I Like Good Art and I Cannot Lie

I was reminded the other day of what a curated treasure trove of art 20x200 is. So I took a spin through their archive and pulled out some favorites. First up are these Always Choose Happy prints from Amos Kennedy (I also like his Book Lovers Never Go to Bed Alone prints):

I don’t think I’ve ever seen this solar eclipse photo from Carleton Watkins before. Wow:

Taken on July 29, 1878, Solar Eclipse by canonized landscape photographer Carleton Watkins powerfully, elegantly captures the exact moment the moon completely blocked the sun and cast a surreal shadow over the Earth. Watkins, known for his pioneering work depicting the American West, used this rare event as an opportunity to simultaneously experiment with photographic techniques and record a celestial occurrence. The piece’s resulting artistic and technical achievement is as sublime and awe-inspiring as the eclipse itself. It’s stunning that then, as now, eclipses humble us all by reminding us of our smallness in a vast and fascinatingly ordered universe.

Sergei Prokudin-Gorskii was a pioneer in color photography; he documented his native Russia in color from 1904 to 1915. Here’s his photograph of some flowers (lilacs? hydrangeas?):

We all might need some Rest right now:

I love the photographic work of Gordon Parks; this one is called Camp Fern Rock (archer):

If you’ve lived in NYC for any length of time, you can’t help but be a little bit curious and charmed by the now-abandoned City Hall subway station:

They also have a bunch of stuff from Jason Polan, this amazing eye test chart, prints of several works by Hilma af Klint, and the The Marvelous Mississippi River Meander Maps.

Tags: 20x200 · art · photography

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