Curio Cabinet / Photo Curio
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Surely this kid is too young to be an astronaut! Yet this human fetus does seem to be embarking on a journey through space in Prenatal journey … Foetus 18 weeks, a photo by famous Swedish photographer Lennart Nilsson, who passed away on this day in 2017. It's no wonder that Life magazine put the photo on their cover the same year that it was taken, though the year itself is a little shocking. This incredible photo was taken over 50 years ago, in 1965. At the time, taking such pictures was thought to be impossible. Nilsson managed it by having two endoscope experts create optical tubes with macro lenses that could be inserted into a pregnant woman's body. The image he captured shows a living fetus, still in its amniotic sac, hovering with its feet slightly crossed and its fists clenched over its chest, looking almost anxious. The surrounding blackness, interspersed with flecks of white tissue, evokes the vastness of space. Nilsson's images of human fetuses, both living and not, as well as his other medical photographs, capture the incredible internal worlds of human bodies. It gives new meaning to the phrase "I contain multitudes!"
Below: more of Nilsson's photos of human fetuses.
Image credit & copyright: Lennart Nilsson Photography
Surely this kid is too young to be an astronaut! Yet this human fetus does seem to be embarking on a journey through space in Prenatal journey … Foetus 18 weeks, a photo by famous Swedish photographer Lennart Nilsson, who passed away on this day in 2017. It's no wonder that Life magazine put the photo on their cover the same year that it was taken, though the year itself is a little shocking. This incredible photo was taken over 50 years ago, in 1965. At the time, taking such pictures was thought to be impossible. Nilsson managed it by having two endoscope experts create optical tubes with macro lenses that could be inserted into a pregnant woman's body. The image he captured shows a living fetus, still in its amniotic sac, hovering with its feet slightly crossed and its fists clenched over its chest, looking almost anxious. The surrounding blackness, interspersed with flecks of white tissue, evokes the vastness of space. Nilsson's images of human fetuses, both living and not, as well as his other medical photographs, capture the incredible internal worlds of human bodies. It gives new meaning to the phrase "I contain multitudes!"
Below: more of Nilsson's photos of human fetuses.
Image credit & copyright: Lennart Nilsson Photography
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It's Flashback Friday! Enjoy this favorite from the Curio Cabinet archives.
Move over, 99 bottles of beer on the wall. This impressive pyramid is made up of approximately 1,200 barrels, each containing 330 standard bottles’ worth of beer. So much for the presentation; this huge stack was slated for destruction after the passing of the 18th Amendment, prohibiting the sale of alcohol in the U.S. It wasn’t until this month in 1933, after many barrels like these were destroyed, that the 21st Amendment repealed it. What we can’t wrap our minds around is how on earth a handful of guys in the 1920s managed to build such a gargantuan tower in the first place. And how they all seem to be having the time of their lives hanging out on a volatile structure some eight stories tall. Our best guess is that they each had a generous “last hurrah” swig of liquid courage before completing the task.
Image credit & copyright: Imagno/Austrian Archives/Getty Images
It's Flashback Friday! Enjoy this favorite from the Curio Cabinet archives.
Move over, 99 bottles of beer on the wall. This impressive pyramid is made up of approximately 1,200 barrels, each containing 330 standard bottles’ worth of beer. So much for the presentation; this huge stack was slated for destruction after the passing of the 18th Amendment, prohibiting the sale of alcohol in the U.S. It wasn’t until this month in 1933, after many barrels like these were destroyed, that the 21st Amendment repealed it. What we can’t wrap our minds around is how on earth a handful of guys in the 1920s managed to build such a gargantuan tower in the first place. And how they all seem to be having the time of their lives hanging out on a volatile structure some eight stories tall. Our best guess is that they each had a generous “last hurrah” swig of liquid courage before completing the task.
Image credit & copyright: Imagno/Austrian Archives/Getty Images
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Who needs a "new year, new me" outlook when artist Tom Curtis and his sons Dom and Al are all about the "new year, new anatomy." In a series entitled Things I Have Drawn, Tom manipulates real-life images in Photoshop to resemble his sons' drawings. The results are playfully odd, as creatures like the above giraffe are transformed to have a split tail, wings, a boxy body, stick-figure legs, and eyes on one side of the head. Tom got the idea for the series in 2016 while appreciating the creativity of his sons' childhood drawings. He then posed quite the question to himself: "What [would the] world be like if all the things kids drew were actually real, and it was just us stupid adults that weren't looking hard enough?" For all its wacky delights, Things I Have Drawn has gone viral, and a book was published in 2017 featuring the creatures of the Curtis Family's imaginations. And here we were, just placing our kids' artwork on the refrigerator!
Below: more of the Curtis family's wacky creations.
