HT Weekend Photos

Deep dive: Weird and wonderful new creatures and features of the deep sea

Sheer delight: While out surveying the remote Phoenix Islands Archipelago, Schmidt Ocean Institute scientists captured rare footage of a “glass octopus”, named so because it is completely see-through. What one does see when one shines a light on it is its optic nerve, eyeballs, and digestive tract. Even though this species has been known to science since 1918, scientists were forced to study about this animal through specimens found in the guts of predators, before this sighting.

Updated on Jan 28, 2023 02:58 pm IST

Photos: Expressions of ecological grief around the world

Herald / Harbinger is a permanent public art installation by Ben Rubin and Jer Thorp. It broadcasts the sounds of the Bow Glacier cracking and breaking 200 km away, to the centre of Calgary, one of Canada’s largest cities, almost in real time. The sounds and imagery shaped by data from a glacial observatory are broadcast through 16 speakers and seven LED arrays.

Updated on Dec 09, 2022 05:24 pm IST

Photos: Dive into the enchanting world of multiverse films

Everything Everywhere All At Once (2022): The movie explores the many dimensions of parenthood and love through the story of a Chinese-American immigrant named Evelyn Wang (played by Michelle Yeoh) who, while struggling to run a failing laundromat business, uses her newfound powers to travel across multiple realities to save the world and work on her strained relationships with her loved ones. It’s a family drama that’s fast-paced, funny and, above all, tackles earnestly the idea of healing from intergenerational trauma.

Published on Dec 02, 2022 01:29 pm IST

Photos: Celebrities who started off on reality shows

Harry Styles. He got a start in music by auditioning as a solo contestant on the British music competition series The X Factor in 2010.

Published on Nov 04, 2022 06:38 pm IST

Photos: Snapshots from staring at the Sun

At first sight: For centuries, sunspots were thought to be Mercury passing across the Sun. By the early 17th century, with the invention of the telescope, astronomers could get a clearer look. In 1610, Galileo Galilei (who first used the telescope to observe space) in Italy and his British contemporary Thomas Harriot identified these as spots on the Sun. Seen here are 35 drawings of sunspots created by Galileo between June 2 and July 8, 1612.

Published on Oct 20, 2022 04:13 pm IST

Photos: How archivists are helping preserve family legacies

Calcutta Houses was initially an Instagram page run by Manish Golder, Sidhartha Hajra and Sayan Dutta. They scoured the city and archived heritage homes, some dating to the early 1800s, others as recent as the Art Deco trend of the 1960s, many that would not be around much longer. Last year they got their first request to document in details a family home that they had featured on their page. Golder has now been commissioned to archive a 200-year-old ancestral home called Barrister Babur Bari (Barrister’s Home; seen here).

Published on Sept 29, 2022 09:33 pm IST

Photos: How climate change is unearthing new histories

In Texas, USA, a mega-drought has revealed 113 million-year-old footprints of an acrocanthosaurus in the dried-up riverbed of the Paluxy River. The massive footprints, ironically situated within the Dinosaur Valley State Park, have not been seen since 2000.

Published on Sept 23, 2022 07:53 pm IST

Photos: Letters from the new anti-caste abecedary

K is for Khairlanji, the massacre in which members of the Scheduled Caste Bhotmange family were tortured and hacked to death by fellow villagers for filing a police complaint over a land dispute, in the village of Khairlanji in Bhandara district, Maharashtra, in 2006.

Updated on Sept 02, 2022 06:17 pm IST

Photos: Two Australian national parks offer lessons, surprises, delights

The Mary River wetlands in Australia’s Northern Territory, are located 150 km east of Darwin. There’s profusion of wildlife: whistling duck, pygmy goose, lotus lilies, kookaburras, and saltwater crocodiles in groups of twos and threes.

Published on Aug 27, 2022 01:37 pm IST

Photos: 10 new museums to visit in India

A view inside Joint Replacement Museum in Ahmedabad, Gujarat. The non-profit Indian Society of Hip and Knee Surgeons opened India’s first arthroplasty museum this year. Some 200 exhibits, dating from the 1970s onward, chart how the field has evolved. Drop in to learn about complicated case studies and best practices.

