Curio Cabinet / Photo Curio

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

This is one fire we don't want to put out! The 48th annual New York City Pride March kicked off June 24, 2018 and it saw more than just rainbow flags, body paint, and dancing. In the midst of an estimated two million onlookers, New York City Fire Department EMT Trudy Bermudez (shown left) proposed to her girlfriend of one-and-a-half years, paramedic Tayreen Bonilla (shown right). If it isn't obvious already, Bonilla said yes! Bermudez told reporters she'd been planning out the proposal for six months, and worried popping the question during the parade would be cliché (which it's not, of course). Her aim was to drop to one knee on Fifth Avenue and 8th Street, the middle of the parade, but when she and Bonilla neared the historic Stonewall Inn—the site of the Stonewall riots—Bermudez just couldn't help herself. The couple's impassioned elopement had their NYFD friends and throngs of others cheering. Because who needs gold when there's love at the end of this rainbow!
 

Below: more pride month photos, including: a man getting down during the 2018 Boston Pride parade; a pig showing its support for equality; and dancers in the Auckland Pride Parade in New Zealand.
 

Image credit & copyright: Kena Betancur / Getty / Scott Eisen / Daisy Korpics for Fast Company / Fiona Goodall
 

Toxic pollution, negative 60-degree weather, dismal life expectancy—why wouldn't anyone want to live in scenic Norilsk, Russia? Located 250 miles north of the polar circle in Siberia, Norilsk is the world's northernmost city and brags an astonishing population of 175,000, thanks to its booming mining industry. Norilsk Nickel, the largest mining and metallurgical industrial complex in the world, produces 44 percent of the world's palladium and 13 percent of its nickel. But the production comes at a cost: residents report black snow, rivers red with nickel, and "blue fogs" that cause itchy throats. In 2015 alone, Norilsk Nickel pumped over two million tons of pollution into the air, contributing to a radius of barren waste the size of Germany that encircles the city. The company pledged to cut emissions by 15 percent in 2016, but that seems insufficient. Far greater environmental initiatives will be required to bring the "city on the edge of the world" back from the brink of ecological catastrophe.
 

Below: more gloomy photos of Norilsk, Russia.
 

Image credit & copyright: Elena Chernyshova/AFP/Greenpeace
 

Violet! The shrubs are turning violet, Violet! Across Northern America this past week, cities celebrated late spring with Lilac Festivals and purple people parades. One of the photographers who brought her talents to Harvard University's event in Cambridge, Massachusetts, was Mary Kocol, whose effortless-appearing photos belie their unique composition. The above image was likely comprised of a greatly prolonged photo (or set of photos) taken of the lilac bushes throughout the day. The result? In the far horizon are lilac bushes bathed in "golden hour" sunset light. The closer the bushes come to the foreground, the more time has passed, and the darker the flowers become. Creating an artistic color-wheel version of lilacs is one thing, but Kocol has also used a plastic Diana camera to capture dreamy, slightly out of focus views of the perennials. Since the flowers have symbolized love and innocence since the time of the Ancient Greeks, maybe Kocol is really giving us a view of life through lilac-colored glasses?

 

Below: more of Kocol's lilac images. These ones were taken with the Diana toy camera.
 

Image credit & copyright: Mary Kocol
 

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

Care for a piece of fruit? Daniel Gordon's photos, like Clementines, above, have a delicious depth and color that makes us want to take a bite. But the fruit and bowl shown here are actually made of paper. The artist takes images from the internet and constructs elaborate, three-dimensional tableaus, often set against patterned backgrounds, then photographs them. Gordon's work was included in the exhibit, Cut! Paper Play in Contemporary Photography, at the Getty Center in Los Angeles last May. The exhibit featured works by six photographers who manipulate paper in different ways to create hybrid, often surreal images. Gordon's work has been described as a mash-up of sculpture, collage, and photography, and his shapes and colors are influenced by both Cubism, which experiments with perspective, and Fauvism, which emphasizes intense color. Still, Gordon feels most comfortable behind the lens. "Everything I make stems from my initial and continued interest in the medium of photography," he once wrote. So long as the medium keeps bearing fruit, there's no reason for him to stop!
 

Below: Still Life With Cherry Blossoms and Zucchini by Daniel Gordon.
 

