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An Abridged History Of Times New Roman, The Most Famous Font In The World

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Times New Roman was first printed on October 2, 1932 in the British newspaper The Times. In the years since, the serif typeface has become something of a classic, its legible style and ineffable sense of authority establishing it as the font designed for readers.

Although TNR is everywhere, how much do we really know about the seemingly ubiquitous, yet strangely anonymous typeface? To educate us all on the importance of the famous typography, a delightful short film from the Unquiet Film Series decided to dive into the past and present of the lettering style, exploring how its origins have evolved over the past eighty years.

Open, robust, boring, proud and gentlemanly are some of the words tossed out to describe what has become the world's most recognizable font. Our favorite description has to be, "It looks like an accountant in a suit." The short video above illuminates the strange ability of fonts to add legitimacy to the words they depict. Something about the particular shapes of alphanumeric characters, their proportions and their geometry, conjures a notion of command, of seriousness and trustworthiness.

Watch the short film to learn more about the iconic typeface that, despite its well known name, is no longer as pervasive as you may think. Let us know your thoughts on the future of TNR in the comments, and if you're on a typography kick, check out the wonderful Defense of Comic Sans.

h/t DesignTaxi

Artist Transforms Everyday Materials Into Gorgeous, Towering Alien Landscapes

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Roaming a Tara Donovan installation feels like navigating an alien landscape, one where massive dandelions sprout amongst textured cubes and glittering, gloopy stalagmites. Yet look a little closer and you'll notice the materials used aren't the precious organic stuff of another planet, but the everyday stock of an office supply closet. This mixing ground of the banal and the otherworldly, the minor and the majestic, is what makes Donovan's artwork so entrancing.

tara d
Photo courtesy Johnna Arnold


Donovan, who was born in Flushing, NY in 1969, is known for transforming simple materials into transcendent forms through careful and ceaseless repetition. Buttons, toothpicks, pencils and straws serve as Donovan's unlikely muses, each unpretentious tool containing within it the potential for perceptual wonders. Through a simple yet labor-intensive process, the artist reveals the textural complexity lurking in these household goods. By embracing the inherent beauty of a toothpick's sharp and slender shape or a button's pearly glow, Donovan savors the innate properties of her manufactured materials, thus complicating the relationship between the organic and inorganic.

A survey of Donovan's work from 2000 to the present is on view at a pop-up space at Pace Gallery in Menlo Park, California. The exhibition, part classic Minimalism and part Willy Wonka's world of pure imagination, walks the oh-so beautiful line between formality and playfulness. "The work has the pragmatic rigor of that earlier American period,” Nicholas Baume, the Institute of Contemporary Art’s chief curator, told The New York Times. "But it brings it into our own period by suggesting digital, cellular, emergent networks. It seems to speak to the systems that are shaping our lives.”

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Detail of Untitled (Toothpicks), 2000, wooden toothpicks, 36" x 36" x 36" (91.4 cm x 91.4 cm x 91.4 cm), Photo courtesy Pace Gallery


Echoes of Eva Hesse's materiality, Sol Lewitt's obsessive iterations and James Turrell's passion for perception are made manifest in Donovan's oeuvre. Yet the seamless combination of all of these modes, accomplished with such unclouded simplicity, remains unparalleled. This is part of what earned Donovan a coveted MacArthur "Genius Grant" in 2008.

Donovan's current exhibition features her early sculptures in which 36-inch geometric cubes are formed from pins, toothpicks and glass without the use of adhesive. The show also features "Haze," a massive white flatland comprised of several million drinking straws that seems to stretch into infinity. And then there's "Bluffs," a series of glimmering gravel towers that look as though they were excavated from an enchanted cave, though really they're made from glue and buttons.

In Donovan's world, the humblest of materials cluster together to form unnatural wonders that seemed to have blossomed of their own supernatural volition. But at the core of the artist's process lives a simple mantra. "So much about the art-making process is about paying attention," Donovan explains. “It’s about looking and noticing things."





Tara Donovan's "Untitled" runs until June 30, 2014 at Pace Gallery in Menlo Park, California. Donovan's large scale sculptures are concurrently on view at Pace in Chelsea until June 28.

Taye Diggs Talks Idina Menzel Split: 'It Was Easy For People To Root For Us'

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When Taye Diggs and Idina Menzel announced their split last December, fans of the Broadway couple had a hard time keeping it together.

In an interview with Redbook this month, Diggs said the public's reaction to their separation did not come as a surprise.

"I'd be lying if I said there weren't times when I thought, Oh, man, people are going to trip out [if we split]," the actor said. "There weren't a lot of couples like us in the theater community -- and I know there aren't a lot of performers as talented as she is … and then you have the whole mixed [race] thing. It was easy for people to root for us."

Diggs met Menzel, who recently stunned film audiences as the voice of Elsa in Disney's "Frozen," on the original Broadway production of "Rent" in 1996. They married in 2003 and welcomed their son, Walker, in 2009. As the separated couple navigates this new stage of their lives, Diggs said their main focus is on parenting.

"Right now, we're still trying to figure out a lot of stuff because we're on different coasts and our son is getting older," Diggs said. "The best is seeing the expression on his face when I pick him up from school. The way he says 'Daddy,' is unrivaled by anything."

Five Chinese Dissident Artists Who Aren't Ai Weiwei

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It's easy to think Chinese political art stops at Ai Weiwei, the embattled provocateur who is arguably the art world's most famous living figure. In fact, a small circle of Chinese artists routinely court danger with their work, not to mention derision from mainstream stars who are enjoying the market's love affair with Asian art, and consider anti-party stances "passé."

There's nothing banal about the punishment dissidents face though. According to the Chinese Human Rights Defenders, an international grassroots coalition, more than 100 noted activists have been taken into custody in the lead-up to last week, when the world outside of mainland China noted the 25th anniversary of the crackdown at Tiananmen Square. Some of those arrested were soldiers themselves, turned artists from the horrors they've seen. Most exhibited their work in private, but were sniffed out anyhow. Below, a look at those who dare to aggravate the state.

1. Guo Jian

guo jian
Photo courtesy Guo Jian.