Published on Aug 19, 2022 07:54 pm IST

Photos | Totos of Totopara: Glimpses of an endangered tribe

A jeep ferries traders to the village of Totopara, home to the Toto tribe of West Bengal. The village is in a remote area near the border with Bhutan. These jeeps transport the traders from the nearest town, Madarihat, 24 km away, along a route that winds across six river beds. In the monsoons, Totopara becomes inaccessible.

Updated on Jul 08, 2022 04:20 pm IST

Photos | Cities of the future: As seen on screen

For Minority Report (2002), director Steven Spielberg worked with a team of futurists to make scientific, believable predictions of what an American city of the coming decades might hold. Privacy is a commodity, transport is self-driving, the cars drive up building walls, there are robot trackers, and everything is secured by biometric signature. We’re already halfway there.

Published on Apr 01, 2022 03:03 pm IST

See, Shoot, Self Publish: How self published photobooks are on the rise in India

Magnum photographer Sohrab Hura’s book, The Coast, is an iteration of his long term project and his short film, The Lost Head & the Bird. Both film and book are set along the coasts of India, unveiling undercurrents of violence that is religious, caste-based and sexual. The book (like the video) is an editing masterpiece that uses found images and Hura’s own photographs to tell a story in 12 iterations.

Updated on Mar 25, 2022 04:09 pm IST

Photos: Ancient Goa through the eyes of photographer Pantaleão Fernandes

This stone icon with a decorative panel depicting the goddess Gajalakshmi sits in a sacred grove in Kudshe village, Sattari. It finds mention in photographer Pantaleão Fernandes’s latest book, Outdoor Museums of Goa, which focuses on forgotten historical artefacts that dot the state.

Published on Mar 04, 2022 03:16 pm IST

Photos: Abandoned Barbie dolls turn up in works of art, folk tales, poems

Homemaker S Devaki from Thiruvananthapuram found a cache of Barbie and Ken dolls abandoned by her grandchildren, during a spell of home renovation. She decided to use them to tell traditional Indian tales. She now recreates scenes from epics, poems, folk tales and classical works of art, in elaborate tableaus built around the dolls.

Published on Feb 18, 2022 02:32 pm IST

Photos: Trans persons show us their authentic selves in Truth Dream

In Bengaluru, Payana, an NGO working to empower Karnataka’s sexual minorities, collaborated with Maraa, a media and arts collective, to offer 12 members from the city’s transgender community a chance to dress like they feel. What emerged were looks that borrowed from pop culture, cinema, myth and everyday reality. Lakshmi, 54, picked a bejewelled golden sari and ornate jewellery, inspired by images she’d seen of maharanis of Mysore.

Updated on Jan 22, 2022 08:24 pm IST

Photos | Reloaded forever: 7 Matrix-inspired memes

Morpheus doesn’t actually say the words “What if I told you…?” in the 1999 film. But you get the drift. Use this meme when you’re about to blow someone’s mind with a banal fact or bust a silly myth.

Published on Dec 24, 2021 03:00 pm IST

Photos: Highlights from the National Insect Museum

The Kikiki Huna: This is the smallest winged insect in the world, measuring about 0.6 mm. The genus Kikiki was recorded in India for the first time in 2013 in Tamil Nadu. It took another two years to find enough female specimens to confirm species identity. “It’s a parasitic wasp which you cannot see with your naked eye,” says Ankita Gupta, the entomologist in charge of the museum and an expert in parasitic wasps. “But it has all the systems an insect should have — six legs, wings, a reproductory and a respiratory system.”

Updated on Nov 13, 2021 03:37 pm IST

Photos | Snake, frog, slug, eel: Say hello to India’s newest species!

Vine snakes in the Western Ghats: In a revolutionary moment for reptilian taxonomy, researchers found that the commonly occurring green vine snake (Ahaetulla nasuta) from the Western Ghats was actually four distinct species. Clockwise from top left, they are the Northern Western Ghats vine snake (Ahaetulla borealis), Farnsworth’s vine snake (Ahaetulla farnsworthi), Malabar vine snake (Ahaetulla malabarica) and Wall’s vine snake (Ahaetulla isabellina). They look similar but are separated by ecological and geographical barriers.

