Midway is a photography project by Chris Jordan

“On Midway Atoll, a remote cluster of islands more than 2000 miles from the nearest continent, the detritus of our mass consumption surfaces in an astonishing place: inside the stomachs of thousands of dead baby albatrosses. The nesting chicks are fed lethal quantities of plastic by their parents, who mistake the floating trash for food as they forage over the vast polluted Pacific Ocean.
For me, kneeling over their carcasses is like looking into a macabre mirror. These birds reflect back an appallingly emblematic result of the collective trance of our consumerism and runaway industrial growth. Like the albatross, we first-world humans find ourselves lacking the ability to discern anymore what is nourishing from what is toxic to our lives and our spirits. Choked to death on our waste, the mythical albatross calls upon us to recognize that our greatest challenge lies not out there, but in here.
- Chris Jordan, Seattle, February 2011”

May 15, 2013 by Designsquish

William Miller: “To look into the Gowanus canal is to gaze into the eyes of a corpse. It is murky and clouded over but if you look closely you can see life and light reflected in the mercury, feces and coal tar that drift in the canal like malevolent clouds. This uncomfortable cohabitation is the foundation of a photographic study of the strangely beautiful horror that the canal hosts”

March 21, 2013 by Designsquish

“Eyes as Big as Plates started out as a play on characters and protagonists from Norwegian folklore with the Norwegian photographer Karoline Hjorth. The series has since moved on to exploring the mental landscape of the neighborly and pragmatic Finns. In June 2012 Finnish senior citizens modelled in the wilderness of south and eastern Finland”

- http://riittaikonen.com

March 05, 2013 by Designsquish

Installation by Spencer Tunick

November 02, 2012 by Designsquish

- http://www.tumblr.com/tagged/wilder-mann
- http://www.charlesfreger.com

October 29, 2012 by Designsquish

- http://bellandstar.blogspot.com/2012/05/pollen-seeds-fruit-work-of-rob-kesseler.html

October 07, 2012 by Designsquish

Palisade Head is an immersive 65 x 74-inch print by Minneapolis-based artist Scott Nedrelow. “It’s more like a an actual-size map, but it’s not a useful map — it doesn’t show a large area like satellite maps or blow up a view that could be examined at more of a “honey, I shrunk the kids” level of fascination. it’s just a segment of ground presented actual size on a wall, something that can be ordinarily observed. so there’s a deadpan poetic element, it becomes significant because it doesn’t show anything that can’t already be easily seen”

September 03, 2012 by Designsquish

by Designsquish

- http://www.diphotos.net/JJ/Tarkovskij/Web/li1.htm

August 14, 2012 by Designsquish

by Designsquish

July 14, 2012 by Designsquish

http://johannawallin.tumblr.com/

July 12, 2012 by Designsquish

Photo taken at Brooklyn Botanical Garden during cherry blossom festival.

May 11, 2012 by Designsquish

Photographs by Anne Schwalbe can be seen as an ode to slowness - an ode to nature, light and emptiness.

April 15, 2012 by Designsquish

February 26, 2012 by Designsquish

February 14, 2012 by Designsquish

Underwater world by Alexander Semenov

February 09, 2012 by Designsquish

Summertime? Countryside? Dream? Reality? Childhood? Infinite fields and forests? “A Perfect Day, Elise” are series of photographs by Tereza Vlkova showing young women who seek to transcend the landscape in which they find themselves, levitating as an exaltation.  Tereza Vlkova was born in 1983 in Vsetiy city, the Czech Republic. She graduated from Photography Institute of Opava.

January 27, 2012 by Designsquish

I am happy to share this interview with Matt Anderson, an amazing filmmaker and artist. In fact, Matt has almost completed his very first feature length documentary, Fall and Winter. The film focuses on environmental issues, but interestingly enough the underlying message doesn’t stop with political action to “change the world.” Fall and Winter inspires us to take matters into our own hands, often quite literally by working with our hands. Building our own homes, growing our own food, and other such practices may require us to alter our current world views, but will ultimately help achieve a much more sustainable lifestyle.

Q: What would be a dream come true?
A: To witness an extraordinary stage of evolution in human consciousness. I think this is happening one way or another.

Q: What did you like about growing up in Vancouver?
A: When I was about 6 or 7 we moved from the city to a small, unserviced island off the coast of Vancouver. There were no cars or stores, and all water and power had to be self-contained. I commuted to school every day on our boat. No matter how big the waves were we had to jump into the dinghy and make it to the mainland. I think this gave me a deep love and respect for the forces of Nature, and set the foundation for my values today.

Q: Why/where/when did you decide to make “Fall and Winter”?
A: There really is no beginning point for this film. For years I was fascinated by conspiracies as a modern mythology - a realm of free thought where fantasy and history co-existed in pursuit of meaning and truth. I went to some conspiracy conventions and read stacks of books about the New World Order, UFO’s and ‘hidden history’. Somewhere along the way I began to migrate from asking ‘what if…?’ and towards ‘what is…?’. This lead me to a small conference in the Silicon Valley called ‘Global Catastrophic Risks’ about 3 years ago. 30 scientists were meeting to discuss the myriad of threats facing life on earth, and strategies to mitigate these threats (if possible). I began to understand that what is really happening is more fascinating and important than the realm of conspiracy. I decided that the film had to be about the massive changes occurring on our planet - and the people facing this challenge head on.

