though he still “referred to his draw­ings as a reminder of how light and shad­ow played off an archi­tec­tur­al space and the fig­ures with­in it.” Is this how he man­aged to ren­der so elo­quent­ly themes of lone­li­ness, iso­la­tion, mod­ern man and his envi­ron­ment? “Those are the words of crit­ics,” the plain­spo­ken Hop­per said. “It may be true, and it may not be true.”

Relat­ed Con­tent:

How Edward Hop­per “Sto­ry­board­ed” His Icon­ic Paint­ing Nighthawks

Sev­en Videos Explain How Edward Hopper’s Paint­ings Expressed Amer­i­can Lone­li­ness and Alien­ation

10 Paint­ings by Edward Hop­per, the Most Cin­e­mat­ic Amer­i­can Painter of All, Turned into Ani­mat­ed GIFs

Dis­cov­er the Artist Who Men­tored Edward Hop­per & Inspired Nighthawks

9‑Year-Old Edward Hop­per Draws a Pic­ture on the Back of His 3rd Grade Report Card

How to Paint Like Kandin­sky, Picas­so, Warhol & More: A Video Series from the Tate

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities, the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall, on Face­book, or on Insta­gram.

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The Dance Theatre of Harlem Dances Through the Streets of NYC: A Sight to Behold

in Dance, Life | October 16th, 2020

It’s near­ly impos­si­ble to find an unblem­ished square of pave­ment in New York City.

Unless the con­crete was poured with­in the last day or two, count on each square to boast at least one dark pol­ka dot, an echo of casu­al­ly dis­card­ed gum.

Con­firm for your­self with a quick peek beneath the exu­ber­ant feet of the Dance The­atre of Harlem com­pa­ny mem­bers per­form­ing on the plaza of the Adam Clay­ton Pow­ell Jr. State Office Build­ing dur­ing the 46th annu­al Harlem Week fes­ti­val.

For obvi­ous rea­sons, this year’s fes­ti­val took place entire­ly online, but the Dance The­atre’s offer­ing is a far cry from the gloomy Zoom‑y affair that’s become 2020’s sad norm.

Eight com­pa­ny mem­bers, includ­ing co-pro­duc­ers Derek Brock­ing­ton and Alexan­dra Hutchin­son, hit the streets, to be filmed danc­ing through­out Harlem.

Those who gripe about the dis­com­fort of wear­ing a mask while exert­ing them­selves should shut their traps until they’ve per­formed bal­let on the plat­form of the 145th and St. Nicholas Sub­way Sta­tion, where the dancers’ pris­tine white shoes bring fur­ther buoy­an­cy to the pro­ceed­ings.

The City Col­lege of New York—in-state tuition $7,340—provides the Neo-Goth­ic stage for four bal­leri­nas to per­form en pointe.

The Hud­son Riv­er and the George Wash­ing­ton Bridge serve as back­drop as four young men soar along the prom­e­nade in Den­ny Far­rell River­bank State Park. Their casu­al out­fits are a reminder of how com­pa­ny founder Arthur Mitchell, the New York City Ballet’s first black prin­ci­pal dancer, delib­er­ate­ly relaxed the dress code to accom­mo­date young men who would have resist­ed tights.

The piece is an excerpt of New Bach, part of the com­pa­ny’s reper­toire by res­i­dent chore­o­g­ra­ph­er and for­mer prin­ci­pal dancer, Robert Gar­land, described in an ear­li­er New York Times review as “an author­i­ta­tive and high­ly imag­i­na­tive blend of clas­si­cal vocab­u­lary and funk, laid out in hand­some for­mal pat­terns in a well-plot­ted bal­let.”

The music is by J.S. Bach.

And in these frac­tious times, it’s worth not­ing that only one of the dancers is New York City born and bred. The oth­ers hail from Kansas, Texas, Chica­go, Louisiana, Delaware, Orange Coun­ty, and upstate.

The group seizes the oppor­tu­ni­ty to ampli­fy a much need­ed pub­lic health message—wear a mask!—but it’s also a beau­ti­ful trib­ute to the pow­er of the arts and the vibrant neigh­bor­hood where a world-class com­pa­ny was found­ed in a con­vert­ed garage at the height of the civ­il rights move­ment.

Con­tribute to Dance The­ater of Harlem’s COVID-19 Relief Fund here.

via @BalletArchive/@Ted­Gioia

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Bal­le­ri­na Misty Copeland Recre­ates the Pos­es of Edgar Degas’ Bal­let Dancers

Watch the 1917 Bal­let “Parade”: Cre­at­ed by Erik Satie, Pablo Picas­so & Jean Cocteau, It Pro­voked a Riot and Inspired the Word “Sur­re­al­ism”

Watch the Ser­pen­tine Dance, Cre­at­ed by the Pio­neer­ing Dancer Loie Fuller, Per­formed in an 1897 Film by the Lumière Broth­ers

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, the­ater mak­er and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine.   Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

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