Extreme Photography by Wanted Mustang

A combo of my two favourite activities: extremem sports and photography. Ukrainian Wanted Mustang, photographs himself in very compromising places, striking a pose whilst being suspended in air for example. The following shots are from his series "Extreme Photography".

More Vice Docos on Documentary Photography: Saudi Arabian Women Unveiled & Documenting Asia's Illegal Animal Trade

"Photography has been the Best Visa."

Documenting Asia's Illegal Animal Trade - Still usiing analog, I can respect that. Venturing ino the wild to bring to the fore the stories that are worth telling. I can respect that. 

Also check out War Photographer below for more on analog development process, start the video at 8.32min - old school photoshop at its best. 

Saudi Arabian Women Unveiled - a really really cool photography concept which incorporates art, humanitarianism, photography and technology.

Vice HBO Series 1 Trailer

CAN.NOT.WAIT. Damn you to HBO for not being available in NZ.

Humans of New York

“I’m attracted to the extreme light and the extreme dark. I’m interested in the human condition and what makes people tick. I’m interested in the things people try to hide.” - Johnny Depp  

Humans of New York is one of the best tumblrs I've stumbled across in a long time. the concept is simple, photographer Brandon Stanton documents the minor accidental encounters that fill ones day,  all of which essentially effect ones perception of a city. "For the past year and two months or so I've been walking all over New York. I've been to almost every single neighborhood. And I've just been stopping strangers on the street and asking them for their photograph," said Stanton. "What I've done is I've plotted them on a map here. And I've organized them by neighborhood. So what you can do is click on a neighborhood and scroll through the faces of the people that live in those neighborhoods," said Stanton. Stanton calls "Humans of New York" a slice of New York City life. He says he loves the art form because you never know who you'll meet or what you'll get, like a break dancer with his son or ballet students. "There's a ton of kids on here. And whenever I see an old couple in love I always stop and ask them for their photograph. Part of that is me knowing what people on my Facebook group like also. We love kids and we love old people in love," said Stanton. Humans of New York is part social documentary, part art project. It offers a dialogue on the existentialism of life, enjoyed through the light-hearted snippets from Brandon's lens. Humans of New York represents everything I love about New York: travel photography and small scale community involvement - this is exactly what the world needs - love, understanding, connecting and documenting. C'est Parfait. I've actually been subscribed to this Tumblr for quite a while, its my little slice of heaven online but I had an overwhelming need to share it here. "I'm always very sensitive as to whether or not I'm getting Jaded." Brandon says, and his introspective outlook and his child like enthusiasm make the blog even more endearing. It seems to me, that by examining other cultural phenomenons like Girls, or the Sartorialist,  people are creating a candid dialogue about what they're going through, documenting and finding solace in the fact that several other people also find solace in the same thing create hime truths. In a way, this made me realize that photography creates an intimacy that cannot be replicated in any other art form, it creates a bond between the photographer and the subject - it's raw, gritty and honest  and presents a fully rendered human being oddly enough... I think that this blog teaches us that we can learn from others, and what we can do about connecting with each other on a small scale makes us realize the fragility of our own existences, which is an important reminder in this fast paced world.

Brandon's Story in his own words...

"Hey there.  I’m Brandon.  I get really passionate about things.  At some time in my life, I’ve been obsessed or borderline-obsessed with saltwater aquariums, the baritone euphonium, reading, piano, filming, financial markets, New York City, and photography.  I studied History at the University of Georgia.  During my senior year of college, I took out $3,000 in student loans and bet it on Barack Obama to win the presidency.  A friend heard about this bet and got me a job trading bonds on the Chicago Board of Trade.  I traded for three years.  It went really well for awhile.  But then it went really bad. Whoops. After I lost my trading job, I decided to move to New York City and take portraits of strangers on the street. Mom wasn’t too happy about that decision, but so far it’s gone pretty well. I’ve taken nearly 5,000 portraits and written 50 stories. And I’ve met some amazing people along the way."

"It's important not to rush through life so much that you don't find time to do the things you really should be doing."

"What things do you wish you'd made more time to do?"

"I wish I'd learned to drive a racecar. Learned to cook. Followed up with a certain young lady. I wish I'd read more. I've got this stack of books I'm going through now, but I should have read them 50 years ago. I'm even reading Harry Potter!"

"Do you mind if I take your photo?"

"..."

"I run a website called...."

"Don't give me that shit line. Just take the picture."

“This is a character.”

“Oh, so this isn’t you?”

“It’s not me. But there’s a lot of me in here.”

“I’m in the middle of a spiritual process. I can’t wear color for another six months.”

“I work at the UN. I study happiness, actually.”

“So what’s happiness then?”

