On Beauty …

“What bothers us about primordial beauty is that it is no longer characteristic. Unspoiled places sadden us because they are, in an important sense, no longer true.” – Robert Adams.

Living and working mostly in Colorado for nearly 30 years, Robert Adams was mostly concerned about a palimpsest of alterations, unfolding in front of his camera in plain western America. Even if unperceivable for so many, the landscape in turmoil was his medium. And it was there, he found out what beauty is not. In 1975, New Topographics encapsulated an evolving Man-altered landscape in an exhibition that end-up by signalling a pivotal key moment in American landscape photography. His sensibility and aesthetic approach remains pertinent today among us. One needs to only replace random and lost inanimate landscapes with random lonely people.

Soundscapes

No, not the Grand Caynon neither the Epstein & Axtell Sugarscape (link) this time, instead a soundscape. A landscape made of sounds or grooves. Look at this as an ancient form of encapsulating data. Taken by Chris Supranowitz, a researcher at The Insitute of Optics at the University of Rochester (US), the image depicts a single groove on a vinyl record magnified 1000 times, using electron microscopy. Dark bits are the top of the grooves, i.e. the uncut vinyl, while even darker little bumps are dust on the record (e.g. centre right). For more images check SynthGear, and found out (image link) what have they discovered if we keep magnifying that image further still!