I guess I look like I live here. On my way to and fron the Phillips (this is Saturday), I was asked by two ladies about where to catch the L buses on Connecticut Avenue, and then later I gave directions to another couple: they were looking for the National Museum of Women in the Arts, eight-plus blocks away. I've lived here almost 23 years, and I still feel a little self-conscious about giving directions like, "follow Pennsylvania Avenue, pass the White House on your right, and then New York Avenue will angle off to the left."

I walked past a restaurant on 21st Street that was undergoing a cuisine change. A guy was up on a ladder draping a banner in Korean over the present awning that promised Japanese food.

posted: 4:56:54 PM  

Margaret Bourke-White, The Photography of Design, 1927-1936, The Phillips Collection, Washington

Maybe it was a funk brought on by seeing too many piles of dirty slush in the street, but I felt sort of gloomy at this show, which focuses on Bourke-White's work before Life magazine, much of it for Fortune or commissioned by manufacturers.

Her subscription to a Machine Age aesthetic is so complete, there's no humanity in it. A striking image taken in New York's Garment District 1930 from directly overhead reduces a crowd of men to just so many hats, and is compositionally similar to images from the same period of bundles of aluminum rods seen end-on. Conversely, dolls and toy soldiers in a Higbee's department store window become frozen people. Later in her work, a few photos of Dust Bowl survivors appear, but humans are just as likely to be seen as compartmentalized drones working the catalog order line at Montgomery Ward. Even her pictures from a Steinway factory are about the geometry of piano keys first and the faces of the craftsmen second.

This is not to say that Bourke-White's photographs of machines are not quite beautiful. A particularly dazzling portrait of a Royal typewriter from 1934 keeps every detail in focus, catches reflections of the keys in the chromed faceplate of the mechanism. And in a moment of anticipating Warhol (not really), we see a rack of (unlabelled) Campbell's soup cans.

posted: 4:47:51 PM  

I saw Bend It Like Beckham through my film club, not by direct choice. The flick delivers everything that it promises in its trailer. Advice from David: never eat in any place called Mom's, and never see a movie whose sole marketing point is that it's an international hit. Juliet Stevenson's agent owes her big time for signing her up for this cartoon.

posted: 4:27:32 PM