Hashima Island (Border Island) more commonly know as Gunkanjima (Battleship island) due to its resemblance to the shape of a battleship, was once the most densely populated place in the world but today is abandoned and derelict.

The island was bought by Mitsubishi in 1890 with the aim of using it to mine coal from the sea bottom. The mine and island were closed in 1974 and today travel to the island is prohibited.

This photographer's life work is documenting his mysterious love/hate relationship with the sea. Corey spends 3-4 months of the year working as an Alaskian Crab fisherman all the while documenting it and his ship he works on was featured in the popular Discovery Channel show, Deadliest Catch...

Corey's work has been featured in Rolling Stone, RE:UP, Juxtapoz, Artweek, Giant Robot, Fortune, FHM UK, Humble Arts Foundation, National Fisherman and Popular Photography. He just wrapped up a solo show in 2007 at Richard Heller Gallery in Los Angeles. Corey Arnold has now taken up permanent residency in humble city of Portland, Oregon.

coreyfishes.com

From movie stars, musicians, and skate-boarders to toys, technology, and history, Giant Robot magazine covers cool aspects of Asian and Asian-American pop culture. Paving the way for less knowledgeable media outlets, Giant Robot put the spotlight on Chow Yun Fat, Jackie Chan, and Jet Li years before they were in mainstream America's vocabulary.

But Giant Robot is much more than idol worship. GR's spirited reviews of canned coffee drinks, instant ramen packs, Japanese candies, Asian frozen desserts, and mar-inated bugs have spawned numerous copycat articles in other publications. GR's historical pieces on the Yellow Power Movement, footbinding, Asian-American gangsters, and other savory topics have been cited by both academics and journalists. Other regular features include travel journals, art and design studies, and sex.

www.giantrobot.com

Shadow's first full-length work, Endtroducing... was released in late 1996 to immense critical acclaim.

Endtroducing would make the Guinness World Records book for "First Completely Sampled Album" in 2001.

The only piece of equipment Shadow used to produce the album is the AKAI MPC60 12bit sampling drum machine.

Now available is a limited edition cover artwork print available on a heavy, coated matte stock approximately 15" x 38"

Go buy online a turntable lab

Having been behind the lens in Iraq, Bosnia, Syria and Afghanistan, Luca Faccio is no stranger to finding himself in the most intense situations of conflict and human endurance.

His ground-breaking 'Image Transfer Pyongyang/Vienna' allowed him again to push the boundaries of photography, art and international relations. Stepping behind the closed borders of North Korea, Luca shot the people and country in way never permitted before.

It's one of the first times that the world outside North Korea has been given an insight into the ordinary people without the usual focus on its politics, dictatorship or atomic weapons development. As well as the interview, we get pulled into Luca's work with his strikingly absorbing Horizon gallery, featuring shots he took in North Korea.

lomography.com/broadenyourhorizon?goto=lucafaccio

”This new series looks at contemporary American culture through the austere lens of statistics. Each image portrays a specific quantity of something: fifteen million sheets of office paper (five minutes of paper use); 106,000 aluminum cans (thirty seconds of can consumption) and so on. My hope is that images representing these quantities might have a different effect than the raw numbers alone, such as we find daily in articles and books. Statistics tend to feel abstract and anesthetizing, making it difficult to connect with and make meaning of 3.6 million SUV sales in one year, for example, or 2.3 million Americans in prison, or $12.5 million spent every hour on the Iraq war. This project visually examines these vast and bizarre measures of our society, in large intricately detailed prints assembled from thousands of smaller photographs.

My only caveat about this series is that the prints must be seen in person to be experienced the way they are intended. As with any large artwork, their scale carries a vital part of their substance which is lost in these little web images. Hopefully the JPEGs displayed here might be enough to arouse your curiosity to attend an exhibition, or to arrange one if you are in a position to do so. The series is still in its early stages, and new images will be posted as they are completed, so please stay tuned.” ~cj, January 2007

For more information and more examples of Chris Jordan’s work visit www.chrisjordan.com

Handguns, 2007
Digital C print, 72x94"

Depicts 29,569 handguns, equal to the number of gun-related deaths in the US in 2004.