Guo Jian has said he identifies both with the protesters at Tiananmen Square and the soldiers. Like many Chinese of his generation, the artist was a teenage member of the People’s Liberation Army. In college, his worldview changed. He joined the student protesters flooding into the square, and left with memories that haunt him today. A few, he recalled to the Financial Times this summer: 100 corpses stacked outside a hospital, in an area normally reserved for bicycles; a wounded man with “blood running like a water fountain.”

The interview also touched on his latest work, a large diorama of Tiananmen smothered in more than 350 pounds of minced pork (an image of which is posted above). Shortly after the article appeared in the FT, Guo was taken into custody by Chinese officials earlier this month, ostensibly for issues relating to his visa.

2. Yan Zhengxue

yan zhengxue
Photo courtesy Getty Images.


Yet another artist said to have disappeared ahead of the Tiananmen anniversary, Yan Zhengxue is no stranger to detainment. Last year, he wrote on a human rights-focused website of Chinese officials locking him in a “rubber cell" in the 1990s, where he says he was “tortured for three hours with electric shocks from six electric batons used simultaneously.” More than a decade later, he says, he was imprisoned again, from 2006 to 2009.

The image above is of a painting he completed while in jail. Titled “89.6!!!! Tiananmen,” it shows a blackened sun over a desolate Tiananmen Square, wreathed in dark veins. Of the three goats standing in the center, Yan told the Washington Post, “They represent the obedient ones, the only ones left alive.”

According to a report by the CHRD, Yan and his wife were among those “forcibly taken ‘traveling’ by authorities” this spring, “in order to leave Beijing before June 4.”

3. Liu Yi

liu yi
Photo courtesy Getty Images.


Liu Yi began the painting above in secret in 2006, a collage of faces meant to represent the victims of the 1989 crackdown. He showed it only to his wife and a few close friends, hoping to avoid trouble from authorities and to protect his commercial work. In the same WaPo story that profiled the work of Yan Zhengxue, Liu Yi finally debuted his piece to the public. “I can’t explain why but I felt a need to do something for the people who died,” he said. “I think for many, the trauma is still somewhere inside. Once I finished the series, I felt a kind of peace."

4. Zhao Zhao

zhao zhao
Photo courtesy Chambers Fine Art.


A protege of Ai Weiwei, 31-year-old Zhao Zhao is routinely touted in the West as the next big rainmaker. In China, the attention is of a different kind: Zhao is a frequent target of government interference, and “one of the most at-risk people in the country,” according to the Beijing-based German art dealer Alexander Ochs, who spoke with Der Spiegel about the young artist last year.

Indeed, in recent years, Zhao has kept a lower profile, citing stress placed on his family by government hecklers. His more provocative works often circle the legacy Ai has already created, like the one shown above. He cast the intentionally “ruined” sculpture of an enormous Chinese police officer during Ai’s imprisonment in 2011. On the officer’s uniform is carved the date of Ai’s arrest.

Along with several other works, the rubble-like sculpture was to launch Zhao’s international career at a Manhattan gallery show in 2012. He's managed to make a name for himself despite the fact that the grand debut never happened: Chinese officials confiscated the entire exhibit shipment before it hit the water. The broken officer was later targeted once more by authorities, who ordered it removed from a Beijing gallery show on the grounds that it wasn't art.

5. Chen Guang

chen guang
Photo courtesy NPR.


Chen Guang has talked about being "brainwashed" as a young recruit to the PLA. The horrors he witnessed as a soldier at Tiananmen now inform his work as an artist, which drips in the imagery of blood. Chen too was taken by authorities ahead of the anniversary this year, in a dramatic series of events documented by The New York Times. A private show staged in his home -- in which he whitewashed over a series of painted numbers signifying the years between the 1989 shootout and now -- ended in a flurry of calls from authorities, he informed the Times, in a harried series of texts. A few days later, his friend told the paper, he was taken away by four police vehicles.

In the photo above, snapped a year ago for an NPR profile that ran this month, Chen stands in front of a painting of his memory of clearing Tiananmen Square as a soldier.

Mugshots Of Fairytale Heroines Tell A Different Story

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Show us one person who can't recite the story of Alice in Wonderland, Little Red Riding Hood, Snow White or Goldilocks by heart, and we'll show you a baby just born into this world. Because we all grew up learning of the dangerous scenarios these heroines had to endure -- from a wolf dressed as grandma to tumbling down holes deep enough for rabbits and finding unlikely roommates in three bears and seven dwarfs, these stories all paint a very pretty picture of girls lost and found. But what if our four princesses weren't so innocent?

Artist Marilen Adrover imagined just that, re-thinking the folklore as crime stories. Alice's hazy trips, Red's violent attempt at survival, Snow's seductress ways and Goldilocks' "misplaced" keys. How badass do they look now, eh?









Find more of Adrover's work here.

Striking Photos Show What It's Like To Actually Live On $1 A Day Around The World

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More than 1 billion people around the globe -- roughly one in six -- earn just $1 a day.

That astonishing statistic is the motivator for the Forgotten International's campaign to shed light on the staggering levels of wealth disparity blanketing many regions of the world today. The nonprofit, which works to alleviate global poverty, has created a book of photographs, Living on a Dollar a Day: The Lives and Faces of the World's Poor, featuring people barely making ends meet to survive.

A team traveled to four continents collecting thousands of photographs and conducting several interviews to better understand the circumstances and stories of the impoverished. Thomas A. Nazario, founder and president of The Forgotten International, is the author of the book, and Pulitzer Prize-winning photojournalist Renée C. Byer captured the images.

The nonprofit is also raising funds to produce a documentary under the same name with a similar goal in mind.

