Handspeak: A Sign Language Dictionary
Forget those well-meaning if completely indecipherable sign-language illustrations, Handspeak features video clips of a young woman demonstrating hundreds of American Sign Language terms. The site's list of reasons to learn the language makes a pretty strong case: you can sign with your mouth full, firefighters can talk while in smoke, and no one can overhear you through doors. And you haven't lived until you've seen American Sign Language for "spaghetti," "bored," or "diskette."
Kodak: Olympics 2000: Olympic History
Kodak and Journal E have collaborated to create this world-class photographic celebration of the history of the Olympic Games. Use the animated timeline to explore the Olympiads: Paris 1900; Jesse Owens' 1936 triumph in Aryan-obsessed Berlin; and the politicized games of Mexico City 1968, Moscow 1980, and Seoul 1988. Be sure to visit The Athlete, which consists of three portrait galleries by Jonathan Anderson and Edwin Low showing athletes in moments of preparation, release, and consequence.
The Museum of the Moving Image presents this fascinating video history of political advertising in presidential elections, beginning with the 1952 contest between Stevenson and Eisenhower. If you ever watched '50s television, you'll recognize the cartoon styling of I Like Ike and the sophisticated crooning of I Love the Gov (which rhymes "Adlai" and "madly"). Chilling ads from the 1968 Nixon vs. Humphrey vs. Wallace campaign recall turbulent times. Revisit the '80s, when a telegenic former movie star took his Teflon charm all the way to the White House, then read about the influence of the Internet on the desktop candidates of election year 2000. (You'll need Internet Explorer to visit the site, but Netscape and Mac versions are promised soon.)
The Complete History of the Discovery of Cinematography
Subtitled "An Illustrated Chronological History Of The Development Of Motion Pictures Covering 2,500 Years Leading To Cinematography In The 1800's," Paul Burns' detailed study begins with prehistoric shadow plays and ends with Eadweard Muybridge's celebrated films of running animals. Mr. Burns quickly dispenses with the notion that film is only a hundred years young, and traces theories of lenses, light, and moving images from antiquity to the turn of the 20th century. And for fans of bizarre 19th-century inventions, you can hardly go wrong with Plateau’s Phenakistiscope, Stampfer’s Stroboscope, or Houdin's Automaton.
Heroine: For Women of Substance
As editor Joan Osborne puts it, "Magazines about women have some great articles in them, but those articles are surrounded by words and images that reduce women to their bodies, their wardrobe, their spending habits. I wanted a place to go to find my heroines straight up." That place is Heroine. Susan Sarandon and the Indigo Girls talk about activism, Canadian artist Fiona Smyth takes on the Virgin Mary, and Mary J. Blige talks straight. Who's your heroine? Submit your answer, and you may get published.
PopPolitics covers the blurry intersection of politics and popular culture. Ambitious and high-minded, the magazine's mission is to straddle the line between candidates and celebrities, electoral politics and ad-sponsored entertainment, old-guard media and online upstarts. Diverse journalists, academics, and students report on the view from the barricades. The most recent issue focuses on work, that inescapable bane of adult life. This collection of potlatch journalism includes a tongue-in-cheek look at workplace privacy, a professor's earnest homage to his hardworking father, and one man's decision to flee the world of wired content and go back to the presses. A previous issue, archived onsite, treats marriage with similar sincerity.
Formosa: Nineteenth Century Images
Here's a digital library of maps, exotic images, and documents from long-ago Taiwan, known to 19th-century western visitors as Formosa. Hosted by Reed College, the image collection consists of published woodcuts, sketches, and etchings, viewable by subject (architecture, landscapes, implements, people, and boats) or by artist. The texts include travelogues, reports, ethnographic studies, and linguistic surveys. The language used to describe the original inhabitants of this tropical island, exploited by colonizers from both Europe and Asia, is often patronizing and racist, though rich in scholarly detail.
Professional photographer Martha Cooper began collecting photographs and images of women with cameras in 1977. Her online exhibit features dozens of magazine ads, catalog covers, and film wallets featuring the mythic Kodak Girl, "a fashionable, young, vibrant and independent woman who often appeared in ads in a distinctive blue and white striped dress. Until the mid-1920s the Kodak Girl roamed the world freely taking pictures as she went." The collection is very impressive, but Martha Cooper's life story is just as compelling -- the daughter of two well-established camera store owners in Baltimore, Martha was pretty much born with a camera in her hand. She went on to become her own version of the Kodak Girl.
