Weekend Grab Bag

A handful of unrelated photography items from the weekend:

• Cindy Sherman's studio spread in Vogue (here). I'm always interested to see what is hanging on the walls of an artist's studio, especially when it's photography. There is a slide show linked at the bottom of the article, with shots of her work space, prop closets and the like.
• Erwin Olaf contributes some dark images of cobwebbed kitchens with rotting food to an article by Michael Pollan in the New York Times Magazine about the slow demise of cooking (here). Given the Edgar Martins fiasco, notice the extra obvious "photo illustration" captions under each image.
• A generally sad article in the New York Times about the deteriorating financial situation of Annie Leibovitz (here). It's an astonishing but seemingly real possibility that she could lose control of the rights to the output of her entire career.
• Alec Soth's new work, Black Line of Woods, done as commission for the High Museum in Atlanta, opens later this week (here) and is featured/profiled in the New York Times (here). The subject matter of this project is people who are living out in the woods, off the grid, separated from society: "monks, hermits, and survivalists" according to the article. While I haven't seen the pictures (except for the few included in the feature), I think this subject has some timely resonance, especially for those who are feeling trapped by the bad economy and the encroaching world, and are either forced to leave or are looking to "run away" and return to a simpler existence of some kind. I also liked the idea of his list of things to watch for while driving, taped to his steering wheel; it reminded me of the endless obsessive lists of things to photograph that Diane Arbus made.