Curio Cabinet / Photo Curio

It's Flashback Friday! Orange you glad you get to enjoy this favorite from the Curio Cabinet archives?
 

Who is Cindy Sherman? It can be hard to tell because the celebrated photographer and MacArthur fellow, who turned 63 this week, has taken up many identities in her self-portraits. This striking orange chromogenic print, commissioned but never published by ArtForum magazine, features 27-year-old Sherman parodying a pornographic centerfold pose. Sherman's character, however, is youthfully innocent and hopeful as she clutches a singles newspaper ad. The photo made headlines when it sold for a hefty $3.89 million in 2011—the most expensive photograph ever sold at the time. This tangerine daydreamer is just one of hundreds of personas Sherman has adopted over the years, from the vulnerable and relatable to the theatrically-posed and parabolic. Among her best-known series is Untitled Film Stills, shot between 1977 and 1980 and showcasing female tropes of the '50s and '60s. A century later, Sherman parodied masculine idealizations of classic European paintings. In her latest series, the artist poses herself as aging Hollywood starlets set before elaborate backdrops. "I am trying to make other people recognize something of themselves rather than me," the artist has stated, which may also explain why she leaves her images untitled. In other words, Sherman provides all the props; it's up to us to tell the story.
 
Below: still from Sherman's Untitled Film Stills (1977-1980), where she portrays the female tropes of a sexy librarian, a country girl in the big city, and a cold sophisticate.
 

 
Below: more contemporary work from Sherman including the European painting-inspired Untitled #196 (1989), an everyday woman in Untitled #355 (2000), and an aging Hollywood starlet in Untitled #574 (2016)
 

 
Image credit & copyright: Cindy Sherman
 

Some bees just want to escape the buzz of hive life. Shown above is a mud-flower bee nest created by a member of Osmia avosetta, a solitary species of mason bee that prefers burrows to honeycombs. The autonomy comes with a price, though; females lack the babysitters that beehives accommodate, and must craft these vibrant temperature-controlled chambers to protect their larvae. To create one, an expectant mother first harvests flower petals and hoards them at her nest site, where she burrows about a half-inch into the ground. She then applies overlapping layers of petals and mud to create a shingled nest, and pools it with syrupy pollen and nectar upon which she lays her eggs. Finally, she plugs the chamber with mud. While the exterior hardens, the interior remains humid for the larvae to mature, sip nectar, and wait out harsh winters. It's quite literally a "bed of roses!"
 

Below: a close-up of Osmia avosetta collecting pollen and more looks at the species' colorful nests.
 

Image credit & copyright: Dr. Jerome G Rozen / American Museum of Natural History
 

National Puppy Day is this week, and we're lamenting that the late Jim Buck can't join us in the festivities. According to The New York Times, Buck became the first professional dog walker in 1964, receiving a profile in the famed newspaper entitled "145-Pounder Walks 500 Pounds of Dogs." Unsatisfied with his job as an electronics salesman, Buck quit and began advertising his skills with dog walking and training to his fellow wealthy Upper-East Side New Yorkers. As he became more successful with his pooch venture, Buck could be found walking 30-40 dogs across 25 miles of Manhattan "wearing out the soles of a pair of construction shoes every two weeks." Replacement shoes were no biggie, though: Buck could make up to $500 a week walking the dogs (a hefty $4000 in today's dollars). Buck's business soon employed dozens of walkers tasked with herding hundreds of dogs across New York, with the profits allowing him to form his own training academy, the Jim Buck’s School for Dogs. If dogs could talk, we bet a lot of Buck's pawing pupils would have thanked him for making their lives a little less ruff.

 

Below: more images of Jim Buck walking dogs around New York.
 

Image credit & copyright: New York Times
 

It's Flashback Friday! Enjoy this shoe-in favorite from the Curio Cabinet archives.
 

Forget stocking stuffers because St. Nicholas takes his treats to another item of footwear: our shoes. The tradition of shoe stuffing for St. Nicholas Day in December seems to stem from tales of Saint Nicholas of Myra, a wealthy Christian bishop who was known to secretly disperse his wealth to those in need—sometimes by leaving coins in their boots. As the tales have evolved through the years, so has the tradition; on St. Nicholas Eve, a family member dresses up as the white-bearded saint and, together, the family recounts their good deeds and shortcomings over the past year. When it's time for bed, everyone's shoes are laid out in a row, sometimes with a bit of carrot or grains left for St. Nick's trusty horse. When children and adults wake up the next day, they may find sneakers full of oranges, candy canes, and gold chocolate coins as signs of good fortune in the future. This is one holiday tradition that's sure to put a bit of sugar-pep in our step!
 

