Warrantless Wiretapping Score Card

So, here is an interim assessment on the BushCo domestic surveillance program:

(1) The report issued Friday (compiled by the Inspector Generals of the various Intelligence Agencies) claims that it was much more extensive than BushCo made out;

(2) The CIA (at least) lied to Congress about the extent and operation of the program - that according to the current Director of the Agency;

(3) The then Vice President Dick Cheney ordered that lying;

(4) The same group of Inspectors General conclude that the domestic surveillance program was ineffective in generating "intelligence."

This comes from reading these new reports in The New York Times ~ [1] [2] [3] . . .

The upshot seems clear: Bush and his minions played on fear to design a program of surveillance that allowed them to sidestep judicial oversight; they then lied about to Democratically elected representatives charged with providing political oversight; they thereby subverted democratic arrangements and infringed individual liberties for a program that was useless in practical terms. You couldn't make this stuff up.

There is An Interview with Nik Kowsar ...

. . . in The Washington Post yesterday. You can find it here. Kowsar is an exiled Iranian cartoonist.

Not Quite a Flock of Seagulls, But a Pair

UNITED KINGDOM. Scotland. 1977. © Josef Koudelka/Magnum Photos

This image arrived in my inbox as Magnum's 'photo of the week' a couple of days ago. I had seen it several times but this time it brought to mind another, somewhat eerily similar image by Sarah Moon that I'd posted here last fall. Read Moon's description of how she composed her photograph and it contrasts with Koudelka's broader vision. But the gulls might be cousins and they are both casting a sideways glance at the viewer. And, of course, this seems to be yet another instance of what Geoff Dyer calls 'the ongoing moment.'

Louise Glück ~ From "October"

From: "October"*
Louise Glück

5.

It is true the there is not enough beauty in the world.
It is also true that I am not competent to restore it.
Neither is there candor, and here I may be of some use.

I am
at work, though I am silent.

The bland

Misery of the world
bounds us on either side, an ally

lined with trees; we re

companions here, not speaking,
each with his own thoughts;

behind the trees, iron
gates of the private houses,
the shuttered rooms

somehow deserted, abandoned,

as though it were the artist’s
duty to create
hope, but out of what? What?

The word itself
false, a devise to refute
perception - At the intersection,

ornamental lights of the season.

I was young here. Riding
the subway with my small book
as though to defend myself against

this same world:

you are not alone,
the poem said,
in the dark tunnel.

___________
* Louise Glück. Averno. Farrar, Strauss & Giroux, 2006, pages 13-14.

Are the Democrats Going to Show some Leadership on Health Care Funding?

It may seem surprising, but the Congressional Democrats seem ready to propose a health care reform bill that would be - gasp!!! - funded in a mildly progressive manner. As this report from The New York Times indicates:

"The proposal calls for a surtax on individuals earning at least $280,000 in adjusted gross income and couples earning more than $350,000, said the chairman, Representative Charles B. Rangel of New York.

It would generate about $550 billion over 10 years to pay about half the cost of the legislation, Mr. Rangel said. As the proposal envisions it, the rest of the cost would be covered by lower spending on Medicare, the government health plan for the elderly, and other health care savings."

One would think that this were a radical proposal with a broad based "tax" - and that is surely how the right will portray it. However, according to figures for 2006 from the Census Bureau, a gross income of $250,000 places a family in the top 2.5% of the income distribution in the country. The total number of families in that bracket is just under two million. And the tax will be progressive even within the category of the very wealthy.* Boy, those Democrats sure are sticking their necks out!

Even so, as The Times report makes clear, it seems quite unlikely that even modest a tax will pass even the House of Representatives:

"But it remains unclear whether the Senate will go along. Most Republicans there, or perhaps all, oppose the idea, along with some centrist Democrats.

Even in the more liberal House, where Democrats have a majority of 255 to 178, the tax proposal will most likely cost a substantial number of Democratic votes. The Blue Dog Coalition, made up of 52 fiscally conservative Democrats, expressed apprehension this week about the unfolding health care legislation, and that was before Mr. Rangel’s announcement Friday."

Do you think the Obama administration will be out there expending political capital on this gesture towards redistribution? If you do, I have a bridge I'd like to sell you.
__________
* According to The Times: "The surtax would be increased for individuals earning more than $400,000 and couples earning more than $500,000, and step up again for individuals earning over $800,000 and couples earning above $1 million. The precise extent of these increases has not been announced."

Is It a Pattern for Sarkozy?

While getting ready for the official G8 picture, a female
assistant accidentally drops some papers.
(Unattributed Photograph lifted from Huffington Post.)

Obama busted?

I came across this story at The Guardian this morning and thought it was worth sharing. After all there is no actual news coming out of the G8 meeting, right?

Obama's eye for controversy

The US president may have to face the wrath of the first
lady after being caught looking at a pert behind.

Barack Obama and Nicolas Sarkozy turn their heads towards
Brazil's Mayara Tavares at the G8 summit in L'Aquila, Italy.
Photograph © Jason Reed/Reuters.

