The Atlantic has an article about Guitarkadia - Stories Around Guitars, a blog "about stories around guitars. Its mission: bring you those stories as original video, audio, photo or text pieces" from filmaker and photographer Emon Hassan.

The video post they feature at the Atlantic is On the Beauty of Handmade Slide Guitars. "In this segment, Mark Nilsen describes his DIY approach to building slide guitars with found wood and unconventional dimensions."

There's a short text interview with Hassan about his blog. Some excerpts:

I wanted to [read] a blog that talked about guitar as a craft and passion. And as they say, if it doesn't exist, build it. Yet the first year, Guitarkadia struggled with an identity crisis. I only knew that I didn't want to do reviews, be a tech guide, etc. It wasn't until I gave the blog a tag, "stories around guitars" that I found a clear purpose for it.

... Guitarkadia, therefore, uses the guitar as an excuse to enter a person, event, or culture's story.

How do you select musicians to profile?

I'm sent recommendations or I stumble into them, literally, as I did with Mark Nilsen when I spotted him with his cigar box (seen in the video) in the subway. When I walked up to ask him about the guitar and he said, "I built it," I knew I wanted to learn about what made him decide to build his own instruments and this video was the result of that exploration. In a way, the cigar box guitar was my excuse to tell Mark's story.

~ Becky in Tucson