Check out Byer's photographs below (all captions provided by the Forgotten International), and learn more about the book on the organization's website.


dollar a day
Alvaro Kalancha Quispe, 9, opens the gate to the stone pen that holds the family’s alpacas and llamas each morning so they can graze throughout the hillsides during the day. He then heads off to school, but must round them up again in the evening in the Akamani mountain range of Bolivia in an area called Caluyo, about an hour from the city of Qutapampa. In this part of the world, the highlands of Bolivia, approximately 13,000 feet above sea level, residents live in homes with no insulation, no electricity and no beds. Their water comes from streams that run off the snow-covered mountains. Their livelihood lies with their animals, for each animal produces about 3 pounds of fur each year, and each pound of fur is sold for 18 bolivianos, which amounts to about $2.50 U.S. All in all, this family may earn about $200 of income each year from the herd they watch over. Courtesy Renée C. Byer


dollar a day
In Bucharest, Romania, some of the city's poor climb down into underground heating vents or sewers, where they live and eat by candlelight for there is no electricity. Here Hora Florin, 28, a victim of the Romanian dictator Nicolae Ceasescu's orphanages and one of Romania's lost generation of children, lives underground where the heating vents keep him warm at night. Courtesy Renée C. Byer


dollar a day
Four-year-old Ana-Maria Tudor, above, stands in the light of her doorway in Bucharest, Romania, hoping for a miracle as her family faces eviction from the only home they have ever had. Her father recently had a gall bladder surgery that resulted in an infection and left him unable to work. The one room they live in has no bathroom or running water. Courtesy Renée C. Byer


dollar a day
In an e-waste dump that kills nearly everything that it touches, Fati, 8, works with other children searching through hazardous waste in hopes of finding whatever she can to exchange for pennies in order to survive. While balancing a bucket on her head with the little metal she has found, tears stream down her face as the result of the pain that comes with the malaria she contracted some years ago. This is work she must do to survive. Courtesy Renée C. Byer


dollar a day
Also true among the poor is that fact that children everywhere take care of other children. Here Vishal Singh, 6, cares for a baby girl while her mother is away in the Kusum Pahari slum in south Delhi, India. When Vishal is not working or attending to his chores, he attends a school for the children of the Kusum Pahari slum. It is located on the slum grounds. The school is an open-air facility. It has no power, no toilets and no books. To learn their lessons the children and teachers here work off chalkboards. Tuition is 2 rupees a week but no child is turned away for lack of funds. When Vishal is not working, he goes off to school with nearly 600 other children of this slum community. Courtesy Renée C. Byer


dollar a day
Children throughout the world frequently work to help support their families. In some cases, they give up their chance at school to do what they can to help. Ninankor Gmafu, 6, battered by rain, works for his father herding cows in Ghana, West Africa. He dreams of attending school someday but likely will never get there. Courtesy Renée C. Byer


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Cara Delevingne And Jourdan Dunn Get Matching Tattoos, Are Best Friends Forever

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Some best friends wear matching bracelets to show their devotion to one another. But when you're Cara Delevingne and Jourdan Dunn, two of the world's most famous supermodels, jewelry doesn't quite cut it. But tattoos do.

The two beauties took to social media Monday night to debut some fresh ink: matching double-D tattoos. The posts came complete with the hashtag #throwsomedsonthat, which, if it's anything like Delevingne's last Instagram adventure, should be catching on pretty quickly.

We're all about declaring your best friend status to the world, although we're kind of disappointed that Dunn's bestie isn't actually Beyoncé...

Check out the tats below!

How Phil Lord & Chris Miller Turned '22 Jump Street' Into The Year's Best Sequel Thus Far

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Directors Phil Lord and Chris Miller are on the kind of hot streak that would make any filmmaker envious. Their first three films -- "Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs," "21 Jump Street" and "The LEGO Movie" -- have combined to gross more than $500 million at the domestic box office. Each movie has been a critical smash, too: all three had Fresh ratings over 80 percent on Rotten Tomatoes, with this past February's "The LEGO Movie" topping out at 96 percent. (It remains one of 2014's best reviewed films.)

How did Lord and Miller follow those successes? With "22 Jump Street," their first sequel as directors, and a movie that proudly wears that designation like a badge of honor. In his review for Film.com, critic Jordan Hoffman compared the new comedy to the work of Jim Abrahams, David Zucker and Jerry Zucker, the trio behind "Airplane!" He's not wrong: a more meta commentary on movie sequels has not been seen on screen in quite some time. All the jokes people want to make about "22 Jump Street" -- which finds stars Jonah Hill and Channing Tatum going undercover at a local college to stop an insidious drug ring -- are made by the movie itself. As Ice Cube, reprising his role as the perma-aggravated police captain from the first film, tells his bumbling officers: "It's the same case. Do the same thing!"

Fortunately, Lord and Miller didn't do the same thing, except when they did. Which is what makes "22 Jump Street" so funny. Ahead, seven ways the directors, who have been friends since college, made the year's best sequel thus far.

1. They Weren't Afraid To Acknowledge That It Was A Sequel

22 jump street

The end of "21 Jump Street" includes a joke about Schmidt and Jenko (Hill and Tatum) going to college for their next undercover case. "22 Jump Street" makes good on the punchline with repeated gags about how dumb that concept is in practice.

"It definitely helps to let the audience know that you know what they know," Miller told HuffPost Entertainment. "That's nice and it lets them feel like they're part of the club."

As Miller noted, however, there is a limit to how many jokes about movie sequels can actually land before audience fatigue becomes a factor.

"You want less and less of that as the movie goes on," he said. "We had some stuff at the end that was tying up all the similarities and differences of the movie, and it seemed like people didn't want to think about that at the end. The general idea of it was that all the forces were trying to make them do the same thing, but ultimately it had to go its own way."

2. They Looked At What Other Comedy Sequels Did Wrong

22 jump street

It's no secret that comedy sequels are rarely fulfilling, and Hollywood is littered with cautionary tales like "Caddyshack II" or "The Hangover Part II," movies that failed to live up to beloved predecessors.

"A lot of it is about the surprise of the joke," Miller said about why pulling off a sequel is so difficult. "You laugh because something is unexpected. If you're doing the sequel to the joke, you're reminding people of the laugh they once had and it's not as funny."

"You're also often making the second funniest choice that you can make," Lord added. "You already made the funniest choice, you hope, in the first movie."

As a result, Lord and Miller -- working with a script by writers Michael Bacall, Oren Uziel and Rodney Rothman -- turned into the skid: They embraced the repeated situation, but infused the plot with fresh jokes and upped the ante on film's scale.

