Curio Cabinet / Photo Curio

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

This 'bot is ready to rumble! In 2015, California-based tech startup Megabots, Inc. challenged Japan's Suidobashi Heavy Industries to a giant humanoid mech battle, and in October 2017, the two design teams finally settled the score. Pictured above is the press release photo of Megabots' red, white, and blue "Eagle Prime" in Japan on the day of the brawl. Standing awkwardly at a height of 16 feet and weighing in at 12 tons, the mech suit is an exemplar of screaming American patriotism: its right shoulder is even molded in the likeness of a bald eagle. Suidobashi's less gaudy mech, KURATAS, weighed in at a third of Eagle Prime's weight; it was no surprise then, that Eagle Prime defeated KURATAS with a massive chainsaw attachment. But the victory was overshadowed by controversy: MegaBots' co-founder Matt Oehrlein recently admitted to suspicious journalists that the fight took course over several days of stop-and-go filming. Needless to say, techies and robo-fanatics didn't take the news well, especially considering the fight was edited like a reality tv show. Either way, it's pretty comical watching these two unwieldy titans wallop one another!
 

Below: KURATAS KOs Iron Glory, Eagle Prime's prototype, in an undercard bout; Eagle Prime swats KURATAS' drone out of the air; video of the fight.
 

Image credit & copyright: Michael Mauldin / MegaBots Inc. / Reuters
 

A picture is worth a thousand words, or in the case of the above photo, a thousand retweets. Shot in 1894 by photographer George W. Bretz, the image shows a young Kiowa tribe girl named O-o-dee. What's making the photo go viral isn't just the buckskin clothing and elk-tooth jewelry of the Black Hills South Dakota tribe; no, it's the rare sight of a smiling subject in a 19th-century photo. At the time, sitting for a photograph often took several minutes because of lengthy exposure time, and a smile could have easily blurred an otherwise presentable visage. Likewise, a lack of access to adequate dental care left many people with less-than-pearly whites to flash at the camera. Bretz's informal style and O-o-dee's cheery look combine to make this pic seem as if it might have been taken with an Instagram filter rather than exposed on an old-timey glass plate. It seems like even a hundred years ago, a photogenic smile could brighten up anyone's day!
 

Image credit & copyright: Smithsonian Institute
 

Somebody just harvested a fresh new way to print photos! Russell Marx, an amateur photographer working on their PhD in neuroscience, has invented a technique that allows photos to be printed onto algae. The above (dried) algae "selfie", which shows Marx staring down at the camera in their hands, is entirely contained in a petri dish. It is so detailed that viewers can even make out the floral pattern of Marx's shirt and individual strands of hair. How does Marx create these incredible images? First, a photo negative is placed over a petri dish of Chlorella vulgaris, a species of algae that sinks in water; then light is filtered through the negative. The parts of the algae exposed to the most light darken, while areas exposed to less sunlight remain lighter. Each of Marx's images seamlessly melds art, photography, and biology. You could say Marx is growing their own success!
 

Below: another of Marx's algae photos, and a glimpse of their setup.
 

Image credit & copyright: Russell Marx
 

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

Beauty products make ugly byproducts. Photographer Eleanor Ryder set out to capture magnified images of these often-forgotten pollutants, and was awarded third place last month in the Environmental Issues category of National Geographic's Nature Photographer of the Year contest in 2017. The plastic particles take the form of exfoliants, lengthening fibers, glitter, and other "enhancers" in personal care products. They may look transparent and harmless here, but these particles contribute up to 236 tons of additional plastic waste to oceans. Their path to the sea starts when we wash products off our bodies or ingest them, as with lip gloss. We're not sure which part is more disturbing: that many of us are unknowingly noshing on plastic waste, or that this is yet another way that humans are polluting the environment. Microplastic debris may be out of sight, but they shouldn't be out of mind.
 
