TechCrunch Friday June 14, 2024
BeReal, an “anti-Instagram” photo-sharing app that gained popularity during the pandemic, has been acquired by French mobile apps publisher Voodoo for $537 million. Despite its early success, BeReal has been struggling to grow its user base and was looking for a buyer as its initial funding ran out, reports TechCrunch. Founded in 2019, BeReal hoped to bring users a more authentic social media experience than Instagram: At first, users could post just one image a day and only at certain times. The platform’s lack of “likes” or “followers” creates a space for sharing real moments without the pressure to perform, adds TC.
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By
David Schonauer Friday June 14, 2024
Like vinyl records, analog photography has been making a comeback over the past few years. But, noted The New York Times recently, the new generation of film photographers is forgetting about
something important: negatives. Silvio Cohen of 42nd Street Photo--one of a handful of legacy shops in New York City that still develop film--told The Times that when customers come to get their
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The New York Times Thursday June 13, 2024
Bertien van Manen, a Dutch photographer who used point-and-shoot cameras to capture intimate images of daily life in China’s big cities and remote villages, the dismal apartments and alleyways of post-Soviet Russia and coal miners in Kentucky, died on May 26 in Amsterdam. She was 89, notes The New York Times. “There is a kind of offhand intimacy to her work,” said Susan Kismaric, the former curator of photography at the Museum of Modern Art in New York, where van Manen’s work has been exhibited. “She cultivated that very deliberately.”
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The Washington Post Thursday June 13, 2024
Beauty is in the eye of the beholder—and now also artificial intelligence. The Washington Post recently directed several popular AI image generators to portray a beautiful woman. DALL-E showed thin, ethnically ambiguous women in heavy makeup. Sixty-two percent have a medium skin tone. Midjourney’s women are dressed in flowing gowns, most with low-cut tops. Nearly nine in 10 are light-skinned. Stable Diffusion also shows thin women in flowing attire. but its representation of dark skin tones was highest — at just 18 percent.
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