"There was a chance to do bigger things with the action and the visual stuff," Miller said of the film's grander ambitions. "We wanted to take advantage of the fact that a sequel is supposed to be bigger and flashier."

3. They Had An Actual Point Of View

22 jump street

If "22 Jump Street" were merely a meta commentary on movie sequel culture, it would basically amount to a longer and more expensive Funny or Die sketch. What sets the film apart from its jokey premise is the directors' point of view.

"The thing we were trying to do is use the idea of making a sequel to talk about their relationship," Lord said. "What it's like to try to make a sequel to the first time you fall in love with somebody, and how being in a really mature and committed relationship is like doing the same thing over and over and over again."

It's through that thesis that Lord and Miller are able to take Schmidt and Jenko to new levels within their friendship, and the movie is better for the directors' efforts.

"You have this impulse to want to do something else, but what often happens is that you realize the thing you're doing is wonderful," Lord said. "In order for that thing you're doing to continue to live, it does require you both to leave each other a little bit of room to explore something else, and then bring it back to the relationship."

4. They Went Outside The Box With Casting

22 jump street

Hill, Tatum and Ice Cube aren't the only "21 Jump Street" stars to make the leap to part two: Rob Riggle, Dave Franco and Nick Offerman are in the new film as well. (Brie Larson, the "21 Jump Street" female lead, does not return.) Yet despite that hefty roster of comedy talent, it's relative newcomers like Wyatt Russell (pictured above with Tatum) and Jillian Bell who nearly run away with the film on their own. For Lord and Miller, that was almost by design.

"It's actually a luxury because when you're working on something that's a sequel to a successful comedy with two humongous stars -- three, with Ice Cube -- it gives you all this freedom to introduce somebody fresh," Lord said about casting lesser-known actors in key roles, before adding that there was a practical reason for the decision as well.

"You've also already spent so much money on the stars that you don't have that much choice," he joked.

5. They Referenced Michael Bay

22 jump street

"21 Jump Street" owed a lot to Michael Bay's "Bad Boys," and it should come as no surprise that its follow-up bears a strong resemblance to that film as well. The sequel even shares a similar shot: a city logo photographed from below.

"I'm from Miami and that shot is really memorable to me," Lord said of Bay's signature shot, seen above from the first "Bad Boys" film. "But if you've ever been to the Miami airport, that's not a real sign."

Through research, Lord found out the sign was located in a prop warehouse in Miami. He and Miller were prepared to use it for "22 Jump Street" until they realized a simpler solution was right at their fingertips: "Bad Boys" and its sequel, like the "21 Jump Street" franchise, was a Columbia Pictures production. The directors could simply use the stock footage from Bay's films and change the name from Miami to the fictitious "Puerto Mexico" through digital avenues.

"What we realized, though, was the stock footage is the completely different color," Lord revealed. "It looks totally normal. We learned that he went into color correction and twists all the knobs like crazy and turns it into what it was: a silhouetted orange against black. We just made it even crazier. We made it fuchsia."

The homage is not intended to mock Bay, but to acknowledge the directors' fandom.

"We've been admirers of his movies for a long time," Lord said. "'Cloudy With A Chance of Meatballs' is basically trying to ripoff 'Armageddon.' These movies have a lot to do with 'Bad Boys' because he reinvented the buddy cop genre once before."

6. They Even Left The Door Open For Another One

22 jump street

"22 Jump Street" ends on a note that would seem to preclude further sequels, but both Lord and Miller said that "anything is possible" when it comes to a third feature.

"We like to think that it suggests that there could be infinite sequels," Lord said of how the new film ends. "I'm sure the studio would agree."

Scientist Says Relationship With Dolphin Was 'Sensuous'

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It was just for scientific porpoises!*

A scientist who had a "sensuous" relationship with a dolphin in the 1960s has come forward to talk about the wet and wild experience in the new documentary, "The Girl Who Talked To Dolphins," the Guardian reports.

Margaret Howe Lovatt, now 97, worked as an assistant to Dr. John Lilly at Dolphin House in St. Thomas, according to the Telegraph. The aim of Lilly's work, partially funded by NASA, was to to study dolphin communication and explore the possibilities of communication between humans and dolphins.

In 1965, Lovatt lived in isolation for six months with a bottlenose dolphin named Peter in an attempt to teach the animal human speech.

“The ultimate dream was to have a Cetacean chair at the United Nations where whales and dolphins would share their ideas with us," Christopher Riley, director of "The Girl Who Talked to Dolphins," explained to the Express.

Peter never learned to speak English, but he did practice the language of love.

"Peter was a young guy," Lovatt said, according to the Guardian. "He was sexually coming of age and a bit naughty."

Lovatt said that at first, she would take the randy dolphin for visits with female dolphins, but that started to take up too much time, so she opted to "relieve his desires herself manually," the documentary states.

Her notes from the time describe how she and Peter bonded. From the Telegraph:

“New totally unexpected sequence of events took place,” Lilly noted excitedly. “I feel that we are in the midst of a new becoming; moving into a previous unknown…” As Peter became increasingly gentle, tactile and sensitive to Howe’s feelings he began to “woo” her by softly stroking his teeth up and down her legs. “I stand very still, legs slightly apart, and Peter slides his mouth gently over my shin,” she wrote in her diary. “Peter is courting me… he has been most persistent and patient… Obviously a sexy business… The mood is very gentle, still and hushed… all movements are slow.”


"It was sexual on his part," Lovatt says in the video above. "It was not sexual on mine. Sensuous, perhaps.”

Andy Williamson, who was the veterinarian at Dolphin House, says "This dolphin was madly in love with her."

When Dr. Lilly began experimenting with LSD on dolphins, Lovatt disapproved, but felt she was powerless to stop him. However, she did insist that he never give the drug to Peter.

Other people also disapproved of Lilly's seeming lack of concern for the dolphin's welfare, and funding for his laboratory was ultimately cut. Peter was transferred to another of Lilly's labs in Miami, where the dolphin fell into a depression.

In a small tank, with little sunlight and separated from Lovatt, the dolphin committed suicide.

