:
Pictures of the Month January 2008
Check it out here.
Category: Photojournalism
-
My Lover, My Life – The Digital Journalist
:
We have fun, don’t we?” Douglas Kirkland calls from downstairs after a long day of working on this book, arguing and laughing. Editing thousands of images to create “Freeze Frame” was both an emotional and exhilarating process, watching our life through the work, discovering images we didn’t remember existed, seeing ourselves through the 40 years of our marriage.
Our relationship began in 1965 in Paris on the film set of “How to Steal A Million,” with Audrey Hepburn and Peter O’Toole. I was a 21-year-old student at the Sorbonne; my mother worked for the film company. Douglas came to take pictures of the movie stars and romanced me by the Seine. We fell in love, continued our love affair while meeting in London, Rome, Venice and Madrid. It was my first taste of working together and it was wonderfully exciting and romantic. We eventually got married in Las Vegas late one night.
The Sixties and early Seventies were a period of abundance for photojournalism and we enjoyed the best of it. We lived like millionaires without the responsibility of being rich, staying in the best hotels of Europe and mingling with the “aristocracy” of the cinema. It was all very unpretentious, full of joie de vivre, and we embraced it heartily.
Check it out here.
-
Witness to an Assassination – The Digital Journalist
by Adam Dean:
In the climate of fear surrounding Bhutto and Pakistan in general, due to the deteriorating security situation and massive double suicide bombings that marred her homecoming in October, the days of hundreds of thousands of supporters attending political rallies were a thing of the past. On my way to the rally both my hotel concierge and taxi driver had warned me of the dangers of attending Bhutto’s rally as there had been another suicide bomber apprehended before detonating his explosives at a rally the previous day in Peshawar. With the benefit of hindsight, it seemed like the writing was on the wall.
The security at the gates into the park was very thorough and once inside the security seemed much better organized and the rally went ahead as expected. There were a handful of local wire photographers there along with John Moore of Getty Images and myself. We were leaving after the rally, assuming Bhutto would make a quick exit for security reasons, but hundreds of supporters managed to break through the barriers in the park and surround her convoy as she tried to make her departure. Once again she came out of the sunroof and started greeting her cheering fans as her vehicle crawled along the road. I was about 20 meters from her vehicle and started shooting with a long lens as it turned and came towards me.Check it out here.
-
CAR (Central African Republic): – The Digital Journalist
by Spencer Platt:
I first heard of the misery enveloping the Central African Republic last year when CAR was chosen by numerous organizations as one of the world’s most underreported and neglected stories. While Darfur and the Congo seemed to generate ample media attention, the situation in CAR was unknown to all but a few. Located in the center of Africa and sharing borders with Chad, Sudan, the D.R. Congo and Cameroon, CAR is nearly the size of Texas with a population just over 4 million people. Since gaining independence from France in 1960 the poverty-stricken nation has experienced a succession of coups and attempted coups. In the last decade alone it has experienced almost constant rebellion, leading to a state of anarchy in most of the north of the country. CAR is one of the world’s poorest nations with an average life expectancy of only 39 years. With no electricity outside of the capital and virtually no paved roads, it is a land abandoned.
Check it out here.
-
redlights and redeyes: remembering rudy
:
I needed some time to recover from my marathon road/plane trip covering the presidential campaign of Rudy Giuliani before posting anything here. I spent a week from sunrise to sundown with his campaign criss-crossing every corner of South Florida, where he spent most of his campaign rhetoric and dollars trying to secure the state, which he lost.
People always ask if it’s fun work following around a campaign, and to be honest, as tough as it was physically and mentally, it was fun. There is an aspect of witnessing history that I truly respect and admire I have the opportunity to do in this field.
Check it out here.
-
Saved From a Lynching – APhotoADay News
:
From The Vigilante Journalist blog:
My first day on the ground in Kenya, I went into Mathare with a group of photographers after hearing that there had been some problems. Two mobs were facing off on the main street leading into the Nairobi slum. Once the dust had settled, I met an Italian photographer by the name of Enrico Dangnino. He was pretty shaken up. He had blood stains on his clothes and told me that earlier in the day they had witnessed a near lynching but were able to save the man’s life.
Check it out here.
