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Gallery: Confessions of an iPod Touch Artist

Posted: February 20th, 2009, 12:00am EST by Keith Axline

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: Image: David Lasnier
Mobile devices are no longer just for communication, entertainment and business: They can make art, too. Several different iTunes apps for the iPhone and iPod Touch allow users to edit photos, record music and now paint.

Last month, French artist and videographer David Lasnier began composing paintings with the Brushes app on his iPod Touch and uploading the artwork to Flickr. The paintings quickly garnered praise and links from commenters and bloggers.

"The small screen and the limited types of brushes limit the possibilities," says Lasnier, "But this generally boosts my creativity."

The Brushes app has its own Flickr group with a growing number of regular contributors, many of whom create elaborate, professional illustrations with the relatively simple program. A competing app called Colors has similar features, and the debate over which is the superior program rages on in each app's review section.

Click through the gallery to see more of Lasnier's paintings and find out why his iPod has made him pick up his acrylics for the first time in 10 years. Also be sure to submit your own iPhone art for a chance to be featured in a gallery on Wired.com.
: Image: David Lasnier
David Lasnier: I graduated from Villa Arson art school, Nice, France, in 2000. Since then, I've been working mainly as a video artist. I've always been drawing, but I normally don't draw from life. I doodle and make conceptual drawings and word games.

My favorite medium for drawing is a regular black pen. I also painted a lot when I was younger. I used acrylics, oil painting, all kinds of mixed media and found materials.

(Left) It was such fun to vertically frame this ferocious, useless tool.
: Image: David Lasnier
Lasnier: Brushes is more like producing images with a computer — it has a great color picker, you can undo, you can keep versions in case you want to test options. It's like painting with Photoshop, but I never painted with Photoshop because it's too distracting — you can resize the workspace if the frame is not good, you can translate the layer, apply filters, etc.

Too much freedom radically hampers my creativity. If I want to produce a series, I must give myself rules, limits, even if I later try to break them. For this series on the iPod Touch with Brushes, I decided to use this very constrained medium and do my best.

(Left) A 10-minute painting of a kiwi fruit.
: Image: David Lasnier
Wired.com: How long did it take you to make a Brushes image you were happy with?

Lasnier: Almost instantly — I doodled one or two things from imagination, but the first image I made from life was satisfying. It's an air-conditioner remote control; you can see it on Flickr. In fact I was more excited by anticipation of what I knew I would do than by that particular image.

(Left) This is the second image I made with Brushes. It's the tape ruler I use at the office.
: Image: David Lasnier
Wired.com: On average, how long does it take you to make these images?

Lasnier: About one hour; for me, it's hard to spend more time on it. The screen size, the limited accuracy of the touchscreen quickly turn into an urge to consider the image finished. I also try not to modify the image after I stop.

Wired.com What artists have inspired you? Who or what else do you draw influence or inspiration from?

Lasnier: I did a lot of painting when I was younger, and I was greedy and very productive in many directions. So I have a very wide range of influences. I could mention a dozen of classical painter like Caravaggio, Chardin ... but I don't think that's the point of your question. I'm really into avant-garde. I think the fight against academic art is not over. I think Marcel Duchamp, Dada and Fluxus opened interesting possibilities. My videos, my drawings and projects definitely evolve inside these critical systems.

(Left) This is an Ekeko. It's a small prosperity idol my friends Boris and Maritza brought me from Peru. In this case I had to catch as many bits as possible of the subject because nobody knows Ekekos.
: Image: David Lasnier
Wired.com: Would you consider your Brushes images impressionistic? What period do these images belong in?

Lasnier: In a formal point of view, I don't consider my images impressionistic. Some people who use Brushes, do that wonderfully — cleverly use few strokes to catch the light. My approach is way more idiotic. It's a paint of good will. I just do my best, trying to only paint what I see. Maybe this work could be classified as naive or bad painting. I don't mind being the dum-dum boy.

(Left) This is a small inkwell I use for drawing sometimes. I like the highlights on it, and I really wanted to catch the way the little ridge on the corner distorted the reflections.
: Image: David Lasnier
Lasnier: I think impressionists transposed today would have painted rave parties and jet planes. The idea then was to get out of the workshop, bring some colors and catch an "impression" of the world as it is. I'd like to mention François Boisrond for his series of street paintings, which I think are more impressionistic than the totality of the contemporary bucolic "impressionist" paintings.