Image credit & copyright: Eleanor Ryder
 

Hands down, Sidney Poitier is one of the greatest actors of all time and a class act. He made a career of making history, like when he became one of the first black actors to put his signature and handprints outside Grauman's Chinese Theatre in Hollywood, California, on this day in 1967. In the black and white photo above, Poitier wears a suit and flashes his famous smile while kneeling to press his hands into the wet cement. Raised in the Bahamas, Poitier moved to New York when he was 16 to pursue a career in acting. He went on to become the first black actor to be nominated and win an Academy Award for Best Actor. In 1967, he starred in three critically-acclaimed movies that famously dealt with racism and are considered defining films of the 1960s: To Sir with Love, Guess Who's Coming to Dinner, and In the Heat of the Night. Eventually, Portier retired from acting and directed several successful films. In 1974, he was knighted by Queen Elizabeth II, and in 2009, he received the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the highest civilian award in the United States. It would be a gross understatement to say he deserves a few curtain calls!
 

Below: a 2014 interview in which Portier discusses his career and life.
 

Image credit & copyright: GettyImages/Hulton Archive
 

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

Marie Antoinette's elaborate rococo fashion would look lavish on anybody, but for photographer Fabiola Jean-Louis, placing certain bodies in the dresses opens new dialogues on 18th-century history. For her series Rewriting History: Paper Gowns and Photographs, Jean-Louis placed African-American women in painted paper gowns, made to look like expensive tailored outfits, and posed them in stately positions befitting portraits of European royalty. Beyond the dresses lending voluminous, painterly-qualities to the images, many of the photos in the series also feature unmistakeable iconography of colonialism and slavery. The above image, entitled Marie Antoinette is Dead, features black dolls and voodoo trinkets in what would have been fetishized exoticism of African cultures. "The series speaks to the shocking treatment of Blacks throughout history and the trauma inflicted on their bodies as juxtaposed with the abstract idea of black freedom," Jean-Louis once wrote. If there is any kind of silver lining to these troubling images, it is that Jean-Louis is both recognizing a traumatic past inflicted on black bodies, and the idea that a future where colonialist narratives do not control the fates of every race, gender, religion, etc. is a hopeful one.

 

Below: more images from Fabiola Jean-Louis' Rewriting History: Paper Gowns and Photographs, including Madame Leroy, They'll Say We Enjoyed It, and Madame Beauvoir's Painting.
 

Image credit & copyright: Fabiola Jean-Louis
 

Don't worry, this isn't a scene from Midsommar! Ivana Kupala Night is a much happier celebration held every year in parts of Russia, Ukraine, Belarus, and Poland. It celebrates the summer solstice, which falls on June 21 this year. In the photo above, a young woman wears an intricately woven crown of wildflowers and a white dress, symbolizing purity. A bonfire burns bright and tall behind her as a crowd looks on. Along with feasting on traditional food, bonfire jumping is a big part of this celebration (supposedly if a guy and a girl jump over together, they will get married). At night, flower wreaths are placed in nearby rivers as an offering to ancestors. The festival's origins are a tad complicated: Kupala was an ancient pagan summer celebration before the Orthodox feast of John the Baptist took its place in many parts of the world. Over time, the two celebrations mixed together, becoming the modern Ivana Kupala night. Hey, the more celebrations the merrier!
 

Below: more images from Ivana Kupala celebrations.

 

Image credit & copyright: Vasily Fedosenko / Reuters
 

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

Marrying a best friend wasn't such a hard choice for Japanese couple Tsuyoshi and Tomi Seki, otherwise known by their nicknames, Bon and Pon. The pair has been happily married for 38 years, and take selfies everyday to show off their adorably coordinated outfits. Whether it's bright colors, sensible shoes, neatly coiffed hair, or a touch of the perfect red lip on Pon, the pair always looks sleek and put together in colorful essentials. They were initially self-conscious about matching each other in dress, but now show themselves loud and proud to the public. In fact, it was only in 2018 that their daughter posted photos of their matching outfits, and encouraged the two to start their own viral Instagram account. After countless online magazine features on the two, they've begun to write books and design their own clothing line with the Japanese department store Isetan Mitsukoshi—further proof that the couple who stays together slays together.
 

Below: more images of the stylish couple.
 