Image credit & copyright: Our Sunday Visitor
 

Who needs their face on a Wheaties box when there are perfectly good pies to have on one's face? Outfielder Adam Jones (pictured right) was known for his goofy antics in the Baltimore Orioles baseball dugout, most prominently the pies-to-the-face he dealt teammates like Joey Rickard here. Jones' jokes may have made for some of the silliest moments in sports photography, but he was hardly the first to begin the tradition. Pieing teammates who have completed walk-off runs to win the game in the bottom of the final inning has been a baseball tradition for decades—though Jones extended the celebrations to no-hitter pitchers and other difficult plays. He originally used shaving cream instead of pie filling, like many other players, but the grooming substance frequently inflamed eyes. His pies soon became the real deal as he partnered with Dangerously Delicious Pies for two provided desserts per game, and crust and cream were seen flying off his fellow players' faces. In 2016, the Orioles banned pies-to-the-face for safety reasons (and likely frustration with the joke), though it only took one game for Jones to disobey the rule. Old habits sure do pie hard!
 

Below: Jones pieing more of his fellow Orioles including Yefry Ramírez and Chris Davis, and running into a taste of his own pastry medicine.
 

Image credit & copyright: Getty Images, Baltimore Sun, Movie TV Tech Geeks
 

Why so glum—or should we say, why snow glum? Photographer Ignacio Palacios captured this moody image at Riisitunturi National Park in Lapland, Finland, which won him the Snow & Ice Award in the recently-announced 2018 International Landscape Photographer of the Year contest. In the depths of winter, Riisitunturi sees temperatures of -18 degrees Fahrenheit and snow that sheathes the local spruces. Some of the trees bend over with the weight of snow, resulting in an eerie landscape dotted with curved vertical masses. But for Palacios, the view hit home in a personal way: while running a photography workshop in the park, he found two trees that formed the shape of a curved heart. Having been through a divorce recently, Palacios found solace in the visual metaphor—which gives us a new way of appreciating how calming a walk in the woods can be, even in these conditions.
 

Below: Palacios' Heartbroken image, more winners from the 2018 International Landscape Photographer Of The Year contest: Twisted Forest by Adam Gibbs, and Autumnal Abstract by Paul Marcellini.
 

Image credit & copyright: Ignacio Palacios
 

It's Flashback Friday and International Women’s Day! Enjoy this favorite from the Curio Cabinet archives.
 

They united in common purpose—and ignited a powerful backlash. As this image shows, spirits were high as women from around the country gathered for the National Women's Conference in Houston 42 years ago. The goal of the November1977 conference was to promote equal rights for women in all sectors of society. Led by U.S. Representative Bella Abzug, participants included First Ladies Rosalynn Carter, Betty Ford, and Lady Bird Johnson; and feminist icons Gloria Steinem and Betty Friedan. They had reason to be optimistic: at the time, both political parties expressed support for women's rights, and passage of the Equal Rights Amendment (ERA)—then just three states from ratification—seemed certain. But the conference sparked a counter-movement right next door. On the other side of Houston, anti-feminist activist Phyllis Schlafly had organized a rally against the ERA. Schlafly, a standard bearer for cultural conservatism, considered feminism a threat to women's traditional roles and her fierce campaign against the ERA finally helped defeat it in 1982. Contemporary historians credit Schlafly with fueling a conservative groundswell that is still shaping our political landscape today—which is why Gloria Steinem called the 1977 conference "the most important event nobody knows about."
 

Below: Phyllis Schlafly (center) and other anti-ERA protesters.
 

Image credit & copyright: Smithsonian Magazine; bottom: New York Times
 

Quick! Summon the power of Pine-Sol! Inhabitants of the American Great Plains witnessed the dreadful scene shown above on the afternoon of April 14, 1935—a day now known as "Black Sunday." The plains-folk, already laboring to sweep up loose dust caused by poor soil conservation methods, had just gotten out of church when they saw in the horizon "the Red Sea closing in on the Israel children." A 1,000-mile-long cloud of dust blew across the central U.S. as fast as 100 miles per hour, flogging farmlands with 300,000 tons of ballistic dust. "You couldn't see the street lights," recounted a Dodge City, Kansas, native who watched his home get engulfed. "It rolled over and over and over and over and over when it came in," another witness said, "and it was coal black." The human-made disaster was caused by the removal of native grasses, which had long anchored powdery topsoil; the impact of the storm, which included mass destruction of property and livestock, as well as widespread blindness, lead to more precautionary farming techniques. Because if at first you don't succeed, dust yourself off and try again.
 