In the old academic system, the beauty was determined by the nature of the thing you painted. A still life couldn't, in any way, surpass an historic painting. Those were different genres with intrinsic beauty that couldn't compare. Impressionists and avant-gardes destroyed that system. The beauty in the new system was relative to the image, not to the subject. I choose objects just because of how I think they will catch the light, not because of their inherent nobility or aura as an contemporary icon.

(Left) The lamp lit by itself, reflecting itself ...
: Image: David Lasnier
Wired.com: Would you ever want to print these images out or re-create them on a canvas? Are they less meaningful because they exist digitally?

Lasnier: The idea of printed versions of these images has been an option, but it has been abandoned for technical reasons.

When I was younger I was a painter, but I did not paint for 10 years. Having fun with the iPod and Brushes made me take the acrylics out of the box. I'm working on a series of small paintings ... sometimes looking for the undo command!

I have a big problem with artworks, mainly because of the speculation around it and the very elitist potential market. I think an artistic proposition should be theoretically elitist but addressed to the wider public. The digital nature of the Brushes images makes them hard to consider as having an exchange value, and it makes them really easy to share.

(Left) OK, I'm gonna paint some paint. It's red. Then I'm gonna use ... red! This is one of the acrylics that finally reached the light after many years of sleep.
: Image: David Lasnier
Lasnier: This is a cheap set of Allen keys. Metallic parts are really cool to make. Remember those armors from Caravaggio?
: Image: David Lasnier
Lasnier: This teapot is really nice. I knew framing it would be fun.
: Image: David Lasnier
Lasnier: This is the corner of my spiral notebook. I thought it would be funny to frame it this way. On such a small device, if you paint this entire object you end up with just a white rectangle.
Wired.com's 10 Best Galleries of 2008

Posted: December 31st, 2008, 12:00am EST by Keith Axline

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A year of fast and furious pixel-pushing by the Wired.com photo department has finally come to a close. Now, as we slow down long enough to risk a look back, we've compiled a list of our favorites from the hundreds of galleries we ran in 2008.

Be sure to leave your pick for favorite Wired.com gallery in the comments!
10. Photographer Captures America's Best-Kept Secrets

We ran this gallery back in January and it was one of the first big hits of the year. It was a killer combo of Taryn Simon's beautiful photos and an inherently tantalizing subject matter.
9. Under the Surface at Monterey Bay Aquarium

Our own Jon Snyder shot and reported this behind-the-scenes tour of the aquarium — some of his finest work of the year. Keep an eye out for the Ottervator, a photo-department favorite that we reference almost daily. Yes, we are nerds.
8. Super Cool Sci-Fi Cars From Another Galaxy

Once we saw Daniel Simon's photorealist artwork of cars from the future, we had to know more. And when we finally got him on the phone we found out just how far the rabbit hole goes. His fictional universe is just as detailed as his images.
7. On the Job With Wired.com Readers and Their High-Tech Toys

We initially put out a call for photos of readers' work gear thinking we'd see some sad-looking laptops and cellphones for a "Worst Company Gear" gallery. But the submissions ended up being so impressive they turned the idea on its head. The gallery didn't get a whole lot of traffic, but learning how skilled our readers are made this a favorite.
6. Inside NASA's Mars Mission

Our best science photographer, Dave Bullock, toured the Goldstone Deep Space Communications Complex shortly before the Phoenix lander touched down on Mars. His photos show the calm before the storm, and his coverage of the landing and the lander's first images was excellent as well.
5. Sci-Fi-Inspired Concept Ships Show Future of Travel

Igor Tkac's conceptships.org blog has become a focal point for fantastic illustrators who focus on future transport. Tkac narrowed his contributors down to a few favorites and we tracked the artists down for an interview. Enjoy!
4. Star Wars, Aliens and Outta-This-World Lines at Comic-Con

Comic-Con is one of the few nerdy events that actually makes for great photos. With every passing year, the costumes get more and more elaborate and you inevitably see your favorite comic-book heroes caught up in banality — stuffing their faces with food or waiting for the bathroom. Check out even more photos here.
3. Living Lord of the Rings at a Girl Scout Camp in New Jersey

One of our favorite photographers, Bryan Derballa, spent a few weekends at a Live Action Role-Playing camp in New Jersey to get an outsider's perspective on an often-misunderstood hobby. He came away with great photos and interviews, and it's one of the galleries we're most proud of from this year.
2. Geek Ink: Comics Fans Show Off Tattoos

