• From Russiananimation.com:

    From 1924 to perestroika the USSR produced more than 4 dozen animated propaganda films. They weren’t for export. Their target was the new nation and their goal was to win over the hearts and minds of the Soviet people. Anti American, Anti Capitalist, Anti Fascist, some of these films are as artistically beautiful as the great political posters made after the 1917 revolution. A unique series. With a unique perspective. Includes commentary by a leading Soviet film scholar.

    Here.

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  • From the Duluth News Tribune:

    But when News Tribune photographer Amanda Odeski tried to enter the DECC on Thursday night to take pictures to accompany reporter Sarah Henning’s concert review, she got stopped.

    Rob Thomas’ California-based managers, Lippman Entertainment, demanded Odeski sign a form transferring ownership to them of any photos she would take. We could run them in the paper once. But “all images will hereby become the property of Lippman Entertainment,” the form said. “It is further agreed that no images will be used in any manner known or unknown without written management approval.”

    That’s not how we do business, and Odeski didn’t sign. She did the right thing.

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  • From the Washington Post:

    The unwitting end of the hunt comes at a time when al-Qaeda sympathizers like Irhabi 007 are making explosive new use of the Internet. Countless Web sites and password-protected forums — most of which have sprung up in the last several years — now cater to would-be jihadists like Irhabi 007. The terrorists who congregate in those cybercommunities are rapidly becoming skilled in hacking, programming, executing online attacks and mastering digital and media design — and Irhabi was a master of all those arts.
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  • From SportsShooter.com, Thomas E. Witte on building a website for the professional photographer:

    If you set a pile of Lincoln Logs down in front of a 5-year-old they’ll eventually figure out how to make a house out of them. Likewise, two weeks after plopping a $900 design program in to my computer, I eventually created a rudimentary frames based site that while designed so-so, had major flaws in terms of advertising myself.

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  • From Magnum Photos, Abbas portfolio from Afghanistan
    Today in Afghanistan, girls go to school and to the university; the burqah is not compulsory for women who can walk the streets unaccompanied; they are not executed in public for adultery; men are not whipped for not sporting a fist-long beard. The influx of UN and NGO’s money have brought a certain prosperity to the cities which are patrolled by national as well as NATO forces. Presidential and parliamentary elections have taken place. But democracy is not an off-the-shelf commodity which can be purchased in a supermarket and applied to a country with centuries of feudal traditions. Democracy works better when preceded by a secular tradition..

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  • From JPG Magazine:

    We’re the great in between: not quite amateur, not quite professional. Some do it for art, some as a kind of visual journal, some because they want to become a professional one day, and some just because we have to. It’s just what we do.

    Here.

    Submissions for the next issue will follow the theme “Oops!”

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  • From the New York Times:

    In photojournalism, the subject is considered more important than the aesthetics of the image. While clarity, composition and exposure have always been taken into account, it is news value that drives the profession. But in the 1980’s and 90’s, photographers like James Nachtwey and Gilles Peress established distinct visual styles in their coverage of war-torn regions like Bosnia and Chechnya; the way they observed their subjects, discerned in what they chose to shoot and where they stood, added new layers of information to the editorial image.

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  • From the New York Times:

    “If the Americans leave, we are finished,” said Hassan al-Azawi, whose brother was taken from the pet shop.

    He thought for a moment more.

    “We may be finished already.”

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  • From the New York Times:
    I recently met a Sunni man who used to be virulently anti-American. He showed me postmortem pictures of his younger brother, who had been kidnapped by death squads and had holes drilled in his face.

    “Even the Americans wouldn’t do this,” he said.

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  • From the BBC:

    Mr Taylor is accused of selling diamonds and buying weapons for Sierra Leone’s Revolutionary United Front rebels, who were notorious for hacking off the hands and legs of civilians during a 10-year war.

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  • From SFWeekly:

    “My favorite reaction we get now and again is: ‘Why in the world would somebody do that? Why in God’s name would you do that?’ People are stunned that we would drive out to the desert to build a library or put a park in a parking space. I love that reaction. My response to that is: ‘Exactly.’”

    Here.

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  • From PixelPress:

    Photographer Robert Knoth and reporter Antoinette de Jong have documented the impact of nuclear radiation in these four regions since Spring 1999. A book of their work, Certificate No. 00358/Nuclear Devastation in Belarus, Kazakhstan, Ukraine, the Urals and Siberia is to be published on April 18, 2006

    Here.

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  • From the Columbia Daily Tribune:

    When University of Missouri-Columbia football player Aaron O’Neal collapsed in July on Faurot Field, a Tribune photographer (Jenna Isaacson) captured the scene. Now lawyers for the O’Neal family want access to more than 600 digital photos taken shortly before the athlete’s death.

    Here.

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  • From WABC-TV:

    Ben Hider, Photographer: “Three police officers ran at me, immediately, telling me to stop where I was.”

    "Emptied my pockets, searched me, frisked me, started telling me about the recent terrorist threats in America over the past five years and 'haven't I been watching the news?'" Here.

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  • From the Guardian, via Wooster Collective:

    What is disappointing about the authority’s attitude is that Australia is probably still the only country in the world to have elevated a graffiti writer to the status of national public hero. Arthur Stace was an alcoholic from the slums of Sydney who found God while listening to a Baptist preacher in a hostel in the 1940s and took to writing the word “eternity” on the ground in chalk. He rendered it in meticulous copperplate script more than half a million times across Sydney over the next three decades, becoming an urban legend before his death in 1967 at the age of 83. He has since been honoured by a plaque, a range of council-approved merchandise and was the centrepiece of celebrations when the word “eternity” in his trademark hand was lit up in 100ft-high letters on Sydney harbour bridge to mark the new millennium.
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  • From PDN, Alec Soth on his Niagra project:

    I drive a van from home. I always stay in motels. I normally stay on the Canadian side. The only things I look for in a motel are wireless Internet and a windowless bathroom for changing film. When I ask the clerk if they have these two things, they usually give me a suspicious look.

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  • From PDN, their annual list of the top 30 upcoming photographers:

    “My best work,” Nina Andersson says, “Is what I’ve done when I’m not thinking too much when I shoot it. My best work is spontaneous.”

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  • From the game Roma Victor:

    Brighton, UK. Britain will witness its first crucifixion for almost two millennia later this week, when Cynewulf is nailed to a cross as punishment for ganking other players as they first appear. Cynewulf, (in real life a 27 year-old electrical engineer from Flint, Michigan, USA) has no need to worry about suffering any permanent pain to his hands or feet, however, as this barbaric sentence is due to be carried out in cyberspace; in the virtual world of Roma Victor®.

    Here.

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  • From Magnum Photos, part one of photographer Larry Towell’s Living With AIDS photo essay, this one in Peru. As always, Towell’s eye is sharp.
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  • From PDN, Q&A with Toby Morris of ZUMA Press:

    When it first happened, I was really embarrassed to be the photographer who got shot. Because you know that your peers might say, “That guy Toby, he’s a hot dog.” But I’m not Robert Capa, man, I wasn’t standing on top of the trench. I was there more to take portraits than to get news photos anyway.

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