Photography Spotlight: Things

The cultural anthropology of things, or what Hitler’s head has to do with Barbie.

It’s fascinating how we all use things — objects, products, trinkets, stuff — to define ourselves and make sense of the world. This is the backbone of consumer culture, but also a precious piece of cultural anthropology from a historical perspective.

Polish photographer Andrzej Kramarz explores both in Things.

The series, inspired by the horror vacui style of folk art, captures “portraits” of objects from the past, laid out on the ground into densely packed displays.

A typical sight in Eastern European antique street markets, the objects — old, worn-out souvenirs of the past — are of little monetary worth, but offer an incredible glimpse of eras gone by.

In a word: that, which is left of a previous life; that, which used to live, now leads a life after life, sometimes an imagined existence.

From war paraphernalia to antique jewelry to vintage hardware tools, the images read like powerful visual chapters from a textbook on sociocultural and political history.

Explore Things in its entirety over at Lens Culture, and think about what a portrait of your own trinkets-laden past would look like.

Illustration Spotlight: Plan 9.001

The 1′s and 0′s of home, or what the Olsen twins have to do with John Locke and God.

Every once in a while we stumble across something we don’t quite get, but can tell is brilliant. Case in point: The Plan 9.001 Flickr set from an artist by the cryptic name of 9000.

Full of wondrous, beautifully art directed charts, graphs, diagrams and other fascinations that capture the human condition, the illustrations are part poetry, part art direction, part homage to geek culture — and all genius.

Most of the images are left to exist in their self-contained reality, with no caption or explanation, inviting you to make sense of them ever which way you wish.

And some are brimming with keen cultural commentary, oozing both from the images themselves and from the quotes accompanying — mismatched at first glance, like this odd psalm that we had to Google-translate, but deeply profound in context.

Indeed, there’s a certain preoccupation with the God — a quest for divinity in the godless, lonesome, conflicted world the artist seems to inhabit. Or, you know, it’s just a mockery thereof.

And while we’re not quite sure what to make of it it all, we urge you to explore the Plan 9.001 set and the rest of 9000′s rather diverse but uniformly bizarre body of work — if for no other reason than that it has intrigued us more than anything we’ve come across in a long, long time.

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5:1 Student Design Show

Untainted design thinking, or what 200 students have to do with the world of 100.

Here’s to spotting tomorrow’s great design thinkers today: The London College of Communication’s School of Graphic Design is holding its annual degree show this week, titled 5:1 — an exhibition showcasing work by the program’s 200 graduates.

Although the show is divided into five segments reflecting the program’s central pathways — Information Design, Advertising, Typo/graphic, Illustration and Interaction & Moving Image — it fosters interdisciplinary curiosity, featuring cross-pollinated, experimental work across all facets of design.

Creative, compelling, provocative — it’s all the things we want design to be, oozing the freshness of minds not yet tainted by industry expectation and artistic grandeur.

We couldn’t help noticing that some of the work in the Information Design focuses on the symbolic representation of the world as a 100 people — perhaps a course professor stumbled across Toby Ng’s brilliant World of 100 poster series we featured a while ago, and repurposed it as a brief to students? Regardless, some of the interpretations struck our fancy.

5:1 opens to the public tomorrow and closes July 3, so if you’re in the London area, stop by Elephant & Castle SE1 6SB for a burst of delightful design freshness.