There are few gestures of commitment that trump a tattoo. That's what makes these fans so impressive. Whether it's the aesthetics of the drawing or the icon itself, it's hard to question these inksters' dedication to the cause. Excellent photos by our grand poobah, Jim Merithew.
1. The Best Fictional Doomsday Devices

The best part of this gallery was the reader discussion it sparked. Readers chimed in en masse with their favorite doomsday devices and debated the merits of each. The strength of the comments on a gallery are usually the best gauge of a gallery's success, and this one struck a chord with our readers.
Gallery: 10 Years of the International Space Station

Posted: December 4th, 2008, 12:00am EST by Keith Axline

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: Photo: NASA
Floating 190 miles above the Earth's surface, the extraplanetary crash pad known as the International Space Station careens through the sky at an average of over 17,000 miles per hour, making almost 16 Earth orbits a day.

Set for completion in 2011, it's been 10 years since construction first began on the ISS. The final version will double its current capacity of three residents to six and provide incalculable contributions to science. In honor of its 10th birthday, we've assembled some of our favorite photos from the space station's lifetime. Click through the gallery for a glimpse at one of the world's most impressive sci-fi realities.

Left:
Astronaut Piers J. Sellers moves along a truss on the International Space Station, while space shuttle Discovery is docked in July 2006.
: Photo: NASA
The Soyuz TMA-13 spacecraft approaches the International Space Station with Expedition 18 on Oct. 14, 2008. Visible in the background is the southeastern coast of Tunisia (left), the Gulf of Gabès and the Isle of Jerba (bottom center). Top of the picture points northwest.

The Expedition 18 mission brought NASA astronaut Michael Fincke and Russian Federal Space Agency cosmonaut Yury Lonchakov to the ISS for a six-month stay that relieved two other astronauts of their posts.
Of particular note to Wired.com readers: Videogame icon and now space tourist Richard Garriott (known as Lord British in the Ultima series) tagged along on the expedition for 12 days before returning to Earth on Oct. 24.
: Photo: NASA
The International Space Station is seen here in front of the Earth's horizon, photographed from the space shuttle Atlantis as it moves farther away June 19, 2007.

During the departure and fly-around, the Atlantis crew got a look at the station's newly expanded configuration, which included the retraction of an old solar array and the unfolding of a new one on the starboard side of the station.  
: Photo: NASA
During a seven-hour, 19-minute spacewalk, astronaut Scott Parazynski cut a snagged wire and installed homemade stabilizers to strengthen a damaged solar array. Parazynski is anchored to a foot restraint on the end of the Orbiter Boom Sensor System.

Mission STS-120 was flown by the space shuttle Discovery and delivered the Harmony module. The module, among other things, added 2,666 cubic feet of living space and completed the U.S. core contribution to the ISS.
: Photo: NASA
Best known for the insulation-foam scare after the Columbia tragedy, STS-118 found Endeavour with a puncture in its heat shield. Fortunately the fears that the exposed foam would lead to another catastrophe were needless.

Endeavour's orbital-maneuvering-system pods and vertical stabilizer are visible in this photo as it docks with the International Space Station. The mission successfully delivered its supplies and modules.
: Photo: NASA
On mission STS-122, European Space Agency astronaut Hans Schlegel works to replace a nitrogen tank used to pressurize the station's ammonia cooling system.

Pictured in the photo is the exterior of the new Columbus laboratory, which Schlegel traversed during the six-hour, 45-minute spacewalk.
: Photo: Victor Zelentsov/NASA
The station's first female commander, Peggy A. Whitson, walks with cosmonaut Yuri I. Malenchenko (center) and Malaysian space tourist Sheikh Muszaphar Shukor, who is also the first Malaysian in space.

The astronauts are wearing Russian Sokol launch-and-entry suits for Expedition 16. The crew launched from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan on Oct. 10, 2007, and arrived at the ISS on Oct. 12.
: Photo: NASA  
In this photo, the Expedition 1 crew members are still training for their upcoming mission a week-and-half prior to the Oct. 30, 2000, launch to International Space Station.

They are (left to right) Soyuz commander Yuri P. Gidzenko, Expedition 1 commander William M. (Bill) Shepherd and flight engineer Sergei K. Krikalev.

As the first residents of the ISS, it was this crew's job to unpack all the supply boxes and move in. They stayed a little over four months before returning to Earth.
: Photo: NASA
This view of Hurricane Felix was taken from the International Space Station on Sept. 3, 2007, with a 28-70mm lens set at 28mm focal length.