-
road trip: Che
:
this modern day “revolution cliche” also hangs (or rather hung) on my living room wall….mine is an original, signed, full-frame fiber print given to me by Korda himself after we had both consumed i do not know how many Havana Club mohitos…we went long into the night after the opening of my “Cuba” exhibition in Havana in 2000..Alberto died just a few months after our Havana “all-nighter” , in Paris during the opening of his own retro exhibit…
Alberto Korda was a motivated photographer…..”my main aim was to meet women”, Korda confessed in a New York Times interview towards the end of his life…and his second wife (but not his last) was a top fashion model……hmmmmmm… well, motivations aside, Korda is represented by prestige galleries throughout the world and was Fidel Castro’s personal photographer for 10 years after the revolution…you may see an interesting film by Hector Cruz Sandoval titled “Kordavision” which was released after Alberto’s death..this film and the above photograph are not so popular in Miami where many of the “non- recipients” of the Che/Fidel revolution have lived for the last 40 years…
Check it out here.
-
andreas weinand photography · straight photography with a personal view · © copyright : all rights reserved
:
long-term photographic documentations, reflection on social identities
within the private and public spheresCheck it out here.
-
Out of Africa – Reuters Photographers
:
I’ve been trying to write about some sport images that caught my eye while trawling through the Reuters file but I keep getting hung up on our pictures from Kenya.
They are so raw, so powerful and uncompromising that even the most accomplished images of cossetted sportsmen performing in completely controlled circumstances seem insignificant in comparison.Check it out here.
-
Metro Collective » Blog Archive » Px3 award
:
The Prix de la Photographie Paris (Px3) jury has chosen Daniel Cima’s entry, 2006 Drought in Ethiopia, as a winner in in the Human Condition competition.
Select winning photos, curated by the director of the Farmani Gallery, will be exhibited at a group show in Los Angeles from March 6-31. The show will travel to New York later in the year, and potentially overseas.Check it out here.
-
Ghosts of New York: Photographer Arlene Gottfried Captures Disappearing Gotham — Vulture — Entertainment & Culture Blog — New York Magazine
:Ask photographer Arlene Gottfried if she thinks the New York characters she’s shot for 40 years from Coney Island to Times Square and Harlem are freaks, and she bristles. “I don’t think they’re freaks, because then I’d be a freak, too.” With her little-girl Coney brogue (she and her brother, manic comic Gilbert, grew up there), old-soul eyes, and longtime avid membership in the Jerriese Johnson East Village Choir (she occasionally solos, she boasts), she’s a quiet defender of the grimily vibrant denizens of an older New York that’s disappearing daily. Now she’s their enshriner, too: Due out this week from powerHouse Books, Sometimes Overwhelming compiles images Gottfried took of the city in the seventies and eighties. An exhibit of Gottfried’s later work is also opening March 5 at the Alice Austen House Museum on Staten Island.
We interviewed Gottfried about some of her most striking images. An exclusive preview of photos from her book, and her memories of taking them
Check it out here.
-
World Press Photo – Photo of the Year – Tim Hetherington
:
The international jury of the 51st annual World Press Photo Contest selected a color image of the UK photographer Tim Hetherington as World Press Photo of the Year 2007. The picture was taken 16 September 2007 and shows a US soldier resting at “Restrepo” bunker, named after a soldier from his platoon who was recently killed by insurgents.
The 2nd Battalion Airborne of the 503rd US infantry is undergoing a deployment in the Korengal Valley in the Eastern province of Afghanistan. The valley is infamous as the site of downing of a US helicopter and has seen some of the most intense fighting in the country. Hetherington’s photograph is part of a picture story that was also awarded 2nd Prize in General News Stories. He had traveled to Afghanistan on assignment for Vanity Fair.
“This image shows the exhaustion of a man – and the exhaustion of a nation,” says jury chairman Gary Knight, and adds “We’re all connected to this. It’s a picture of a man at the end of a line.” Fellow juror MaryAnne Golon commented: “I use all my energy to have people notice bad things. There’s a human quality to this picture. It says that conflict is the basis of this man’s life.”
Check it out here.
-
Photo Essay: Kenya, By Marcus Bleasdale
By Marcus Bleasdale:
The post election violence in Kenya has killed nearly 1,000 and displaced 270,000. It is the most devastating violence to hit Kenya since its independence. Whilst politicians try to find solutions in Nairobi, the ethnic tensions in the Rift Valley reach new highs. Ethnic cleansing has led to killings and houses being burnt in a movement to shift different tribes out of their non-ancestral homes.
