This week we saw a lot of photography, from the hilarious to somber. One of the top stories was that famed Malibu photographer Paul Rusconi was cleared of allegations of raping his twin daughters, which was a momentous day for him and his family.
After being cleared Friday of allegations that he raped his 20-month-old twin daughters, Paul Rusconi cried. It's been almost a year since distant family members, the nanny who took care of Rusconi's two girls, and her husband, accused him of raping his daughters after seeing photos that he had taken of himself with his girls in a bathtub, KTLA reported. Read more here.
In other news, we celebrated Ai Weiwei's birthday on Friday.
The Chinese artist and provocateur turns 55 this year. Ai was named ArtReview's 'most powerful artist' last year, showing his worldwide impact to the artistic and activist communities. His passion and bravery present an optimistic view of art's possibilities. He is not only a talented artist but one of the most influential spirits of our time. Weiwei once said: “I wouldn’t say I’ve become more radical: I was born radical.” Read more here.
To lighten the mood, we featured Tadas Černiauskas' 'Blow Job' series, which captured the faces of his Lithuanian brethren being blasted with air.
Černiauskas told The Huffington Post in an e-mail about the message behind the collection: "This series doesn't have any hidden meanings. It was meant to give some good laughter to the viewers and participants." He continued, "It turned out to be better that I expected and that is why I like what I do today -- every day is full of pleasant surprises." Read more here.
The BBC reported that this camera is one of 12 surviving models of the legendary 0-Series, and was originally made in 1923 as an early prototype for the compact and durable Leica A. Read more here.
Lastly, we enjoyed Ryan Enn Hughes animated GIFs of people jumping around with sparklers. Sometimes art doesn't have to be weighty -- it can just be fun!
For the project, dubbed "Sparkler$," Hughes enlisted four subjects to jump up and down while "painting" with sparklers. All the while, Hughes took photographs with a DSLR camera on an eight-second exposure. The photos were then mastered at 5,000 pixels.
Hughes says he and his team probably burnt 200 sparklers during shooting process, which was completed over the course of one day.
Well, that was our week. How was yours?