To illustrate Adam Gopnik's piece on National Geographic* in last week's New Yorker, photo editor James Pomerantz riffled through hundreds of images from NatGeo's online archive of more than 11 million photos. This week, the New Yorker website reproduced "a handful of particularly intriguing images" from "the photo booty" Pomerantz uncovered. National Geographic being the source, one of the images naturally featured Cape Breton. Can you guess what's being pictured here? The caption: "Men wear the waistcoat of Cape Breton’s famous giant named Mcaskill (sic)."**  Gilbert H. Grosvenor took the photograph. * A subscription is required to read the entire piece. ** I assume the...

23 April, 2013

National Geographic has been publishing gorgeous photographs for 125 years, so starting a Tumblr feed seems a natural step for the dowdy journal. One of the first entries features Mabel Gardiner Hubbard Bell [See update below] inside a tetrahedral kite frame, while her husband, Alexander Graham Bell, leans in for a kiss. Doesn't it just make you wish you had known these two? Dated October 10 16, 1903, this photo surely must have been taken at Beinn Bhreagh. Click on the image to see the full-sized version. *UPDATE: It appears there is controversy about whether the woman in this photo is Mabel...

29 March, 2013