This week the National Press Photographers Association (NPPA) rejected a proposal to change its name to The Society for Visual Journalists (SVJ). The new name was proposed as a way to re-brand the organization to be more inclusive of videographers, multimedia people, etc.
Check it out here.
By Robert Scheer, Indianapolis Star Visuals Dept
In covering our guys in Iraq, we heard and saw a lot of things that they didn’t want us to publish — such as how fast they drive, where the commander generally is on a convoy. The key thing is to know what photo or story might jeopardize a life, and which won’t. If you embed, you’ll receive countless pieces of paper containing security concerns. They’re important, be sure to digest them.
Early on, we sent some info out that we shouldn’t have. The folks at Q-West weren’t too pleased with us. At some point during the process of being scolded over and over for about two days, by everyone from Privates to Lt. Colonels, we were led into a dark room with gaudy oversized furniture and told in no uncertain terms that every story and every image we sent had to be scrutinized by the resident intel officer, at the other end of the base. This meant a two-mile walk every time we wanted to send to our editors. Back home, our editors were ready to start calling up various generals to read the riot act, but in Iraq, it was either “live with it, or go home.”
Check it out here.
Early on in my career I was working as an assistant for Horace Bristol (one of the original Life magazine staff photographers). Bristol and I hit it off right away and built a relationship that transcended more than just employer/employee. He became my friend and my mentor, a relationship that lasted until he died, about 10 years later.
One of the things he bestowed upon me, several times during our friendship was the importance of organizing your work, sooner rather than later. One day he pulled open one of the dozen or so drawers in a wooden dresser he kept in his house. Inside were several rows of 2 1/4 negs, stacked one layer deep, filling the drawer. This was just one drawer of about 12 in the dresser, and there was yet another filled the same.
Check it out here.
Should we be scared of emo? The Daily Mail says so. After the suicide of the 13-year-old emo schoolgirl Hannah Bond, who hanged herself in her bedroom in Essex last September, a series of headlines have screamed: “Why no child is safe from the sinister cult of emo”, while accusing the American emo band My Chemical Romance of encouraging suicide. Across Latin America it’s even worse. Emo kids are subject to violent attacks, prejudice and media abuse. This gloomy, gothic teenage rock cult, which began 20 years ago in America, has never been so controversial.
Check it out here.
As far as first-wave HC goes, Negative Approach were among the most vicious feedback-pummel units going. Songs careened by in seconds, were pretty much politics-free, focusing on sheer vocal/instrumental destruction. They were inspired by not only their American peers, but UK groundbreakers like Discharge (who, like, NA, were big Stooges fans). In 2006 they returned to the stage at the Touch and Go label anniversary, with Brannon and original drummer Chris Moore augmented by Ron Sakowski on bass and Harold Richardson on guitar, reportedly wiped the place down. On the day of their recent Southpaw show, they amazingly agreed in a day’s notice to come down to my show on FMU, plugged in and turned us to mush with 16 songs in 25 minutes
Check it out here.
The photographic community is incredibly diverse, made up of photographers that shoot from the sky to the sea and everywhere in between. Each month we look at a different segment of the industry, interviewing top professional photographers about life, their careers, and what sets their piece of the photographic industry apart from the rest.
This month we focus on Preston Gannaway, a staff photographer at the Rocky Mountain News in Denver, Colorado. While driving from New Hampshire to Colorado earlier this month, Gannaway learned that she had been named the recipient of the 2008 Pulitzer Prize in Feature Photography. The 30-year-old photographer was recognized for her picture story, “Remember Me,” which she created while on staff at the Concord Monitor. In April’s installment of “Behind the Lens,” Gannaway talks about her career as a newspaper photographer, and the hard work and dedication that went into her Pulitzer-winning picture story.
Check it out here.
Bruce Gilden is an in your face sort of street photographer who specializes in street portraits. Watch him work in the video above.
Check it out here.
Everyone knows I love a floater, so when M. Scott Brauer commented on the Chinese photography post and said he wished I’d included Li Wei, I grabbed the folder of Wei’s work that’s been burning a hole on my desktop and uploaded it with glee.
Wei is a photographer and performance artist who puts himself in gravity-defying poses, often with the use of harnesses. Thirty-seven-year-old Wei intentionally seeks to surprise and shock the viewer
Check it out here.
Photographer Carolyn Drake and writer Ilan Greenberg have won the 2008 Dorothea Lange-Paul Taylor Prize.
They will receive $20,000 in support of their project “Becoming Chinese: Uighurs in Cultural Transition,” which will study the Muslim ethnic group in China facing pressures to assimilate with China’s Han culture. About 10 million Uighurs live in China.
Check it out here.