The ISS was located nearly over the coast of eastern Honduras when this image was taken. At approximately noon GMT, Hurricane Felix was moving west at 21 miles per hour. The sustained winds were 165 miles per hour with higher gusts making it a category 5 hurricane.
: Photo: Bill Ingalls/NASA
Photographer Bill Ingalls has traveled the world as a photographer for NASA since 1989. Honored by United Press International as one of the top pictures of 2007, Ingalls' photo of the Soyuz TMA-11 spacecraft shows it being transported by train to its launch pad at the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan.

The spacecraft launched two days later, bringing the Expedition 16 crew to the International Space Station.
: Photo: NASA
Russian Federal Space Agency cosmonaut Oleg Kononenko, Expedition 17 flight engineer, uses a communication system in the Zvezda service module of the International Space Station on July 17, 2008. The Russian module provides living quarters and life-support functions.
Gallery: On the Job With Wired.com Readers and Their High-Tech Toys

Posted: November 23rd, 2008, 9:00pm EST by Keith Axline

Tags: [edit]

:
We always knew our readers were tech-savvy, but the submissions to our call for company gear photos left us humbled. Click through the gallery to see the badass gear that our readers work with everyday.

Jeremy Chittenden, 29, from Bradenton, Florida, and currently living in Lafayette, Louisiana
Job: Diving Tender/ROV technician at Divecon Services

About the equipment:

"We use the Hysub 20, aka 'Victor,' to do underwater inspection and survey. It has 1 high-res color video camera and two silicon-intensified tube video cameras. We use these cameras to document underwater structures visually as well as Cathodic Potential measurements, water temperature, salinity and pH measurements.

"All these measurements are recorded onto DVD through the ROV's heads up display. Victor has two hydraulic manipulators we can take samples with and remove debris from structures. The work spans from pipelines, platforms, communication cables, dams, biological-geological surveys, as well as search and recovery."
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Job: Film director/producer for Junco Films (2 years) and former IT consultant

About the equipment:

"The equipment is principally a film-editing platform. I designed it to solve the high-demanding capabilities of a high-definition-editing desktop computer in a semi-transportable and resistant option."
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Job: Freelance photographer specializing in advertising (still life and special effects) and fashion (38 years)

About the equipment:

"The rig in the photo was for an extreme close-up while shooting a series of images I'm working on. Inset is the whole thistle in the shot and the other of the macro image so you can get a sense of magnification."
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Job: Instrument technician for analytical lab equipment, mostly HPLCs and MS systems, at Isotechnika (1½ years)

About the equipment:

"This piece of equipment is a 400-MHz Nuclear Magnetic Resonance. It helps determine the purity of a chemical compound, some structural information of an unknown or verify it is what we thought it should be.

"It operates by having a very large superconducting magnet (which is cooled by liquid helium inside another dewar of liquid nitrogen) that aligns all the paramagnetic atoms in a molecule (such as H-1, C-13, P-31). Then it probes at them with a smaller, controlled magnet and records how they respond through things like spin coupling. The 2 Varian Mercury boxes on the left side control the probe and record all the spectral information."
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Job: Self-employed IT jack-of-all-trades and web host

About the equipment:

"It is a StorageTek (now Sun) Timberwolf 9730 robotic DLT tape library. A robotic arm takes all of the tedium out of changing tapes for huge backup jobs. I can set a backup to go and come back days later and the job has completed without ever having to touch a tape or even open the tape vault."
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Job: Programmer and analyst with UCO/Lick Observatory, specializing in human/computer interfaces and the handling of real-time pixel streams from the telescope detectors (20 years)

About the equipment:

"It is the cryogenic dewar containing the mosaic of eight 2048 x 4096 CCDs along with its support electronics. All used for the Deimos spectrograph now operating at the Keck Observatory on the summit of Mauna Kea. View Keck's operational pages for Deimos here.