Image credit & copyright: Things I Have Drawn
Who needs a "new year, new me" outlook when artist Tom Curtis and his sons Dom and Al are all about the "new year, new anatomy." In a series entitled Things I Have Drawn, Tom manipulates real-life images in Photoshop to resemble his sons' drawings. The results are playfully odd, as creatures like the above giraffe are transformed to have a split tail, wings, a boxy body, stick-figure legs, and eyes on one side of the head. Tom got the idea for the series in 2016 while appreciating the creativity of his sons' childhood drawings. He then posed quite the question to himself: "What [would the] world be like if all the things kids drew were actually real, and it was just us stupid adults that weren't looking hard enough?" For all its wacky delights, Things I Have Drawn has gone viral, and a book was published in 2017 featuring the creatures of the Curtis Family's imaginations. And here we were, just placing our kids' artwork on the refrigerator!
Below: more of the Curtis family's wacky creations.
Image credit & copyright: Things I Have Drawn
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It's Flashback Friday! Enjoy this favorite from the Curio Cabinet archives.
A child's work is never done—wait, what? Instead of poring over a puzzle or playing with dolls, these children are hard at work at a Tennessee hosiery mill. Photographer Lewis Wickes Hine took this photo in 1910. At the time, as many as 2 million children were part of the labor force. The U.S. was experiencing an industrial boom, and employers were looking for workers—including small ones who would accept very low wages. Children as young as four worked 12-hour days; many were injured or developed serious health problems. Hine was so disturbed by this abuse that he quit his job and began taking photographs for the National Child Labor Committee. He traveled the country and photographed children laboring in mines, mills, and fields. Hine's images helped fuel a 1938 national law prohibiting the employment of children under 16. Overlooked in his lifetime, Hine is considered a major American photographer today, and he would be gratified to know that contemporary viewers find his photos shocking. Still, according to the United Nations, at least 168 million children around the world are engaged in child labor today. Time to get the kids out of the factory and into the school playground!
Below: This boy lost two fingers in an accident at a textile mill. He was 11 years old at the time.
Image credit & copyright: Lewis Hine, Library of Congress
It's Flashback Friday! Enjoy this favorite from the Curio Cabinet archives.
A child's work is never done—wait, what? Instead of poring over a puzzle or playing with dolls, these children are hard at work at a Tennessee hosiery mill. Photographer Lewis Wickes Hine took this photo in 1910. At the time, as many as 2 million children were part of the labor force. The U.S. was experiencing an industrial boom, and employers were looking for workers—including small ones who would accept very low wages. Children as young as four worked 12-hour days; many were injured or developed serious health problems. Hine was so disturbed by this abuse that he quit his job and began taking photographs for the National Child Labor Committee. He traveled the country and photographed children laboring in mines, mills, and fields. Hine's images helped fuel a 1938 national law prohibiting the employment of children under 16. Overlooked in his lifetime, Hine is considered a major American photographer today, and he would be gratified to know that contemporary viewers find his photos shocking. Still, according to the United Nations, at least 168 million children around the world are engaged in child labor today. Time to get the kids out of the factory and into the school playground!
Below: This boy lost two fingers in an accident at a textile mill. He was 11 years old at the time.
Image credit & copyright: Lewis Hine, Library of Congress
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What a beautiful ball gown… oh wait, that's a fish! Male betta fish are common pets, known for their long, colorful tail fins. Award-winning photographer Andi Abdul Halil has been capturing their unique beauty since 2015, when he noticed how dress-like the fish's tails were. It's easy to see why his recently-finished album of fish photos, appropriately titled Betta Fish, has gone viral. The dark background, in the photo above, creates a perfect contrast to the betta's billowing white fins. The viewer can notice the more subtle colors of the fins—namely the rivulets of soft pinks and iridescent blues. Halil's photos capture not only each betta's fins, but also their individual fishy facial expressions, which sounds like a difficult thing to do. According to Halil, though, his technique is quite simple: "you only need to place a flashgun over a small aquarium and a reflector directly underneath to diffuse the light and trigger." Trust a talented photographer to make capturing such beautiful photos sound like a piece of fishcake.
Below: More of Halil's betta fish photos.
Image credit & copyright: Andi Abdul Halil
What a beautiful ball gown… oh wait, that's a fish! Male betta fish are common pets, known for their long, colorful tail fins. Award-winning photographer Andi Abdul Halil has been capturing their unique beauty since 2015, when he noticed how dress-like the fish's tails were. It's easy to see why his recently-finished album of fish photos, appropriately titled Betta Fish, has gone viral. The dark background, in the photo above, creates a perfect contrast to the betta's billowing white fins. The viewer can notice the more subtle colors of the fins—namely the rivulets of soft pinks and iridescent blues. Halil's photos capture not only each betta's fins, but also their individual fishy facial expressions, which sounds like a difficult thing to do. According to Halil, though, his technique is quite simple: "you only need to place a flashgun over a small aquarium and a reflector directly underneath to diffuse the light and trigger." Trust a talented photographer to make capturing such beautiful photos sound like a piece of fishcake.
Below: More of Halil's betta fish photos.