"Dolphins are not automatic air-breathers like we are," Ric O'Barry told The Guardian. "Every breath is a conscious effort. If life becomes too unbearable, the dolphins just take a breath and they sink to the bottom. They don't take the next breath."

While Lovatt maintains that she did not have any sexual attraction to the animal, that was not the case for Malcolm Brenner, whose book, "Wet Goddess," is based on his own purported 9-month relationship with a dolphin.

"The Girl Who Talked To Dolphins" premieres at the Sheffield International Documentary Festival on June 11.

*WE KNOW, dolphins aren't porpoises.



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James Franco Writes Fictional Story About Lindsay Lohan For Vice

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James Franco has already tried once to clear his name from Lindsay Lohan's sex list of alleged lovers, claiming the two never slept together. Now he's hoping to hammer home that message once again.

In his latest short story, "Bungalow 89," penned for Vice's fiction issue, Franco delves into the details of just how much he never slept with Lohan during the time they spent together at Chateau Marmont. The actor had previously discussed the non-event during an appearance on Howard Stern's radio show. Franco wrote in Vice:

Once upon a time a guy, a Hollywood guy, read some Salinger to a young woman who hadn’t read him before. Let’s call this girl Lindsay. She was a Hollywood girl, but a damaged one.


"Bungalow 89" is supposedly fiction, but it seems like it might be grounded in reality, judging by Franco's description of Lohan, whose advances he explicitly rejects not once, but twice:

I ran my fingers through her hair and thought about this girl sleeping on my chest, our fictional Hollywood girl, Lindsay. What will she do? I hope she gets better. You see, she is famous. She was famous because she was a talented child actress, and now she’s famous because she gets into trouble. She is damaged. For a while, after her high hellion days, she couldn’t get work because she couldn’t get insured. They thought she would run off the sets to party. Her career suffered, and she started getting arrested (stealing, DUIs, car accidents, other things). But the arrests, even as they added up, were never going to be an emotional bottom for her, because she got just as much attention for them as she used to get for her film performances. She would get money offers for her jailhouse memoirs, crazy offers. So how would she ever stop the craziness when the response to her work and the response to her life had converged into one? Two kinds of performance, in film and in life, had melted into one.


And in case you didn't understand before, Franco's story attempts to make it crystal clear that he doesn't belong on the "Mean Girls" star's sex list, writing:

"Now we were lying in bed. I wasn't going to fuck her. She had her head on my shoulder. She started to talk. I let her."

Okay, Franco, we get it.

To read Franco's "Bungalow 89" in its entirety, head over to Vice.

Hamptons Residents Hate 30-foot-tall Walking Statue

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If art is supposed to inspire an emotional reaction, then a 30-foot-tall aluminum statue installed in the Hamptons has succeeded in its goal.

It's definitely making residents emotional, but not in the way the artist or Rechler Equity, the firm that commissioned it, might like.

The so-called “Walking Figure” statue was installed earlier this week inside a traffic circle at Gabreski Airport in Westhampton, New York.

So far, it's not impressing locals like Rob Swanson, Sr., who posted a since-deleted artistic assessment on the Greater Westhampton Chamber of Commerce's Facebook page: “I thought that a scrap dealer’s truck threw up!”

He added, “I want it removed, and I will donate a crane and a wrecking ball!”

Mitchell Rechler, whose firm commissioned the sculpture, believes it is "bold and imaginative, with a liveliness that mirrors the modern design elements and positive, open feel of the Hamptons Business District,” he said, according to the New York Observer.

Tony Intravaia, 50, who owns a pizza parlor in Westhampton, has other opinions.

“Everyone thinks it’s Olive Oyl from Popeye," he told the paper. [The town] should let us know what it means, and if it doesn’t stand for anything, then they have issues."

To be fair, not everyone thinks it looks like Olive Oyl.

walking figure

One likened it to a character from the "Rugrats"cartoon while another thought it looked like a Peanuts character, according to the New York Post.

Locals may have a few years to figure out exactly who or what the sculpture looks like.

Rechler Equity has 35 years left on a lease to develop 55 acres near the airport, including the land where the statue stands, 27East.com reports.



Paul McCartney Postpones June U.S. Dates Due To Illness

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The following article is provided by Rolling Stone.

By KORY GROW

Paul McCartney has rescheduled the U.S. tour dates he had originally scheduled to begin in mid-June for October. His Out There tour will now resume in Albany on July 5th. The former Beatle is still recuperating from the virus that forced him to postpone several dates in Japan and South Korea. See the rescheduled dates, as well as McCartney's July and August dates, below.

Paul McCartney Trades Dance Moves With a Robot in 'Appreciate' Video

"I'm sorry, but it's going to be a few more weeks before we get rocking in America again," McCartney said in a statement. "I'm feeling great, but taking my docs' advice to take it easy for just a few more days. Look forward to seeing you all soon."

In Pics: The 12 Weirdest Paul McCartney Songs

The 71-year-old postponed a string of dates in Asia in late May when he came down with a virus and was hospitalized in Tokyo. At the time, his rep said, "He will make a complete recovery and has been ordered to take a few days rest."

Rolling Stone’s 100 Greatest Beatles Songs

Prior to postponing the U.S. tour dates, this leg of McCartney's Out There tour was meant to wrap up in San Francisco, where he would play the final concert at the city's Candlestick Park. That show, which is still scheduled to take place on August 14th, is where the Beatles played their final full concert in 1966.

In Pics: How the Beatles Took America: Photos of the Historic 1964 Invasion

Here are Paul McCartney's upcoming tour dates:

7/5 Albany, NY - Times Union Center
7/7 Pittsburgh, PA - Consol Energy Center
7/9 Chicago, IL - United Center
7/12 Fargo, ND - Fargodome
7/14 Lincoln, NE - Pinnacle Bank Arena
7/16 Kansas City, MO - Sprint Center
8/2 Minneapolis, MN - Target Field
8/5 Missoula, MT - Washington-Grizzly Stadium
8/7 Salt Lake City, UT - EnergySolutions Arena
8/10 Los Angeles, CA - Dodger Stadium
8/12 Phoenix, AZ - US Airways Center
8/14 San Francisco, CA - Candlestick Park
10/2 Lubbock, TX - United Spirit Arena (originally 6/14)
10/11 New Orleans, LA - Smoothie King Center (originally 6/19)
10/13 Dallas, TX - American Airlines Center (originally 6/16)
10/15 Atlanta, GA - Philips Arena (originally 6/21)
10/16 Nashville, TN - Bridgestone Arena (originally 6/25)
10/25 Jacksonville, FL - Jacksonville Veterans Memorial Arena (originally 6/22)
10/28 Louisville, KY - Yum! Center (originally 6/26)

In Pics: The Lost Beatles Photos: Rare Shots From 1964-1966

Why Andy Garcia Refused To Change His Last Name

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Andy Garcia knows Hollywood isn't the same place it was 30 years ago.