"The dewar is now inside Deimos, the silvery thing seen here sitting on the railroad tracks that roll it up to the white Keck 2 telescope. More photos here."
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Job: Marketing and sales for Air Methods Corporation (7 years)

About the equipment:

"The equipment in the picture is our custom instrument panel for the Eurocopter EC145 helicopter. Our company takes 'green' aircraft from the factory and performs very complex modifications, converting the cabin into a flying trauma center, and installing the latest equipment to help the pilot navigate the aircraft safely in all types of weather."
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Job: Research assistant (1 year)

About the equipment:

"The equipment is a DNA synthesizer. It uses DMT amidite chemistry to synthesize oligonucleotides. There are bottles of chemicals in the front of the machine. One for A, C, T, and G. There are also eight or so other chemicals that are used in the synthesis. You can basically type in a sequence, such as: ATTCGGATACG, and hit go. If you have all the right chemicals etc. you will have a strand of DNA at the end."
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Job: Owner of Digital Capture Systems, a digital-tech company for photographers (2 years)

About the equipment:

"The van is for onsite digital support for photographers. The equipment inside consists of two 8-core Mac Pros with 16 GB of RAM and 6 interior hard drives. Each Mac Pro has a 30" Apple Cinema Display and each has the ability to run both displays in dual display mode. There is also a 5-disk MacGurus SATA Burly Enclosure that each Mac Pro can share.

"The first workstation is used primarily for capture, whether tethered to a Medium Format Digital Back, a 35mm DSLR or downloading from memory cards. The Digital Tech on this workstation makes sure the images are checked as they come into the computer for the desired exposure, sharpness, etc. The selects are then processed out to be retouched on the second workstation and/or placed into a layout. The layouts or finished files can then either be printed out, e-mailed or placed on a hard drive for delivery.

"All this is powered by two 4D lead-acid batteries that are energized by a solar panel or a 150-amp alternator on the engine. When we need to run the air conditioning unit or power additional power outlets, we have a 5000-watt generator under the back of the van. Both the engine and generator run on biodiesel and we plan to switch to 100 percent waste vegetable oil in the near future.

"In addition to the AC unit, there is a three-person-wide sofa in the back for clients to relax on with a modest-sized desk for laptops as well as 3Gx2 WiFi, a fridge/freezer combo, a microwave, and we are planning on the addition of a espresso maker."
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Job: Defense researcher at the National University of Singapore working on the development of armor materials and systems (1½ years).

About the equipment:

"The equipment is a Claymore antipersonnel mine, it is one of the most widely used antipersonnel weapons in the world and poses a great threat [to] soldiers and civilians. My job is to design armor materials and systems to protect people against such mines and I use them to test the effectiveness of the prototypes."
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Job: Air traffic control trainee for the Federal Aviation Administration (1½ years)

About the equipment:

"The main displays are our ARTS IIe scopes that present aircraft under our control in the form of datablocks. Each datablock includes the aircraft's call sign (such as DAL123), altitude, speed, aircraft type, destination and which sector is talking to that airplane. We have nine of these scopes, allowing us to delegate sectors (and the traffic within those sectors) as it gets too busy for one person to handle. Depending on the time of day, we'll have around five or six scopes going, sometimes more.

"The items surrounding each scope include:
-- Our various radios; yellow and green lights on the top left of each scope
-- Status display for our airport and airspace; computer monitor, top right of each scope
-- Landline communications; directly to the left of each scope
-- Bays for flight plans; slanted tray directly to the right of each scope."
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Job: Research associate at Stanford Linear Accelerator Center (2 years)

About the equipment:

"The equipment shown is a cryostat in a clean-room facility, 2500 feet underground at the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant. This is part of the EXO-200 experiment, which is a search for a rare nuclear decay called neutrinoless double beta decay. The cryostat holds the main detector, which we use to 'look' or detect the decay, if and when it happens."
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Job: Ph.D. student at the Laboratoire de l Accélérateur Linéaire, or LAL, Intranet in Orsay, the biggest particle-physics lab in France — including the Atlas experiment, one of the two general-purpose experiments at the Large Hadron Collider at CERN in Geneva (2½ years)

About the equipment:

"The equipment in the photo is the Atlas detector. Its aim is to detect and record the outcome of head-to-head collisions of protons at very high center-of-mass energy in the LHC. Those will help probing the mysteries of modern physics among which [are] the existence of the Higgs boson, dark matter, supersymmetry, extra-dimensions and more."
Wild Rides Rule the Playa at Burning Man

Posted: August 30th, 2008, 6:00pm EDT by Keith Axline

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: Photo: Kat Wade/Wired.com
BLACK ROCK CITY, Nevada -- From mind-bending art cars to crazy, tricked-out bicycles, there's more than one way to get around at Burning Man. And sometimes the journey's all in your head.