Image credit & copyright: Andi Abdul Halil
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It looks like the portal to another dimension, or maybe a tunnel straight to ski-heaven. But these halos of light, captured in the Arosa Mountains by Swiss photographer Michael Schneider, aren't actually supernatural. Their appearance is due to both a high amount of direct sunlight and a high concentration of ice crystals, hanging in the air. Each crystal reflects light from two different sides of its central chamber, resulting in a loop, or halo. Capturing one ice halo on camera isn't entirely unusual, but to capture so many at once required perfect conditions and a lot of luck. Schneider, for his part, is happy to have caught this phenomenon on film, even if he doesn't understand every technical aspect of it. On his website he states, "One thing became clear to me on Twitter, my randomly shot picture is awesome - but the explanation of what I really saw on it can only be understood by experts and scientists." Truly a winter wonder!
Below: two slightly different angles on the halo effect captured by Schneider.
Image credit & copyright: Michael Schneider
It looks like the portal to another dimension, or maybe a tunnel straight to ski-heaven. But these halos of light, captured in the Arosa Mountains by Swiss photographer Michael Schneider, aren't actually supernatural. Their appearance is due to both a high amount of direct sunlight and a high concentration of ice crystals, hanging in the air. Each crystal reflects light from two different sides of its central chamber, resulting in a loop, or halo. Capturing one ice halo on camera isn't entirely unusual, but to capture so many at once required perfect conditions and a lot of luck. Schneider, for his part, is happy to have caught this phenomenon on film, even if he doesn't understand every technical aspect of it. On his website he states, "One thing became clear to me on Twitter, my randomly shot picture is awesome - but the explanation of what I really saw on it can only be understood by experts and scientists." Truly a winter wonder!
Below: two slightly different angles on the halo effect captured by Schneider.
Image credit & copyright: Michael Schneider
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It's Flashback Friday! Enjoy this favorite from the Curio Cabinet archives.
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
It's Flashback Friday! Enjoy this favorite from the Curio Cabinet archives.
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
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Playing in the mud isn't just for kids and archaeologists anymore. Washington-based artist Heidi Gustafson has been researching ochre pigments for her Early Futures project, a recent feature in The New York Times. Shown above is a small sampling arranged in color scale; it exhibits some of the iron-rich pigments Gustafson has foraged from the Cascade Mountains near her cabin, as well as ones sent to her from places like Zambia, Russia, and New Zealand. Colors range from the familiar deep reds and oranges to more unusual slates and blues. Gustafson estimates she is in possession of some 400 distinct types of clay pigment, which she started collecting after a dream she had while living in Oakland, California. "I realized that ochre and pigments were at the heart of art and aesthetic experience," Gustafson has said, "Protecting ochre's vast capacities and impact on human creativity, feels like Earth's mandate to me." Early Futures is such a visually stunning and meticulous project, we here at Curious eagerly await the next 400 ochre samples Gustafson collects.
Below: more photos of Gustafson's ochre collection and Early Futures project.
Image credit & copyright: Heidi Gustafson, The New York Times / Kyle Johnson
Playing in the mud isn't just for kids and archaeologists anymore. Washington-based artist Heidi Gustafson has been researching ochre pigments for her Early Futures project, a recent feature in The New York Times. Shown above is a small sampling arranged in color scale; it exhibits some of the iron-rich pigments Gustafson has foraged from the Cascade Mountains near her cabin, as well as ones sent to her from places like Zambia, Russia, and New Zealand. Colors range from the familiar deep reds and oranges to more unusual slates and blues. Gustafson estimates she is in possession of some 400 distinct types of clay pigment, which she started collecting after a dream she had while living in Oakland, California. "I realized that ochre and pigments were at the heart of art and aesthetic experience," Gustafson has said, "Protecting ochre's vast capacities and impact on human creativity, feels like Earth's mandate to me." Early Futures is such a visually stunning and meticulous project, we here at Curious eagerly await the next 400 ochre samples Gustafson collects.
Below: more photos of Gustafson's ochre collection and Early Futures project.
Image credit & copyright: Heidi Gustafson, The New York Times / Kyle Johnson
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It's Flashback Friday! Enjoy this favorite from the Curio Cabinet archives.
Ted Spagna understood shuteye like the back of his hand. In the 1970s and 1980s, the sleep photographer documented dozens of subjects with time-lapse cameras installed over their beds. Featured above is Dr. Allan Hobson, a neurophysiologist at Harvard, alongside his wife in 1977. Hobson and other researchers examined Spagna's photos to confirm the length of the sleep cycle (90 minutes) as well as the fact that most people don't move while dreaming. But they do plenty of shifting around at other points in the night, as the images above show. In one shot, Hobson's pillow is askew and his head precariously close to the edge of the bed. Spagna's pictures have drawn comparisons with
Eadweard Muybridge's shots of animals in motion; both photographers created art that also revealed something about science and behavior. The weirdness of human sleep never ceased to fascinate Spagna, who used himself as his initial subject. "You look into the mirror every day and you think you know yourself," he said in an interview a few years before his death. "I saw in those pictures another self that I didn't know existed." Tomorrow being Sunday, we'll let our other selves hit the snooze button!
