The difference between a good picture and a mediocre picture, it’s a question of millimeters
This video of Henri Cartier-Bresson, told in his words, overlaid with his photos, is too long to describe succinctly, but if you’re interested in art, how to see and think, in learning about the world through taking photos, it is worth the 18 minutes.
In 1952, Cartier-Bresson published his book Images à la sauvette, whose English edition was titled The Decisive Moment. It included a portfolio of 126 of his photos from the East and the West. The book’s cover was drawn by Henri Matisse. For his 4,500-word philosophical preface, Cartier-Bresson took his keynote text from the 17th century Cardinal de Retz: “Il n’y a rien dans ce monde qui n’ait un moment decisif” (“There is nothing in this world that does not have a decisive moment”). Cartier-Bresson applied this to his photographic style. He said: “Photographier: c’est dans un même instant et en une fraction de seconde reconnaître un fait et l’organisation rigoureuse de formes perçues visuellement qui expriment et signifient ce fait” (“Photography is simultaneously and instantaneously the recognition of a fact and the rigorous organization of visually perceived forms that express and signify that fact”).
James Gleick, The Information
I’m only a couple chapters into James Gleick’s The Information, but already it deserves a recommendation. It is both a straightforward history of the transformation toward information culture and a poetic and metaphorical exploration of it. I could give dozens of examples — the chapter on the talking drums of Africa comes to mind — but if the subject of how we came to transform ourselves into thought is interesting to you, you will want the pleasure of unfurling it for yourself.
Previously on clusterflock:
Also, women were the first computers
Re-winding A Clockwork Orange
Ed and Mike and a few others and I drove to Houston to see A Clockwork Orange when it looked as though it would not be shown In Dallas.
Watching Clockwork that afternoon was one of the most painful aesthetic experiences I’ve endured. And Kubrick’s film remains one of the greatest films I’ve ever seen.
Adam Curtis, It Felt Like a Kiss
Sheila suggested I check out documentary filmmaker Adam Curtis’s found footage montage, It Felt Like a Kiss. A collaboration between Curtis and improvised theater company Punchdrunk, I’m not quite sure what the immersive experience would have been like, but I have rounded up the various pieces of it available on YouTube, and if you are interested — you’ll only need to watch a few minutes to know if it’s right for you — you can take a look.
Here is what the Guardian’s Charlie Brooker had to say:
One particular segment, set to River Deep, Mountain High, feels like being repeatedly stung on the mind by a hallucinogenic jellyfish while inhaling huge clouds of history through a pipe. The marriage of Phil Spector’s wall of sound and Curtis’s wall of images is so perfect, so strange and striking, it jangled around my head for hours afterward. And I only saw it in a tiny window on an Apple Mac, in a corner of Curtis’s tape-strewn “lair” at BBC Television Centre. God knows what it’ll be like on a big screen as part of a live-action, funhouse-style experience. It’ll probably kill people.
Flannery’s beer finds
You would think it would be an old guy like me giving my daughter tips about good beers–but for a while now it has been the other way around. She says, “Try one of these.” I take a sip and think damn, and I’ve been drinking that other shit.
Writers At Their Typewriters
So you know, The Guardian has a fantastic slideshow of prolific authors with their trusty sidearms.
Black in Latin America
We’ve seen a few episodes from Henry Gates’ excellent series Black in Latin America. The episode on The Dominican Republic and Haiti was especially fascinating, as you have a microcosm of evolutionary pressures present in such a small space. All the episodes are available online.
What I’m Listening to: Danger Mouse and Daniele Luppi – Rome
Naturally, Rome can’t possibly exceed the sum of its parts, with its successful composer and arranger in Luppi, its groundbreaking producer and composer in Danger Mouse, countless combined years of orchestra experience, a painstaking recording process with vintage equipment, and the juxtaposition of White’s fatalistic moan with Jones’ coolly detached croon. It almost has to sound better on paper than in practice, but it’s terrific in practice, too, as it alternates appropriately cinematic instrumentals with a handful of nifty showcases for its headliners.
HipHop: Beyond Beats & Rhymes
Apologies if you already know about this documentary, but I was just exposed to it in my Cross-Cultural Counseling class.
If you hadn’t heard of this and liked it, try checking out The New Jim Crow.
