NPG, Third View, Rapture

Surviving my first week of school, I've just got to love the three day schedule. However, the remainder of the week will be occupied by preparing for week number 2. I've decided to put a lot of the material online, because some other freakish individuals might find it interesting. But before I launch into that, I want to catch up on some links.

I was perusing a very fine blog, Dragonthief a few days ago when I noticed one of those odd little Internet humor stories about Little Rock. Of course, while funny, it wasn't true. Then a few days later, it showed up on Raindogs. I'm not trying to defend Little Rock really, it's a strange place. Reading the full refutation of it exposes what a truly clever parody it is. I was wondering about the rubber love doll part.

Amazingly enough, to connect with the post I made earlier about New Topographics, I found a link to another one of those projects started by Mark Klett. Third View is a look at some rather interesting rephotographs of canonical landscapes. I much prefer this to the much hyped appropriation of Walker Evans FSA photographs. Sometimes Postmodernism is really boring; sometimes, it's a strategy for understanding the dynamics of change. I'm not a huge Klett fan, but I really enjoyed this the first time around when I was in school— I had no idea that they continued it, for a third time around.

Also of great interest was the discovery that The National Portrait Gallery has a searchable archive of images. I thought their usage fees were a bit stiff, but still, it's nice to peruse some of the fine portraits they have available.