Garcia, 58, was honored with the National Association of Latino Independent Producers' Lifetime Achievement Award this past Saturday. The Cuban-born actor took some time before the NALIP ceremony to chat with The Huffington Post about how diversity in Hollywood has evolved over the years, why he refused to change his last name and why he doesn't frame himself as a Hispanic actor.

Congratulations on being honored with NALIP's Lifetime Achievement Award. How did you feel when you were told you'd receive the award?

It's very flattering, I feel very honored that my peers think of me in those terms. It gives you a moment of reflection when someone approaches you that way for your work. You go about the business of creating a body of work as an actor or producer or director -- and I feel blessed that I've been given the opportunity to do that for the past 30 years or so -- and when you feel that someone is acknowledging the work that you've been doing, it's a great honor. It's very touching.

In recent years there's been a lot of conversation about bringing more diversity into Hollywood. You've been in the business for a very long time. You've found great success in franchises like "Ocean's Eleven" and "The Godfather" -- so, tell me about the changes you've seen along the way.

Well you know, when I first arrived to Los Angeles to look for work as an actor in 1978 -- first, the only places that were places to work in terms of film or television were about five studios, more or less, the major studios that we all know of. Warner Bros., Paramount, Universal, Fox, MGM and PBS. There were no cable outlets. So the opportunities for actors to work in film or television were much more limited.

And I also think they still had not made any kind of real headway or transition in terms of stereotyping actors because of their cultural or ethnic backgrounds. You were limited as an actor. An actor of Hispanic descent or with a Hispanic surname, I would say, [was] pigeonholed into parts that require a character that they think could be Hispanic or can represent a Hispanic -- whether it'd be Puerto Rican, Cuban, Mexican, it didn't matter. But there weren't that many roles written specifically for characters of that culture or heritage [either]. So combined with the stereotyping of the actor and the lack of roles, there wasn't a lot of work out there.

It was very difficult for [an] actor that comes from a specific cultural background and had certain surnames to, sometimes in the casting process, be able to cross over and say, 'Just look at that person as an actor, don't look at him as an actor of Mexican descent or an Asian or whatever, just look at him for what he can bring to the story and how he can enhance your film by his participation and his talents as an actor or actress.' ... So that's always been the challenge.

The experience for Latino actors in Hollywood has certainly changed drastically, but I'd say it's taken a long time to see significant change.

Many, many years prior to when I was attempting to start a career, there were different eras in Hollywood films. You know, in the '30s or '40s, an actor that had a sort of Hispanic or Latin surname was kind of invoked -- the "Latin Lover" was invoked for many years. It was an asset in a way. And then that kind of disappeared, and actors who had Hispanic surnames felt the pressure to change their last names in order not to be stereotyped and create more opportunities for themselves.

I think as time passed into the '80s and '90s and the opportunities became greater for diversity in film and television, [there were] more places to actually work ... And the audiences asked for and [wanted] to identify with characters of all kind of cultures and points of view and experiences. So the opportunity for an actor now is much greater when you're going to audition for work, and the level of stereotyping, in my opinion, has been reduced tremendously. It will always exist, actors are always trying to break that mold, but it has gotten much better over the years. Now, the fact that you may have a Hispanic surname or you're Asian or any diversified culture like that -- [it's] not as much of hindrance as it once was.

Did you personally ever feel pressured to change your last name?

Yes, yes. From early on, all the agents that I met when I came to town, first thing they would say is 'Change your name.'

Why did you decide not to?

Well, I think that the most important thing as an artist is to [have] a very personal connection to who you are. I always felt that in changing the name I would lose sort of the essence of how I could personalize the work, my point of view. And it would be, in a way, betraying that, betraying my inner self. So on a personal note I was just never prepared to go that route. You think about it very strongly because you want to be able to work, but at the end of the day I decided not to go that route. It's very difficult, I think, when someone asks you who you are and you state your name and it's not really your name.

In the past, however, you've said you don't consider yourself a "Latino actor." Could you elaborate on those comments?

Philosophically for me, I frame myself as an actor, I do not frame myself as a Hispanic-actor. That sort of hyphenation is not where you're coming from. I think people who are successful that happen to be from a Hispanic background are successful because of their talents as a producer or as a director or as an actor and their training. It's about the work that they bring. I think it's important to recognize that you're casting the artist ... what their sensibilities are and what their talents are for a particular project.

Some of the greatest performances have been given by actors who were not of the same cultural background as the characters that they were playing. Even someone like José Ferrer in "Cyrano de Bergerac" or Marlon Brando in "The Godfather" -- Marlon Brando is not Italian. Does it matter? Ultimately it's all about the art form and the actor's ability to personify his parts.

And speaking of portraying characters of other cultures, you're going to be starring as a Spanish expat living in Cuba for your upcoming film "Hemingway & Fuentes." The movie is an original concept of yours and you co-wrote the script with the late author's niece, Hilary Hemingway. Tell me about why you were drawn to produce and direct a film like this.

Gregorio Fuentes was a character that was with Ernest Hemingway for the last 20 years of his life. He was the captain of his boat the Pilar ... My interest in Hemingway and my love of "The Old Man and the Sea" -- why he wrote it, how he wrote it and what motivated him to write, but also to spend the time he did in Cuba in the world of Cojimar -- that was the initial spark for me. For many years, I always wanted to explore that story of what happened, what was the relationship and what prompted him to write the book, which became probably his most famous and recognized piece of work.

