Bert Teunissen’s Domestic Landscapes is one of my favourite photography books, and I had wanted to talk to Bert about his work for a while. A little while ago, I finally sent him an email to ask, and he agreed to an interview.
Check it out here.
Author: Trent
-
A Conversation with Bert Teunissen (Conscientious)
-
Portraits of the Underworld | TABlog | Tokyo Art Beat
Katsumi Watanabe is the definitive photographer of Tokyo street life, known for his four decades of relentless focus on the hustle and bustle of Tokyo’s Shinjuku district. With a background as a photojournalist, Watanabe became a familiar face along the seedy side streets of Kabukicho and in effect gained insider status and behind-the-scenes access to many of the neighborhood’s forlorn storefronts and clubs. The Watari Museum’s current posthumous exhibit of a portion of Watanabe’s archives (easily over thousands of photos) serves as an authoritative, if unofficial history of the extremities of Tokyo’s social and cultural life.
Check it out here.
-
Behind the Lens with John Moore – – PopPhotoMarch 2008
This month we focus on John Moore, a senior staff photographer with Getty Images based in Islamabad, Pakistan. Before joining Getty, Moore was a staff photographer with the Associated Press, and was on a team that won the 2005 Pulitzer Prize in Breaking News Photography for their coverage of the war in Iraq. Having lived in Nicaragua, India, South Africa, Mexico, Egypt and Pakistan, as well as the United States, Moore estimates that he’s worked in over 80 countries throughout his career. Most recently named Magazine Photographer of the Year in POYi, Moore was awarded two first place prizes at the 2008 World Press Photo Contest for his coverage of Pakistani Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto’s assassination. Taking some time while on a layover in Johannesburg in route to Zimbabwe, Moore provides some insight into what it’s like to work as an international conflicts photographer.
Check it out here.
-
Judges Picking Winners In 2008 Best Of Photojournalism Still Photography & Web Categories
Judging in the Still Photography and Web categories of NPPA’s Best Of Photojournalism competition started today at the contest’s host site, The Poynter Institute for Media Studies in St. Petersburg, FL, and it’s NPPA’s biggest Best Of Photojournalism contest to date.
Check it out here.
-
The problem with microstock ||| Photocritic blog
Haje Jan Kamps experiments with microstock, and discovers that while he sold three times more photos, he earned 40 times less money from the micro stock sales than from a full-on agency – with the exact same photos on sale…
The lesson? If you’re a decent photographer, stay the hell away from micro-stock: The bigger agencies treat you better, pay you more, and actually make an effort to sell your photos on a bigger scale.
Check it out here.
-
Hacking the Olympic logo – Eyeteeth
China’s crackdown on dissent in Tibet — and, well, everywhere else within its borders — makes Beijing an odd choice as host city for an international gathering dedicated to competition in the “spirit of friendship, solidarity and fair play.” So it’s no surprise that the Beijing Olympics logo is getting a few enhancements by culture-jammers.
Check it out here.
-
Photographer Plans To Burn Pictures In Protest At Awards Snub (Sunday Herald)
Freelance photographer Roddy Mackay was told he was shortlisted for the Young Photographer of the Year category in the prestigious national awards at the end of February – only to be told soon after that judges had decided to withdraw the prize because the overall standard of entries in the category was “not good enough”.
Mackay, 25, who was shortlisted for the award alongside Edinburgh Evening News photographers Ed Jones and Dan Philips and picture agency SNS Group’s Craig Williams, said the judges’ decision to withdraw the prize had damaged him “mentally and physically”.
He said: “I’ve made a decision to burn my pictures and speak out publicly about their lack of support. As a young photographer I feel very, very passionately about the way I have been treated.”
-
In Fallujah, Peace Through Brute Strength – washingtonpost.com
Photos by Andrea Bruce – The Washington Post
The city’s police chief, Col. Faisal Ismail al-Zobaie, a husky man with a leathered face and a firm voice that resonates with authority, ordered an aide to shut his office door. He turned to his computer. Across the screen flashed a video, purportedly made by the Sunni insurgent group al-Qaeda in Iraq.