Image credit & copyright: Daniel Gordon and the M+B Gallery
 

Behind one of America's greatest political dynasties was the tireless work of a mother: Rose Fitzgerald Kennedy. Pictured above with sons Joseph Jr. and John at Palm Beach, Florida, in 1942. Rose was a stern and somewhat aloof matriarch of the Kennedy family who spoke several languages and taught her children history and Bible lessons. As John and the other boys began their political careers, Rose became an unstoppable force in their campaigns. In John's 1952 race for the Senate in Massachusetts, Rose became a hostess for the "Kennedy teas" and socials for the Democratic Party. In 105 years of living, Rose managed to raise a family of nine children who would go on to become President (John), Attorney General (Robert), Senators (Edward, John, Robert), and the founder of the Special Olympics (Eunice). Of motherhood, Rose once said "I looked on child rearing not only as a work of love and duty but as a profession that was fully as interesting and challenging... and one that demanded the best I could bring to it."
 

Below: more images of Kennedy family vacations. The collection is featured in the 2013 book Rose Kennedy's Family Album, which contained rare and never-before-seen photos of the famous brood.
 

Image credit & copyright: Kennedy Family Collection, John F. Kennedy Library
 

Did someone give these molds a combing? Nature photographer Alison Pollack captured these seemingly-coiffered specimens, or young Stemonitis slimes, while hiking Point Reyes, north of San Francisco, California. Members of the Stemonitis genus appear modest at first before sprouting bioluminescent fruit bodies in their adolescence. The color drains as they mature, and their fruit putrefies into a rusty brown as their supporting threads, or capillitium, acquire a downy texture. Pollack scours decayed logs to document the ephemeral beauty, holding a microscope to bulbous goops and lambent weepings. Most people keep their eyes elevated at flowers and trees (they certainly smell better!), but who can question Pollack's love of slimes? No flower glows as majestically as they do!
 

Below: more of Pollack's slimy and fungal subjects, including Tyromyces chioneus, Comatricha (R), Hemitrichia calyculata (L), and Comb Tooth fungus (Hericium coralloides).
 

Image credit & copyright: Alison Pollack
 

It's Flashback Friday and Public Radio Day! Enjoy this favorite from the Curio Cabinet archives.
 

"Zero Hour Overhangs A Breathless Cosmos." That was the New York Times' headline the morning Jack Dempsey and Georges Carpentier entered the ring on July 2, 1921—the first boxing match to yield over a million dollars in revenue. Pictured above, a crowd of over 10,000 people swarmed the New York Times building in Times Square for updates on the fight. The landmark bout pioneered the concept of sports as mass entertainment, with two variables fueling the hype. First, the rival boxers' contrasting stories: Dempsey, once taken to court and acquitted of skirting the military draft, and Carpentier, the French World War One veteran. The second variable: broadcast radio. The budding realm of radio advertising played up the drama between the boxers, painting Dempsey as the cowardly villain and Carpentier as an international hero. Over 80,000 people stood in attendance for the sold-out fight, hoping to see the Frenchman wallop the draft-dodger. For those unable to scrounge up $50 ($625 in today's currency!) for a ringside ticket, or $5.50 ($70) to sit in the boonies, radio announcers relayed details moment-by-moment for sport's first mass audience. Unfortunately for everyone tuned in, Dempsey floored Carpentier in the fourth round!

 
Below: Dempsey and Carpentier before the fight; Dempsey floors Carpentier in the fourth round.
 

 
Image credit & copyright: above, Old Pics Archive; middle, Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division; below, Box Rec
 

We've heard of taking a boat out fishing before, but these lobster farmers are next level. Lobster Farm by photographer Pham Huy Trung, a recent finalist in the 2018 Drone Awards, shows lobster fishing off of the Hòn Yến coast in Phú Yên Province, Vietnam. Out of thousands of submissions each year, the prize showcases some of the best aerial and drone photos around the world. Aerial photography has been around at least since the 1860s when James Wallace Black photographed Boston from a 2,000-foot elevation. Getting a direct overhead shot like Trung's flattens vertical dimensions and allowing for bright colors and textures, like those of the neon netting and baskets in the deep blue water, to really pop. What does the future hold for drone photography? We're not sure, but we bet drones will keep mapping places in unimaginable ways!