Image credit & copyright: bonpon511
 

Here's one robot who can "Exterminate!" infections to its circuits' content. In Chennai, India, Coronavirus-shaped robots have been deployed to sanitize a containment zone. These bots are covered in fake green peplomer (a protein spike-shape on a virus) and they hold up to eight gallons of disinfectant. They were designed by artist B. Gowtham, who has also made pink COVID-shaped police helmets to encourage people to stay home. Gowtham's bots were dispersed in an effort to minimize human contact: India has increasingly been turning to artificial intelligence to aid medical efforts and reduce the spread of the highly contagious SARS-CoV-2 virus. For example, in Tamil Nadu, Zafi Medic robots were originally programmed as educational devices, though they have been reprogrammed to deliver food, medicine, and other necessities to COVID patients. If the Zafi Medic and Gowtham bots are any indication, India has its best and brightest on the job of combating COVID!
 

Below: an officer in India wearing a covid-inspired hat designed by B. Gowtham.
 

Image credit & copyright: Arun Sankar / AFP / Getty Images, Jessie Yeung, CNN
 

Finally, we can look at the sun without harming our eyes! Amateur astrophotographer Andrew McCarthy, whose composite photos of the moon (images created by combining multiple photographs) recently went viral, has also released detailed photos of the sun. The images, taken last summer from his own backyard, allow viewers to see not only the sun's fiery photosphere (it's visible surface) but also a large solar prominence—a cloud of superheated, gaseous plasma flares held in place by the sun's magnetic field. To capture the incredible bright oranges textures and purple shades, McCarthy used a Solar Max III telescope with solar filters, a monochrome camera (which offers superior detail), and an equatorial mount. In an interview with Format, McCarthy explained that his photos are meant to help people see the normally unseeable. "We see the Earth every day and take it for granted," he said. "My goal is to never take the beauty of our sky for granted, and teach others to appreciate it as well by showing it to them in a new way!" Now there's an out of this world goal!
 

Below: Another of McCarthy's sun photos.
 

Image credit & copyright: Andrew McCarthy
 

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

Here's a tradition that's sure to brighten anyone's day. The woman in the above picture is lighting clay lamps in Colombo, Sri Lanka for a religious ceremony associated with Diwali, the Hindu festival of lights. A Hindu may arrange these candles in a row in front of their homes, in a symbolic gesture of letting in light and banishing evil. Called deepa, these rows give the holiday its name. Across India, the origin story of Diwali takes on various incarnations, with a prominent northern story being that of King Rama's return to Ayodhya after defeating Ravana. In any case, the five days of Diwali bear traditions like cleaning the house on the first day, decorating with clay lamps and colored powders called rangoli on the second, and taking part in Lakshmi puja—a prayer and feast devoted to the goddess Lakshmi—on the third day. The fourth day marks the new year (according to the Hindu lunar calendar), and the fifth and final finds brothers visiting married sisters. Sounds like a lot to be joyful about!

 

Below: more Diwali celebrations at Madan Mohan Malviya stadium in Allahabad, India, shopping for fireworks, and a Sikh in Amritstar celebrates the festival, though his religion would mark the day Guru Hargobind Ji, the Sixth Sikh Guru was released from prison.
 

Image credit & copyright: Dinuka Liyanawatte, Verma, Raminder Pal Singh, Narinder Nanu, EPA, AFP, Getty Images, Reuters, Shuttershock
 

That's an unusual way to make a mess in the kitchen! Photographer Patty Carroll's long-running series Anonymous Women has grown particularly popular during the coronavirus pandemic, as we all struggle to make ends meet. In Cooking the Goose, a mannequin falls apart as she tries to cook in her oven, stir with a ladle, and talk on the phone at the same time. She wears powder-pink capri pants, heels, and a sweater, to match her picturesque kitchen full of beautiful vintage appliances. All of Anonymous Women's shots feature similar female mannequins attempting (and failing) to complete household tasks in hyper-perfect domestic settings, to spoof the societal expectations faced by women. But in the isolated tedium of quarantine, Anonymous Women has found a second voice. Speaking directly about her photos' relation to stay-at-home orders, Carroll recently said, "It is hard to ponder larger issues when we are confined to our homes… nevertheless, all of my photographs are about those simple, ordinary, yet overwhelming tasks that we carry out every day." Here's hoping we keep it together better than Carroll's mannequins!
 

Below: two more photos from Carroll's Anonymous Woman series, Pie Eyed and Cleaned Out.
 

