Wildly influential though mostly unknown, A.R. Gurrey Jr was born in Kansas in 1874. By 1900, as a trained civil engineer, he relocated to Hawaii. There, he surfed, declined a role within his father’s insurance business, and began working to open and operate an art gallery. In 1914, he published at least one edition of The Surf Riders of Hawaii—a hand-assembled book comprising mounted gelatin-silver …
Beginning with the lucha libre-inspired masks of Isaías Huerta (a resident of Puebla, Mexico), Atlas Obscura explores creative face masks made all over the world. Huerta—a retired wrestler and current costume-maker—began designing masks for friends and family, eventually extending his output to others. As unique as Huerta’s designs are, his desire to enhance his masks with representations of personality is universal. Now, more than ever, …
“There are times in history, defining moments in many of our lives, when we have taken that astronomical perspective… to view the sight of humanity as a whole: vulnerable, brave, afraid, cruel, compassionate,” Janna Levin (author, astrophysicist and Director of Sciences at Pioneer Works) writes. “From that astronomical perspective, humanity—in all its hyper-finely pixelated colors and languages and traditions and beliefs—resolves into a crisp portrait …