 

Below: more past winners from the Drone Awards, including When the muddy river meets the ocean by Joao Galamba, Bear and Salmon by Roie Galitz, and Sidewalk by Guilherme Pupo.
 

Image credit & copyright: Pham Huy Trung, Joao Galamba, Roie Galitz, Guilherme Pupo, Drone Awards
 

It's no secret that the San Francisco Bay Area housing crisis and tech boom have amplified issues of wealth inequality in the region. A recent study by researchers at the University of California San Francisco called the HOPE-HOME Project has uncovered another frightening aspect of the trend: the drastic rise in poverty for the elderly. In a visual essay entitled "Homelessness After 50," the San Francisco Chronicle profiled three of the participants, including Joe White, a 68-year-old man whose career in food service ended when his leg was injured. For six years, White has been homeless and living in a parking lot in Oakland, no doubt within many of the tent cities that have popped up in the past few years. The weather is unforgiving in the area, and White has to protect his food from rats who've chewed a hole through his tent. According to the UCSF study, over 44 percent of its 350 participants became homeless after the age of 50—a stark reminder of what befalls our most vulnerable citizens when social safety nets are not there to catch and support them through difficult times.

 

Below: more images from the SF Chronicle of Joe White and a UCSF researcher crossing tent cities.
 

Image credit & copyright: San Francisco Chronicle
 

Happy Arbor Day! Enjoy this favorite from the Curio Cabinet archives.
 

Forget fences and "private property" signs. Up in the canopy, it's all about crown shyness. Tree tops avoiding each other has mystified scientists for decades. First noticed in the 1920s, crown shyness has been accounted for in several ways. Some say gaps between trees deter the spread of leaf-eating insects. Others report the distance reduces damage during intense winds and promotes growth of sensitive tree tips. Whatever the cause, the behavior creates stunning visual effects; in this image captured by photographer Dag Peak in Plaza San Martin in Buenos Aires, Argentina, channels of blue sky run between the branches.
 

Below: another example of the mysterious phenomenon "crown shyness."
 

Image credit & copyright: Dag Peak
 

Just another breezy afternoon noodling on the leaf! Photographer Aditya Permana of Yogyakarta, Indonesia, stole this photo of a forest dragon lizard in 2015 after closely observing the critter for over an hour. The reptiles' humanlike repose and fingering give the impression that he's shredding on a chloroplastic guitar. According to Permana, he had to win over the pint-sized rocker's trust before it randomly picked up the leaf to channel its inner Hendrix. Though the image has certainly struck a chord with musicians and animal lovers alike, herpetologists remain skeptical. "Lizards do not lay on their backs and sit up like the one shown in the photo," said Adam D. Leache, an associate professor at the University of Washington. Dragon lizards like this guy tend to hang out in trees, not the ground, so it is possible that Permana posed him. Or maybe Leache doesn't boogie. At any rate, the lizard appears at ease. Now, if only we could hear those tasty licks!
 

Image credit & copyright: Aditya Permana / Mercury Press / Caters
 

Don't mistake those fire masks for fashion accessories. American photographer Lee Miller snapped these two British women as they huddled near a bomb shelter during the Blitz of World War II—when the German Luftwaffe conducted nightly air raids over England. Just how Miller arrived in England is a somber tale. Raped as a seven-year-old, then objectified as a fashion model, Miller later struggled as her innovations in avant-garde photography—such as her and Man Ray's rediscovery of the "pseudo-solarisation" technique—were overshadowed by those of male contemporaries. Unable to join the Army and battle an unjust world with arms, Miller instead became a harrowing war journalist. But confronting the abyss led her down a brutal road; following the frontlines deeper into Nazi Germany, Miller witnessed first hand the atrocities of the Holocaust. Despite seizing the chance to muddy up Hitler's abandoned Munich home (and bathe in the megalomaniac's tub), she returned to the States with severe PTSD. Though she succumbed to alcoholism and faded into obscurity, her son rediscovered over 80,000 of her photos decades later and curated them in the Lee Miller Archives. Give them a look so Miller can finally get the elusive recognition she deserves.
 

Below: more photos by and of Miller, including Irmgard Seefried, Opera singer singing an aria from 'Madame Butterfly' (1945); Lee Miller by David Sherman in Munich Hitler's apartment (1945); and FFI (Forces Francaise de l’Interior) worker, Paris, France (1944).
 

