Sunday Stills: 'A Chemistry Set for Grown-Ups,' Baseball Graffiti, and More

Archive: Napoleon’s Legacy View in web browser. Sunday Stills ISSUE 21 Sunday, July 27, 2014 NEWS Confusion and Loss: Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 PHOTOGRAPH BY ALEXANDER KHUDOTEPLY/AFP/GETTY IMAGES Walking from the main crash site of Malaysia Airlines Flight 17—a ruin of black grass, scorched earth, and melted aluminum rivulets—Volodya Bogdanov crunched down a gravel trail in his military boots. At a turn, he stopped and walked over to the body of a little girl. He and the other rebels had covered her face the night before with a section of soft, yellow insulation, out of respect for the dead. “How could they do such a thing? How could they kill a little girl?” he said, a look of shock on his face. Most of the fighters had been up all night, guarding the perimeter of the crash site. His face, like those of the others, was white with strain and disbelief. READ PROOF ‘It Was Like a Chemistry Set for Grown-Ups.’ PHOTOGRAPH BY KLAUS PICHLER/ANZENBERGER Over a period of nine months, fine art photographer Klaus Pichler turned the bathroom of his studio apartment into a curated collection of plastic containers, each containing food items available to the average citizen of industrialized Europe. The strawberries rotted in a week and a half. The smell of the decaying chicken kept him up for two days. “It was like a chemistry set for grown-ups,” he laughs. READ PROOF On the Marks PHOTOGRAPH BY CJ GUNTHER, CONTACT PRESS IMAGES “Look at the wall,” David Mellor, the Boston Red Sox groundskeeper, said to sports photographer CJ Gunther. “Ok,” shrugged back Gunther. “No. Really look at it.” It was then that Gunther realized he was staring at hundreds of baseball marks scattered along Fenway’s famous Green Monster wall. “You need to come shoot pictures of these,” said Mellor. And with Mellor’s declaration in 2009, CJ Gunther began his body of work, chronicling the detailed scars scattered across what’s arguably baseball’s most famous wall. “My first reaction was awe. I’ve been coming here forever and never seen this,” recalls Gunther. READ VIDEO Before Stonehenge “Archeologists are not really after treasure. We’re after the whole story.” —Nick Card, excavation director Scotland’s Orkney Islands are so dense with human artifacts that they’ve been called “the Egypt of the North.” At the site of a colossal complex that predates Stonehenge, archaeologists have discovered Neolithic art, pottery, and several carved stones that are extremely rare. WATCH IN FOCUS Two Sides to Every Dam PHOTOGRAPH BY DAVID GUTTENFELDER Dam projects in Southeast Asia have ignited a legal battle over the Mekong River’s future. One such project, the Xayaburi Dam, is being endorsed by the Laotian government, which has stated its ambition to become the “battery of Southeast Asia,” and has been financed by Thai investors who are eager to supply their nation’s booming cities with electricity. But the project, along with several other large dams proposed downstream, are vehemently opposed by Cambodia, Vietnam, and many environmental organizations because of their threats to the river and those who depend on it. READ Show Your Support: SHOP DONATE SUBSCRIBE TRAVEL BECOME A MEMBER You are receiving this email because sugengaria@gmail.com is signed up to receive National Geographic communications. If you prefer not to receive emails from us, please unsubscribe. To ensure that you receive your National Geographic emails, please add ngs@e.nationalgeographic.com to your address book now. Learn how. Contact Us | Privacy Policy | About Us | Customer Service National Geographic | 1145 17th Street N.W. | Washington, D.C. 20036 Copyright © 2014 National Geographic Society. All Rights Reserved.