Partial zoom

Detail at actual size

&

Image Source : TheeErin

Submissions for Grafuck: Book 3 are open. They are seeking the most inspiring, striking, smart, creative, brilliant erotic work from all fields. Grafuck: Book 3 will be published in full color, with images only.

You can email low resolution RGB spread images (5.25”H x 14.25”W @ 72 dpi) to love@grafuck.com by April 22nd for initial consideration. A maximum of 3 spreads are allowed. Selected contributors will be notified and asked to provide high resolution 300 dpi files.

http://www.grafuck.com/

Spotted via BLDGBLOG

"Distant changes in air pressure cause the whole system to shudder, whistling subliminally on the edges of the wind, a soundtrack for the city so beautiful it’s often hypnotic. If you wait long enough in certain alleys in Soho, you’ll hear it, droning beneath the rustle of crisp bags and trash. " Urban Knot Theory - BLDGBLOG

Siologen has a gallery of more than 1000 incredible images mapping underground urban geography.

For more choice images and a great read see BLDGBLOG's Urban Knot Theory post or explore Siologen's archive

"The international jury of the 50th annual World Press Photo Contest selected a color image of the US photographer Spencer Platt of Getty Images as World Press Photo of the Year 2006... The picture shows a group of young Lebanese driving through a South Beirut neighborhood devastated by Israeli bombings. The picture was taken on 15 August 2006, the first day of the ceasefire between Israel and Hezbollah when thousands of Lebanese started returning to their homes." Link

Full details from World Press Photo

Found via notes from somewhere bizarre

All the featured artists on http://maarav.org.il/draftedart/ are Israeli citizens or individuals that live, work and create art in Israel but oppose the actions of the Israeli government and military. They feel it is important that this statement comes out of Israel and is created by Israelis, therefore they are not accepting art from fellow artists abroad. They would, however, welcome any future collaboration focused on joint struggle, especially with artist in our neighboring countries.

http://maarav.org.il/draftedart/ more pics on Flickr

Graphic Agitation 2 explores graphic protest in the digital age, in particular over the years since the Gulf War. The book deals with a range of protest imagery from hi-tech and low-tech to no-tech and is comprehensively illustrated with images ranging from lollipop wrappers to websites.

Graphic Agitation II: Social & Political Graphics in the Digital Age is Liz McQuiston's latest book on the subject of protest art. Published by Phaidon Press and comprehensively illustrated, the book presents dissident artworks from the traditional to the shocking, from high-tech to no-tech. Paintings, drawings, and posters are displayed side by side with street art, postcards, t-shirts... even screen grabs of websites.

Mark Vallen's 1991 anti-Gulf War silkscreen poster, New World Odor is included in this essential and exhaustive study of modern protest art.

Buy at Amazon

Nusign* was born from a meeting between Piero Preitano, founder of the communication agency “l’Araignee” and Oliver Stak, artist and founder of WorldSigns magazine.

The group exhibition Nusign*2.4 was their first collaboration in July 2004, organized by l’Araignee with the help of Stak. It gathered for the first time in Paris forty of the most talented young European artists coming from the post-graffiti scene.

Nusign* magazine sees itself as the reflection of young contemporary creation: to exceed the street/gallery gap and to represent a whole generation of creators whose work goes beyond the borders of street art. The works of artists coming from street culture who have known how to infiltrate and to tackle diverse institutional art will be alongside those of more classically trained artists who have adapted to the streets

On Thursday 8th of Feb., we will also be celebrating the launch of the Nusign #1

Nusign* Magazine is a quartlerly contemporary art magazine avaialbel for 15 euros. Click here for more information.

Via UrbanRetroLifestyle Via Wooster Collective

Photograph of a street in Cuba, Havana taken about 4 years ago. I like the way it could be back in the 50's...

