Best of the Web

• Posted By: Kathy M.Y. Pyon
• Posted On: 10:00 p.m. | June 15, 2012

“A Shadow Remains”

The very personal work that photographer Phillip Toledano made of his father is insanely beautiful.  Several years ago I was having dinner with my friend Maxine Helfman, also a talented photographer.  I asked who’s work she is following and who inspires her.  She thought for about half a second and said, “I just picked up ‘Days With My Father‘ by Phillip Toledano.”   We had a lengthy conversation on his meaningful work.  Not only is it beautiful, but the level of intimacy and transparency is unsurpassed.  Mediastorm produced  a short teaser trailer to the full-length feature.  The trailer is compelling and left me wanting more, which makes the $1.99 commitment seem insignificant.

“Boxeo Clasico”

The New Yorker’s Photo Booth features this body of work by photographer Christaan Felber of boxers at a family owned Brooklyn, N.Y., gym.  I dig this collection and style choice.  The work is gritty and beautiful simultaneously. Felber’s choices lends a  feeling of very high fashion in some aspects and perfectly messy in others.

Photo Booth is a nice blog that explores interesting work to follow.

“Kon*Fab”

My  friend Katy Newton created something wonderfully innovative for the news and information industry during her term as a Knight Fellow at Stanford University.  In this video, she explains the concept of how we can explore a whole new world of digesting new information without limits.  The idea of discovery of something beyond our everyday interests is something that is slowly being depleted with people with people getting their daily dose from a constant similar stream.  I admire the idea that Katy is developing and look forward to it being developed and catch on.

“Future Learning”

I haven’t been on Good magazine for sometime now.  In the past, I enjoyed its approach to videos.  I was pleasantly reinvigorated by this video on education.  It was filled with information and was entertaining as well.  A video over 12 minutes online can be overwhelming, however this film was chaptered and flowed quite well.  I was engaged throughout the whole experience.  I also learned a lot and was motivated to send this along to several people, a true gauge of a film’s impact.

Caption: Top left: photography by Phillip Toledano; top right: photography by Christiaan Felber; bottom left: screen grab from “Kon*Fab”; bottom right: screen grab from “Future Learning.”