And the movie sets out to answer just that and explore the relationship between Hemingway and Fuentes during their fishing trips off the coast of Cuba. As a Cuban-born actor I can imagine you will be bringing a personal perspective to the set.

Well you know I was born [in Cuba] and I spent the first five and a half years of my life there, but I've been very involved culturally with my heritage. I dedicated really all my life [to] its history and its music because it's something that I'm very connected to. So, that is the perspective that I bring -- my connection to it and I guess my understanding of what that world was like in the '50s.

My parents grew up in that era and I grew up in an exile [Cuban] community, which was always profoundly nostalgic and loving and filled with memories from that time period. That stimulated my own interest in it and to this day I still continue to have a profound connection to that era, the 1940s and '50s in Cuba. I left when I was a child, but in my subconscious I sort of lived it as an adult. Through the people who lived [it], sort of through osmosis and hearing their stories and music, you're able to kind of imagine yourself living in that era and understanding its beauties and its tragedies.

This Is The Fastest Way To Cut A Cake (VIDEO)

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Happy birthday, somebody!

You've opened your presents, blown out your candles and made a wish. All that's left is the cutting of the cake. Now that you're one year older, you should be able to master the art of slicing up a tasty confection with ease. Follow Youtuber Foodinese's ingenious cake cutting trick, and you should have no problem at all.

Abandon your cake knife for a long piece of dental floss. Make sure it's of the unflavored variety, 'cause nobody wants to feel like they're at the dentist's while indulging in what should have been a delicious piece of cake.

Start with your cake and a long piece of floss.



Hold the floss taut and press down into the diameter of the cake in one, fluid motion. Then repeat in the other direction.



Cut in between your quartered slices. Keep slicing like this, depending on how many guests there are to serve, and how fat of a slice everybody's prepared to devour.



Now that you've cut the desired number of slices, it's time to have your cake and eat it, too. Plate, serve and enjoy!



You can slice up more than just cake with this floss-cutting technique. Try it out on a block of cheese for an even, uncrumbly sliver. If it's not your birthday, but you're eager to put this craft to the test, find some cake recipes below and get baking. You deserve to eat cake every day.





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How Are They Keeping Rats Off Kara Walker’s Sugar Sculptures?

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Kara Walker’s 75-foot-long, 35-foot-tall sculpture made of 160,000 pounds of sugar rests in the expansive, soon-to-be-razed Domino Sugar Refinery, surrounded by 15 five-foot-tall statues of boys coated in molasses and brown sugar. The rafters are still encrusted with the sweet crystal, and molasses sticks to the walls, slowly dribbling down to the floor. Of all the questions asked of the gleaming sphinx, from the intricacies of the artist’s message to the systems of labor behind its crafting, the most practical one is perhaps also the most mysterious: Where are all the sugar-seeking pests?

The towering sphinx is made of sugar and water churned in a cement mixer to produce a gooey adhesive that sticks to a styrofoam core, with no additional coating to preserve it. The sculptures are also left uncovered overnight, as one volunteer told Hyperallergic, and the team did not spray insecticides on the works or on the surrounding ground. The lack of pests, then, seems to stem more from the factory’s status as a construction site.

Google Helps Immortalize The Vanishing World Of Street Art

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Street art is far from static in the ever-changing urban jungle.

Building walls get ripped down, taking with them painstakingly detailed murals; frustrated landlords whitewash over laborious graffiti, and gradually, those impermanent works become nothing but a distant memory.

In an effort to immortalize urban art, Google launched the Street Art Project in tandem with a handful of art institutions Tuesday. The new interactive site allows users to get up-close and personal with street art spaces from around the world. Featured spaces include New York City’s late 5 Pointz graffiti mecca and the giant murals adoring the abandoned building walls of Buenos Aires’ Coghlan Art District.

These works of art that decorate our streets do not always hang about for long, which is why we’re delighted to work with partners around the globe to help them tell a story of street art around the globe,” Amit Sood, Google Cultural Institute‘s director, told Time.

bogota graffiti
A view of Cultura calle (2013) by Toxicómano, DjLu in Bogota, Colombia.


Created by the Paris-based Google Cultural Institute, the project contains more than 5,000 iconic works cataloged into mini digital exhibits. The project's partnership with hundreds of museums, archives and cultural institutions allows the collections to be contextualized with a history of the region’s street art movement. Some works, like the labyrinth of graffiti-covered rooms of Paris 13, even offer interactive Google Street View tours.

paris 13 graffiti
Inside the now demolished Paris 13 tower in France


“Using Street View, you can also explore buildings with street art that are closed to the public, or that have already been demolished—such as the famed Paris 13 tower,” the Google Cultural Institute said in a statement. “Street art may be temporary on our walls and sidewalks, but its beauty and vibrancy live on, on the web.”

all city canvas graffiti
A view of ESCIF's giant mural in Mexico, part of the All City Canvas urban art festival, (image by ARTO O ACC).


Shepard Fairey, the graffiti artist notorious for his depiction of President Barack Obama in a 2008 election poster, says he supports the concept for its accessibility.

“I’ve always used my street art to democratize art, so it would be philosophically inconsistent for me to protest art democratization through Google,” he told The New York Times through a publicist. “[A]s long as they credit the mural to me, and it’s not being used for commercial purposes or corporations.”

Users can also be "spotters” and contribute to the project by uploading their street art photos to social media with the hashtag #StreetArtProject.

The Striking Men Of Sikhism Get Their Due

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The surname Singh is so prevalent around the world that Canada used to ban immigrants from keeping it, claiming the name was too common to process quickly.

Today, it’s a loaded identifier: violence against those who bear the name Singh -- men who belong to the religion known as Sikhism -- has escalated since the attacks of September 11, so much so that the FBI has devoted a branch to investigating such crimes.

2014-06-10-singh1.jpg

Still from Kickstarter.


Given the visual nature of the Sikh identity, the photo above is a long time coming. It's part of The Singh Project, a new undertaking by British photographers Naroop Singh Jhooti and Amit Amin. The series features tight-cropped portraits of Sikh men, intended to “highlight the subjects,” according to a video on the project’s Kickstarter page.