Image credit & copyright: Patty Carroll
 

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

Dutch-Angolan artist Keyezua explores disability through her startling and unusual images. The above photograph is part of a painterly series featuring a woman wearing masks Keyezua made with help from a team of disabled men. Keyezua collaborated with people with physical disabilities as a tribute to her late father, whose legs were amputated due to complications from diabetes. Each mask represents one aspect of the artist's experience of losing her father early in life; the mask in the image above features blue and white, colors associated with the Netherlands, the country of Keyezua's childhood. The images—shot in Luanda, Angola, where the artist now lives—portray struggle without "immediately scream[ing] sorrow, loss, and survival," she says. For instance, the beautiful woman in a bright red dress suggests glamour rather than a difficult personal battle like the one that Keyezua's father endured. Inspired by her father's resilience, Keyezua named the series Fortia, a play on "force" or "strength," in his honor. Though her father has passed away, his legacy lives on; the series was featured last year in a South African art gallery, Keyezua's first such exhibition in the country. From loving daughter to global artist!
 

Below: more images in the Fortia series.
 

Image credit & copyright: Keyezua
 

Talk about flower power! These seven million beautiful blooms at Holland's Keukenhof Garden usually draw millions of visitors each year. However, due to the coronavirus pandemic, this year the garden is closed for the first time in over seven decades. Luckily, one photographer, Albert Dros, was allowed into the closed garden. In the photo above, swirls of pink tulips, yellow daffodils and other flowers cascade around trees and along walking paths. Even the empty stone walkways are beautiful, curving like gray streams through the fields of color. The absence of people allowed Dros to take some stunning shots of uninterrupted landscapes. Dros told Bored Panda that "Photographing in broad daylight with the strong sun was a challenge. But forget about the photography for a moment: walking around there all alone, with only the sounds of birds and the incredible smell of all these flowers, is an experience by itself." Still, here's hoping that by next year, the gardens will be safely packed with visitors again!
 

Below: two more of Dros's photos of Holland's Keukenhof Garden.
 

Image credit & copyright: Albert Dros
 

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

Check out this rooster rocking Andy Warhol's iconic wig look! Italian photographers Moreno Monti and Matteo Tranchellini's latest collection, CHICken (chic chickens), captures the glitz and glamor of high-bred fowls. The project has evolved into a 190-page book comprised of 85 high-resolution avian candids. Modeling came so natural to the birds, the photographers merely set them before the camera and let them shake a tailfeather. Hens readily flashed their best flanks, roosters darted their dourest glares, and the bold even showed a little talon for the camera. The breeders who let Monti and Tranchellini borrow the chickens were horrified, commenting that their birds weren't posing to breeder standards; Monti and Tranchellini shrugged them off. The inspiration for their project came in 2013, when the two toured a farm in Milan. There, a hen named Jessicah won their hearts with her very human-like passion for fashion. Monti and Tranchellini have been obsessed with the haughty bearing of these chicken models ever since!
 

Below: a hen with feathers resembling a monarch butterfly; a rooster named Hayden works the dignified philosopher look; two chickens bear all.
 

Image credit & copyright: Moreno Monti and Matteo Tranchellini
 

What an illustrious lady! Shown above is a shot photographer Mathew Brady took of field nurse Clara Barton, who founded the American Red Cross on this day in 1881. She sits like royalty, in a long-sleeved, ruffle-necked gown, clutching her gloves in one hand. Her expression is calm and dignified, indicative of royalty. Barton founded the American Red Cross after years of working as a battlefield nurse, and ran the organization for its first 23 years. Yet Barton wasn't the most famous American to sit for a portrait with Brady. The photographer himself was an icon, known as "the father of photojournalism." He not only captured images of civil war battlefields but portraits of celebrities from Walt Whitman to Daniel Webster. He also took portraits of famous women and black Americans, such as Susan B. Anthony and Frederick Douglass, at a time when marginalized demographics were often overlooked. The best of Brady's portraits were published in an 1850 collection, The Gallery of Illustrious Americans, which sold for $15, (around $450 today). It just goes to show that people have always loved celebrity photos!
 

Below: two more of Brady's Civil-War-era photos, Camp scene showing Company kitchen and Frederick Douglass.
 

