Posted: October 13th, 2008 | Author: kamau | Filed under: fashion, globalization, magazine, music, street art | 2 Comments »
TRACE: Black Girls Rule! Issue. Lately, Claude Grunitsky’s has moved Trace towards upscale fashion and away from the underground “transcultural” scene that originally made the magazine so unique. However, I still like their annual “Black Girls Rule!” issue for showcasing, um, Black women in positions to inspire or lead in other areas of life away from the runway or studio. I haven’t been able to track down a physical copy of this year’s edition (guest edited by Spike Lee), but there’s a link to a free downloadable PDF copy of the magazine right here
SHOOK: I still miss Straight No Chaser that brilliant magazine that chronicled the global underground music scene from “ancient to future”. Shook picks up where it left off (including the hard to read typography). I am yet to see Shook on the newsstand, like SNC, it is hard to find (although one can mail order it from Dusty Groove). Downloadable PDFs of Issues 1 and 2 are available right here.
Posted: September 24th, 2008 | Author: kamau | Filed under: music, photography, politics, street art | Comments Off
PHOTOGRAPHY: Staged Realities: The studio in African photography 1870-2004
The exhibition juxtaposes photography taken in the studio tradition in (mostly) sub-Saharan Africa in the late 19th-century by European photographers with those images taken in this tradition (mostly) in Africa from the 1950s through to the present day. The selection of images contrasts an ethnographic and pre-conceived perception of African people, entrenched by colonialism, and a very different vibrant and individuated view generated by African photographers who have repositioned the practice of studio photography.
Member of Hamalali Wayunago Garifuna Dance Group performs at Africa Day Parade in Harlem
MUSIC: Belize: The Exile’s song [click on the "Watch Video" button]. Marco Werman’s 2004 Frontline World piece on the paranda music of Belize’s Garifuna people.
Screenshot of Araminta de Clermont’s photo essay on Guardian site
PHOTOGRAPHY: Guardian slide show Prison Ink:
Araminta de Clermont explores the tattoos sported by members of South Africa’s notorious prison gangs. Tattoos, particularly facial, are a gesture of defiance to the prison authorities and show a prisoner’s status. The pigment is created by mixing burned paper, ground-up rubber washers or brick dust with saliva.
[kofia tip: Sci-Cultura]
Martin Luther King Mural on 116th Street, Harlem
PUBLIC ART: New York Times slideshow, A Man in the Streets MLK murals across the US.
In America’s poorest ghettos, the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s portrait is one of the most popular subjects of public art. These images, which I have been documenting since 1977, regularly appear on the walls of the liquor stores, auto-repair shops, fast-food restaurants, mom-and-pop stores and public housing projects of Chicago, Detroit, Los Angeles, New York and many other cities across the country. …. He is often accompanied by his famous phrase, “I have a dream” – a reminder that in many of the communities where these murals exist, the gulf between hope and reality remains far too wide. — Camilo José Vergara
Posted: August 7th, 2007 | Author: kamau | Filed under: magazine, photography, street art | 2 Comments »
after the riots of 2004 photographer/street artist JR decided to visit the banlieues or ghettos that ring paris to take upclose portraits of the young men and women who live there. he took the results and made poster size images that he pasted up around paris as (illegal) street art. in effect it brings the gallery to the street and forces parisians confront their image of youth who have usually depicted only as rioting, violent hoodlums. “28 millimetres, portrait of a generation”
via foam, international photography magazine
