September 01, 2008

Chinese political illustration, then & now

• Ethan Persoff has gathered a collection of anti-US Chinese political cartoons c.1958-1960.  Without translations or other context, many are baffling, but I find this one especially creepy.  [Via]
• Drawing your own political messages in China is less welcome: James Powderly of the Graffiti Research Lab (see previous) was detained for six days for attempting to display Tibet-related protest messages during the Olympics.  He tells the story in a series of interviews.
• History repeating as farce: Now you can get a hand-painted version of your face in a Chinese propaganda poster.  [Via]

Olympic photography

• As you’d expect, The Big Picture offers up a sampling of terrific Olympics photos.
• TotallyCrap offers their own collection, juxtaposing some excellent bits with bizarre loss of dignity.  Feeling overwhelmed, I haven’t even gotten to check out parts 2 and 3. [Via]
• Vincent Laforet talks about shooting world records from above.