Image credit & copyright: Lee Miller Archives / Imperial War Museum London
 

It's Flashback Friday! Pedal into the weekend with this favorite from the Curio Cabinet archives.
 

Please, no—the bikes, they just keep coming! In 2017, startups all over China pounced on the lucrative bike sharing trend, where pedestrians pay a small amount of money to rent a bicycle for a set amount of time. All the consumer has to do is unlock a GPS-enabled bike with a purchase, ride, and abandon their aluminum mount anywhere they like, be it against a building or in a bush. But there was a major problem: the startups flooded the market with bikes at a pace that far—far—surpassed demand. There are now so many bikes in China that spokes, pedals, and handlebars are clogging the streets. Shown above, a man pedals past a humongous pile of them. By the end of last year, Shanghai alone had 1.5 million bikes (compare that to London's 11,000). Eventually, city legislators had to move in and cap production. Although the treaded tide seems to have passed, there's still a lot of work to be done—countless bikes to be heaped and sent off to graveyards. We're not yanking anyone's chain: look below to see the damage!
 

Below: more shots of China's insane bike surplus, including: a man untangling rope from a heap of bikes; a 10,000-bike pile; and tens of thousands of unridden bikes collecting rust in a field.
 

Image credit & copyright: Reuters / TPG / Getty / Yibo Wang / Shutterstock
 

As one of the 19th century's greatest poets, Walt Whitman once wrote, "I am large, I contain multitudes." It was no secret that Whitman was also a tall and gregarious figure in life, which makes these images of his last years in Camden, New Jersey, all the more poignant. Whitman spent years in and out of newspaper rooms in New York and New Orleans, with a role as a hospital caretaker during the Civil War. He first published his seminal work Leaves of Grass in 1855 and revised at least nine editions. Like many aspects of his life, Whitman's poetry in Leaves of Grass ignored rules about rhyme and meter, subjecting readers to a vibrant and affectionate view of the world (the erotic texts cost Whitman a job in the Boston, Massachusetts, District Attorney's office). After suffering a paralytic stroke in 1873, Whitman once again took to revising Leaves of Grass, noting it would be his final edition. He felt that the work encapsulated all things great and small: "L. of G. at last complete—after 33 y'rs of hackling at it, all times & moods of my life, fair weather & foul, all parts of the land, and peace & war, young & old."

 

Below: another view of Whitman in his house at Camden, New Jersey.
 

Image credit & copyright: Library of Congress
 

The new spring has arrived, and Lake Michigan is breaking the ice. Shown above are tens of thousands of jagged ice shards lining the water-body's southwestern coast, piled up by this year's vernal melt. They were created by the recent polar vortex that terrorized the Midwest last winter; when the warmer temperatures of March arrived, Lake Michigan's 22,404 square miles of water remained so frozen that they didn't thaw in the heat. Instead the resilient panes shattered into these elegant, if not threatening, scales. But as beautiful as the formations are, the U.S. Coast Guard remains sobersided. "No ice is safe ice especially this time of year… [it's] certainly deteriorating and breaking up," says U.S. Coast Guard BMC Grant Heffner. While he seems more worried about potential icefalls, we're just glad no daredevils have inadvertently nicked themselves!
 

Below: more shots of Lake Michigan's ice shards.
 

Image credit & copyright: Joel Bissell/Kalamazoo Gazette - MLive.com via AP
 

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

The Pillars of Creation was quite the creation itself. Taken in April 1995, one of the most widely recognized shots of outer space shows three large columns of dust and gas as they form new stars, a process which can take up to 10 million years. It's a rare shot of a region called the Eagle Nebula that wasn't easy to get; the Hubble Space Telescope's four cameras had to take 32 pictures. Each lens was responsible for one quadrant of what ended up being the final image. The camera used for the top right quadrant captured a magnified view that didn't cover the space around the pillars; hence the black squares in one corner. The images were then spliced together and colorized, with light depicted by different gases assigned its own shade. (Oxygen shows up blue, while hydrogen is green and sulfur red.) To celebrate the 25th anniversary of the Hubble's launch in 1990, astronomers took new, more complete images of the Eagle Nebula. One of the new photos shows the full range of stars produced in this region, 6,500 light years away from Earth. Talk about a dazzling tribute to the original!
 