In the video, branches are thrown into a pit the size of a coffin, then doused with kerosene and ignited. The camera pans to three blindfolded men, kneeling, mouths sealed with tape. Six armed men in black masks stand behind them. One declares: “These three men fought and killed al-Qaeda. We will punish them according to Islam.” The masked men then kick the three into the burning grave.
Zobaie angrily turned off the video. “How can we show mercy to those people?” he asked. “Do you want me to show mercy to them if I capture them?”
Check it out here.
-
Self-Important Alabama Town To Photogs: Scram! – PDNPulse
The town of Mooresville, Ala., has done itself no favors by demanding a $500 fee from professional photographers who dare take pictures of its historic buildings.
After a photographer was told to stop taking photos in a public place, he wrote a letter to the local paper, unleashing a flood of bad press.
The Huntsville Times reported last week: “Huntsville photographer Don Broome said Wednesday he was standing in a public street in Mooresville taking pictures of the town’s historic buildings when he was served a notice that advised him to ‘cease photography and leave immediately.’”
Check it out here.
-
For The Love of Light – Josh Spear
. For The Love of Light: A Tribute To The Art of Polaroid gathers the work of twenty-five photographers from ten countries, on five continents in one breathtaking volume of photos produced with the their precious Polaroids. The book will be available in July, and hopefully will be such a roaring success that it will lead a world wide Polaroid revival and force the parent company to reconsider its stance on phasing out their film.
Check it out here.
-
Annals of War: The New Yorker
The woman behind the camera at Abu Ghraib.
by Philip Gourevitch and Errol Morris
Specialist Sabrina Harman took hundreds of pictures, she says, to “just show what was going on, what was allowed to be done.” Photograph by Nubar Alexanian.
Check it out here.
-
Turning the Tables on the Associated Press
The AP threatened to sue Brian C. Ledbetter for reproducing their photos without authorization. But they didn’t ask permission before they grabbed Ashley Dupre’s pictures.
Check it out here.
-
A picture not taken, a memory forged – Los Angeles Times
By Rick Loomis, LA Times
How can you never forget someone you never knew?
I did take Marine Lance Cpl. Aaron Austin’s photo, but I take photographs of people every day and I can’t say I knew him.
It’s the picture I didn’t take that has left Austin burned forever in my memory.
Check it out here.
-
The ’80s Video That Pops Up, Online and Off – New York Times
The women’s basketball game at Eastern Washington University on March 8 started out like any other, as the Eagles of E.W.U. faced off against the Montana State Bobcats.
Davin Perry, dressed as the singer Rick Astley, broke into a basketball game with an Astley hit from 1987.But a routine timeout turned into a 1980s flashback, as two men on the sidelines briefly hijacked the proceedings with a popular prank known as rickrolling. They surprised the crowd by blasting the British singer Rick Astley’s 1987 hit song “Never Gonna Give You Up” through the gym, while one, dressed as a look-alike in Mr. Astley’s signature trench coat, lip-synched and mugged to the music.
The stunt provoked a variety of reactions. Many older spectators looked, by turns, puzzled or irritated. But the under-30 fans danced and sang, happy to participate in a rapidly spreading phenomenon with roots in their favorite medium — the Internet.
Rickrolling is a descendant of an older Internet joke called duckrolling. A Web site or blog post would offer a link to something popular — say celebrity photos or video gaming news — that led unsuspecting viewers to a bizarre image of a duck on wheels.
Check it out here.
-
B: Photographic Lineups
When I approach subject matter and consider how to photograph it, one my main considerations is whether forms in the shot should line up or not. By “line up” I mean foreground and background combine to create shapes distinct from the photo’s subject matter
Check it out here.
-
Trapped: Mental Illness in America’s Prisons
by Jenn Ackerman
What started out as an assignment for school has produced a piece that has changed my life and hopefully will do the same for the people that view it. That was my hope when producing it at least. Ten weeks ago, we (my grad class at OU) were given the assignment to create a magazine including the brand, the mission statement and of course the content.