Below: more photos of the "Black Sunday" dust storm, including the enveloping of Spearman, Texas; girls attempting to pump water in Springfield, Colorado (March 1935); and Coloradans using a towel as a dust mask for their horse.
 

Image credit & copyright: Associated Press / U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration
 

Hail to the Krewe of Alla-King, baby. One of the longstanding traditions of Mardi Gras in the U.S. has been the presence of Kings and Queens of krewes (pronounced "crews"), or social organizations which throw parades or balls for Fat Tuesday. The above photo, taken in 1959, shows that year's star-bedecked King Alla, who represented the ALgiers, LouisianA (hence the name Alla) group. Before going co-ed in 2014, the Alla krewe was an all-male group. Indeed, when Mardi Gras parades first began in 1857 in New Orleans, many of the krewes were run by affluent and elite men and were segregated. This lead to formations of groups specifically for women (Krewe of Iris), Native Americans (Creole Wild West tribe), Italian-Americans (Virgilians), and African-Americans (Zulu Social Aid and Pleasure Club). By the 1960s, the "superkrewe" Bacchus allowed general public members to join, effectively creating an all-inclusive krewe. These days, Mardi Gras in NOLA feels like a party where everyone's invited!
 

Below: Jazz great Louis Armstrong (second from left) rides a float as the King of the Zulus in 1949.
 

Image credit & copyright: Mardi Gras, NOLA
 

It's Flashback Friday! Enjoy this favorite from the Curio Cabinet archives.
 

If there's anyone who can bring out the "mystical visions and cosmic vibrations" during a photo shoot, it's Allen Ginsberg. In 1994, British photographer Nigel Parry took his camera lens to one of America's most celebrated poets—though, it took years for Ginsberg's work to be considered so. Ginsberg initially read his unadulterated confessional poem Howl on October 7, 1955, at the Six Gallery in San Francisco. The reading introduced the world to the oft-imitated opening, "I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness, starving hysterical naked..." and it elevated Ginsberg's brilliant and vulgar voice as a beat counterculture icon. Through obscenity trials and literary canonization, Howl remains a touchstone of '60s counterculture; Ginsberg also noted how he used the work to come to terms with his homosexuality at a time when it was considered cause for institutionalization. That Ginsberg seems so tranquil holding a daisy is evidence of wisdom imparted by his prior, impassioned, and grief-ridden Howl days.

 

Image credit & copyright: Nigel Parry/Weiss Katz Gallery
 

Classy, timeless—these aren't style qualities one might necessarily associate with the all-jean "Canadian tuxedo" outfit. Its origins, however, prove it was always a statement suit. The story goes that singer Bing Crosby, pictured above, was a fan of Levi's jeans and wore them on a hunting trip to Canada in 1951. When he attempted to check into a hotel, the desk clerk refused to rent him a room as jeans were considered too uncouth for their fine establishment. Crosby was later recognized by the bellhop and given a room, though the incident would make the news regardless. In response to the hotel's policy, Levi Strauss & Company created a double-breasted, denim tuxedo jacket for Crosby which they presented to him during a ceremony where he became the honorary mayor of Elko, Nevada. Beyond Crosby's dapper days in his jean suit, the Canadian tux hit peak rugged appeal in the '70s with musicians like Bob Marley and the Eagles rockin' the look. What's next for the Canadian tux? Perhaps all-jean accessories like denim-beaded bracelets, denim chukka boots, or jean scrunchies for man buns!

 

Below: more famous Canadian tuxes throughout time, including actor Alec Baldwin, rocking the '70s look, and the infamous 2001 American Music Awards outfits worn by pop singers Britney Spears and Justin Timberlake.
 

Image credit & copyright: Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, Tops Images, US Weekly
 

Some lessons are destined to be learned the hard way; others may be taught through stories. The above photo is a strikingly lit recreation of the Odzala-Kokoua folktale of "The Mole and the Sun." Mole's mother is ill and the medical seer (in light blue) tells him she'll recover if his friend, the sun, can orbit the earth in the opposite direction (it can't). This tale and many others are captured in the new book Congo Tales: Told By the People of Mbomo, a collection of fables reenacted by locals and shot by fine art photographer Pieter Henket. The project was initiated by Dutch film producer Eva Vonk as a way of preserving the cultural and environmental ecosystems at the second-largest tropical rainforest in the world, the Congo Basin in Central Africa. 24 myths in total were collected from local tribes' oral traditions, which were later translated into English, French, and the Bantu language Lingala for the book. The results offer rich oral histories and folklore never collected before—and hopefully never to be forgotten.
 

Below: more images from Congo Tales: a tragic tale of sisters not listening to their mother; children posed as fish eggs in "The Story of the Little Fish and the Crocodile"; the woman who is banished to the moon for working on a day when it was forbidden.
 

