James Nachtwey grew up in Massachusetts and graduated from Dartmouth College, where he studied Art History and Political Science (1966-70). Images from the Vietnam War and the American Civil Rights movement had a powerful effect on him and were instrumental in his decision to become a photographer. He has worked aboard ships in the Merchant Marine, and while teaching himself photography, he was an apprentice news film editor and a truck driver.

In 1976 he started work as a newspaper photographer in New Mexico, and in 1980, he moved to New York to begin a career as a freelance magazine photographer. His first foreign assignment was to cover civil strife in Northern Ireland in 1981 during the IRA hunger strike. Since then, Nachtwey has devoted himself to documenting wars, conflicts and critical social issues. He has worked on extensive photographic essays in El Salvador, Nicaragua, Guatemala, Lebanon, the West Bank and Gaza, Israel, Indonesia, Thailand, India, Sri Lanka, Afghanistan, the Philippines, South Korea, Somalia, Sudan, Rwanda, South Africa, Russia, Bosnia, Chechnya, Kosovo, Romania, Brazil and the United States.

Nachtwey has been a contract photographer with Time Magazine since 1984. He was associated with Black Star from 1980 - 1985 and was a member of Magnum from 1986 until 2001. In 2001, he became one of the founding members of the photo agency, VII. (Bio)

To learn more about James Nachtwey, I strongly recommend watching the documentary War Photographer (Christian Frei, 2001).

About Richard Estes:

“Richard Estes (born May 14, 1932 in Kewanee, Illinois) is an American painter who is best known for his photorealistic paintings. The paintings generally consist of reflective, clean, and inanimate city and geometric landscapes. He is regarded as one of the founders of the international photo-realist movement of the late 1960s, with painters such as Ralph Goings, Chuck Close, and Duane Hanson.” (wikipedia)

Although he built comparatively little, and only one of his buildings - the Ashmolean Museum and Taylorian Institute in Oxford - remains in the public eye, C.R. Cockerell (1788-1863) is described in Howard Colvin’s A Biographical Dictionary of British Architects (3rd ed., 1995) as ‘at once the most fastidious and the least pedantic of English neo-classical architects’, and by a leading architectural historian of the period as quite simply ‘the greatest English neo-classical architect of the 19th century’ (Frank Salmon, Building on Ruins, Aldershot 2000, p.144). (more)

More of Cockerell’s work over at the Royal Academy of Arts Collections.

“All my favourite buildings in the Mile End neighbourhood of Montreal. Orginally commissioned by Drawn & Quarterly for their bookbags.”

Matt Forsythe is “an illustrator and comic-book artist from Montreal, Canada”. Visit his official website: www.comingupforair.net

That’s the same model of plane as the one Andrew Joseph Stack III crashed in a IRS building last Thursday.

“Firefighters work on putting out a fire at a seven-story building after a small private plane crashed into a building that houses the Internal Revenue Service in Austin, Texas on Thursday Feb. 18, 2010.” (more)

“The 2010 Austin plane crash occurred on February 18, 2010, when Andrew Joseph Stack III, flying his Piper Cherokee PA-28-236 (Aircraft registration: N2889D) plane, crashed into Building I of the Echelon office complex in Austin, Texas, United States. Two people were killed (including the pilot), and thirteen injured. An Internal Revenue Service (IRS) field office is located in the four-story office building along with other state and federal government agencies. Prior to the crash, Stack had posted a manifesto dated February 18, 2010 to his business website.” (wikipedia)

See the same photo over at the Library of Congress Online Catalog (call number LC-H261- 29972[P&P]). No known restrictions on publication. About the Harris & Erwin Collection :

“The Harris & Ewing Collection of photographic negatives includes glass and film negatives taken by Harris & Ewing, Inc., which photographed people, events, and architecture, particularly in Washington, D.C., during the period 1905-1945. Harris & Ewing, Inc., gave its collection of negatives to the Library in 1955.” (read more)

Learn more about Harris & Ewin studio.

Boston.com / The Big Picture: Earthquake in Haiti - A view of the badly damaged presidential palace - the center portion formerly 3 stories tall - after an earthquake in Port-au-Prince, Haiti on January 13, 2010. (REUTERS/Eduardo Munoz)

This photo is part of the Gottscho-Schleisner Collection hosted by The Library of Congress (perm. link). The collection can be searched by keywords and by subjects.

Overview of the collection: “The Gottscho-Schleisner Collection is comprised of over 29,000 images primarily of architectural subjects, including interiors and exteriors of homes, stores, offices, factories, historic buildings, and other structures. Subjects are concentrated chiefly in the northeastern United States, especially the New York City area, and Florida. Included are the homes of notable Americans, such as Raymond Loewy, and of several U.S. presidents, as well as color images of the 1939-40 New York World’s Fair. Many of the photographs were commissioned by architects, designers, owners and architectural publications, and document important achievements in American 20th-century architecture and interior design.”

More about Samuel H. Gottscho: “The Gottscho-Schleisner collection is the work of two architectural photographers, Samuel H. Gottscho [1875 - 1971] and William H Schleisner [1912 - 1962]. Samuel Gottscho acquired his first camera in 1896. From 1896 to 1920 he photographed part time specializing in houses and gardens as he particularly enjoyed nature, country scenes and landscapes.” (read more). Learn more on Wikipedia.

About Ketter’s art: “Ketter constructs flat sculptures, installations and three-dimensional paintings – or a compound of all three categories. His striking painting-cum-sculpture-cum-installations principally recall interior design. They capture moments in condemnation or rebuilding usually of limited duration but here freeze-framed in art. The walls exist in a permanent limbo between the presence of demolition and the eternity of art.” (read more over at Arken Museum of Modern Art).