Mark Menjivar’s “You Are What You Eat” series looks at the interiors of refrigerators in homes across the US.

Each image is tagged with a brief description about the owner — providing insights that tell big stories about the lives of the people who eat from the foods contained within.

As Erica Barnett in the Stranger describes the series:

“... simultaneously impersonal (the photos depict still lives, with the only implied human presence being the hands that arranged them) and incredibly intimate (the shot of the fridge containing an open Pepsi bottle filled with water, some miscellaneous bread products, and an unmarked paper bag — belonging to a botanist who ‘feels more comfortable among flora and fauna ... than people’ — just kills me. There are a thousand stories in every refrigerator ...”

What does your fridge look like, and what does that say about your life?

Don't have it myself yet - but this looks like a really amazing combination of photojournalism, memoir, and modern graphic novel.

From the wonderful Cory Doctorow at BoingBoing:

The book is the memoir of Didier, a photographer who accompanied a caravan of Medecins Sans Frontiers doctors into war-torn Afghanistan to staff a clinic in the middle of the Soviet-Mujahideen war. Didier dictated the memoir to Guibert (the graphic novelist who also produced Alan's War, a stunning memoir of post-war France) before he died of a heart-attack, and Guibert and Lemercier worked to turn this into The Photographer.

Visually, The Photographer resembles nothing so much as a Tin Tin adventure, except that it is liberally sprinkled with Didier's photos and contact sheets, dropped in among the drawn panels, incorporated seamlessly into the action. Didier was a powerful, naturalistic photographer, unflinching and unpretentious, and between the finished drawings and the annotated contact sheets, you get a sense of a real artist at work.

Sounds fantastic! You can get it here:
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/1596433752/downandoutint-20

Widely making the rounds on the interwebs today (though it was posted online in Nov. and shot several years ago) - Thomas Allen's superawesome book art photography. Beautiful dioramas hand cut from old pulp paperbacks.

To any one who ever stumbled upon a treasure trove of salacious pulp novels as a kid - this is extra amazing. Steamy characters embroiled in intrigue stepping out of the book!

Thanks Thomas Allen!
Thanks Paintalicious!

Brilliant - simple idea. Powerful execution. A "why didn't I think of that?" kind of thing.

Peter Funch captured throngs of NYC pedestrians by shooting from the same streetcorners for weeks. Compositing people from across time into a single frame - grouped by theme. Amazing - looks like heavily art directed film stills.

Smokers. Yawners. Manila folder or bouquet-of-flowers holders. Sun dress wearers. Umbrella-ers. Dog walkers.

I love the subtle ones that could nearly be a single capture (everyone looking in the same direction) - a slightly discomforting altered reality.

Thanks Peter! Thanks BoingBoing!

Pink-tinged clouds with happy faces that decay after 30 minutes floating above the Tate Modern? Sign me up!

London artist Stuart Semple released 2,057 of the clouds … “I just wanted to make a piece of work that would cheer people up a bit.”

I’m totally cheered.

Best viewed in video form:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RKwO7avwOTA

via DesignBoom

This made my morning. Ex-New Yorker (and illustrator) Christoph Niemann’s playful take on the city in simple Lego form is evocative and totally awesome.

This series is a treat for anyone who misses NYC or anyone who loves childhood toys repurposed for semi-abstract interpretation.

Check out the rest of Niemann’s “Abstract City” posts for the NYTimes. All excellent!

Magical deer spin forever via the neatness of this animated GIF.

Thanks snuh and Boing Boing!

(Post doesn't display animation - click through click through!)