Cool Hunting
Growing up in a remote town of 800 people on Cape Breton Island in eastern Canada, the first thing I would do each morning was to check if I had developed super-powers. As I got older, in an attempt to be more like Peter Parker, I began to explore both photography and science so that one day I too could be bitten by a radio-active spider.
I now work as a family doctor in Vancouver, British Columbia. In medical school, I would organize art exhibitions on medical themes, write about photography for medical journals across North America, and use my student loan money to buy the photographs that I fell in love with. My heart still always skips a beat (literally) when I see a really great picture.
When I’m not reorganizing the photographs on my walls or sitting on the beach with my French bulldog Beckett, I still spend most of my free time in search of beautiful pictures, and have recently decided to organize my findings on my own blog called Squint.
For years I've been completely in love with Walton Ford's meticulously detailed watercolors of animals, so you might imagine that I was practically giddy to see his new work now on view at Paul Kasmin Gallery. On first glance Ford's paintings might be mistaken for 19th century nature illustrations, but beyond the flawlessly rendered historical aspect of the paintings, the images often integrate both...
One of my new favorite stores in Vancouver (well one of my new favorites anywhere, actually) is Roden Gray, a recent addition to Vancouver's trendy Gastown neighborhood. Roden Gray maintains a carefully-selected range of clothing, shoes, bags and accessories from labels that bring sophistication to casual menswear such as Wings + Horns, Filson, Nice Collective and Obedient Sons. My particular favorites on a recent...
Since bursting onto the scene eight years ago as one of the hottest young photographers in town, Ryan McGinley continues to produce enduring images that focus on the energy and enthusiasm of youth. In his latest show entitled "I Know Where the Summer Goes" (a title taken from an early B-side by Belle and Sebastian), McGinley continues to move from his original casual snapshot-style...
Amy Stein creates amazing dioramas that explore her own version of natural history in her photographic series called "Domesticated." The photographs in this series were inspired after meeting a number of taxidermists and becoming interested in the psychology behind venturing into the wild to kill an animal and then paying a considerable amount of money to reanimate it and make it a permanent fixture...
Few stores out there offer to give you just what you want in bed, but a great little shop in Vancouver called "Bed" (that also sells online) has made that its motto. For several years, Bed has been offering some of the most unique bedding available by making products that are all about dramatic patterns and brilliant colors. I love the endless combinations of...
The Three Gorges Dam project along the Yangtze River in the Hubei province of China is the world's largest engineering and construction site and has displaced over 1.2 million people and destroyed 11 cities. Once completed, the resulting 400 mile long reservoir will supply enough water to generate 84 billion kilowatts-per-hour of electricity. This project has been the at the center of much controversy,...
When tougher new laws began to crack down on strip clubs in Times Square in the 1990s, performers began to focus less on the "strip" and more on the "tease"creating a new type of burlesque movement— and the wonderful Lisa Kereszi (an assistant to Nan Goldin at the time) was there to capture the transformation. In her new book called "Fantasies," her richly-colored photographs...
British artist Muzi Quawson explores the social structures of American culture with color photographs that feel like movie stills. While in Manhattan in 2002, Quawson had a chance meeting with a young musician and mother named Amanda Jo Williams, and spent the next four years staying with Amanda and her family in Woodstock. The pictures document Amanda's relationship with her partner and young twin...