Below: The Pillars of Creation in 2015; another image from 2015 that highlights all the stars forming in this region.
 

Image credit & copyright: NASA
 

No, this isn't the cover of a cool new outlaw country group; it's the 2011 image of The Brown Sisters, a 40-year photography project by Nicholas Nixon. In 1974, the landscape photographer began taking photos of his wife Bebe and her three sisters. Over the decades, the process has remained the same: the sisters stand in the same order (L to R: Heather, Mimi, Bebe, and Laurie) as an 8x10 view camera set on a tripod and loaded with black and white film captures their visages. Each shot is developed on a silver gelatin print, capturing the quartet's timeless poise again and again. The sisters haven't spoken much to the press on their participation in the process, though they do work with Nixon to decide which image will be the annual sibling portrait. Because even after taking similar photos for 40 years, it's still important to make sure the camera captures one's best angles—and one's sisters' for that matter.
 

Below: more shots of the Brown Sisters. In 1986, Nixon began framing the sisters in much tighter shots, revealing an intimate view of their relationships.
 

Image credit & copyright: Nicholas Nixon, Smithsonian American Art Museum
 

The view looks so much better from up here! Photographer Carla Rhodes snapped Giddyup, Partner, a picture of two disproportionately-sized lizards, while visiting Fernandina Island in the Galápagos. The adorable pairing is one of the finalists in the Natural World category for Smithsonian Magazine's 16th Annual Photo Contest. The tiny reptile on top is a lava lizard, who will reach about 10 inches in length. The larger creature is a marine iguana, which typically grows four to five feet in length. Male lava lizards are notorious show-offs that puff up their brightly-colored scales to appear larger than they really are—which explains why one hitched a ride on the biggest iguana he could find! If Giddyup, Partner ends up winning it all over some of the most breathtaking shots of wildebeests and lemurs, we can rest assured that the little guy will let it go to his head and find an even bigger steed for his royal reign.
 

Below: more finalists from the Smithsonian Magazine Photo Contest, including Divas in Hong Kong, Road to Ruin in Syria, and SOS! Flying Shark! In Poland.
 

Image credit & copyright: Carla Rhodes, Alessandro Sgarito, Christian Werner, Agnieszka Maruszczyk
 

It's Flashback Friday! Enjoy this fun(gi) favorite from the Curio Cabinet archives.
 

When fungi let their hair down in the rain, they get frizzy, too! Roo Vandegrift, a professor at the University of Oregon, recently traveled to an endangered cloud forest in Ecuador to collected some curious fungi. Photographed above by Vandegrift's research partner, Danny Newman, is a member of the parasitic Cordycipitaceae family. This hairy host has latched itself to the underside of a fallen tree, where it receives optimal moisture. According to Vandegrift, this fun-guy is just one of over an estimated three million fungi species in existence—and of them, only a mere 120,000 have been discovered. Vandegrift returned from Ecuador with 350 specimens, and he hopes to encounter some of those undiscovered species among them. He recently concluded a successful crowdfunding campaign to fund their gene sequencing, collecting over four thousand dollars. Stay tuned to see if he and Newman discover any new fungal friends!
 

Below: more bizarre fungi photographed by Danny Newman.
 

Image credit & copyright: Danny Newman
 

We smell a freshly-scented rat! That's because Canadian photographer Diane Özdamar donned this fancy rat with a pink flower as part of her ongoing effort to dispel prejudices against rodents. Fancy rats, a domestic pet species, possess keen intelligence, love rollicking with friends, and are extraordinarily clean; traits that street rats actually exhibit, as well. In fact, the entire genus Rattus is characterized by loyalty, socialization, and profound empathy. The critters even laugh when tickled! Özdamar, who owns up to 14 rats at a time, has fostered these adorable scamps for several years now, working to ensure that they find adoptive homes in a world that sees them as malicious, filthy, and pests. Don't fall for the ignorance! Özdamar's fancy rat photos show that these furry rascals deserve, at the very least, a chance to win over our hearts.
 

Below: more of Özdamar's heart-melting rat photos.
 

Image credit & copyright: Diane Özdamar