The Crikey culture blog

Category Archives: photography

What it’s like to be a soldier in Afghanistan

We hear about it, have heard about it for what seems a long time now – but it’s hard to get a good picture of it in our minds: what it’s like in Afghanistan. And how it would be like to be a Coalition soldier there. To see the pictures below is to have something [...]

Can a landscape painting beat a landscape photo?

Photography v painting. That hoary old argument*. Naturally enough, photography wins, with hands tied behind its back. The density of detail, that magical documenting of evidence – today was fine, there was no wind, the sun was brilliant, the shadows were dark, she was smiling etc. (We have to trust that no photoshop was applied [...]

Carnarvon Gorge: Culture Mulcher does Nature

You’ve seen them, you’ve been there: The Great Barrier Reef and the cliffs over the Great Australian Bight, Franklin River and Cradle Mountain, the Bungle Bungles and Lake Mungo, Uluru and the SydOpHo – but have you heard of Carnarvon Gorge?
Last week we took Joni Mitchell’s advice, and got ourselves back to the garden. We [...]

Portrait of a polite man

Had to share: this is the extraordinary photograph taken by John Wright for the August cover of Q magazine (see previous post). Wright was given a minute and a half to do it.
In the issue Wright recalls: ‘He was very polite – he shook everybody’s hand. He’s very quietly spoken, but he had a normal [...]

O, for a pair of cheap blue jeans

The excellent photography site 100 eyes has a suitably eye-opening photo essay by Justin Jin. If you’ve ever wondered where all those cheap jeans* came from, have a look.
Caption to the picture above: Workers scrub jeans using a sanding machine in Mr Huang’s factory in Zhongshan city, China. The blue dust from the jeans is [...]