On the Outside, Looking In.

I interviewed an artist for Freunde von Freunden a couple of summers ago who told me about the many afternoons he spent watching his neighbor smoke cigarettes on the back terrace of her apartment building. "She smokes and spits, smokes and spits," he said. "I take portraits of her. I have pictures of her smoking in the summer, in the winter. I could start a series."

I thought of this when I came across Rear Window, a series by Jordi Huisman, a photographer with whom I had the pleasure of working on another piece for FvF last month in Amsterdam. I always thought there was something very intimate about the back windows of a city building, which offer measured glimpses into the deepest corners of a person's home — and Jordi, it appears, agrees. He writes: "There is...an element of the voyeuristic: meticulous exposures resolve small details in the houses and lives of their residents which were never meant to be outwardly visible." Beautiful.

Find more of Jordi Huisman's work on his website, here.

Recommended Reading / 42.

Every Monday, words to start the week. 

This week, via the very cool Maptia: "The Pink Vigilantes", an essay on a 10,000-member, all-female gang based in Bundelkhand, a notoriously poor region of Uttar Pradesh, India. United by a common mission to bring justice to the oppressed, the women dress in a uniform of bright pink, arming themselves with traditional Indian fighting sticks called lathis. Though they aren't always peaceful protesters, the women — led by Sampat Pal Devi, a destitute 47-year-old mother of five —insist that theirs is a different sort of "gang" than ones reported on more often in the news. Says member Bhagwati Devi, "One must understand that a gang doesn't always have to be anti-social. Our gang is a team, a team of women in pink."

Story and photographs by Sanjit Das.

Three more, just because:
-The benefits of eating out alone.

-President Obama's summer reading list. (Also: revisiting children's books.)
-From Ashley Brooke Toussant via the brilliant Pep Talk Generator: "SPF 30 always. Stop tanning. Your pale skin is just right. Read books in the shade and everywhere else. Keep that precious brain healthy and active. Keep that side of yourself that needs to listen to 'perhaps lame' music. Remember the good feelings. And all the feelings for that matter. You are lovely, smart and charming. Your older self realizes this more. Know it now."

More recommended reading, here. Have a very happy Monday.

Why Time Flies.

For those (like me) who are astonished at the fact that there are just four-and-a-half months remaining in the year, here's an interactive timeline that explains why life seems to pass us by faster as we age. The site was designed by Maximilian Kiener, who ends with this: "We tell ourselves we can always do this or that thing later. Open a bar when we get older. Put off that trip we've been thinking about for a while. Life is short. Do things now!"

See for yourself at Why Time Flies. Thanks, Tina, for sharing!

More on age (one of my favorite subjects):
-First steps.
-100 shots of 100 people of 100 ages.
-From Andrew Solomon: "I would like to be young again — for the obvious dermatological advantages, and because I would like to recapture who I was before the clutter of experience made me a bit more sagacious and exhausted. What I'd really like, in fact, is to be young and middle-aged, and perhaps even very old, all at the same time — and to be dark- and fair-skinned, deaf and hearing, gay and straight, male and female. I can't do that in life, but I can do it in writing, and so can you. Never forget that the truest luxury is imagination, and that being a writer gives you the leeway to exploit all of the imagination's curious intricacies, to be what you were, what you are, what you will be, and what everyone else is or was or will be, too."

What My Hands Doing?

I like sifting through Instagrams listed under #whatmyhandsdoing for a number of reasons, not the least of which has to do with its very cute wording. The man who started it all is an Indonesian artist who goes by ponypork, and it's his heavily tattooed arms that dominate the selection. Here they are gathering flowers, examining x-rays, grasping at rainbows — and there's much, much more from many other Instagrammers, too, if you're willing to scroll. It's a wonderful, whimsical (and literal) show of hands.

Explore #whatmyhandsdoing, here. (And find Romo Jack's account, here.)

Paper City.

Paperholm is what artist Charles Young calls a "growing paper city," having added one new structure to its scaled-down streets daily for an entire year. Each is crafted by hand from paper and glue, and many — including windmills, carousels, and tiny, teetering trees — have moving parts. When I saw it, I thought immediately of Anthony Doerr's All the Light We Cannot See, which is centered around a wooden model of a neighborhood in Paris, and which I read in one go, wide-eyed, on the plane from Amsterdam to New York.

See more at Paperholm, here. Many thanks to Colossal for the introduction.