“Well it’s very strongly related to income, but only to a certain amount. After about $20,000 a year, it becomes much more dependent on the amount of time we spend with family and friends. This is something we seem to intuitively know at the beginning and end of our lives— but lose sight of in the middle.” 

“I never had any family growing up. But I still went to school everyday. One day, when I was in eleventh grade, my English teacher came up to me and said: “If you graduate, I’ll adopt you. I’ll show you the life. You’ll do things you never dreamed of.” And he kept his promise. He made it legal and everything. On the day I graduated, he was the only family I had there. My father’s taken me everywhere since then. I’ve done all kinds of things.”

Seen in Times Square.

Seen on the Williamsburg Bridge.

“When my husband was dying, I said: ‘Moe, how am I supposed to live without you?’ He told me: ‘Take the love you have for me and spread it around.’”

Seen on the Subway

“Living in New York is a struggle, because you’re always trying to make $5 last for three days. But in a way it’s romantic, because The City always gives you little ways to make it.”

This man walked onto the subway and announced in a loud voice that “Everyone is now on the Love Train!” He then started blasting gospel music, volume 10. Ironically, some people opposite-of-loved it.

Meanwhile in Iran...

“How is business?”

“As God wants it to be.” 

(Tehran, Iran)

This man offered me a cup of tea after I took his photo. It seemed like a good idea to accept his offer. He was super friendly, but it quickly became apparent that the extent of his English consisted of the phrase: “Do you want some tea?” Unable to communicate, we spent an awkward five minutes staring at our shoes and avoiding eye contact, while I burned the shit out of my tongue trying to finish the tea as fast as possible.

I saw these men from the window of a taxi. I asked the driver to pull over, so I could walk back and take their photo. Instead he INSISTED on backing up against a heavy stream of traffic. It was 100 yards of sheer terror. “No, please,” I said. “This is perfect.” Not a problem at all, he insisted.

So much of Iran’s history, as well as world history, is encapsulated in this image. These are the 200 year old etchings of British servicemen, carved into the 2500 year old walls of Persepolis— the markings of a modern empire on the ruins of an ancient one. The drive to empire is not a disease of individual nations, but a disease of humanity.

Behind the Portraits

A City of Faces

An American Photogrpaher in Iran

Check out Humans of New York here.

Kate Seabrook's Endbahnhof

Urban decay and bratwurst. These are the things that continue to draw artists and photographers alike to Berlin, none more so than Aussie born Kate Seabrook, who has called Berlin her home for just over a year now. The juxtaposition of the old and new Berlin continues to be a source of inspiration for many. The following photoset is a collection from her latest project, Endbahnhof, which is a study of each U-bahn station, each with possessing its own quirky style. 

Kate says of her work: 

"Endbahnhof is a photographic series documenting Berlin's entire U-bahn system, end to end, one line at a time. The idea for the project was born out of an appreciation of the impressive and varied styles of U-bahn architecture and typography and the reliability of the system to get Berliners where they need to go. What makes Endbahnhof special is that each line is shot in a single journey, disembarking at each station to photograph it before the next train arrives.". 

And of the Berlin Public Transportation system, Kate says:

"I have found it very interesting that the architecture of the U-bahn station reflects the local area. Generally speaking, the historical working class and former communist neighbourhoods tend to have stations that are more purist in design, whilst the most elaborate designs can be found in wealthy former West Berlin neighbourhoods such as Wilmersdorf. The thing I really love is that anyone can experience these extremes of architectural design for the cost of a train ticket!".

You can find out more about Kate's work, here and here. 

The Self Illusion: How the Brain Constructs Who We Are

We know that the notions of stable character and fixed personality are a myth. And yet, our culture is wired for labels and checkboxes, eager to neatly file people away into categorical cabinets and thrown into furor over the slightest inkling of multiplicity. Take, for instance, Howard Hughes, at once a legendary aviator, movie mogul, tycoon, and socialite, and a reclusive billionaire housebound by his deathly phobia of dirt. He was a fearless aviation pioneer who set and broke countless records, yet he remained terrified of dying from germs. Hughes spent his final days unbathed, dressed in rags, with long sticky hair, curling nails, and the remnants of five hypodermic needles in his arms. He was worth $2 billion. It was this biography woven of paradoxes and dimensionality that compelled cognitive neuroscientist Bruce Hood to explore the building blocks of what we experience as the “self” in The Self Illusion: How the Social Brain Creates Identity. Adding to the ongoing conversation on what consciousness is, how it works, and how it measures up against Truth, Hood writes:

"Each morning, we wake up and experience a rich explosion of consciousness — the bright morning sunlight, the smell of roast coffee and, for some of us, the warmth of the person lying next to us in bed. As the slumber recedes into the night, we awake to become who we are. The morning haze of dreams and oblivion disperses and lifts as recognition and recall bubble up the content of our memories into our consciousness. For the briefest of moments we are not sure who we are and then suddenly ‘I,’ the one that is awake, awakens. We gather our thoughts so that the ‘I’ who is conscious becomes the ‘me’ — the person with a past. The memories of the previous day return. The plans for the immediate future reformulate. The realization that we have things to get on with remind us that it is a workday. We become a person whom we recognize.

