The definition of irony

An exhibition until this weekend in the Kanagawa area is of work by Ben Shahn, who made some fascinating paintings from his own photographs, which the exhibition in part explores. He also made work like the above, which is of the Japanese fishing-boat captain who was exposed to radiation and died after being aboard the boat The Lucky Dragon which inadvertently sailed too close to a nuclear test. (The text he is holding explains that.)

The show was supposed to include Fukushima city as part of its tour to several Japanese cities, but one of the several US museums from which the works come has prohibited its artworks from traveling there – for fear of contamination by radiation. How ironic, as this article in the Mainichi Daily News points out.

Eiko Ishioka

Few designers have the range and talent of Eiko Ishioka. The great sets for Paul Schrader's Mishima film, the M. Butterfly stage sets, the graphic design of Miles Davis' Tutu album to name but a few – sometimes she outshone the project she was part of (the costumes for Coppola's Dracula for example). She died of cancer last Saturday, the 21st.

The Tsunami and the Cherry Blossom

Have yet to see this, but it's now one of the Oscar-nominated documentaries… The Tsunami and the Cherry Blossom

Japanese magazine bits and pieces

An on-going collection of pages scanned from old Japanese design, interior design, and fashion magazines (above) can be seen on this tumblr site…

Retro Japanese smut mags (below), and linked to from the above site, can also be found here…

Who's behind either site, I don't know.

via magculture.com

Portraits: 29

Peter Preston, journalist, The Guardian offices, London, 1991
This was taken in Preston's office when he was editor of The Guardian newspaper (he was editor for 20 years from 1975-1995). I had other close-ups and non-angled shots, but I liked this 45-degree angled one – I don't remember, but I'd guess this was not the one used. For City Limits.

For more on these portraits see here and the portraits tag on the right

Manga goes virtual in the US – to 14-year-old's misery

Interesting take on the loss of a print Shonen Jump in the US. Beyond the other finances of it all, everything is geared to instant supply and consumption. Why people "need" instant supply of entertainment, I don't know. (I like the US TV show Dexter, but in Japan we have to wait for the series release on DVD, which doesn't seem to dim my enjoyment at all. In fact it almost increases it.) I would agree with this writer's "maybe, just maybe, the culture really is losing something valuable as everything goes virtual." Despite, like this writer (Andrew Leonard on Salon.com), being a user and occasional creator of online stuff.