Q: What are some things that inspire you?
A: To me, it’s important to be inspired both by positive and negative forces. I am driven by the beauty of Nature, the things that my dear friends create and also by the destructive practices rampant around the globe. I think it’s important to be full of love and also mad as hell!

“Fall & Winter is a documentary that explores the origins and present-day realities of our global crisis to better understand the catastrophic transition we have now entered. Over the past year we’ve traveled 15,000 miles around the country, documenting various aspects of both the collapse and rebirth happening all around us. The film highlights a variety of ways in which individuals are creating innovative, sustainable methods of living in adaptation to their environment, and fostering in their communities a vital transformation in the way we live on this planet.”

WatchFall and Winter previewand remember to donate at their website!

-http://fallwintermovie.com/
-http://fallwintermovie.com/donate.html

July 03, 2011 by Designsquish

Photographs from our trip to Harriman State Park(Upstate New York). Magic macro zoom lens uncovering detail almost invisible to the naked eye…

I love the heart pattern on the dragon fly tail.

Photographs by Paul Gower

by Designsquish

Bloom Magazine launched by one of the most famous trend forecasters, Lidewij Edelkoort.  This blog posting is an excerpt from Bloom Magazine article “Newer flower Children”.  “The flower child is back.  The signs are around us: along with the rise of the musical genre known as freak folk and the nature-espousing counterculture that goes with it, we live at a time of defiance by hair. “

Everywhere you look you see dreadlocks, beards, and fantastical moustaches.  Hair is being employed as a tool of expression and rebellion, an assertion of values that go counter the status quo.

“Over the past several years we’ve seen a re-awakening of responsibility for the environment, a desire to live simpler lives, a revival of community, an appreciation for the handmade, the small-scale and the humble, all symptoms of an urgent realization that it’s time to seriously confront our more serious habits as a species. It’s if the flower-child ethos took a break for fifty years, re-emerging in a more developed form when the world had reached a new pinnacle of self-destructiveness and was particularly in need of its values”

“The flower-child spirit of our time has become a more savvy beast - updated, re-imagined, but familiar.  Could this be the decade where people finally get serious about turning things around?”

June 30, 2011 by Designsquish

Laneways of Oak Bay and Fairfield, Summer 2010. 
(Laneways are narrow alleys behind buildings common in British Columbia, Canada.)

Photographs by Victoria (British Columbia, Canada) artist Ali Bosworth.
-http://www.alibosworth.com/

June 23, 2011 by Designsquish

Fresh poppy seeds - delicious! Beautiful photography by Inmost Light

Above:  Inmost Light

June 08, 2011 by Designsquish

Rainbow Gatherings are temporary intentional communities usually held in outdoor settings, and espousing and practicing ideals of peace, love, harmony, freedom and community, as a consciously expressed alternative to mainstream popular culture, consumerism, capitalism and mass media…Rainbow Gatherings are an expression of a Utopian impulse, combined with bohemianism, hipster and hippie culture, with roots clearly traceable to the 1960’s counterculture. Mainstream society is commonly referred to and viewed as “Babylon”, connoting the participants’ widely held belief that modern lifestyles and systems of government are unhealthy, unsustainable, exploitative and out of harmony with the natural systems of the planet….The first Rainbow Gathering, a four-day event in Colorado in July 1972, was organized by youth counterculture “tribes” based in Northern California and the Pacific Northwest. - wiki

- Rainbow Gathering album on flickr by photographer Benoit Paillé

June 01, 2011 by Designsquish

“I grew up on the countryside where my parents run a plant nursery and a flower shop. {...}  I decided to show nature how I experienced it as a child.”

-http://www.amirafritz.com

May 21, 2011 by Designsquish

Image above: http://www.bloom-magazine.eu

Place flower between 2 sheets of paper to protect the pages of the book. Leave at least 1/8” of pages between pressings, weigh the book down and wait a couple of weeks.

May 15, 2011 by Designsquish

Above:  Tree says hi.

Photos by Israel based photographer Ella Sverdlov

May 12, 2011 by Designsquish

“Desire to Disappear” is a film by Minnesota based artist Alec Soth.  Alec Soth traveled across America looking for people who’ve retreated from society.  Below are some of Alec’s photographs and quotes from his film. 

“This is Alec Soth.  So I am a photographer and the project I am doing deals with the subject of retreating from the world.  That can involve everything from hermits to monks.”

“I think it is something in the culture right now and is, in some ways, preparation for the decline of the American empire.”

“A part of it is a fantasy of having retreat”

“It is not really about running away. It is about the desire to run away.”

Preview: http://www.somewheretodisappearthefilm.com/

May 07, 2011 by Designsquish

Tonatiuh Ambrosetti has been making these stunning photographs of glaciers melting in his home country of Switzerland.

- http://www.tonatiuh.ch

April 20, 2011 by Designsquish

Great blog from Vancouver, BC - http://www.old-chum.com/

April 12, 2011 by Designsquish