Hand dryers from around the world. Photos: Douglas Wilson. (Click to enlarge.)

[Via Gizmodo]

Cold War era playground rockets. Photos by Lauren Orchowski. Click to enlarge.

Artist Lauren Orchowski created a great photographic series of 23 Cold War era rocket-theme playground structures, called Rocket Science, made with an 8 x 10 inch view camera between 2005 and 2008 all over the United States. [Source: Lauren Orchowski, via Gizmodo]

Mash-up Stefan Hester photos of Tom Fuller's Roadside Church. Click to enlarge.

Accidental Mysteries has a story about photographer Stefan Hester’s photographs of Tom Fuller’s sign-saturated “religious environment” in Crystal Springs, Mississippi, that Mr. Fuller calls the “Roadside Church.”

I created the mash-up, above, from four of Stefan’s photos, just to highlight the obsessive textification of this religious environment. Be sure to check out the Accidental Mysteries post, not only for the photos, but for Stefan’s story about meeting Tom Fuller and encountering “Libby’s Potted Meat Food Product.”

Images from Masahisa Fukase's The Solitude of Ravens

The Solitude of Ravens sadly foreshadows the photographer’s own deep solitude to come, as Wikipedia explains:

His greatest and last photobook was “Raven”. Shot in Hokkaido in 1976 in the wake of his divorce, the gloomy and emotional photos are a sharp contrast to his earlier works. The enormous renown won by their release in 1986 then the American release (“The Solitude of the Raven”) in 1991 was short lived as he fell down a flight of stairs while intoxicated and into a coma which he remains in today.

The Photo Book Guide review of The Solitude of Ravens tells Fukase’s haunting story in more detail, and includes some other brilliant photos, such as this gem:

A page from The Solitude of Ravens, by Masahisa Fukase