IN the summer of 1968 photographer Michael Joseph gathered the Rolling Stones around the ruins of the Swarkestone  Hall Pavilion in Derbyshire for a photo shoot. The idea was to create images for the upcoming album Beggar's Banquet. Also pictures from the shoot were used on the compilation album Hot Rocks. On the back cover of Hot Rocks you see the band strike a pose in some kind of medieval clothing. It reminds me of the painting ‘De Boom van Jesse’, painted in the year 1500 by Jan Mostaert.

ICE goggles gives you brain freeze. This Australian meteorologist can tell you that. The two were part of the Australasian Antarctic Expedition that collected data between 1911 and 1914. The famous Australian photographer Frank Hurley made the portraits. Hurley seemingly liked working in icy conditions, because he was also the photographer of the Endurance Expedition that was trapped in Antarctic pack ice.

ONE day Maurice Constant wrote down the musical notes of his military marches and found a publisher who saw market for it. Now the book waits in a library for a musician with an appetite for marches.  Sheet music publications are pretty large. I can’t read notes, but I do like the covers of the books. No illustrations, just type. I found the ‘notebooks’ in the Library of Amsterdam.

AMERICAN graphic designer Bradbury Thompson had a thing with masks. For the company Westvaco he created his own mask with the use of letters. In 1980 the US Postal Service asked Thompson to design a sheet of stamps celebrating the art of the North American Indian. The designer found four masks of different tribes and placed them in a prominent way on the stamps. I think postage stamps are a good platform for masks.

NEW YORK street photography is almost a genre of itself. The mix of rich and poor, black and white and locals and visitors that walk the streets of Manhattan gave some of the biggest names in photography inspiration to roam the city. In the next couple of weeks I will introduce some of these searchers of sidewalk scenes. #3 in line: Bruce Gilden. The New Yorkers in the pictures of Bruce Gilden can be seen as some kind of stereotypes, but they are not. They are the leading actors in the photograph and it’s up to the viewer to make up the story. ‘If your pictures aren't good enough, you're not close enough’, photographer Robert Capa said. Bruce Gilden made the advice his main principle. He takes his pictures so close that often people think he’s is photographing something behind them. The viewer gets the feeling he is in the middle of the action. ‘I'm known for taking pictures very close, and the older I get, the closer I get’, Gilden says about his work. This work routine, in combination with a good nose for characters that stand out, makes Gilden one of the best street photographers around. He has worked all over ...

IF I ever going to buy a cat, I will call it Yogi Berra. He is a legendary catcher who played for the New York Yankees. Yogi is his nickname. His real first name is Peter Lawrence. But the nickname works well with his last name. Yogi Berra. It’s got a good ring to it.  Berra played almost his entire career for the Yankees and his number 8 was retired after he stopped. Next to baseball, Berra is also famous for his quotes. For example, he came up with the statements ‘It ain’t over till it’s over’ and ‘the future ain’t what it used to be’. Also, they say the cartoon character Yogi Bear is named after Berra.

FORGET about collecting stamps. Instead fill your album with used heroin bags. It is the newest craze. As we speak, collectors search the back alleys for empty glassine packets. Lucky ones find dope bags with a logo they don’t have. The images and slogans are printed on the bags by dealers in the hope the marketing will create a loyal group of consumers. One of the pioneers of collecting the heroin bags is Clayton Patterson. I wrote about his passion before. (My personal favorite is, off course, the LIFE bag.)

ROMAN statues look cool. And that is not only because they are made of white marble. In the French book Mémoires d’Hadrien the ancient faces illustrate the story. The statues are printed on transparent paper so you see a grid on the other page. The book is designed in 1953 by Jacques Darche and is a publication for an organization with the name the ‘Club of Best Books’.  They only published 5000 numbered copies. See more Roman statues X graphic design here and here.

THE typeface Avant Garde is an outgrowth of the masthead logo for Avant Garde magazine. In the late sixties, graphic designers Herb Lubalin and Tom Carnase developed the masthead into a complete alphabet. In the beginning the typeface was only used in the magazine. In 1970 Avant Garde became commercially available. It is considered as one of the most successful new typefaces of the 20th century. Out of Avant Garde evolved the typeface Lubalin Graph. It is a serif version of Avant Garde. Tony DiSpigna designed Lubalin Graph. The two typefaces are famous for their many innovative ligatures. More Lubalin here and here.

PHOTOGRAPHER Walker Evans was not afraid to try something new. Evans, who started his career with a glass-plate view camera with wooden tripod, bought a couple of months before his seventieth birthday a Polaroid SX-70. This foldable camera, made of brushed aluminum with inlaid pony leather, was the start of an unexpected creative period for Walker. In 1973 Walker, who had been a photographer for more than half a century, recovered from a serious stomach surgery. He still wanted to work, but his bad health would not allow him to carry his equipment and also developing the prints in the dark room took to much effort. The solution came with a new invention, a small size camera that produced instant color prints: the Polaroid SX-70. This camera was made for the mass market. A handy device to make snapshots. Not a camera for the professional photographer. But Walker gave it a chance. ‘I bought that thing as a toy, and I took it as a kind of challenge’, the photographer once said. ‘It was this gadget and I decided that I might be able to do something serious with it.’ The SX-70 allowed Walker to work again. ‘It makes things awfully easy ...