Below: Peter & Cat, a series of images taken in 1979 that show a man whose cat jumps onto his bed for a portion of the night; Christian & Otis, taken by Spagna's nephew in 2013.
Image credit & copyright: The Ted Spagna Project and Ron Eldridge / Sleep Snapshots
It's Flashback Friday! Enjoy this favorite from the Curio Cabinet archives.
Ted Spagna understood shuteye like the back of his hand. In the 1970s and 1980s, the sleep photographer documented dozens of subjects with time-lapse cameras installed over their beds. Featured above is Dr. Allan Hobson, a neurophysiologist at Harvard, alongside his wife in 1977. Hobson and other researchers examined Spagna's photos to confirm the length of the sleep cycle (90 minutes) as well as the fact that most people don't move while dreaming. But they do plenty of shifting around at other points in the night, as the images above show. In one shot, Hobson's pillow is askew and his head precariously close to the edge of the bed. Spagna's pictures have drawn comparisons with
Eadweard Muybridge's shots of animals in motion; both photographers created art that also revealed something about science and behavior. The weirdness of human sleep never ceased to fascinate Spagna, who used himself as his initial subject. "You look into the mirror every day and you think you know yourself," he said in an interview a few years before his death. "I saw in those pictures another self that I didn't know existed." Tomorrow being Sunday, we'll let our other selves hit the snooze button!
Below: Peter & Cat, a series of images taken in 1979 that show a man whose cat jumps onto his bed for a portion of the night; Christian & Otis, taken by Spagna's nephew in 2013.
Image credit & copyright: The Ted Spagna Project and Ron Eldridge / Sleep Snapshots
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Welcome to our Top 15 of 2019 countdown! As the year comes to an end, we're looking back at this year's most loved Curios across all categories. Enjoy the walk down memory lane in your entire Curio Cabinet.
Talk about a power couple! Finnish photographer Lassi Rautiainen captured something extraordinary: a friendly relationship between a female gray wolf and a male brown bear. Not only is this friendship heartwarming, it is also unprecedented: according to Rautiainen, a relationship like this, between a wolf and bear, has never been documented before—at least not in Europe. Don't tell that to this duo though, because Rautiainen photographed the pair playing together, sharing food, and sleeping side by side. Both male and female wolves usually stay close to their packs, while male brown bears live solitary lives, outside of mating season. "No one can know exactly why or how the young wolf and bear became friends," Lassi said in an interview, "I think that perhaps they were both alone and they were young and a bit unsure of how to survive alone… it is nice to share rare events in the wild that you would never expect to see." It's a story for the ages—or at least a story of some wild, starcrossed youngsters.
Below: More from Rautiainen's collection of nature photographs.
Image credit & copyright: David Cardelús
Welcome to our Top 15 of 2019 countdown! As the year comes to an end, we're looking back at this year's most loved Curios across all categories. Enjoy the walk down memory lane in your entire Curio Cabinet.
Talk about a power couple! Finnish photographer Lassi Rautiainen captured something extraordinary: a friendly relationship between a female gray wolf and a male brown bear. Not only is this friendship heartwarming, it is also unprecedented: according to Rautiainen, a relationship like this, between a wolf and bear, has never been documented before—at least not in Europe. Don't tell that to this duo though, because Rautiainen photographed the pair playing together, sharing food, and sleeping side by side. Both male and female wolves usually stay close to their packs, while male brown bears live solitary lives, outside of mating season. "No one can know exactly why or how the young wolf and bear became friends," Lassi said in an interview, "I think that perhaps they were both alone and they were young and a bit unsure of how to survive alone… it is nice to share rare events in the wild that you would never expect to see." It's a story for the ages—or at least a story of some wild, starcrossed youngsters.
Below: More from Rautiainen's collection of nature photographs.
Image credit & copyright: David Cardelús
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FREEPhotography Photo CurioFree1 CQ
Welcome to our Top 15 of 2019 countdown! As the year comes to an end, we're looking back at this year's most loved Curios across all categories. Enjoy the walk down memory lane in your entire Curio Cabinet.
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
Welcome to our Top 15 of 2019 countdown! As the year comes to an end, we're looking back at this year's most loved Curios across all categories. Enjoy the walk down memory lane in your entire Curio Cabinet.
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
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FREEPhotography Photo CurioFree1 CQ
Welcome to our Top 15 of 2019 countdown! As the year comes to an end, we're looking back at this year's most loved Curios across all categories. Enjoy the walk down memory lane in your entire Curio Cabinet.
We're celebrating some true heroes who rode trusty steeds on their epic quests for literacy! As part of President Roosevelt's New Deal programs to combat the poverty-inducing effects of the Great Depression, the Pack Horse Library Project began bringing reading materials to eastern Kentuckians in 1934. The librarians rode twice a month on routes up to 120 miles long to circulate books and magazines to reach the Appalachian population, a group estimated to have a 31 percent illiteracy rate at the time. Initially, the program's modest supplies were acquired from local donations. As word spread across the country, dozens more donations came in with one former-Kentuckian in California donating 500 books in honor of his late mother. By the time the program ended in 1943 (replaced three years later with motorized bookmobiles), Pack Horse Librarians were immensely popular in the 57 communities they served. If only we could receive our library check-outs on horseback!