Wacky Packages—a series of collectible stickers featuring parodies of consumer products and well-known brands and packaging—were first produced by the Topps company in 1967, then revived in 1973 for a highly successful run. In fact, for the first two years they were published, Wacky Packages were the only Topps product to achieve higher sales than their flagship line of baseball cards. The series has been relaunched several times over the years, most recently to great success in 2007.
Known affectionately among collectors as “Wacky Packs,” with artist Art Spiegelman, as a key creative force, the stickers were illustrated by such notable comics artists as Kim Deitch, Bill Griffith, Jay Lynch, and Norm Saunders.
Check it out here. Via BoingBoing.
Former White House press secretary Scott McClellan writes in a new memoir that the Iraq war was sold to the American people with a sophisticated “political propaganda campaign” led by President Bush and aimed at “manipulating sources of public opinion” and “downplaying the major reason for going to war.”
McClellan includes the charges in a 341-page book, “What Happened: Inside the Bush White House and Washington’s Culture of Deception,” that delivers a harsh look at the White House and the man he served for close to a decade. He describes Bush as demonstrating a “lack of inquisitiveness,” says the White House operated in “permanent campaign” mode, and admits to having been deceived by some in the president’s inner circle about the leak of a CIA operative’s name.
Check it out here.
Current TV brings us this short and interesting documentary about the confusion over the right to photograph in public places in the U.K.:
Check it out here.
On trial for the 1989 murder of one African-American, a skinhead was accused yesterday of stalking another black person he allegedly wanted to kill in the Brandywine Creek area near Wilmington.
The murder was averted when he realized his target was white, an ex-girlfriend testified yesterday.During cross-examination, the 39-year-old Newark, Del., woman revealed defendant Thomas Gibison’s alleged attempt to murder again so that he could earn from fellow skinheads a blood-red teardrop in his spider tattoo, which was a trophy from the first murder.
Check it out here.
The next coolest photography event of the year will be in Southern California this Fall as the Sports Shooter Academy Boot Camp returns September 5 & 6, 2008.
The Boot Camp is a two-day hands-on, shooting education program with a different emphasis each day. Participants can register for single day or attend both days.
Check it out here.
Last week my buddy Eric gave me a heads up about this photographer Alex Prager, so I checked out her site, and was totally stunned. ALex works in Los Angeles, shooting photos that are extremely retro in their styling, but modern in their execution. Imagine the set of The Birds, or an episode of The Wonder Years, but shot in this weird, almost Stepford Wives kind of way. It’s kind of like she crafted a bunch of personas from different pieces of characters in films and then photographed it. The colors are bright, but somewhat desaturated and definitely surreal.
Check it out here.
Are you ready for some nostalgic “ha-ha’s” at my expense? Embarrassing ones? Good. Way back in 1980/81, my 9th grade friend Curtis and I made a Xeroxed cut-and-paste “New Wave” magazine called Propaganda, and gave it away to all of our friends at Clark High School in Plano, Texas (click below to see each page). I had forgotten about it until a few years ago when somebody sent me copies of some of the pages they’d stashed away (which were already copies of copies of copies). The pages were washed out, gritty and hard to decipher, but I definitely remembered the whole thing. Then I forgot about it again. But recently, someone sent me crisp scans from some of the original “master” pages, which look even better than the original photocopies probably did (what is it about Xerox paper that doesn’t ever yellow, even after a quarter of a century?) Now, kick and scream as I click and drag you through my cut and paste past…
Check it out here.
Robb Kendrick fits in well not only because he is a sixth-generation Texan, raised in ranch country in the state’s panhandle, but also because of the unusual method of photography he favors, one patented and popularized at a time when the idea of the American cowboy was itself just being created.
He doesn’t need batteries or memory cards or even film for his pictures. Mostly he just needs time, patience and lots of elbow grease. And as he labors, moving methodically from beneath the hood of his wooden box camera to a portable field darkroom, bearing wet iron plates that he has painstakingly prepared, he thinks of himself not as simply making pictures but also as taking part in the world of the cowboys who are the subjects
Check it out here.
Scott Strazzante:
Well folks, I’ve decided to add one more blog to the world.
In the past, I have blogged as part of my job as staff photographer at the Chicago Tribune. I have blogged from the Summer Olympics in Athens, Greece and from the Winter Olympics in Torino, Italy. I have sent dispatches from Super Bowl XLI in Miami and have kept a photo journal as a compliment to “The Season” photo column.
Now, I just feel that I need an outlet for work that at this point doesn’t have a home- my personal photos, outtakes, past unseen work and daily successes, near misses and total disasters.
I’m not sure how regularly I will post but i hope you get something out of it.
