Forthcoming from Princeton University Press in May 2024.
The announcement page is here.
You can pre-order it on Amazon here.
After publication the data files for the Statistical Appendix will be available here.
The Cinemagraph is a technique pioneered by Jamie Beck and Kevin Burg, which uses the old animated .gif format to stunning effect (see www.cinemagraphs.com). The result is still photos imbued with subtle motion.
Compare the still picture above to the cinemagraph below, made by Stéphanie Renard and Alice Seabright.
Here is a sample of some of my favourite cinemagraphs.
A Wonderful World. (Image source: From Me To You)
Can You Smell Them? (Image source: From Me To You)
Endless Time. (Image source: Tilen Sepic)
Shave And A Haircut. (Image source: From Me To You)
Meet Me At The Bar. (Image source: From Me To You)
Above: “City of Shadows: St. Petersburg 1990s”, by Alexey Titarenko.
Here are some contemporary photographers whose work I admire.
Stéphanie Renard
Stéphanie is a portraitist and still life photographer based in Toulouse. Thanks to her for the portrait on the About page.
Gauri Gill
Gauri Gill has won the 2011 Grange Prize for contemporary photography. She was born in Chandigarh, India in 1970. She received BFAs at the Delhi College of Art, New Delhi (1992) and at the Parsons School of Design, New York (1994); and an MFA in Art at Stanford University, California (2002). Her work has been exhibited widely in India and across the world. She lives in Delhi.
Alexey Titarenko.
Alexey Titarenko received his Master of Fine Arts degree from the Department of Cinematic and Photographic Art at Leningrad’s Institute of Culture in 1983. He began taking photographs at the beginning of the 1970s, and in 1978 became a member of the well-known Leningrad photographic club Zerkalo, where he had his first solo exhibition (1978).
Since this was creative activity that had no connection with the official Soviet propaganda, the opportunity to declare himself publicly as an artist came only at the peak of Perestroika in 1989 with his “Nomenclature of Signs” exhibition and the creation of Ligovka 99, a photographers’ exhibition space that was independent of the Communist ideology.
Titarenko has received numerous awards from institutions such as the Musee de l’Elysee in Lausanne, Switzerland; the Soros Center for Contemporary Art in St. Petersburg; and the Mosaique program of the Luxemburg National Audiovisual Centre. He has participated in many international festivals, biennales, and projects and has had more than 30 personal exhibitions, both in Europe and the United States.
Thanks to Alexey for permission to use his photograph “City of Shadows: St. Petersburg 1990s” in my chapter “Darwin and Human Society” in the book Darwin.
Paul Seabright, The Company of Strangers: A Natural History of Economic Life. Second Edition, Princeton University Press, 2010. Read More →
I visited Easter Island in December 2010. Together with Miguel Fuentes, Ricardo Guzman and Carlos Rodriguez-Sickert I am currently working on a paper about the history of its moai, the monumental stone figures built during the centuries between the first settlement of the island by Polynesians sometime between 800 and 1200 CE and the outbreak of serious warfare in the 17th century. Here is Unesco World Heritage Sites Rapa Nui page. The photographs on this page were taken by me during my trip in 2010.
The city of Santa Fe, NM, is one of the most beautiful cities in North America. Its official website is here. It houses the Santa Fe Institute, where I have been a visitor almost every year since 2005, but also the Santa Fe Opera, a large number of galleries of both modern and folk art, and some remarkable architecture in adobe. The photo at the head of this post is of Taos Pueblo, an hour’s drive north of Santa Fe.