In America, we don’t necessarily think of our tattoos as holy. Meaningful, perhaps, or simply beautiful, but mostly devoid of serious spiritual tradition on more than an individual level. Not so in Thailand, where the spiritual “Yantra” tattoo tradition merges sacred art with the bodies of the believers. Our friends at Lost at E Minor tipped us off to this amazing project by Cedric Arnold, a French and British photographer who divides his time between London and Bangkok. Arnold writes, “A chest etched with a fierce leaping tiger, a hand adorned with images of geckos on each finger, a back protected by a monkey God, or a shoulder inscribed with ancient Khmer text, sacred ink, believed to have mystical powers. Known in Thai as ‘sak yant’, the tattoos are a testament to the complex spiritual makeup of Thai society, incorporating elements of Buddhism, Animism, Brahmanism and Hinduism.” They are also beautiful to behold, and Arnold’s black and white photography does them perfect justice. Click through to see some of the photographs that blew us away, then make sure to click over to Arnold’s website for even more.
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Mail delivery is a dangerous gig. As much as we appreciate a loyal pup’s protective instincts, it’s hard for mail carriers not to take the growls and snarls personally. Presenting: Ryan Bradford’s photo essay All the Dogs Want to Kill Me, featuring canines jumping at fences, burrowing under gates and glaring out mail slots in full-on hunting mode. OK, so he’s no Robert Mapplethorpe, but keep in mind that these photos were snapped with a cheap, disposable camera in a high stress setting. We think they capture those furry occupational hazards with feeling and a bit of humor.
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These photographs of meticulously constructed shacks and huts were taken in Kyoto, Osaka, Tokyo, and Helsinki by photographer Ari Saarto for his series IN SITU. The huts are built with walls, windows, furniture and amenities from refuse. Like homesteads, they stand on the sidewalks, under bridges, and in forests, expressing ingenuity and adaptation of their inhabitants. Surprisingly, these shelters look similar, despite being built on different continents.
The inhabitants are deliberately not pictured: Saarto set out to document “traces and evidence of human presence” with landscape style photography, lending to almost clinical but fascinating shots. See them in our gallery.
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Irish photographer Richard Mosse looks at the fog of war and disaster through a literal rose-tinted lens, bringing unearthly color to the bleakest of scenes.
By using light-diffusion and infrared film, Mosse’s images and videos lend conflict-torn lands and disaster aftermaths an eerie, otherworldly character. By laying a Renaissance glow and Pop Art flair over tense and tragic photojournalism, he highlights the seeming unreality of the catastrophically real.
Mosse’s work also includes photos of Saddam Hussein’s vacant palaces, images of abandoned airplanes, and portraits of war-machine detritus, all spotlighting the ghostly feel of things left behind in the wake of often earth-shattering events.
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Photographer Tom Carter’s CHINA: Portrait of a People documents the 56 wide-ranging ethnic groups living in the 33 provinces that compose the vast, overwhelmingly diverse nation.
Backpacking through every region of China over the course of two years, the photojournalist met and documented everyday people who live and work far from the tourist-traveled trails. Gaining his subjects’ trust, while at times risking arrest, Carter captured the fascinating faces that comprise the People’s Republic of China, creating a stunning document in the process.
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Magnum Photos, the cooperative photography agency established in 1947, has a blue-chip pedigree (founders included Robert Capa and Henri Cartier-Bresson) and a gigantic scope (a photojournalism collection amassed from across the globe in the 20th century). The archive comprises more than 180,000 images known as press prints, physical copies once circulated to newspapers and magazines before the digital age. Now the organization is moving forward with a one-two punch: after selling its entire photo archive to a collector, Magnum is recreating itself as an authoritative media entity online. After the jump, view an exclusive slideshow of eight photos from the archive.
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This image of a coal miner, taken in West Virginia in 1944, is part of the National Geographic Society’s vast archive of more than 11 million images, which up until recently sat relatively untouched under the depths of Washington, D.C.; now National Geographic is looking for private collectors and institutions to buy photographs at prices likely to range from $3,000 to more than $10,000 a pop. Photos from the collection will be displayed in public for the first time ever in September when an exhibit comes to Chelsea’s Steven Kasher Gallery. [via the NYT]
