Are there any truly quiet places left on the planet? As “The Sound Tracker,” acoustic ecologist Gordon Hempton has circled the globe three times in pursuit of Earth’s rarest nature sounds—sounds that can only be appreciated in the absence of man-made noise.
The key was to forget what I was looking at and focus on what I was seeing; not a “rose,” but a particular arrangement of shapes and colors. I moved in close and approached the plants from unexpected angles, and I stepped back, to capture the larger landscape in which the plants were flourishing. I tried to go beyond photography to achieve something more akin to painting.
One of the most wonderful releases for New Yorkers emerging from shelter-in-place has been the joy of entering pianist Collin Huggins’s “living room” in Washington Square Park. Each morning, the slender Huggins wrestles his 900-pound piano from its storeroom at the Judson Memorial Church at the north end of the park, places it on a dolly and moves it onto center stage.
It all started with Tilda Swinton’s video of four her adorable dogs, frolicking at the beach to the beat of a Baroque opera. We got the idea to explore the way animals have come to our aid during the coronavirus, lifting our spirits, and helping us to reclaim some lost aspect of our lives.
How does an artist adapt to a new country? Sara Evans explores Gustave Baumann’s move to New Mexico and his woodcuts from the 1930s in a lavish new book from Rizzoli.
Artist Frances Kidder captures the devastation of the 1874 Mill River flood in Western Massachusetts — yet another story of human error, arrogance and greed.