Below: another view of several Pack Horse Librarians.
Image credit & copyright: Goodman-Paxton Photographic Collection / Kentucky Digital Library
Welcome to our Top 15 of 2019 countdown! As the year comes to an end, we're looking back at this year's most loved Curios across all categories. Enjoy the walk down memory lane in your entire Curio Cabinet.
We're celebrating some true heroes who rode trusty steeds on their epic quests for literacy! As part of President Roosevelt's New Deal programs to combat the poverty-inducing effects of the Great Depression, the Pack Horse Library Project began bringing reading materials to eastern Kentuckians in 1934. The librarians rode twice a month on routes up to 120 miles long to circulate books and magazines to reach the Appalachian population, a group estimated to have a 31 percent illiteracy rate at the time. Initially, the program's modest supplies were acquired from local donations. As word spread across the country, dozens more donations came in with one former-Kentuckian in California donating 500 books in honor of his late mother. By the time the program ended in 1943 (replaced three years later with motorized bookmobiles), Pack Horse Librarians were immensely popular in the 57 communities they served. If only we could receive our library check-outs on horseback!
Below: another view of several Pack Horse Librarians.
Image credit & copyright: Goodman-Paxton Photographic Collection / Kentucky Digital Library
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FREEPhotography Photo CurioFree1 CQ
Welcome to our Top 15 of 2019 countdown! As the year comes to an end, we're looking back at this year's most loved Curios across all categories. Enjoy the walk down memory lane in your entire Curio Cabinet.
Who are those jokers at the back of the bus? They're none other than Daegu Elementary's new class of first-graders: specifically, grandmothers from Gangjin County in South Korea, as featured in the New York Times. While 50-year-olds may seem unusual candidates for first grade, the issues facing Daegu Elementary certainly warrant unusual solutions. The birth rate has plummeted so far in recent decades that Daegu, which once boasted 90 students per grade, only has 22 students in total. To keep the school open, the empty first-grade class was filled with elderly women from the town who want to learn how to read. Pictured on the far left in red is Hwang Wol-geum, who "remembered hiding behind a tree and weeping as she saw her friends trot off to school six decades ago." Illiteracy has been a source of shame for Hwang, and an impediment to daily tasks like sending packages or finding train schedules in Seoul. Along with the rest of the grandmother gang, Hwang is spending her days learning how to read and write in Korean—just as she always dreamed she could.
Below: more activities from Daegu Elementary's newest first-graders, including line-ups, visiting with second-graders, and helping each other complete their assignments.
Image credit & copyright: Chang W. Lee / The New York Times
Welcome to our Top 15 of 2019 countdown! As the year comes to an end, we're looking back at this year's most loved Curios across all categories. Enjoy the walk down memory lane in your entire Curio Cabinet.
Who are those jokers at the back of the bus? They're none other than Daegu Elementary's new class of first-graders: specifically, grandmothers from Gangjin County in South Korea, as featured in the New York Times. While 50-year-olds may seem unusual candidates for first grade, the issues facing Daegu Elementary certainly warrant unusual solutions. The birth rate has plummeted so far in recent decades that Daegu, which once boasted 90 students per grade, only has 22 students in total. To keep the school open, the empty first-grade class was filled with elderly women from the town who want to learn how to read. Pictured on the far left in red is Hwang Wol-geum, who "remembered hiding behind a tree and weeping as she saw her friends trot off to school six decades ago." Illiteracy has been a source of shame for Hwang, and an impediment to daily tasks like sending packages or finding train schedules in Seoul. Along with the rest of the grandmother gang, Hwang is spending her days learning how to read and write in Korean—just as she always dreamed she could.
Below: more activities from Daegu Elementary's newest first-graders, including line-ups, visiting with second-graders, and helping each other complete their assignments.
Image credit & copyright: Chang W. Lee / The New York Times
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FREEComposition Photo CurioFree1 CQ
Welcome to our Top 15 of 2019 countdown! As the year comes to an end, we're looking back at this year's most loved Curios across all categories. Enjoy the walk down memory lane in your entire Curio Cabinet .
How do you turn water droplets into a colorful sculpture? Canadian photographer Don Komarechka uses macro photography in Jewels of Summer, shown above, to capture the small things in life in big ways. Jewels shows off Komarechka's first attempt to include a "live actor," as he calls it, into his macro images. The photographer staged the scene in his own backyard by directing the ant towards blades of wet grass with vibrantly blooming peony plants in the background. By combining multiple exposures, Komarechka creates the illusion that a tiny world exists inside each sphere of liquid, bursting with color. Komarechka's ongoing macro photos are so captivating that they have been featured on National Geographic's website, and he was recognized by the Royal Canadian Mint, which used one of his photos to create a limited-edition silver coin in 2017! Unbelievably, Kamarechka was never formally trained as a photographer—he simply loves interacting with nature. On his website, Komarechka says, "Pushing the limits of light while still producing visually stunning images is my passion. If someone is captivated enough to re-evaluate the world around them, I've done my job." In that case, consider the job done!