Image credit & copyright: U.S. National Archives
 

The wheels in the desert go round and round. The winner of Agora's #Fun2020 photo contest, A Simple Game Played By Children All Over The World, was taken by Vietnamese photographer Tran Tuan Viet. As its title suggests, it shows a group of children playing a simple game—chasing motorcycle tires down sandy dunes in Mui Ne, Vietnam. The children run at full speed, their legs extended mid-leap, trails of sand billowing behind them as they chase the rolling tires. According to Viet, children in the coastal town of Mui Ne don't have the same kinds of toys and luxuries as children in nearby cities, yet they always find ways to have fun. It looks like Viet was on a roll answering the #Fun2020 themed-question "what does fun mean to you?" through photography. With his winnings, he plans to support the Vietnamese COVID-19 fund. Talk about positivity breeding positivity!
 

Below: two more finalist photos from the 2020 Agora's #Fun2020 contest, Fun With My Best Friend by Abu Rizchi and Swing Ride at Chicago Fun Fair by Güzin Mut.
 

Image credit & copyright: Agora/Tran Tuan Viet/Abu Rizchi/Güzin Mut.
 

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

This scarecrow isn't just a bunch of stuffing. According to Peter Mitchell, it's a "friend" with a distinct personality.The Leeds-based photographer's collected these expressive inanimate objects in his book Some Thing Means Everything to Somebody. While the fields of golden flowers may come and go with the seasons, Mitchell has said that his fondness for the scarecrows stems from their steadfast nature and tireless work ethic. In his own words: "They are temporary, they have character, they are not neutral, they have a job to do, they are stuck between heaven and earth, they symbolize and remind us of things, I could go on and on and on." What's more, the simply-sewn dressing and blue bows of this particular field guardian reflects something found in all the scarecrows Mitchell photographs: the distinct personal aesthetic, creativity (or lack thereof), and hand-me-down items of its creator. Making all of them reflections of real people and changing times—not to mention pretty stylish from their heads down to their tomatoes.
 
Below: more images of Mitchell's scarecrows.
 

 
Image credit & copyright: Peter Mitchell
 

Paparazzi have been around a long time! Early 20th-century British photographer Lizzie Caswell Smith, who took a litany of celebrity photos, is a fine example. Smith's above photo of nursing icon Florence Nightingale, who was born on this day in 1820, is one of the most unique she ever took. Usually, Smith photographed actors and politicians in her professional studio, yet the above photo was taken in Nightingale's home in London, in 1910. Nightingale is around 90 years old, silver-haired, and reclining in her large bed with her legs covered. She gazes into the distance, past a vase of flowers by her bedside, with a peaceful look on her face. It was the last photograph of Nightingale, who died shortly afterward—though the image itself would remain lost for decades, only having been discovered in the early 2000s and sold at auction in 2008. On the back of the photo, Smith wrote that it was "the only photograph I ever took out of studio—I shall never forget the experience." An honor befitting the Lady of the Lamp!
 

Below: two more of Smith's early celebrity photos, actress Maude Fealy and actor Sir Johnston Forbes-Robertson as Hamlet.
 

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

For many of us, this photo may seem more terrifying than tender. But the diver, Christina Zenato, has spent much of her professional life working to protect Caribbean reef sharks, like those shown encircling her here in the waters off the Bahamas. Chinese photographer Fan Ping took the photo, Surrounded, which was named runner-up in 2018's Underwater Photographer of the Year contest. Zenato, a diver and shark behaviorist, wants to convince the public that sharks are not the vicious killing machines portrayed in movies like Jaws and Sharknado. In fact, humans kill 100 million sharks every year, many of them to make the popular Chinese delicacy, shark fin soup. Zenato teaches a shark course to underscore sharks' crucial (and threatened) role in ocean ecosystems, and she's even learned to calm the creatures enough so she can reach into their mouths to remove fishing hooks. No wonder, then, that Zenato is known as the "Shark Whisperer." Still, she is not so besotted with the creatures that she underestimates the sharpness of their teeth. She always dons a diving suit made of tightly-woven steel mesh before jumping in.  

Below: Shark Whisperer by Fan Ping.
 

Image credit & copyright: Fan Ping, UPY; National Geographic