Results for "Humanities"
- Blog Post
Digital Humanists Dive Into Archives
- Date: August 3, 2011
- Creator: Marvin Heiferman
- Description: Bloggers on The Bigger Picture often describe how, in the course of their work, they come across intriguing archival objects and artifacts that trigger new insights into history. “Hands on” encounters with compelling evidence from the past are thrilling and can be provocative. But so can different sorts of encounters, including those that are driven by data, rather than
- Blog Post
Looking for Mr. or Ms. Right
- Date: April 20, 2010
- Creator: Marvin Heiferman
- Description: [caption id="" align="aligncenter" width="350" caption="Perfect, by Bruce Berrien, Creative Commons: Attribution 2.0."][/caption] At the turn of the 21st century, as federal organizations and private corporations were competing against each other in the race to decode the human genome, a number of exhibitions that explored areas where genetic science and visual imagery
- Blog Post
Photos Can Turn Down the Heat
- Date: October 20, 2009
- Creator: Marvin Heiferman
- Description: [caption id="" align="aligncenter" width="350" caption="Natural Gas Fracing, by Melissa Peffs."][/caption] Photography is valued for, among other things, seeing what the human eye cannot. From medical scans to red light cameras to artworks made by image makers offering up new perspectives, photography reminds us that there’s always more to observe than we’re physically able to
- Blog Post
Up In the Air: The New 9/11 Photos
- Date: February 15, 2010
- Creator: Marvin Heiferman
- Description: [caption id="" align="aligncenter" width="403" caption="Untitled, 2001, by Susan Watts, Digital photograph, National Museum of American History, Behring Center, Division of Information Technology and Communications, Courtesy of Susan Watts/New York Daily News, Image No. watts012."][/caption] Given how quickly photographs are spread by the news and social media, we’ve come to
- Blog Post
A Photographer, Not a Terrorist
- Date: March 11, 2010
- Creator: Marvin Heiferman
- Description: Starting last fall, stories started popping up in the British media and online about photographers who’d been stopped by officials empowered to question and search them if they seemed suspicious or might have some links to terrorism.
- Blog Post
The Family of Man, as Told by the Family of Man
- Date: September 20, 2011
- Creator: Marvin Heiferman
- Description: Periodically—given the fleeting nature of life and the ubiquity of photographic imagery—it’s seems like someone’s always trying to hatch another ambitious image-based cultural project to prove that, despite our differences, we’re pretty all much the same.
- Blog Post
Meanwhile, back on earth... A Slideshow
- Date: June 5, 2009
- Creator: Marvin Heiferman
- Description: [caption id="" align="alignleft" width="133" caption="Earth, 1971, Apollo 15, Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum, Center for Earth and Planetary Studies"][/caption] The planets and outer space used to seem far, far away from our lives down on earth. But as this slideshow reveals, by the mid-twentieth century—with Ford Galaxies in our driveways, satellite-shaped barbeque
- Blog Post
When Good People Love Bad Pictures
- Date: August 19, 2009
- Creator: Marvin Heiferman
- Description: [caption id="attachment_1954" align="aligncenter" width="300" caption="Squirrel Kisses, by Flickr user (Alex)."][/caption] It’s summer, so time for a break from serious thoughts about photographs, their meaning and impact. Instead, let’s relax and have a laugh about the pictures that make us laugh. A recent article in the business section of Time magazine describes how Ben
- Blog Post
And the Winner Is . . . Photography!
- Date: October 9, 2009
- Creator: Marvin Heiferman
- Description: [caption id="attachment_2474" align="aligncenter" width="300" caption="Silicon Eye, from the inner core.... the 5 Megapixel CCD sensor that electronically captures the image, by Flickr user jurvetson."][/caption] The Nobel Prize jury recently announced three winners in physics, who’ve been dubbed "the masters of light" for their innovations in the ways photographic images are
- Blog Post
Wish You Were Here?
- Date: December 1, 2009
- Creator: Marvin Heiferman
- Description: [caption id="attachment_3071" align="aligncenter" width="300" caption="Spiral Galaxy Messier 81 (M81), 2003, Spitzer Space Telescope / IRAC, NASA / JPL-Caltech / S. Willner, Harvard-Smithsonian CfA"][/caption] You may in fact be, or just feel like, a big shot down here on earth. But, ever since airborne cameras started to photograph our little planet from above, and once they
- Blog Post
Them Bones
- Date: April 27, 2010
- Creator: Marvin Heiferman
- Description: Look at enough photographs and it’s inevitable that, at some point, you’ll find yourself pondering mortality and photography’s relationship to death. Because the medium so effectively captures fragments of lives, events, and data that have come and gone, you’re always looking at and trying to make sense of something that’s over, finished, part of the past. Writers—particularly
- Blog Post
Here Kitty, Kitty, Kitty
- Date: June 16, 2010
- Creator: Marvin Heiferman
- Description: Since The Bigger Picture began in early 2009, I’ve written a number of posts about what might be called camera traps, situations where cameras are installed to collect evidence of one kind of unusual or unwanted behavior or another. Red light cameras are a controversial example; across the country and on an almost daily basis, local municipalities and motorists argue about