Left: Adrian Selkowitz rides shotgun as Anela Bence drives Boss Hog across the playa. They're just two of the five creators of the huge hog. There's a fine line between a good acid trip and a bad one, and Boss Hog snorts that line up for breakfast.
: Photo: Kat Wade/Wired.com
Bikes of all shapes and sizes grace the avenues at Burning Man. The amount of energy people waste trying to figure out why someone would build these bikes actually makes them less fuel-efficient than a Hummer.
: Photo: Kat Wade/Wired.com
Maya Peer peers through a kaleidoscope created by "Ivan Idea" while Micha Biterman takes a snapshot of her multiple images. The sign is both instructive and a cry for help.
: Photo: Kat Wade/Wired.com
A forklift is brought in to move The Beast from Camp Apocalypse after the monstrous machine's hydraulics failed, causing a mammoth roadblock in the streets of Black Rock City.

In accordance with Burning Man's archaically inhumane robot policy, The Beast will be put to sleep and thrown in a Dumpster out back, and its creators will be told that it was for the best.
: Photo: Kat Wade/Wired.com
A burner turns heads as she cruises through the streets of Black Rock City on a motorized skateboard. Not pictured are the thousands of angry 13-year-olds from whose fantasies she just escaped.
: Photo: Kat Wade/Wired.com
After a blazing day on the playa, burners Adam Al-Harbi (left) from California and Loren Geenberg (center) from New York come out to play in the Zorb, a hamster-wheel-type contraption powered by Logan Jackson and "Dr. Dave" from camp And Then There Is Only Love.

Shortly after this photo, the Zorb became what one onlooker described as a "vomit washing-machine."
: Photo: Kat Wade/Wired.com
It's love at fur sight: A playa moment between "friends."
: Photo: Kat Wade/Wired.com
Lighting the night on fire, Katrina McFerrin, a fire dancer from Albuquerque, New Mexico, shows off her talent for the Crazy Horse Camp. McFerrin later suffered minor burns when she remembered she hadn't set up her out-of-office auto-reply and lost concentration. (Just kidding.)
: Photo: Kat Wade/Wired.com
A spectacular, pedal-powered, fire-spouting vehicle operated by burners from Camp Department of Spontaneous Combustion blazes a trail up the esplanade. And they say cars are dangerous.
: Photo: Kat Wade/Wired.com
Burners dance to sounds spun by Doug LePre, aka Big Daddy Doug, at Big Puffy Yellow Camp beneath the "air star" by Jim McGuire. Four 50-watt bulbs and helium create the full-moon effect, but there can be no explanation for the mumu.
Gallery: Inside the Architecture of Authority

Posted: May 29th, 2008, 12:00am EDT by Keith Axline

Tags: [edit]

: Courtesy Richard Ross
A new book by photographer Richard Ross, Architecture of Authority, examines the way institutional buildings exert power over people. Ross managed to gain impressive access to all kinds of secretive or high-security buildings, from Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq, to the supermax high-security Pelican Bay prison in California. Ross credits his unprecedented access to a combination of persistence and sincere curiosity. "Many of these people want to show you these places once they know that you're interested in their world," he says.

To question the pervasiveness of intimidating, "disgusting" architecture, the images in Ross' book are both striking and inviting. Ross intentionally makes the photos of oppressive structures look seductive. "You can convince people a lot easier by whispering in their ear rather than hitting them over the head," says Ross.

Following is a selection from the book along with Ross's commentary. Ross has an exhibition at the Aperture Gallery in New York which is now open to the public.

Left: Pictured is the prison's lethal injection chamber. "Ninety percent of inmates who enter Angola [Louisiana State Penitentiary], never leave," Ross says. Inmates work on the prison farm and are not allowed to eat the cows they raise because the quality of the meat is too high. Meals at Angola can cost as little as 17 cents per person since so much of the food is grown on site. Twice a year, inmates enjoy a rodeo on the prison grounds with barbecues and bull riding.
: Courtesy Richard Ross
Pelican Bay prison holds some of the most dangerous inmates in California. Inmates are often accompanied by four guards during transport within the facility. The light coming through the ceiling in this photo is likely the only sunlight that inmates see during their sentence. In spite of the immense security, Ross says, prisoners are still able to get messages to the outside world to carry out deals and assassinations.
: Courtesy Richard Ross
Opened in 1829, the Eastern State Penitentiary is one of the oldest prisons in the United States. When it was built, the word 'penitentiary' signified that prisoners were to be penitent in the eyes of God. Even the design of the walls was meant to resemble those of a church.

