Found Spine Poem #1

photo by Lorie Novak

if costs continue to rise

forensic scientists will be

parried with insurgents there and

starkly different than the one at 

His Agency

best for the long haul

Sorting

Yesterday I was sorting through the category “Life in Conflict Zones,” and thought I had duplicates in the pile. On closer look, I realized that there were in fact different images, and I was noticing a new trope: bombed-out buildings with small figures making their way in the foreground. The front pages are 4 months apart and the photographs are taken in Syria. Devastating that it is a new normal – I fear that it does not make us look more closely. Syria devastation NY Times - 1

Looking through Old Files

Looking and re-thinking… searching for something else and found these photos. A few years ago I bought a digital projector and returned to my old method of working by projecting images – using the newspapers and their reference to history as a backdrop. Images interest me now that didn’t then….

©Lorie Novak - challenged

.©Lorie Novak - Long March

Holding Photos – Presence of Absence

It’s a Saturday night and I am in my studio. With my new printer, I have been getting inspired to print from all the various little projects I have going. Since I started clipping/saving images from the newspaper, I have been moved by images of people holding photos of their loved ones. It is usually someone who has disappeared – missing or dead. The Madres de Plaza de Mayo helped make it a understood political act to hold the image of your missing child as public protest. Tonight I made a grid of images I have in my computer – scanned from newspapers, magazines and grabbed from the web. When see together, the gesture of the hands holding the images speak about the loss, love, anger, and the absence. I notice more.

Skeuomorphs (for Diana Taylor)

Why Innovation Doffs an Old Hat by JOSHUA BRUSTEIN
NY Times: February 12, 2011

Just as the average human carries around the remnants of a prehistoric tail and a useless appendix, the tools we use also bear marks of the evolutionary process from which they arose. more

reading further…

…superfluous references to the past are known as skeuomorphs (from the Greek words for tool and form), and Apple’s fondness for them on the iPad has provoked criticism from some designers.

“It drives a lot of designers batty because it is so skeuomorphically heavy,” said Craig Mod, a designer for Flipboard, a magazine for the iPad.

I’m staring at my skeuomorphically heavy screen (now I know there is an adjective too): trashcan, folders, my desktop… but as I read the article and came across the photo below with a protester  drawing computer keys to express his wish: I wonder what it should be called, a de-skeuomorph?

Not surprised that I found when internet searching the blog skeuomorphs.com/ > technology vs. nostalgia

1.11.11 Re-imagi(ni)ng the Front Page

[reblogging myself from 365 Days of Print]

Above the Fold
Re-imagi(ni)ng The Front Page Photo of the NY Times, 1.11.11

I couldn’t believe my eyes today when I looked at the NY Times. A larger than usual photo is above the fold. And it is a video grab. It is shooter Jared Loughner looking deranged.  What do we learn from this photo? Nothing. Oh wait, they shaved his head. What is the news value? None.

The victims have gotten nice profiles, but their photographs have been small. We should see them when we see him. So I rearrange today’s party – pulling a excellent photo from page A24 and a screen grab from the multimedia piece on those that died.

But I can’t stop thinking about why would the NYT choose this photo for its prime spot.

I go the Newseum Front Page Collection for perspective.

No Arizona papers published this image on the front page.

I check the page with the NY Papers and my answer appears:

via 365daysofprint.com: 1.11.11 Lorie Novak.