• From Iraqslogger via Editor and Publisher, a report that journalists will be banned from covering violent incidents by the Iraqi government. Among the reasons given by man with a long title Iraqi Interior Ministry Operations Director Brigadier General Abdul Karim Khalaf:

    — To protect journalists from being victims in follow on attacks (insurgents often target first responders).

    — “We do not want evidence disturbed before detectives arrive.”

    — “The respect of human rights by not photographing dead bodies who fall by bombings and other incidents.”

    — “The Ministry does not want to give terrorists information that they achieved their goals.”

    With tongue in cheek regarding the first point, this must be the first government in modern times that’s interested in protecting journalists. Maybe the next step is to ban all journalists from working throughout Iraq “for their own safety.”

    The last point is an interesting one. There is a war of information being fought, and terrorism needs publicity to fan its flames. And that’s why terrorist groups have taken to filming their own operations.

    You can say that desperate times call for desperate measures, but these restrictions will have larger effects than the stated goals. Shutting down the freedom of information over there is either a really bad idea or an illustration of how bad things are in Iraq.

    Links:

    Iraqslogger
    Editor and Publisher

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  • A collection of galleries from Photo District News (or is it just PDN now?). Terrific photography, guaranteed to inspire. From PDN:

    As PDN’s Photo Annual marks another year of extraordinary photography, we honor the contest winners who grace the following pages. From Lauren Greenfield’s heart-wrenching multimedia project, “Thin,” to Gary Schneider’s hauntlingly beautiful photo story about obesity, this year’s contest was a study in extremes. Whether it be a poignant social statement, such as Jan Grarup’s Newsweek documentation of the devastation in Darfur, or a perfectly nutty ad campaign like Lyndon Wade’s for Nestle Crunch, each image has its own identity, worthy of recognition.

    Link – Here.

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  • (Thanks to A Photo A Day for pointing this out to me.)
    From American Photo, “a tribute to ten photographers who inspire us”:

    Not one of the photographers featured on the following pages wanted to be called a hero. We sympathize: The word is immodest and certainly overused these days. Nonetheless, we can’t help but consider them heroic, and when you read their stories, we think you’ll understand why.

    The photographers are:
    Phil Borges, John Dugdale, Timothy Fadek, Stanley Greene, Chris Hondros, Yunghi Kim, Joseph Rodriguez, Fazal Sheikh, Brent Stirton, Hazel Thomspon

    The photo above is from Stanley Greene. His book on Chechnya, Open Wound, sits on my bookshelf. It’s too powerful to go through in one sitting.

    Links:
    American Photo’s Heroes of Photography
    A Photo A Day

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  • Cool street art by FilthyLuker, via Wooster Collective.

    More Here.

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  • Sometimes the description of a film newly releasing on Netflix is worthy of a post. This one, Sex Machine, is described thusly:

    Frank can’t really explain why he has the words “Sex Machine” tattooed on his arm. In fact, he can’t seem to remember much of anything about his life lately — including why his head is throbbing, bleeding and wrapped in gauze. Seeking solace in the arms of his girlfriend, he sets out to find answers to a long list of troubling questions and, in the process, butts heads with a gang of deadly assassins and a vengeful mad scientist.

    Releases on DVD May 15, 2007

    Here.

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  • Lauren Collins has a piece in The New Yorker on Banksy:

    If Bristol is, as James told me, “the graffiti capital of England,” then Banksy is its patron sinner. One morning last June, citizens were surprised to find a new mural downtown, on the side of a sexual-health clinic. It depicted a window, a perfect imitation of others nearby. From the sill, a naked man dangled by his fingertips. Inside, a fully dressed man scanned the horizon, next to a woman in dishabille. Directly facing the fake window are the offices of the Bristol city council, which, in a departure from policy, decided to put the mural’s fate to a public vote. Of about a thousand respondents, ninety-three per cent said the mural should stay. So it did. (In late April, however, London authorities whitewashed Banksy’s famous “Pulp Fiction” mural, which showed John Travolta and Samuel L. Jackson holding bananas instead of handguns.)

    “Banksy’s latest work of art is superb,” a man wrote to the local paper. “If the council wants to do something it should cut down that dreadful shrub which is obscuring the piece.” Gary Hopkins, a councilman, told me, “I think we undermined his street cred by making him mainstream.” Even James admitted to a grudging affection for Banksy. “I like the one where he’s got a picture of a stream and a bridge and he’s just dumped a shopping trolley in there,” she said, referring to a painting that Banksy did in the style of Monet. “I can relate to that, because we’ve got a problem with shopping trolleys.”

    It’s Here.

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  • From PDN:

    Photojournalist Dmitry Chebotayev was killed in a bombing Sunday while on assignment in Iraq, according to news reports and his agency, World Picture News. Chebotayev was traveling with U.S. forces in Diyala province when their vehicle was hit by an improvised explosive device. Six American soldiers were killed and two were wounded, according to the U.S. military. Russian news organizations identified Chebotayev as one of the casualties on Monday.