"In the Eastern State Penitentiary they had skylights and natural light come in because they equated the idea of light and God as one," Ross says. He draws visual parallels in his book between prisons, churches and law enforcement institutions as places where people are intended to seek some form of redemption.
: Courtesy Richard Ross
Nothing is private in this isolation room, a fact conveyed by the prominent camera in the corner. Ross says the use of rooms like these is at the extreme of an authority continuum that begins in preschool (also featured in his book):

"Situations evolve without anybody noticing," Ross says. "Civil liberties are taken away piecemeal but they're rarely given back. So it starts with kids giving up some of their independence to sit on the circle at Montessori school, and that's socialization, or learning to live within a group, but at some point it gets a lot rougher than that."
: Courtesy Richard Ross
There is often a third party present in interrogations, Ross says, who sits behind the interrogator. This adds an ominous element of uncertainty. The prisoner is left to wonder whether this person has the ability to intervene, and if so, whether it would be on his behalf or not:

"It's almost as if they act like an omnipotent presence. The silent voice. It's almost Buddhist. They don't say anything. The person being interrogated could look over at that person and wonder if this person is going to tip the scales. Are they going to intercede at any point? At what point do they intercede? At what point do they stop being a neutral, silent observer? Their role is always confused there. The uncertainty assists in the interrogation process."
: Courtesy Richard Ross
In photographing military and law enforcement buildings, Ross never directly requests to photograph the most sensitive areas.

"When I go to a Secret Service interview room, I would never say to them, 'Could I see your interrogation room?' They would bristle and I wouldn't get in," he explains.

In the case of Abu Ghraib prison, the notorious scene of torture and abuse of prisoners, this was particularly important:

"If you look at a continuum of a conversation, an interview, interrogation and torture, where's that line?" Ross asks. "By the time prisoners are in Abu Ghraib, that's an interrogation room. They're not fucking around and they're not standing on ceremony."
: Courtesy Richard Ross
Ross' father was a New York City police officer at this precinct. "I grew up there," Ross says. Though he died 20 years ago, Ross says his father would be amused that he is able to make a living by photographing these institutions.
: Courtesy Richard Ross
Though the cells in this prison have been removed, it is a classic example of a panopticon, where prisoners are controlled by the actual or perceived gaze of guards at a central position. One of the most efficient architectures of authority, the simple design allows many people to be controlled by very few.
: Courtesy Richard Ross
For Ross, this is the signature photo of the project. Shot in August 2005 in almost 120-degree heat, within a window of five minutes, the photo was almost prohibited by the officers on-site.
: Courtesy Richard Ross
The curtain in this photo segregates the women from the men in a small corner of the mosque. Ross says he wanted to give an idea of the way women are weighted or valued in these buildings.
: Courtesy Richard Ross
"These mosques are the architecture of our world. They're really gorgeous," Ross says. "In any of the mosques there's never any image of anything figurative. There's no idol worshipping in a mosque."
: Courtesy Richard Ross
"I was in there photographing that room. It was empty and then a kid, probably in his early twenties who is Arabic, Iraqi, comes in and says, 'Are you a photographer?' We need someone to help us document the birth of the Iraqi constitution," Ross says.

"I ended up going with them for several days photographing sheiks, the president, Muqtada al-Sadr, al-Maliki, with real flexibility of going from one side of the yellow tape to the other," Ross says.

"They were really cool about that. They were great people. I would be having lunch with the oil minister and he would be saying things like 'Thank you for liberating our people,' and I said, 'Don't thank me, I had nothing to do with it, and I would've voted against it.'"

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Wired: Top Stories

Gallery: Confessions of an iPod Touch Artist

Posted: February 20th, 2009, 12:00am EST by Keith Axline

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Wired.com's 10 Best Galleries of 2008

Posted: December 31st, 2008, 12:00am EST by Keith Axline

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Gallery: 10 Years of the International Space Station

Posted: December 4th, 2008, 12:00am EST by Keith Axline

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Gallery: On the Job With Wired.com Readers and Their High-Tech Toys

Posted: November 23rd, 2008, 9:00pm EST by Keith Axline

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Wild Rides Rule the Playa at Burning Man

Posted: August 30th, 2008, 6:00pm EDT by Keith Axline

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Gallery: Inside the Architecture of Authority

Posted: May 29th, 2008, 12:00am EDT by Keith Axline

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