What’s With The New Banner Logo?

You might be asking what’s the funny doodle in the new banner?

I should precursor my answer with a history of pain as regards the banner image. Back in 2008, I used a detail of a crumbling wall – a poor metaphor of the hundreds of thousands of carceral sites if there ever was one. Soon after, I abandoned that for the commonly-used image of a line-up of book spines. But, still, the books were a mere representation of knowledge … and of whose knowledge, it wasn’t exactly clear.

So, when I learnt about the project TOBERND,YOURHILLA, with it’s distribution of etch-a-sketch-like graphics relating to the Becher’s oeuvre I was tempted. The tickling generosity of TOBERND,YOURHILLA toward the photoblog community is also a nice touch. I decided I was happy to give over the banner to some sort of distant artistic force.

Dider Falzone quotes the introduction to the 2008 exhibition “Bernd and Hilla Becher: Landscape/Typology” at The Edward Steichen Photography Galleries, to put TOBERND,YOURHILLA in context:

“The Bechers are best known for their “typologies”: grids of b/w photographs of variant examples of a single type of industrial structure. […] At each site the Bechers also created overall landscape views of the entire plant, which set the structures in their context and show how they relate to each other. The typologies emulate the clarity of an engineer’s drawing, while the landscapes evoke the experience of a particular place.”

Falzone draughted nine of these landscape plans (see above) with the intention that each would become a calling card on photography blogs. He adds, “each slot of the 3×3 logo grid evokes one of the storage silos arranged into grid for comparation of form and design. Once the nine logos are assigned, the digital manipulation will mirror itself in a systematic auto-generated community.”

That might be grand language for what I appreciate as a cheeky game and badge of membership to a club of like-minded, whimsical bloggers. I got to the party late, but was lucky enough to snag Slot ●●● ●●● ×●●. The only other remaining slot has since been claimed. As such, Prison Photography finds itself in good company; below are seven photoblogs also part of this doodle-based nonagon group.

Slot ●×● ●●● ●●●