Huge parts of different cities across the valleys have been razed to the ground and the inhabitants forced to flee. In the villages, warriors from opposing tribes battle with bows and arrows, rocks and occasionally guns to gain or regain control of their land.
While the politician’s talk, the future of Kenya will depend, not on the final results of the discussions in Nairobi, but on the ability of Kenyans to forgive and live together again. That will take much longer.
Check it out here.
-
Photographer describes wars in pictures – News
:Chris Hondros has seen the world at war first hand – and so has his camera lens.
Working for Getty images as a war photographer for almost a decade, he has captured militiamen crying out in battle in the Second Liberian Civil War, American soldiers on raids in Iraq and children in the arms of their mothers in Sierra Leone’s refugee camps.
Hondros brought these images, his experiences and his personal comments to Pitt yesterday afternoon in a lecture facilitated by the global and film studies departments, PittArts and Pittsburgh Filmmakers. About 70 people crammed into room 501 in the Cathedral of Learning for a slideshow of Hondros’ work and to hear his commentary.
Check it out here.
-
5B4: The Americans by Robert Frank 50th Anniversary
It is rare for a photographer that came of age in the 1960’s and 70’s to not cite Robert Frank’s The Americans and Walker Evans’ American Photographs as the two books that inspired them to take up a camera and explore the world. It is lore that gets repeated so often it almost seems disingenuous in the retelling. I have often thought that it isn’t possible that so many people could be so instantly enamored since, as much as it may be embarrassing to admit, both of those books took a while for me to warm up to them and see their true greatness. I’ve come around, probably in the same way that an early critic of the first edition of The Americans had when he described Frank as one who “produced pictures that look as if a kid had taken them while eating a Popsicle and then had them developed and printed at the corner drugstore.” That critic failed to specify which flavor of Popsicle would have fueled such a remarkable feat. If he had, maybe photographers would have flocked to have given it a taste.
Check it out here.
-
Photographing Tragedy In Alabama – PDNPulse
:
One of the most powerful photos of the tornado damage in the southern U.S. is by photojournalist Gary Cosby Jr. of The Decatur Daily in Alabama. Cosby’s shot was picked up by the AP and ran as today’s lead photo in the USA Today and The New York Times, among other newspapers.
The photo shows one man, James Devaney, searching through the flattened debris of the home where his daughter, along with her son and her husband, were killed early Wednesday morning.
Check it out here.
-
Richard’s Notes » Blog Archive » Jeff Mermelstein
Jeff Mermelstein walks around New York with his Leica taking pictures. Great commentary on his style and process including his work on 9/11 below.
Check it out here.
-
Chicago Reader | Hot Type | Shooting for Dollars: The fight over photo rights to high school sporting events involves more than the First Amendment.
:Lockport came from six runs down to beat Oak Park 8-6, and Banks headed onto the field to take the “jubilation shot”—the photo of ecstatic teenagers hugging and tumbling and screaming. It’s the shot that goes on page one of tomorrow’s paper and into the photo albums of every player on the team.
But a volunteer from the Illinois High School Association blocked Banks’s way at third base. “She knew who I was and she said, ‘I can’t let you out,’” he says. “I asked why. She said, ‘This is my instruc tion.’” Banks looked around. He spotted the photographer from Visual Image Photo graphy, the firm under contract with the IHSA to take pictures of its major events, heading for the field from the first base side. Banks trotted after him and got his picture.
Banks also calls the jubilation shot the “money shot,” and that’s not just a metaphor. Papers point out that for 100 years they’ve sold copies of their pictures for a nominal rate to readers seeking mementos. Now a lot of papers have digitized the process—their photographers post pictures and readers order them online. An outside company that handled the order and made the print took a cut and Banks and the Southtown split the balance. Banks says his yearly take was something under $2,000.
The revenue stream is pretty small—it didn’t come close to sparing the Southtown its recent drastic economies, merging with the Star papers and laying off a lot of people, Banks included. But visit the Web site of what’s now the SouthtownStar and you’ll see the paper means business. “Welcome to Southland Photo Shoppe,” it says. “Your shopping choices range from traditional prints to T-shirts, mugs, computer mouse pads and other items on which our photos are imprinted.” A simple eight-by-ten is $25.Check it out here.
-
Rob Galbraith DPI: Tornado aftermath images show path of devastation
Photographers captured the devastation from killer tornados that wreaked havoc across five southern states. We found galleries from National Geographic News, the New York Times and The Tennessean.
Check it out here.