An exhibition of new paintings and works at L.A. Louver
16 November - 30 December, 2006

L.A. Louver is delighted to present a long-anticipated exhibition of new paintings and works on paper by the Japanese-American artist Gajin Fujita. Fujita’s increasingly sophisticated works reflect many cultural influences that range from the lush visuals of traditional Japanese tattoos, screen painting from the Edo period and woodblock prints by ukiyo- e artists, to contemporary Japanese cartoons and hip-hop culture.

 “ …the paintings present themselves as competing fields of moral and technical mastery that coexist in their own accomplishment. The Renaissance compositions do not ‘critique’ the Edo characters. The Edo characters do not ‘critique’ the graffiti or vice versa. Everything is equal, and, insofar as the synthesis is complete, beautiful, and just a little frightening in its insistence on our fragile mortality.” – Dave Hickey

Burn, 2006
acrylic, 24 & 12K gold leaf, spray paint & Mean Streak on wood panel

Fatal Match, 2006
gold & silver leaf, acrylic, paint marker, spray paint and Mean Streak on wood panel

Slow & Easy, 2006
gold & silver leaf, acrylic, paint marker, spray paint and Mean Streak on 6 wood panels

Installation photography, Gajin Fujita, Twilight Blush, 16 November - 30 December, 2006

Found via Artkrush

For more gallery information and artsit profile visit http://www.lalouver.com/html/gajin.html

Nuns Urinal

The photographer Stuart Redler has launched a search to find a British twin town for Timbuktu (right) in Mali. The quest coincides with the start of Redler's exhibition of West African images and aims to help raise awareness of the city.

British towns, cities and villages can be nominated online. Delegates from the winning town will be invited to visit Timbuktu.

Bids must be received by November 15. For details see www.stuartredler.com

A photographic project commissioned to celebrate Poetry International 2006

Consisting of 4,000 photographs taken by local residents and the opportunity to hear their poetry via sensors, the first interactive LomoWall is unveiled by the South Bank Centre and the Lomographic Society London as part of the launch of the South Bank Centre’s Poetry International, the UK’s major international poetry festival.

Entitled Trading Places, the LomoWall is made up of photographs taken by local residents of Lower Marsh in Waterloo, near the South Bank Centre an area in which people have lived and traded since the 17th century, to create a living portrait of their lives in a 14 metre by 2.5 metre installation on hoardings in front of the Royal Festival Hall.  Secret sensors are embedded in the wall, amongst the photographs, for visitors to find and press and listen to the recordings of the resident’s spoken memory poems.

Inspired by Kwame Dawes’ Wisteria: Twilight Songs from the Swamp Country, the opening event at Poetry International - which records the segregated lives of women from South Carolina - three generations of the Lower Marsh community were given Lomography Coloursplash cameras with which to record their lives and experiences.  The Youth Group SE1 United, local businesses and market-stall holders and Lower Marsh residents were each involved, bringing together the generations.

Four contemporary poets Charlie Dark, Malika Booker, Breis and Anna Robinson, who has lived all her life on Lower Marsh, worked with the different groups to express their lives, experiences and memories of the street in poetry.  The spoken memory poems were recorded by the participants and are part of the LomoWall. 

Visitors can also feed their own photographs into the LomoWall by sending pictures via Bluetooth to the project website, www.rfh.org.uk/tradingplaces where their images will be displayed.

Shân MacLennan, Head of Education, South Bank Centre, comments:
“Trading Places is one of those great moments at the South Bank Centre when the voices of people who live and work near to this festival site are heard as part of one of our major festivals.  As we head towards the re-opening of the Royal Festival Hall we will hear more and more of these voices and they will become part of the new landscape of the site. It has been enthralling to watch Trading Places develop and we feel very privileged to bring the people and poetry of Lower Marsh to the South Bank Centre as we celebrate Poetry International.”

The Trading Places LomoWall will be on show at the South Bank until December 2006. Launch date: Tuesday, 24th October 2006 at 10am, South Bank Centre. For more information on Lomography and the LomoWall, please visit www.lomography.com

POETRY INTERNATIONAL is the UK’s only major international poetry festival which draws world renowned poets from around the globe to the South Bank. For more information about the poets appearing at the festival, please visit www.rfh.org.uk/poetryinternational