Below: More of Kamarechka's photos and a video featuring his techniques.
Image credit & copyright: Don Komarechka
Welcome to our Top 15 of 2019 countdown! As the year comes to an end, we're looking back at this year's most loved Curios across all categories. Enjoy the walk down memory lane in your entire Curio Cabinet .
How do you turn water droplets into a colorful sculpture? Canadian photographer Don Komarechka uses macro photography in Jewels of Summer, shown above, to capture the small things in life in big ways. Jewels shows off Komarechka's first attempt to include a "live actor," as he calls it, into his macro images. The photographer staged the scene in his own backyard by directing the ant towards blades of wet grass with vibrantly blooming peony plants in the background. By combining multiple exposures, Komarechka creates the illusion that a tiny world exists inside each sphere of liquid, bursting with color. Komarechka's ongoing macro photos are so captivating that they have been featured on National Geographic's website, and he was recognized by the Royal Canadian Mint, which used one of his photos to create a limited-edition silver coin in 2017! Unbelievably, Kamarechka was never formally trained as a photographer—he simply loves interacting with nature. On his website, Komarechka says, "Pushing the limits of light while still producing visually stunning images is my passion. If someone is captivated enough to re-evaluate the world around them, I've done my job." In that case, consider the job done!
Below: More of Kamarechka's photos and a video featuring his techniques.
Image credit & copyright: Don Komarechka
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It's Flashback Friday! Enjoy this favorite from the Curio Cabinet archives.
Enough horsing around—it's time for the annual haircut. Rapa das Bestas, or "Shearing of the Beasts," is a 400-year-old horse festival that takes place each summer in the region of Galicia, Spain. Hundreds of semi-feral horses are the focus of the event. They're corralled from local mountains to a curro, or enclosure, where they get their manes deloused and trimmed in front of eager crowds. And as this photograph by Javier Arcenillas proves, these untamed animals can get quite feisty! Because of this, aloitadores, or fighters, must first calm or wrestle the horses into submission before they can be groomed. After this unusual "spa treatment," the animals are released back into the mountains to roam free until the next summer's festival. The rite serves two purposes: to care for the local horse population and to prove an aloitadore's manhood. We can't decide which is more nerve-racking: strong-arming a mare, or betting one's entire life savings on the darkhorse!
Below: aloitadores tag-team a horse while spectators look on.
Image credit & copyright: Javier Arcenillas via Smithsonian.
It's Flashback Friday! Enjoy this favorite from the Curio Cabinet archives.
Enough horsing around—it's time for the annual haircut. Rapa das Bestas, or "Shearing of the Beasts," is a 400-year-old horse festival that takes place each summer in the region of Galicia, Spain. Hundreds of semi-feral horses are the focus of the event. They're corralled from local mountains to a curro, or enclosure, where they get their manes deloused and trimmed in front of eager crowds. And as this photograph by Javier Arcenillas proves, these untamed animals can get quite feisty! Because of this, aloitadores, or fighters, must first calm or wrestle the horses into submission before they can be groomed. After this unusual "spa treatment," the animals are released back into the mountains to roam free until the next summer's festival. The rite serves two purposes: to care for the local horse population and to prove an aloitadore's manhood. We can't decide which is more nerve-racking: strong-arming a mare, or betting one's entire life savings on the darkhorse!
Below: aloitadores tag-team a horse while spectators look on.
Image credit & copyright: Javier Arcenillas via Smithsonian.
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Brr, this gives new meaning to weathering winter! This snow-covered Tungus (or Indigenous Siberian) man is part of a LensCulture feature on the series Out of the Way by Russian photographer Elena Ansova. Her project highlights life in a remote settlement in Northern Russia where the Tungus people live. In the photo, an older Tungus man seems unconcerned at the snow collecting on his face and beard. The image is an example of the fortitude displayed by the 100-or-so people who also call his village their home. There, electricity is only available during mornings and evenings, food must be grown in sealed greenhouses, and hunting elk is a matter of survival. What inspired Anosova to travel to such a place where temperatures can fall as low as -67 degrees Fahrenheit? Family ties. Her own ancestors helped found the settlement around 300 years ago, and practically everyone living there now is a distant relative. Out of the Way is an extraordinary series which shows getting back to one's roots can be worth braving the cold.
Below: More from Elena Anosova's Out of the Way series.