The call of nature tells us it is time to visit the bathroom and en route we glance at the mirror. We take a moment to reflect. We look a little older, but we are still the same person who has looked in that same mirror every day since we moved in. We see our self in that mirror. This is who we are.

The daily experience of the self is so familiar, and yet the brain science shows that this sense of the self is an illusion. Psychologist Susan Blackmore makes the point that the word ‘illusion’ does not mean that it does not exist — rather, an illusion is not what it seems. We all certainly experience some form of self, but what we experience is a powerful depiction generated by our brains for our own benefit."

Hood goes on to trace how the self emerges in childhood and examines why this notion of the illusory self is among the hardest concepts to accept, contrasting the “ego theory” of the self, which holds that we are essential entities inside bodies, with Hume’s “bundle theory,” which constructs the self not as a single unified entity but as a bundle of sensations, perceptions, and thoughts lumped together. Neuroscience, Hood argues, only supports the latter. The Self Illusion tells the story of how that bundle forms and why it sticks together, revealing the brain’s own storytelling as the centripetal force of the self.

Smithsonian Magazine's 2012 Photography Contest

The editors of Smithsonian magazine have just announced the 50 finalists in their 10th annual photo contest. The following are some of images, including some great shots from each of the competition's five categories: The American Experience, The Natural World, People, Travel, and Altered Images. 

 An onlooker witnesses the annular solar eclipse as the sun sets in Albuquerque, New Mexico, on May 20, 2012. Photographed by Colleen Pinski of Peyton, Colorado, for the the Natural World category.

 Alternating rice plots in the Bac Son Valley, Vietnam. Photographed by Hai Thinh Hoang, of Hanoi.

 Grandpa's helper, for the Americana category, photographed by Jenny Braun in Hampton, Minnesota, in July of 2012.

 Ants holding seeds, by Eko Adiyanto, of West Java, Indonesia.

 A visit to Bagan, Myanmar in January of 2011. Photographed by Han Tha, from Yangon, Myanmar. 

 Lone Acacia, Sossusvlei Sand Dunes, Namibia. Photographed by Bob Bush of Altadena, California, in May of 2010.

 Musicians arriving at the bullring in Quito, Ecuador, in October of 2011. Taken by Raul Amaru Linares, of Bogota, Colombia, for the Travel category.

 A man-made ice geyser in Duluth, Minnesota. Taken in December, 2011 by Nathan Carlsen, of Duluth.

 Blues in the streets of Chicago, by Javier Arcenillas of Alcobendas, Madrid, Spain, for the American Experience category.

 The awesome power of an Iowa tornado, in Mapleton, Iowa. Photographed by Timothy Wright of Omaha, Nebraska.

 "Exploring the Night" A lone hiker viewed the path before him as the Milky Way rose in the night sky above Bryce Canyon National Park, Utah. Taken by Jason Hatfield, Lakewood, Colorado, in May of 2012.

 Rice Terraces Close to Harvest Season, in La Pan Tan, Mu Cang Chay, Yen Bai, Vietnam. Taken by Vo Anh Kiet of Ho Chi Minh City.

 Christine, 20 years old, with her months-old first child under mosquito netting. Photographed in Mulungwishi, Deomcratic Republic of Congo by Paolo Patruno, of Bologna, Italy for the People category.

 Policemen run across the National Congress in Brasilia during a demonstration against corruption. Photographed by Olivier Boels from Brasilia, Brazil. 

 Il Duomo di Firenze, by Garret Suhrie of Los Angeles, California. Submitted in the Altered Images category.

 Apple Guy on location in the desert, by Ron Henderson of Dallas, Texas

 Annual bucking horse sale in Miles City, Montana. Photographed by George Burgin, of Billings, Montana.

 River ferry operating in the early morning in Xiao Donjiang, China, by Teng Hin Khoo, of Shah Alam, Malaysia.

 "Mummy, I am down here, and hungry!" A locally rare juvenile spiderhunter, photographed while trying to get the attention of its parents at the Borneo Highland Resort, in Sarawak, Malaysia by Bjorn Olesen of Singapore.

 People harvesting salt at sunset by Giang Hai Hoang of Hanoi, Vietnam. Photographed in August of 2012 in Khanh Hoa Province, Vietnam.

Breeding penguins in Antarctica in February of 2012, by Neal Piper, from Washington, D.C.