“Despite what graffiti writers who view him as a sellout would have you believe, Banksy is nothing if not an artist of the people. His work widely appeals to the public, and it also plays with the community in subtle (and sometimes not-so-subtle) ways. Watching the entire month-long residency unfold in about an hour’s time, it becomes clear that the stencils left on buildings were just the beginning of what he intended to create. ”

Read the ArtNet review of HBO’s ‘Banksy Does New York’ documentary.

+artisthemovement

Photographer Jimmy Nelson photographs global indigenous tribes before they vanish forever.

+acitythatendures

Iggy Pop gives a tour of the East Village circa 1993.

+acitythatendures

The year is drawing to a close and that’s when the ‘Year’s Best Of…’ lists start coming together. StereoGum is my go to for albums and Nat Geo for travels. A new favorite is Fubiz, a French photography blog that is full of fantastic, inspirational photographs. 

This is Fubiz’s Best Photos of 2013. You’ll probably recognize some of these, maybe not, but they’re all powerful in their own way…maybe not so much Miley Cyrus twerking at the VMA’s, but memorable nonetheless.

Hope you’re 2013 was as good as mine!

Best Photos of Year 2013. Thank you Fubiz!

Photographer Jimmy Nelson spent 3 years photographing tribes that have remained untouched by time. In a series titled ‘Before They Pass Away’ exhibits a beautifully captured and eye opening documentary. Makes you wonder what could’ve been had technology not progressed. 

I wanted to witness their time-honoured traditions, join in their rituals and discover how the rest of the world is threatening to change their way of life forever. Most importantly, I wanted to create an ambitious aesthetic photographic document that would stand the test of time. A body of work that would be an irreplaceable ethnographic record of a fast disappearing world.

-Jimmy Nelson

See the whole series at Before They Pass Away.

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I found this beautiful photo series Strangers by photographer Shane Connaughton. There’s something so quiet and serene about them, the way they’re grainy and ambiguous in subject. The series is shot in a photo journalistic way, but leans more towards conceptual and abstract; less focused on subject and more so on the comprehensiveness of daily life. That is exactly what makes it unique-it’s journalism and art at the same time, which is not an easy feat.

See more beautiful images at Connaughton’s Flickr. 

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Photographer Michael Wolf’s ‘A Series of Unfortunate Events’ serves as a documentary of the ups and downs (literally) of daily human life. Setting up a camera and tripod, Wolf takes pictures of Google Street View images and captures everything from people falling off bikes to cars on fire.

Reminiscent of Henri Cartier-Bresson’s 'decisive moment’ and the humorous photos of Weegee, this series is a redefined and modernized approach to photojournalism. Some praise him for his smart series and others accuse him of appropriating the images from Google. I personally see this series as an amusing look at humanity; it’s something that we, as humans, can all relate to when it comes to the smaller disasters of daily life-that moment you fall off your bike in front of others, that moment you can’t hold it, that moment your car starts smoking…

Not to mention, we all take part in the voyeurism that is today’s internet. Maybe Wolf is the ultimate troll of Google Street View!

See more of the series at Word Press Photo, who awarded Wolf with an Honorable Mention in 2011.