Image credit & copyright: Elena Anosova
Brr, this gives new meaning to weathering winter! This snow-covered Tungus (or Indigenous Siberian) man is part of a LensCulture feature on the series Out of the Way by Russian photographer Elena Ansova. Her project highlights life in a remote settlement in Northern Russia where the Tungus people live. In the photo, an older Tungus man seems unconcerned at the snow collecting on his face and beard. The image is an example of the fortitude displayed by the 100-or-so people who also call his village their home. There, electricity is only available during mornings and evenings, food must be grown in sealed greenhouses, and hunting elk is a matter of survival. What inspired Anosova to travel to such a place where temperatures can fall as low as -67 degrees Fahrenheit? Family ties. Her own ancestors helped found the settlement around 300 years ago, and practically everyone living there now is a distant relative. Out of the Way is an extraordinary series which shows getting back to one's roots can be worth braving the cold.
Below: More from Elena Anosova's Out of the Way series.
Image credit & copyright: Elena Anosova
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It's Flashback Friday! Enjoy this favorite from the Curio Cabinet archives.
Check out Sol in the sky with diamonds! This photo, taken by Czech astrophotographer Petr Horálek, recently won the grand prize in 2019 Royal Society Publishing Photography Competition. Beautiful, if not menacing, Three diamonds in the sky shows the sun and moon engaged in a hybrid eclipse. Exceedingly rare, these appear like total eclipses in some parts of the world, but annular, or incomplete in others. Luckily for Horálek, the photographer happened to be in Pakwero, Uganda, which was treated to a mixture of the two types—and also an extraordinary three-part "diamond ring" (the bright bursts of light). The term refers to when solar flares from the sun's photosphere peek out from behind the moon's shadow; the hairline band of the sun's corona, paired with a solar flare, appear like rings of fire in the sky. Three diamonds was up against some beautiful and downright captivating scenery, but the gem nevertheless ran rings around the competition!
Below: more photos from the competition, including Baby on board by Anton Sorokin, Courting Royals: two Royal Terns in courtship display by Kristian Bell, and Waxwing and Rowan berries in the snow by Alwin Hardenbol.
Image credit & copyright: Petr Horálek / Anton Sorokin / East Carolina University / Kristian Bell / Deakin University / Alwin Hardenbol / University of Eastern Finland / Royal Society Publishing Photography Competition 2018
It's Flashback Friday! Enjoy this favorite from the Curio Cabinet archives.
Check out Sol in the sky with diamonds! This photo, taken by Czech astrophotographer Petr Horálek, recently won the grand prize in 2019 Royal Society Publishing Photography Competition. Beautiful, if not menacing, Three diamonds in the sky shows the sun and moon engaged in a hybrid eclipse. Exceedingly rare, these appear like total eclipses in some parts of the world, but annular, or incomplete in others. Luckily for Horálek, the photographer happened to be in Pakwero, Uganda, which was treated to a mixture of the two types—and also an extraordinary three-part "diamond ring" (the bright bursts of light). The term refers to when solar flares from the sun's photosphere peek out from behind the moon's shadow; the hairline band of the sun's corona, paired with a solar flare, appear like rings of fire in the sky. Three diamonds was up against some beautiful and downright captivating scenery, but the gem nevertheless ran rings around the competition!
Below: more photos from the competition, including Baby on board by Anton Sorokin, Courting Royals: two Royal Terns in courtship display by Kristian Bell, and Waxwing and Rowan berries in the snow by Alwin Hardenbol.
Image credit & copyright: Petr Horálek / Anton Sorokin / East Carolina University / Kristian Bell / Deakin University / Alwin Hardenbol / University of Eastern Finland / Royal Society Publishing Photography Competition 2018
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Whatever lies at the end of this vibrant, red path of fallen pine needles is surely something magical. Path in the Woods by American photographer Eliot Porter, born December 6, 1901, is just one example of his dedication to capturing nature in living color. During the 1940s, when most serious photographers still worked in black and white, Porter became known for his color photographs of landscapes, trees, and birds. In Path in the Woods, color plays the vital role of making a bare pine forest seem warm and inviting, beckoning the viewer to explore vivid reds, greens, and browns. Porter certainly did his fair share of wilderness exploration: he not only captured images of America's disappearing wilderness, but also the Galápagos Islands, Antarctica, and East Africa. His widely-published work was a powerful tool in promoting conservation, particularly of wild birds. He received a Guggenheim Fellowship in 1941 to photograph several threatened avian species, which led to his famous Birds in Color series. The latter was exhibited at the Museum of Modern Art two years later. It goes to show that the power of color photography was no pigment of Porter's imagination!
Below: more of Porter's nature photos.
Image credit & copyright: Eliot Porter
Whatever lies at the end of this vibrant, red path of fallen pine needles is surely something magical. Path in the Woods by American photographer Eliot Porter, born December 6, 1901, is just one example of his dedication to capturing nature in living color. During the 1940s, when most serious photographers still worked in black and white, Porter became known for his color photographs of landscapes, trees, and birds. In Path in the Woods, color plays the vital role of making a bare pine forest seem warm and inviting, beckoning the viewer to explore vivid reds, greens, and browns. Porter certainly did his fair share of wilderness exploration: he not only captured images of America's disappearing wilderness, but also the Galápagos Islands, Antarctica, and East Africa. His widely-published work was a powerful tool in promoting conservation, particularly of wild birds. He received a Guggenheim Fellowship in 1941 to photograph several threatened avian species, which led to his famous Birds in Color series. The latter was exhibited at the Museum of Modern Art two years later. It goes to show that the power of color photography was no pigment of Porter's imagination!