Recently Watched
Zach Galifianakis – Live at the Purple Onion
This might be stand up for people who don’t really like stand up. It mixes road trip footage, interviews with Galifianakis’s fake brother Seth, and live performance. Reading some of the negative reviews will give you an idea of why I liked it so much. It is streaming on Amazon Prime and Netflix, or you can buy it here.
Exit Through the Gift Shop
Errol Morris recommended this as the best movie of the year. You can watch it on Netflix or Amazon Prime or buy it here.
Longreads and The Browser
Twitter has been helpful finding good articles to post, but in the flood sometimes I forget where I found something or who pointed it out. In that spirit, I was reminded this morning of how good Longreads and The Browser are at aggregating articles that keep my interest. You can follow them on the web, through Twitter, or RSS.
Your business card sucks
Don’t miss the rebuttal.
Michael Haneke, The Piano Teacher
Michael Haneke is becoming a favorite director. I watched The Piano Teacher last night, after having seen Caché a few years ago, and holding off watching another because I liked it so much I didn’t want to be disappointed. The Piano Teacher is excellent. Disturbing and excellent. But I don’t really think of movies that work (or anything else, for that matter) on any other level — there is an intelligence in something well crafted that is the only thing important to me. It is streaming on Netflix, and you can buy it here.
Fish Tank
I watched Fish Tank last night. The trailer isn’t perfect, but the film is very well put together, and emotionally beautiful.
It is streaming on Netflix or you can purchase it here.
It Gets Better: The Book
We started this project to talk directly to kids about no matter how much their lives may be bad right now that it does get better.
Now we’ve collected about 100 incredible stories from allies and members of the LGBT community. From the kid across the street to President Obama, these stories will provide hope to kids who may not have access to YouTube.
If you want to help get a copy of this book onto the shelf of a high school library, you can do it.
this just in
Vernon, Florida is still really fucking good.
The Mad Farmer
On Wednesday, President Obama presented the 2010 National Humanities Medal to agrarian philosopher Wendell Berry. I enjoyed these remarks by Slacktivist commemorating the occasion:
Wendell Berry scares me. He is a poet, novelist, essayist, farmer, husband, conservationist, radical and gentleman. He writes with an unrivaled clarity of language, clarity of thought and clarity of conviction. It’s that conviction that scares me, because often when I read Wendell Berry I can’t help but think that if he is right, then a great deal of the rest of the world is wrong. And he usually seems to be right.
If you’ve never had the opportunity to page through his books, I can’t recommend them enough.
from the comments
I’m using Michael Pollan’s book The Omnivore’s Dilemma in one of my classes, and one of the parts I have enjoyed most concerns Joel Salatin’s Polyface Farm. He calls himself a “grass farmer” and explains in lovely detail the way he nurtures the grass to make it sustainably healthy. He has also introduced many innovations, such as his “eggmobile.” It’s a kind of rolling chicken coop (he moves several of them about) with an open bottom that lets the droppings fall to the ground below. Since they are moved, just the right amount is given to the grass. Also, in the morning the chickens troop down the plank from the coop doors and set about eating bugs and dispersing the cow dung with their scratching. He has many processes that he says lets the animals do most of the work–and the animals are doing what they want to do. Pigs rooting in the compost to turn it–because Salatin has sprinkled a few kernels of corn under wood chips there. The corn ferments and apparently pigs are so avid for the stuff they will turn everything over to find it. Anyway–it’s a fine book and I recommend it.
Kasoundi
Select your mix of chillies and slice them up. Separate the seeds from the flesh if you want a milder outcome. Kasoundi is not a macho hot-sauce contest. Avoid the temptation to construct an edible inferno, because all those subtle flavours will be lost. Look, you should just throw out the seeds.
As Part of my Funemployment…
I’ve been watching this. I never knew this show existed until today.
Book Recommendations
Luke asked on Twitter what magic realist stories people would recommend for a high school class he is teaching. Unrelated, I’ve been wanting to read a good overview of human evolution, maybe the last two million years forward until Homo sapiens were the only branch of modern humans.
Dear Clusterflock
What do you recommend?
dear clusterflock
Best Ted Talks.
Nurse Jackie
We’ve been watching the first season of Nurse Jackie. You can find out about the series here. It is streaming on Amazon’s video on demand.
Dogtooth
I can’t more highly recommend this movie. I also don’t want to give it away. It is currently streaming on Netflix. Here is the trailer, and here is the Wikipedia page (spoiler alert), if you want to see or read more about it, but, again, I appreciated the chance just to watch it.
Thanks, Aaron.