    Links:

    Photoshelter’s In Memoriam Page for Chebotayev

    PDN Article

    Dmitry’s photographs on Photoshelter.Com

    Dmitry’s profile on Lightstalkers

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  • The documentary film, “Looking for an Icon” opens this week (if you live in a major market (and I don’t)). It’s a 55 minute look at four photographs that took top honors in the World Press Photo contest. World Press is hands-down the finest photojournalism competition in the world.

    Here’s a clip from the movie review from the NYT:

    This documentary by Hans Pool and Maaik Krijgsman about four World Press Photo contest winners defines icon to mean a still image so searing that it supplants memories of the event it was supposed to record. The selected pictures pass the test: a South Vietnamese brigadier general executing a Vietcong guerrilla in 1968; a 1973 image of President Salvador Allende of Chile, soon to be assassinated; the 1989 snapshot of a Chinese protestor blocking a column of tanks in Tiananmen Square; and a 1991 Gulf War photograph of a United States soldier in a helicopter, weeping near the body of his best friend.

    Can’t wait to see it. Whenever that is.

    You can read the rest of the short review by clicking here. (requires free registration)

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  • Writing about the new ITV series Deadline, this from Sqweegee’s Blog, EPUK:

    The tone of the programme is pretty much summed up by elegantly coiffured Darryn Lyons’ dressing down of Lisa L’Anson after the former Big Brother loser takes time out from an assignment to have her hair done: well, who hasn’t?

    ‘You make me look like a f*ing prick’, seethes Mr Paparazzi, apparently distressed at the idea that he might need assistance in this department. ‘You go and get your f*ing hair done and do your f*ing shopping. That’s all you’re interested in: shopping and f*ing hair.’

    Lyon’ rant is a prelude to L’Anson being told to clear her desk by Street Porter. ‘I’m going to tell you the two reasons so you’re f*ing PERFECTLY CLEAR why I want you out of here,’ screams the Fleet Street legend, looking in urgent need of a hairdressing appointment herself. But failing to produce any reasons at all, she just rambles on: ‘Lisa, cut the crap and get out of the office. It’s the second time you’ve worked for me and it’s been just as crap as the first. You are a bullsh*t artist, now get out of here.’

    More Here.

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  • From the American Photo site:

    Paolo Pellegrin, Q. Sakamaki, Kristen Ashburn and Farah Nosh took the photography prizes at the 68th Annual Overseas Press Club awards, presented by CBS News anchor Katie Couric at a dinner Thursday night in New York. Pellegrin won the prestigious Robert Capa Gold Medal for his photo essay “True Pain: Israel and Hizbullah,” parts of which were first published in Newsweek. The 43-year-old Magnum photographer received an honorable mention nod for the Capa award in 2002, but this is his first outright win.

    Paolo’s work (a sample above) is beautiful black and white. Beginning with his book “Kosovo 1999-2000,” I began to watch his technique. Or rather, a seeming lack of it. Paolo isn’t looking for sharp, clean imagery. He is more interested in capturing mood and motion than perfect technique.

    Along those lines, one of Q. Sakamaki’s photographs (above) stood out to me as well. Especially the caption, which reads:

    The image of a Sri Lanka government soldier is accidentally overlapped with the image of a Tamil girl staying at a war-torn church in Jaffna, where the long civil war has devastated lives and the Sri Lankan economy.

    See how it works, kids? Make a mistake, win an international award. For the record, I think it’s a beautiful accident.

    Links:
    Paolo Pellegrin
    American Photo’s story on the awards
    Overseas Press Club of America

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  • From Kid Robot:

    From Argentina, where suave desserts and happy pills keep company with nauseous oil barrels and 3-D lightning bolts, street art and design collective DOMA firmly plants one foot in reality and the other in psycho-tropics. Acid Sweeties, their first mini figure series, is an absurd medley of happy colors and bright characters.

    15 vibrant (and somewhat socially enigmatic) residents inhabit a wide eyed universe where toy oddities come out of the woodwork, brightly colored antics are the norm, and a token nod to making sense is about all your going to get.

    Here.

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  • Digital camera guru Rob Galbraith offers up his thoughts after testing a pre-production model of Canon’s new high-end camera. A little quote:

    The camera’s features may be difficult to sum up, but the camera’s performance isn’t. It’s awesome. Pixel-for-pixel, the image quality is the best we’ve seen from a digital SLR, and except for one preproduction body glitch, it’s also the best SLR we’ve ever shot with too. The EOS-1D Mark III shows a level of design care and engineering thoroughness that is simply unprecedented. Its list of features is impressive. But actually using the camera reveals how impressive all these features work.

    This is the camera that most photojournalists are drooling over right now. If you’ve got four thousand bucks laying around, this is a good way to spend it.

    You can read Rob’s thoughts and download sample files from the camera from his review by clicking here.