Below: more of Porter's nature photos.
Image credit & copyright: Eliot Porter
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Why be camera shy when you're this adorable? The silver-backed chevrotain pictured above was recently captured on camera by conservationists in Vietnam—and is the first of its kind to be photographed in 30 years. Commonly called the Vietnamese mouse-deer, this hooved mammal is neither a mouse nor a deer. Chevrotains are the world's smallest hoofed mammals, or ungulates, with silver-backed chevrotains being about the size of a rabbit. It had been so long since scientists had spotted a silver-backed chevrotain that they feared the species was extinct. To find out for sure, they placed hidden cameras in the Vietnamese wilderness, and what they captured was astonishing. At least two silver-backed chevrotains, identifiable by their distinctive grey rumps, were caught on film. Footage showed the animals rummaging for food, with their long muzzles, on the forest floor. Conservationists were excited by the footage, which quickly went viral online, and stated that immediate protections should be put in place to ensure the species' survival. Shy or not, there's no denying that the rabbit-sized, deer-like chevrotains have become overnight stars.
Below: a video and more photos of the silver-backed chevrotains spotted in Vietnam.
Image credit & copyright: Southern Institute of Ecology / Global Wildlife Conservation / Leibniz Institute for Zoo and Wildlife Research / NCNP
Why be camera shy when you're this adorable? The silver-backed chevrotain pictured above was recently captured on camera by conservationists in Vietnam—and is the first of its kind to be photographed in 30 years. Commonly called the Vietnamese mouse-deer, this hooved mammal is neither a mouse nor a deer. Chevrotains are the world's smallest hoofed mammals, or ungulates, with silver-backed chevrotains being about the size of a rabbit. It had been so long since scientists had spotted a silver-backed chevrotain that they feared the species was extinct. To find out for sure, they placed hidden cameras in the Vietnamese wilderness, and what they captured was astonishing. At least two silver-backed chevrotains, identifiable by their distinctive grey rumps, were caught on film. Footage showed the animals rummaging for food, with their long muzzles, on the forest floor. Conservationists were excited by the footage, which quickly went viral online, and stated that immediate protections should be put in place to ensure the species' survival. Shy or not, there's no denying that the rabbit-sized, deer-like chevrotains have become overnight stars.
Below: a video and more photos of the silver-backed chevrotains spotted in Vietnam.
Image credit & copyright: Southern Institute of Ecology / Global Wildlife Conservation / Leibniz Institute for Zoo and Wildlife Research / NCNP
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It's Flashback Friday! Enjoy this favorite from the Curio Cabinet archives.
A queen bee and the Queen of England should both appreciate this micro-image of a honey bee's antennae. Shortlisted for the 2019 Royal Society's Publishing Photography Competition, Alone! by Geetha Gangasandra Thimmegowda exposes the complex surface of the bee's antennae, which are used as multiple sensory organs—smelling, feeling, and hearing their surroundings! Because there's only a small ball of pollen in the middle of the photo, scientists could tell this bee came from a low-pollution area. Thimmegowda captured the image with an electron microscope as part of a naturalist-inspired chemical ecology (NICE) lab in Bangalore, India, where the effects of pollution on pollinating species are studied. Her image, and over 1,100 others, were entered this year into the Royal Society's competition. The society is one of the United Kingdom's oldest natural science academies, which was founded in 1660 and boasts Isaac Newton, Charles Darwin, and Stephen Hawking among its past and current ranks. No doubt individuals who could be considered the busiest of bees of their own scientific communities!
Image credit & copyright: Geetha Gangasandra Thimmegowda
It's Flashback Friday! Enjoy this favorite from the Curio Cabinet archives.
A queen bee and the Queen of England should both appreciate this micro-image of a honey bee's antennae. Shortlisted for the 2019 Royal Society's Publishing Photography Competition, Alone! by Geetha Gangasandra Thimmegowda exposes the complex surface of the bee's antennae, which are used as multiple sensory organs—smelling, feeling, and hearing their surroundings! Because there's only a small ball of pollen in the middle of the photo, scientists could tell this bee came from a low-pollution area. Thimmegowda captured the image with an electron microscope as part of a naturalist-inspired chemical ecology (NICE) lab in Bangalore, India, where the effects of pollution on pollinating species are studied. Her image, and over 1,100 others, were entered this year into the Royal Society's competition. The society is one of the United Kingdom's oldest natural science academies, which was founded in 1660 and boasts Isaac Newton, Charles Darwin, and Stephen Hawking among its past and current ranks. No doubt individuals who could be considered the busiest of bees of their own scientific communities!
Image credit & copyright: Geetha Gangasandra Thimmegowda