me studio

after london and amsterdam, the spanish city of madrid has decided to qualify itself with a clever marketing brand name too… oh dear…

the dutch design awards (de nederlandse design prijzen) have just changed their name to… um well… the ‘dutch design awards’ and they have completely revamped the whole event, again… this is the fourth attempt if i’m correct, should be interesting to see what the secret to success will be this time… see the (all new) site for details and lots of well, ‘newness’…

the city of amsterdam archive or ‘stadsarchief’ has an impressive and probably quite unique image bank which can be accessed by anyone online and features an enormous amount of material on the city by some well known people (try searching for photographers ‘olie’, ‘eilers’, ‘breitner’ and ‘van der elsken’ for example) they even regularly offer funds for anybody wishing to document a particular aspect of city life… the hilarious image below popped up when i did a search for ‘red light district’

an american photojournalist who goes by the name of ‘zoriah’ was an official correspondent (’embed’ is the term they use) with the american army, when he witnessed a suicide bombing on the outskirts of fallujah in iraq

the fact that he decided to go ahead and publish this shocking series of images on his blog (beware if you do not want to see dead bodies) has resulted in the US army withdrawing his embed… in short he is no longer welcome…

the lego images reminded me of a series which i once saw at the icp in new york in the late 90’s by brazilian artist vik muniz who has created some stunning images, using chocolate, sugar and his memory amongst other things, always worth a look if you ask me…