Updated on Nov 05, 2021 09:19 pm IST

Photos | Almost famous: Six Indian foods seeking Geographical Indication (GI)

Red Rice; Himachal Pradesh’s red rice is a rare red-kernel variety that has been adapted over the decades to grow in cooler climates. Varieties grow in Shimla, Chamba, Kullu and Kangra districts. The grains are richer in iron and zinc than regular rice, and play an important role in local rituals. The rice is gifted at weddings and the birth of a child. This year marks the golden jubilee of Himachal’s statehood – 50 local items are seeking GI in celebration.

Published on Oct 15, 2021 04:37 pm IST

A different lens: Photography with a mission by Vijay S Jodha

Born to Perform: Part of a four-year-old and ongoing photo project shot in India and aboard with performing artists from 20 countries. Chinese ballet dancer Ma Li has one arm while Zhai Xiaowei has one leg but together they have performed all over the world.

Updated on Oct 15, 2021 08:29 am IST

Photos: Loss and longing in Goa

Goa-based architect and historian Vishvesh Prabhakar Kandolkar’s site-specific installation. This is not the Basilica! It is a large print of the the Basilica of Bom Jesus hidden behind a protective covering of palm fronds, to indicate the fragile nature of the structure and the weak efforts made to protect the 16th-century monument.

Updated on Oct 03, 2021 03:07 pm IST

Photos | Naturally funny: Candidates for the Comedy Wildlife Photography Awards

Operatic Warm Ups: A kangaroo captured in Perth, Australia, looks just like a soprano practicing high notes.

Published on Oct 01, 2021 05:07 pm IST

Photos: Ancient India through a geologist’s eyes

3.2 billion years Before Present: The Aravallis, India’s oldest mountain range, begin to take shape, as tectonic plates push against one another. Erosion over the next 2 billion years will mould them into the shape you see today. The mountains stretch 692 km, from Gujarat to Delhi, passing through Rajasthan and Haryana. The name comes from the Sanskrit words ‘ara’ and ‘vali’, which means line of peaks.

Updated on Sept 19, 2021 04:37 pm IST

Photos: Bridges that appear in famous works of art

Regatta at the Rialto Bridge (1770-9), an oil-on-canvas work by Francesco Guardi (1712–93) features the Rialto Bridge, one of the top tourist attractions in Venice. Few know that it replaced a rickety wooden version in 1591 and that people feared the new one would collapse under its own weight. Guardi captures the morning light and shadows, the dozens of human figures participating in the boat race and Venice’s distinctive architecture in the background.

Published on Sept 10, 2021 02:14 pm IST

Photos: Birds of India, DAG’s stunning exhibition of paintings from 1800 to 1835

Company Paintings - 1800 to 1835 is India’s first exhibition of its kind devoted entirely to Indian birds. They’re works by unknown Indian masters commissioned by the British East India Company in the late 18th and early 19th centuries, to document India’s animals, plants, monuments and people. This image is of a Cinereous Vulture (Aegypius monachus).

Published on Sept 03, 2021 04:56 pm IST

Photos: A look at Anupama Kundoo’s internationally acclaimed architectural work

Anupama Kundoo, 54, was awarded the Auguste Perret Prize for Technology in Architecture by the International Union of Architects in May. Last week, the Royal Institute of British Architects chose her for the RIBA Charles Jencks Award, which she is set to receive in November. You may not have heard of her. But you’ve probably seen her residence, Wall House. It was showcased in the India episode of the Apple TV series Home last year.

Updated on Aug 30, 2021 12:28 pm IST

Photos: Tour forgotten single-screen cinemas from across India

Inside the Capitol Theatre in Mumbai. Between the strains of competing with multiplexes and streaming platforms, and now the pressures of Covid-19, it is likely that many single-screens that hung on until 2019 will now never reopen.

Updated on Jul 11, 2021 03:02 pm IST

Photos: Snapshots from a pandemic-era Mumbai

A deserted Marine Drive on a weekday afternoon. Those who haven’t stepped out in a while are in for a rude shock as views of the coastal road construction jut into the Arabian Sea.

Published on Jul 08, 2021 08:38 pm IST

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