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.
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.”
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.
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: 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.
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.
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.
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 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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Breaking News: A Stunning and Memorable Account of Reporting from Some of the Most Dangerous Places in the World
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
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.
I must say that I have never lived in a place that has flooded before. After the midwest rains finally stopped coming down, I was amazed at what parts of town looked like.
Check it out here.
The Beginnings of World War II, the End of Civilization.
By Nicholson Baker.
sometimes it is the simple stark fact that makes you sit up straight for a moment, like this one from early in the book: “The Royal Air Force dropped more than 150 tons of bombs on India. It was 1925.” This, coming soon after an account of the proposed bombing of civilian targets in Iraq in 1920 (with Churchill writing: “I am strongly in favor of using poisoned gas against uncivilized tribes”), sets a theme for the book, which Baker will skillfully weave into the fabric of events mainly between 1920 and 1942 — that the bombing of villages and cities from the air represents “the end of civilization.”
Check it out here.
The REAL Photography Award exhibition will be on view at LP II Art Exhibition Centre in Rotterdam from 21 March – 4 May 2008. The exhibition will display the work of the 30 award nominees, including the six finalists. The exhibition is scheduled to travel to other countries later in the year.
Check it out here.
German photographer Hans-Christian Schink has won the first REAL Photography Award, which ING Real Estate presents biannually to an international photographer shooting nature, development or architecture. Schink received the €50,000 (about $77,100) prize at a ceremony in Rotterdam, Netherlands, on March 20.
Schink was awarded the prize for his black-and-white print of water and mountains, which he produced using a technique known as true solarization. The image is part of a series of 12 photographs depicting Earth’s movement.
Check it out here.
i seem to get the most energy going when i pair things down to what may seem like “nothing”…..which is, of course, in a Zen way, “everything”….i felt just like this back in 1989 when i “caught on fire” for what was to become the work in Divided Soul ….this period of work led to being nominated into Magnum by 1993….so, i know THE FEELING.. “the feeling” makes me get out of bed in the morning with the juices flowing KNOWING i am on to something….now is such a time….
Check it out here.