Image credit & copyright: Pieter Henket
 

It's Flashback Friday. Walk, run… enjoy this favorite from the Curio Cabinet archives!
 

Nobody puts baby in a corner. Not even Boston Marathon race director Jock Semple, seen here trying to rip off Kathrine Switzer's race bib during the 1967 race. Thanks to a screening oversight, Switzer had successfully obtained an official bib into the male-only competition after being told she was "too fragile" to complete the 26.2-mile course. Moments after this image was taken, her boyfriend (in dark shorts, far right) pushed Semple to the ground; Switzer then "ran like hell" to become the first female with a bib to finish the world's most famous marathon, 4 hours and 20 minutes after she'd started. (She'd drop that time to 2:51:37 seven years later—about an hour and a half faster than the current average male time.) Even still, it took five more years for women to be officially allowed to run in the event. Nowadays, they make up nearly half of the Boston Marathon's participants. On the 50th anniversary of her landmark performance in 2017, 70-year-old Switzer ran Boston again for the first time in four decades. As an additional commemoration, the Boston Athletic Association announced they would officially be retiring her iconic bib number, #261.

 
Below: Switzer and Semple, who made peace with having women entrants to the event, posing before the 1973 Boston Marathon.
 

 
Image credit & copyright: WBUR/Runner's World
 

However poignant the above scene may be, it wasn't intended to serve as social commentary. African-American photographer Roy DeCarava snapped Graduation to simply capture a moment of beauty: a Harlem Cinderella, if you will, hoisting her dress as she maneuvers a disadvantaged life in 1949. Unlike the photographer's black contemporaries, who found themselves pigeonholed by white critics as documentarians of ghettos and suffering, DeCarava championed subjective beauty and creative expression as rebuttals to dominant European perceptions of beauty. Through this lens, DeCarava freed himself to approach his art in the way many white photographers do: with aesthetic appreciation free of societal constraints and expectations. The resulting Graduation shows that a black woman raised in poverty can be just as stunning as a woman born and raised with a storied pedigree, ensconced in comforts and luxury.
 

Below: more photos by DeCarava, including Coltrane on soprano (1963).
 

Image credit & copyright: The Estate of Roy DeCarava / David Zwirner
 

Paramount Theater and chill? The grandiloquent Oakland, California, art deco theater is just one of dozens of locations recalling Hollywood nostalgia in Stephan Zaubitzer's Cinémas series. In 2003, Zaubitzer began photographing the big and beautiful, the small locales, and the unfinished parking lots that function as movie cinemas around the world. With the advent of internet streaming services at home, Zaubitzer says people are losing these community locations of the last century, and some of the magic of gathering to watch the latest and greatest of Hollywood (or Bollywood) storytelling. "I started the project in West Africa where, with the exception of Burkina Faso, nearly every country has seen its cinemas close down one after the other." Many of Zaubitzer's photos were taken using large format view cameras—adding to the nostalgic look and feel of these old places. We know there's nothing quite like a cozy chair and the convenience of watching movies at home, but maybe getting dressed to go to the theater could become the newest Oscar party craze?

 

Below: more from Zaubitzer's Cinémas series, including Liberty, Mumbai, India, the Grand Lake Theater, Oakland, California, and an outdoor theater in Rio, Alexandria, Egypt.
 

Image credit & copyright: Stephan Zaubitzer
 

It's Flashback Friday! Enjoy this favorite from the Curio Cabinet archives in honor of Presidents’ Day Weekend.
 

Former President Barack Obama once described this moment as the "longest 40 minutes of my life." Chief Official White House Photographer Pete Souza recognized it as a moment that would change the world. The Situation Room, taken by Souza on May 1, 2011, marked the end of a decade-long hunt for Osama Bin Laden. It instantly became a historically-defining photograph and, in true internet-age form, meme fodder. It isn't hard to see how Souza, who also held the same position under President Reagan, gained the trust of the national security staff; he portrayed the off-the-cuff reactions of his extraordinary subjects with the same fine eye he took to more formal affairs. Among the two million images Souza snapped during the Obama administration are moments like the former president caught in Spider-Man's web, jogging with First Dog Bo, and playfully tipping the scales during a visit to the University of Texas in Austin. During his tenure, Souza's motto could have easily been "ask not what your country can do for you, but what your camera can do for your country!"
 

Below: more photos from Pete Souza's tenure as Chief Official White House Photographer to President Obama.
 

