WFMU’s Beware of the Blog: Worst of the Worst of the Worst… of the Worst:
In my ongoing mission to torture Beware of the Blog readers with insufferable nineteen seventies kitsch I have sunk to a new low. I would have sunk to this earlier but this did not hit the internet until this week. I thought it could get no worse than The Brady Kids – Wonder Woman crossover. I was wrong. Roy Clark, jonesing for even more stomach-churning hokum than Hee-Haw could offer, called up the chick from One Day at a Time to help host a roast and celebration of Fred Flintstone. Not the real Fred Flintstone but one in a giant foam outfit. Along for the ride, defying all stone-age continuity, are other Hanna-Barbera characters in oversized cloth forms : Jabberjaw, The Banana Splits, Snagglepuss, Hong Kong Phooey, The Hair Bear Bunch and on down the line. The laugh track seems to be enjoying itself immensely (although if you listen closely you might hear a bit of a retch track). This is truly the worst thing I have ever seen
one of the most rewarding things for me to come out of the Magnum meeting now going on in London is the inclusion of Spanish photographer Cristina Garcia Rodero as the newest full member of our agency….out of the approximately fifty members of our agency , only eight of them are women…..this is a painful reality…..no matter where i travel and am faced with an audience of photographers, the question is always asked of me “why are there not more women in Magnum?”…..indeed….perhaps more importantly, the question should be, why aren’t there more women in our craft in general???
Book Review – ‘The Last War,’ by Ana Menéndez – Review – NYTimes.com:
The narrator of “The Last War” has received an anonymous letter accusing her war correspondent husband of infidelity. So, unfortunately, did the book’s author. It speaks to Ana Menéndez’s maturity — as a woman and a writer — that her novel doesn’t go where it might have. It doesn’t constitute literary payback.
TMZ Was Far Ahead in Reporting Jackson’s Death – NYTimes.com:
For more than an hour, TMZ was essentially the only outlet claiming that Mr. Jackson was dead. Television and newspaper journalists read the TMZ report but largely held off on repeating it, for fear of making a mistake. Still, the bulletin traversed the Web with remarkable speed, creating a stark divide: on the Internet Mr. Jackson was dead, and on TV he was still alive.
PDNPulse: Getty Awards “Good” Grants to Stephen Ferry, Karen Kasmauski:
Stephen Ferry has won a grant to support his project for Human Rights Watch, “Chronicle of a Death Foretold: Widespread Threats and Political Violence Against Colombian Civilians.”
Karen Kasmauski has won a grant for a documentary project for Save Our Cumberland Mountains.
False photos as a Statement about Photojournalism | dvafoto:
John Vink over on this post on Lightstalkers brought up a very interesting case: two students, Guillaume Chauvin (23) and Rémi Hubert (22), upon winning a Paris Match photojournalism prize, announce that they have faked the pictures in their entry as an exercise and indictment of photojournalism.
Showcase: A Magazine Worth Its Price ($25) – Lens Blog – NYTimes.com:
Gary Knight can’t help himself. He has to go against common wisdom.
When photo agencies were converging and getting bigger, he helped found VII, a collectively owned boutique agency that produces the finest photojournalism. When experts on popular opinion said that content wanted to be free and that audience attention spans were shrinking, he helped start Dispatches, an intellectual journal, in words and photographs, that costs $25 for each quarterly edition.
If I understand correctly, Martin Parr and the publishers of his new book Playas, Editorial RM and Chris Boot, left all creative control of the book to the printer they employed in Mexico. That is, the design, sequencing, format, everything. This decision was made after asking several different low cost printers to design a cover and then Martin picked the best (or worst depending on how you look at it) and that company won the job to do the whole production. The result may be the best Martin Parr book in quite a while.
Letter From Europe – Is Free News Really Worth the Price? – NYTimes.com, by ALAN COWELL:
It may be tempting, perhaps, to argue that, finally, that oft-reviled beast — the mainstream media — has been left in history’s wake. After the demise of typewriters and Telexes, the time of the tweet has arrived. The view is not universal, even among tech-friendly journalists.
“My zeal for Twitter knows a limit,” wrote Jack Shafer, editor at large of the online publication Slate, saying the welter of messages from the streets of Tehran was “more noise than signal in understanding the Iranian upheaval.”
I have received several tips from stores, Nikon reps, Nikon authorized service centers, etc about the Nikon D700x. Those tips are coming from different parts of the world and the interesting thing is that they all point to a Nikon D700x release in the Fall of 2009
Q and A: What’s the deal with the new Micro Four Thirds format? — Photocrati:
Can you explain the new Micro Four Thirds format? What is the point of a camera like this compared to one that fits into a shirt pocket like my Lumix FS25 with 29-145mm lens? I see that both Panasonic and Olympus are making Micro cameras now, but they’re not very small and they are very expensive. Why would anyone want one of those?
I assist staff photographer John W. McDonough and we covered the Western Conference Finals with our partner in crime, Shawn Cullen, who was there to lend us a hand and the occasional smile. Staff photographer Bob Rosato covered the Eastern Conference Finals with his assistant Kevin Liles. We all combined our forces to form one super photography team to cover the Finals from every angle.
Bruce McBroom, a photographer, snapped the image that made Farrah Fawcett an icon. He tells TIME how an innocuous photo shoot — in which Fawcett posed at her Hollywood home in a red swimsuit — resulted in the 1976 poster that wound up plastered on millions of bedroom walls.
Photographer Lucia Ganieva likes to photograph women. And with the three series featured below, working women. Born in Russia, Lucia now lives in the Netherlands and explores women in all walks of life. She still does much of her photographic work in Russia, and the images below reflect Russian factory workers, aging stars, and museum guards.
