Neat Photography - Grace Weston & David Alesworth

Check out Grace Weston's website.

Some amazing photography, mostly using children's toys, like this:


I found this on Neatorama. Some interesting stuff on there.

Grace Weston's work kind of reminded me of some of the photography of a former colleague of mine, David Alesworth. Unfortunately I can't find much in terms of his work on line except for this picture that was titled 'Snow White and Bubble Boy':


Its one in a series of fabulous photographs of second hand toys found at Itwar Bazaar. I've tried fishing around on the internet but alas can't find much of David's work at all. He has a website, which does not seem to have been tended much apart from the main page and there is a section on him here at the website of the Vasl international artist's collective, but little else apart from that.

That's a real pity because David really has a keen aesthetic sense and a real eye for possibilities and incongruities that make him a stand-out photographer. He's a sculptor by training but his sculpture has never resonated with me in the way his photography has. I don't pretend to have seen a great deal of his work, but some of his photographs have to be amongst the most interesting visual art that's come out of Pakistan in the last decade and a half.

IZ

Rumi at the Caravansary

Hey, look what I found. And its like so close to me. I must check this out soon, and I'm so there at the Sufi music concert. If only I had known about this earlier! There's no way I would have missed the drumming workshop in the park!

IZ

Edit: Also, this is an interesting article about women scholars in the classical Islamic age. I like this quote:

Akram’s entry for someone like Umm al-Darda, a prominent jurist in seventh-century Damascus, is startling. As a young woman, Umm al-Darda used to sit with male scholars in the mosque, talking shop. “I’ve tried to worship Allah in every way,” she wrote, “but I’ve never found a better one than sitting around, debating other scholars.”

Sorted Books and xkcd

Thanks to madgraceflint for the link on her blog to this site and the Sorted Books Project.

She also linked to this comic on the xkcd web-comic site, which is one of the best web-comics out there in my opinion, but which, for some reason, I haven't yet linked to on this blog.

To make up for this error I bring you one of my favourite xkcd comics (click on it to see a bigger version):



IZ

Ancient Computers and More on Banksy

Here's a lengthy piece on Banksy in the New Yorker. Interesting.
Also in the New Yorker is an article on what some archaeologists believe may have been the first computer in the world, discovered on a shipwreck in the Mediterranean Sea. Also Interesting.

IZ

Fatima Kazmi

Here is a link to the online art gallery of Fatima Kazmi. A lot of her work is on wood, where she works with the natural grains of the wood, letting them shape her paintings. Unfortunately the full visual impact of this is lost to a certain extent when viewed as photographs online. It still makes for interesting viewing though.

IZ

Edit: Oh, and in the interests of full disclosure: Fatima is married to my cousin, Ali

Asma Ahmed Shikoh

Here is a link to the website of Asma Ahmed Shikoh, a pakistani-american artist now living in New York, and a friend and former colleague from my early teaching days.

IZ