For this project, I decided to focus on the mental health crisis, specifically in prisons. This brought me to the CPTU inside the Kentucky State Reformatory.
Check it out here.
-
Photographer dies while trying to put out fire
John Gumm’s son, Jim Gumm, said his father was an accomplished photographer who worked for the Oklahoma Publishing Company in the 1950s and ’60s.
“I’ve been a photographer for 25 years, and I can’t even come close to him as far as the technical side,” he said. “He was a phenomenal man, just a very talented man.”
He said some of his father’s most interesting assignments as a photojournalist included photographing the Great Alaska Earthquake in March 1964 and an undercover assignment in which he lived among Chicago’s beatniks around the same time period.
“He grew out a beard and everything for that one,” Jim Gumm said.
Check it out here.
-
Concord Monitor – His photos reflect our community
After nearly 20 years at the Monitor, the last 13 as photo editor, Dan Habib has left to pursue a career as a filmmaker. For us, it is as though a member of the family has moved out. For readers, it is a milestone, too.
Dan raised photojournalism at the Monitor to heights seldom reached by a newspaper our size. He seemed to lead the photo staff without effort, but there was always effort. He just figured out how to make a difficult job look easy.
It is hard to know where to begin to describe what Dan did for us and our readers, but the one trait that connects all his talents is humanity. He is the most decent person most of us know. His caring for others governed the way he dealt with the community and with his colleagues.
Check it out here.
-
Click Review: Breaking News by Martin Fletcher
Breaking News: A Stunning and Memorable Account of Reporting from Some of the Most Dangerous Places in the World
, by Martin Fletcher.
Martin Fletcher, the NBC News Bureau Chief in Tel Aviv with a penchant for posing on top of destroyed tanks, provides a great look back at his life covering conflict.
War reporters face moral dilemmas all day: Is it reasonable to film a crying woman two feet from the lens? How about a lost child screaming for its parent? Should one film him or take him by the hand? If a man is to be executed and the soundman’s gear suddenly doesn’t work, what do you do? Delay the execution? That’s what the BBC’s David Tyndall did in Biafra in 1970, when he yelled, “Hold it, we haven’t got sound,” and the quivering man about to be killed had to suffer that much longer while the soundman sorted out his gear. Later, Tyndall was mortified by his instinctive response to the dilemma, as was the BBC, which severely reprimanded him. But every move in this job poses a different dilemma, and nobody can be right all the time. In fact, the most critical question is usually not moral in nature but practical: How far down this road can I drive and stay safe?
Fletcher takes us through his experiences beginning with the Yom Kippur War in Israel and then on throughout Africa (Somalia, Rwanda, Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe), South Africa), Cyprus, Afghanistan, etc. This from Albania, covering the Kosovo war:
Then there was the small matter of the bandits who preyed on travelers, especially foreign journalists flush with cash. One BBC television team hired a small truck and driver. Just as they were approaching the final leg of the journey into the country’s wild and poor northeast, they ran into a group of armed men who stopped their vehicle at gunpoint and demanded money. The producer handed over his shoulder bag with envelopes of cash, and they were allowed to proceed unharmed. The team was shocked, but the producer chuckled and said, “Don’t worry, I’m not dumb, that was just a token in case we got robbed. The real money is in my boot.” The team laughed with relief, whereupon their Albanian driver stopped the car, put a gun to the producer’s head, and stole the rest of the money. Then the driver forced everybody out and drove off with their gear. And he was one of the good guys.
Breaking News: A Stunning and Memorable Account of Reporting from Some of the Most Dangerous Places in the World
-
on patrol at uncommons
Yesterday I wrapped up a rather anticlimatic day of covering the rising floodwaters in St. Louis. For days my name was missing from the flood coverage roster until Friday morning when the word came down that I was set to ride with the U.S. Coast Guard (Air Station New Orleans) air group who are up here staging in Chesterfield while conducting search-and-rescue operations.
Check it out here.