Laws of Physics Can't Trump the Bonds of Love. Zack ConkleLIFE LESSONS Jeffrey Wright with his son, Adam, who has a developmental disorder, in a scene from “Wright’s Law.”
Jeffrey Wright is well known around his high school in Louisville, Ky., for his antics as a physics teacher, which include exploding pumpkins, hovercraft and a scary experiment that involves a bed of nails, a cinder block and a sledgehammer. But it is a simple lecture — one without props or fireballs — that leaves the greatest impression on his students each year. The talk is about Mr. Wright’s son and the meaning of life, love and family. It has become an annual event at Louisville Male Traditional High School (now coed, despite its name), and it has been captured in a short documentary, “Wright’s Law,” which recently won a gold medal in multimedia in the national College Photographer of the Year competition, run by the University of Missouri.
Internet History Sourcebooks. Amelia Earhart on Marriage. By Maria Popova “I cannot guarantee to endure at all times the confinements of even an attractive cage.” Charles Darwin gleefully weighed the pros and cons of marriage, ultimately deciding in its favor, while Susan Sontag called it “an institution committed to the dulling of the feelings.” Slide Show: Photographing Love. In celebration of Valentine’s Day, we’ve curated a selection of intimate portraits from photographers who have a significant body of work devoted to their husband, wife, partner, or lover.
The images below explore intangible emotions, from new, lustful love to lengthy, studied intimacy to a love transformed or lost. Nicholas Pye and Sheila Pye, “Sitting on a Unicorn” (2004). “Playing self-invented, absurdist, and at times juvenile games, Sheila and I developed a situation or stage for power struggles between female and male to play out. This photograph deals with the meaning of language through abjection,” Nicholas told me.