The subjects are both diverse and narrowly chosen. Some are young, donning leather and jeans. Others look like jolly grandfathers in a Tinkle cartoon. Several, young and old, brandish the traditional Sikh knife, or kirpan.

2014-06-10-ScreenShot20140610at11.06.43AM.png

Still from Kickstarter.


All, however, are followers of the Sikh tenet forbidding the cutting of hair out of reverence for the body. Accordingly, many Sikh men -- and some brave women -- tend to sport luxurious facial hair. Their uncut head hair is hidden by a turban. The regal look, often confused by the uninformed for an Islamic one, befits the faith’s commonest name: Singh comes from the Sanskrit word simha, which means lion (think Disney’s “Simba”).

In the Kickstarter video, creators Jhooti and Amin discuss how embarking on the project has changed their view of Sikhism. Both are Sikhs, but neither devout enough to look the part:

“But we felt a sense of pride,” Jhooti says. “It was great to see these men come into our studio. Their pride in their identity was so strong that it reinforced our belief in our religion.”

The project also calls to mind the work of Waris Ahluwalia, a Sikh man-about-town who’s recently stirred up press. Known to his admirers simply as Waris, the designer/model/gadfly made national headlines last year, when a Gap ad he was featured in across the U.S. drew anti-Muslim vandalism.

The Singh Project is poised to pick up where Ahluwalia left off, broadcasting the unique look of Sikh men to the general public, with an exhibit of oversized prints.

“And of course,” Amin adds in the video, “plenty of tea and samosas at the launch party.”

Floating Charcoal Sculptures Explore The Complex Relationship Between Man And Nature

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Charcoal is a natural substance derived from the geological process of burning trees. The light black residue that remains, though created by nature, has a distinct architecture to its rough sides and sharp edges, reminiscent of the shapes made, consciously, by man.

Korean artist Seon Ghi Bahk uses this unorthodox artistic material to explore the complex and interwoven relationship between nature and human civilization. While Western culture has the tendency to view our natural surroundings as either a tool of human civilization or a pleasant backdrop for our daily lives, Bahk paints, or rather sculpts, a more nuanced picture.

columns


Bahk strings together delicate chunks of charcoal using nylon thread, arranging the intricate configurations into various abstract and figurative shapes. The monochromatic sculptures take the forms of everything from decomposing architectural columns to ethereal floating orbs. Tough yet ephemeral, the charcoal is reminiscent of birds in flight or an architectural explosion occurring in slow motion.

The shattered columns dwell in the space between the organic and the manmade, their imposing stature already fading into oblivion. The works embody the transience of human culture, implying that even the most ancient facets of human civilization are, in the grand scheme of nature, destined to disappear. Furthermore the charcoal that comprises the columns, made from a purely geological process, represents our eternal dependence on nature's processes.

Bahk's exhibition, titled "Fiction of the Fabricated Image," explores the ways humans all too often misinterpret their relationship with the organic world around them. As Zadok Gallery summarized in a statement: "According to Seon Ghi Bahk, the idea that man and nature can exist separately is pure fiction. His work points out that humankind is not only derived from nature, but cannot exist without it."

The exhibition runs until August 25, 2014 at Zadok Gallery in Miami.

This Is The Claymation Rap Video You Never Knew You Needed

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We never thought we'd find ourselves obsessively hitting replay while a blinged out banana raps about the good life. But here we are, eyes glued to a little gem called "Butter Ya'Self."

banan

The epic claymation-enhanced video above combines the musical stylings of Nana Splits, a banana, and ButterKrust, a bun with a striking vocal resemblance to Nicki Minaj. Nana has expensive tastes and a knack for food-centric word play, dropping delicious lines like, "Sorry, honeydew, but you know I can't elope." As far as store-bought goods go, he's a star.

The ripe parody comes courtesy of Julian Petschek, a student at The California Institute of the Arts. Katrina Recto plays the sassy carbohydrate, Jacob Gibson the potassium-filled protagonist and DJ Petroleum Jelly the melodious butter stick by the name of Sweet Cream.

After the video above, you'll empathize with the plight of a baller banana in ways you never imagined. Get ready for some weed smoking, kicks wearing, fast talking produce. "We on a roll. Bitch, I am a roll. Getting hot and heavy in the oven like a casserole. Making bread. Shit, I'm made of bread. And these fruits and veggies all faker than Potato Head."

Widescreen and turn it up.

pink

fruit

h/t Juxtapoz.

One Daughter's Response To Her Mother's Death, Captured In Stunning Keepsake Photos

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"I found myself deeply overwhelmed by the need to keep even the most mundane of my mom's belongings when she died suddenly this past February," photographer Jennifer Loeber explains in her artist statement. "Instead of providing comfort and good memories they became a source of deep sadness and anxiety and I knew the only way I would be able to move past that was to focus on a way to interact with them cathartically."

ring

It's a familiar paradox for many individuals who've grieved the death of a loved one. Once they've passed, the memories of a deceased grandfather or sister seem cosmically connected to the objects they once called their own. From a hairbrush to a briefcase, the banal things are at once tangible evidence of our family and friends' existences, as well as painful reminders of the fact that they are no longer with us.

Loeber, a Brooklyn-based artist, decided to confront the tragedy she saw in her mother's make-up and old cassettes head on. In a project titled "Left Behind," she pieces objects like a tube of lipstick or a vintage camera to snapshots her father captured over the course of Elizabeth Ann Loeber's life. The results amount to a beautiful, photographic memorial to a mom that connects artifacts to vibrant moments frozen in film.

"I had recently become active on Instagram and realized that utilizing the casual aspects of sharing on the app was a way to diminish my own sentimentality towards the objects my Mom left behind," Loeber added. "Each image [in the series] is paired with an archival image of her that speaks to its subject. "

Moving from retro portraits of a woman in curlers to stylized still-lifes of ornate lighters, "Left Behind" is an intricate, and reasonably heart-wrenching glimpse into the life of a woman held in loving regard by the series' creator. Meticulously organized and thoughtfully paired, the images reveal one individual's journey with mourning, as tragic and beautiful as that process can be. Below is a preview of Loeber's breathtaking series. Let us know your thoughts on the project in the comments.

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