Image credit & copyright: Pete Souza
 

For many people, Valentine's Day will be celebrated with flowers, cards, and candies; for those in Ghana, February 14th will be a day to celebrate their main export on Chocolate Day. In the above picture, the bisected cacao fruit shows off the raw cocoa beans which, when fermented and dried, are the source of chocolate for candies, drinks, and other cocoa-related products. Cacao plants were originally brought to Ghana in the 19th century by Dutch missionaries, though it was agriculturalist Tetteh Quarshie in 1879 who was responsible for the widespread cultivation of the plant. Several different regions in Ghana now grow and harvest the plant, with the government establishing a Ghana Cocoa Board (COCOBOD) in 1947 as the agency overseeing the industry's development. Chocolate Day was established in 2005 to honor the crop's legacy in the country, with local chocolatiers taking part in competitions and educational events taking place across the nation, including tourist trips to Quarshie's original cacao farm in Eastern Ghana. The U.S. may not have as rich of history with cacao crops, but that isn't stopping us from celebrating Chocolate Day in our own way!  

Image credit & copyright: Business Recorder
 

It takes two to tango, but three's a dance party. Captured by photographer Duncan Murrell, Devil Ray Ballet recently took Best of Show in the seventh annual Ocean Art Underwater Photo Competition. It depicts two male devil rays simultaneously performing courtship rituals, while a flattered female dances amongst them in a vortex of shimmering wings, affection, and fishy hormones. Murrell's perfect timing and sensitive angling, which shows the tryst in ambient lighting, helped the self-described compulsive adventurer top the most competitive year in the contest's history. Thousands of submissions arrived from 70 countries across 16 categories, including the freshly-added Underwater Art category, which allows undersea photographers unprecedented room for creative expression. Over $80,000 in prizes were awarded to this year's contestants by the organizer of the event, the Underwater Photography Guide publication, as well as a vacation to the Solomon Islands and diving trips in Indonesia. Generous awards like these are just another way to give visibility to aquatic life and environments in an age when conservation efforts are vital to our oceans' health. Here's to keeping our eyes on deepsea beauties, and maintaining our efforts to preserve them for future generations.
 

Below: more finalists from the Ocean Art Underwater Photo Competition, including Smile of a Friend by Antonio Pastrana, Paddle Boarders Sunset by Grant Thomas, and Mangrove by Yen-Yi Lee.
 

Image credit & copyright: Duncan Murrell / Antonio Pastrana / Grant Thomas / Yen-Yi Lee
 

It's Flashback Friday! Enjoy this favorite from the Curio Cabinet archives in honor of Boy Scouts Day. (Kennedy and Armstrong were both scouts!)
 

1961 marked another rough year for America in the Space Race. The Soviets, having already launched the first satellite into orbit, Sputnik, also placed the first man in orbit, cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin. Meanwhile, America's attempt to do the same with astronaut Alan Shepard failed. But the tide of the cosmic rivalry was about to turn, thanks to the eloquent words of one man. On May 25, 1961, President John F. Kennedy took the podium at a special joint session of Congress to announce that America would achieve a lunar landing by 1970. Not only would Kennedy restore the space program's budget, he'd bolster it. At a follow-up speech at Rice University, he elaborated further: "We choose to go to the moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard." Kennedy's rallying cry united Americans and fostered hope for a better future. And although the following Vietnam War and a string of assassinations—including that of JFK, himself—would challenge national unity and focus around the Space Race, Kennedy's vision was actualized: On July 20, 1969, Neil Armstrong became the first human to step on the moon, besting Kennedy's deadline by five months.
 

Image credit & copyright: NASA
 

Here comes the sun... or, at least, solarized photos of the Beatles. In 1967, iconic American photographer Richard Avedon had the chance to photograph the Fab Four in what would become promotional materials for their new psychedelic phase in music. Primarily known for his stark black-and-white portraiture, Avedon wasted no time flexing his unseen talents. Two main sets of Beatles portraits were taken on that date: a black-and-white set and the promos, which would feature each bandmate paired with symbolic items representative of their characters, such as Lennon's hypnotic glasses and Starr's peaceful dove. The final four images use a solarized development technique where a print is halfway developed, briefly exposed to light, then continued in the development process. The results are half-negative, half-positive images which play with light and shadows in artistic ways. The images were then layered with colors in preparation for their debut in January 1968's Look magazine. The Beatles would sit for countless photographers over their years together, but none so readily captured both the band and the photographer at the height of their powers.

 

Below: a different view of Paul McCartney's final Avedon shot, and an alternate set of black and white images of the Fab Four, which would be edited together as a single "Mount Rushmore" image and reprinted on subsequent Beatles collections albums in the '70s.
 

Image credit & copyright: The Richard Avedon Foundation