“This image, Chip Clark’s most requested photo, shows Roxie Laybourne, Smithsonian research associate, in front, with Birds Division collections staff members Beth Ann Sabo, James Dean, Bonnie Farmer, and Dawn Arculus, in 1992. The Museum holds the largest collection of vertebrate specimens in the world, with over 5.8 million specimens representing fishes, amphibians, reptiles, birds, and mammals. Photo by Chip Clark, Smithsonian Institution” (more)

About Chip Clark:

“Chip Clark came to the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History in 1973, with a degree in biology and an interest in photography. He has been a photographer on staff ever since, documenting thousands of specimens and exhibits, and accompanying scientists on research trips around the world. He has photographed everything from dinosaurs and mummies to diamonds, butterflies, and, of course, his fellow staff members. In the field he has photographed in caves in Jamaica, the rainforest in Peru, the coral reefs in Belize, and on the ocean floor in a deep-sea submersible off the Bahamas. He thrives on the challenges of photographing the natural world in its environment, no matter what the conditions.” (“Chip Clark: Museum Photographer for More Than Thirty-Five Years”)

Lady, That’s My Skull: New Universities Dictionary Illustrated, 1922

The book is all but disintegrated from age and weathering but I managed to save the artwork. No artist information can be found in the book though there seems to be a signature on the Plumage page. I can’t determine if that is the artist name or the previous owner of the book.

About the Graffiti Taxonomy: “In Graffiti Taxonomy: Paris (2009), over 2,400 graffiti tags were photographed from April 24 to April 28, 2009 from each of Paris’s 20 districts. All photographs were archived, tagged and sorted by letter. The ten most commonly used letters by Parisian graffiti writers were identified for further study (A,E,I,K,N,O,R,S,T and U). From each letter grouping, eighteen tags were isolated to represent the diversity and range of that specific character. These sets are not intended to display the “best” graffiti tags in Paris, but rather the aim is to highlight the diversity of forms ranging from upper case to lowercase, simple to complex and legible to cryptic. Each of the resulting tags were digitally cropped from their surroundings and depicted as solid black on white. The highlighted letter in the tag is enlarged and placed next to the tag from which it originated. All of the eighteen letters in each group are placed into a grid. Stemming from Edward Tufte’s notion of small multiples, the rendering of each character in a similar language and at close proximity emphasizes the differences in form. The resulting set of characters can be viewed on the facade of the Fondation Cartier until November 29th, 2009, or on online here. There are 180 tags in total, each by a different graffiti writer.” (Read more)

About Evan Roth: “Evan Roth (born 1978) is an artist whose work focuses on tools of empowerment, open source and popular culture. He has previously released work under the name “fi5e.” (Wikipedia). Check his website.