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  • Amazing photos by Richard Barnes of starling flocks over Italy in today’s New York Times Magazine:

    Richard Barnes’s photographs capture the double nature of the birds — or at least the double nature of our relationship to them — recording the pointillist delicacy of the flock and something darker, almost sinister in the gathering mass. Many of Barnes’s photographs, which will be shown at Hosfelt Gallery in New York this fall, were taken over two years in EUR, a suburb of Rome that Mussolini planned as a showcase for fascist architecture. The man-made backdrop only enhances the sense of the vast flock as something malign, a sort of avian Nuremberg rally.

    Here.

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  • From The Observer:

    When Britain’s hardiest metal band played their first Indian gig, Ed Vulliamy joined them and their fans for a frank discussion of war, economics – and music

    Whereas a Maiden audience in Europe tends to be what Valerie Potter of Metal Hammer magazine calls ‘a family outing, father and son perhaps’, the crowd tonight are almost all in their twenties and there are more girls than there would be in the West. It becomes clear that in India it is frowned upon for a Maiden fan to like any other band. There is particular loathing for Ozzy Osbourne, regarded by Payal Bal as ‘a sell-out. Nothing to do with metal. It’s got to be Maiden and only Maiden.’

    ‘We may listen to other music, and we all fall in love, but that’s not the point,’ says Alidya Hara. ‘We can get our love songs from any of the others. From Maiden we can get what we really feel – pent-up aggression, the right questions.’

    Here.

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  • Check out this amazing plush Donkey Kong designed for the I Am 8 Bit show, found on Michelle and Amanda’s The Girls blog, which showcases their work as The Girls Productions

    Amanda Visell and Michelle Valigura are always posting great work on their blog.

    You can see more cool videogame artwork at the I Am 8 Bit website, and even more at the website of LA’s Gallery 1988.

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  • Featuring Josh Brown, Andy Martin, Scott Bort, Jorge Javier Lopez, Jonathan Hanson, Francesa Dotta, Yeulmaus, Lars Borges.

    Check it out here.

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  • Back to good news in the photojournalism world: The winners of this year’s Pulitzer Prizes were announced this week. The Pulitzers are the top awards in newspaper journalism.

    The award for Breaking News Photography was awarded to Associated Press photographer Oded Balilty for the photo above, of illegal settlers being removed in the West Bank.

    The Feature Photography Pulitzer was awarded to Sacramento Bee photographer Renee C. Byer for her story, “A Mother’s Journey,” which tells the story of a single mother and her dying son’s battle with cancer.

    Balilty’s photograph is wonderful and deserving. It’s everything that a great news photograph should be. But make sure you look through Byer’s powerful photo essay on the Bee’s website. If you don’t choke up as you follow the downward spiral of this family’s fight with cancer, well…

    Byer’s essay is everything that I love about great photojournalism. It isn’t a photo-op. It doesn’t involve celebrities. It isn’t the opening of a new government office building. This is a long-term intimate look at real people facing real problems. The frustration and despair, the hopes both wished for and dashed, are all there, captured in great documentary photography. It is truly amazing work.

    Congratulations to both photographers. And thank you.

    Here is Byer’s work on The Sacramento Bee’s website. If you’re in a hurry, make sure you at least click through the four photo galleries (parts one through four) listed along the right side of the project’s page.

    This post first appeared here.

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  • Some new pieces from one of today’s greatest art prankster Banksy are up at Banksy’s website. Thanks to Juxtapoz for the notice.

    I’ve been meaning to review Banksy’s book Wall and Piece for months now. The man is a genius. One of my favorite artists of all time.

    Here.

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  • The winners of the UK photojournalism competition, The Press Photographer’s Year, including their Photograph of the Year (seen here), by Sean Smith of The Guardian. As they say:

    Designed for press photographers by press photographers.
    Sponsored by Canon cameras, the acknowledged industry leaders, The Press Photographer’s Year will be the definitive awards for the outstanding press photography taken for, and used by the UK media in 2006.

    Here.

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  • From LA Weekly, a conversation with Quentin Tarantina, Robert Rodriguez and the masters of grindhouse films (Richard Rush, Bob Clark, Brian Trenchard-Smith, Allan Arkush, Lewis Teague, and George Armitage):

    TARANTINO: I have to tell you that, of course, everyone talks about the George Romero movies when they talk about the zombie genre. But hands down, on my own list of great zombie movies — or even the great shoestring classics of ’70s horror — Children Shouldn’t Play With Dead Things is right up there in the tip, tip top. The thing I loved about that movie so goddamned much is that the whole movie is humorous — it’s humorous from beginning to almost end. If the movie is 90 minutes long, for 79 of those 90 minutes it’s a comedy. And then, when the zombies show up in the last 11 minutes, there ain’t a goddamn thing funny about it. They just wipe out everybody. I have never seen a movie that for 79 minutes is a comedy and the last 11 minutes is balls-out horror!

    Here.

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