Has Barack Obama been hanging round Silvio Berlusconi too long? On first inspection, this snapshot from the G8 summit in L'Aquila suggests the US president is as easily distracted by a pert derriere as his Italian and French counterparts.

What would Michelle think? He'll be sleeping on the sofa, according to Gawker

This is surely meant to be humorous and it is. But of course, here in the U.S., the image of a black man ogling a white woman has ~ in my lifetime ~ been enough to get him killed.
_________
Update: According to this report, an examination of the tapes suggests that Obama may not have been ogling the teenage Ms. Tavares after all. Was Sarkozy? The is something for the French to decide, if they care.

Best Shots (78)~ Karl de Keyzer

(105) Karl de Keyser ~ Cheap and cheerful ... The Good Friday
procession at Our Lady of Guadalupe church (San Anonio,
Texas ~ 1991). (8 July 2009).

"Artists hold applause for Obama"

That is the headline for this story at Politico; as is the case on most other dimensions, Obama's "change you can believe in" turns out to be a marginal adjustment on prior government performance. If you are interested in candidate Obama's position on the arts you can look back to this post.

Jose Gaytan ~ "Brooklyn in Transition"

Top: Gowanus Canal Landscape (view from Union Street
Bridge). Bottom: Canal Shoreline Study (Summer 2008).
Both Photographs © Jose Gaytan.

This story about Jose Gaytan in today's New York Times led me to a parallel post at their photography blog, which led me to the exhibition announcement at the Brooklyn Public Library. The story about a (to me, at least) little known photographer is instructive ~ how many talented photographers are there in the world. And the work, I think, is amazing.

Bill Kristol's Little Brother Ross Douthat ~ Evidence of the Inherited Inability of Conservatives to Make an Argument

I used to spend too much time here pointing out the idiocies of Bill Kristol. I have not paid much attention to his replacement, another conservative, Ross Douthat. While I was getting ready for class today I stopped to get coffee and read Douthat’s column in today’s New York Times. You can find it here. In the column Douthat laments Sarah Palin’s political demise and wishes that she had not accepted John McCain’s invitation to run for Vice-President. Here is Ross::

If Palin were exactly what her critics believe she is — the distillation of every right-wing pathology, from anti-intellectualism to apocalyptic Christianity — then she wouldn’t be a terribly interesting figure. But this caricature has always missed the point of the Alaska governor’s appeal — one that extends well outside the Republican Party’s shrinking base.

In a recent Pew poll, 44 percent of Americans regarded Palin unfavorably. But slightly more had a favorable impression of her. That number included 46 percent of independents, and 48 percent of Americans without a college education.

That last statistic is a crucial one. Palin’s popularity has as much to do with class as it does with ideology. In this sense, she really is the perfect foil for Barack Obama. Our president represents the meritocratic ideal — that anyone, from any background, can grow up to attend Columbia and Harvard Law School and become a great American success story. But Sarah Palin represents the democratic ideal — that anyone can grow up to be a great success story without graduating from Columbia and Harvard.

This ideal has had a tough 10 months. It’s been tarnished by Palin herself, obviously. With her missteps, scandals, dreadful interviews and self-pitying monologues, she’s botched an essential democratic role — the ordinary citizen who takes on the elites, the up-by-your-bootstraps role embodied by politicians from Andrew Jackson down to Harry Truman.

But it’s also been tarnished by the elites themselves, in the way that the media and political establishments have treated her.

Douthat, thankfully, does not try to save Palin from the obvious fact that she has more than proven inept at politics. Indeed, his lament would have no ground if that were not the case. But he turns to the conservative’s standard bogeyman as he casts about for someone to blame. When in doubt, it must’ve been “the elites.”

This is hypocritical and tired. Why hypocritical? Douthat, of course, cannot quite bring himself to mention that he hardly comes from from a family of auto-mechanics, unemployed industrial workers, or Walmart greeters but, instead, from a family of lawyers and writers. He fails to mention that he attended a pricey private secondary school on his way to Harvard. He obviously now writes for the oh-so obviously plebeian New York Times. In other words, like his predecessor on The Times editorial pages, Bill Kristol, Douthat is simply a hypocrite when he whines about the nefarious “elites” and their patronizing views of America. There apparently is no mirror in the Douthat residence.

Why tired? Because like most conservative whining it is immune to basic facts. Lack of self-awareness aside, Douthat neglects to note - based on this own chosen poll - that a majority of Americans “without a college education” view Palin unfavorably. No doubt, he would complain, that is due to the barrage of bad press that the “elites” have directed her way. But might it not simply be the case that regular Americans know ineptitude and wackiness when they see it? To adopt that view would be to treat normal Americans as intelligent and sensible. Douthat instead wants to insist that they’ve been misled by their betters at places like The Times. Ooops! Is that your elitism showing, Ross?

And, of course, Douthat subverts his own defense of Palin too. He notes, rightly, that McCain chose Palin as a running mate at the behest of advisers, “the professionals who pressed [her] into the service of a gimmicky, dreary, idea-free campaign.” Just so. Those were the people who cynically exploited poor Sarah - an otherwise solid, family-oriented, god-fearing Governor of a little known state. But they were Republicans, Ross. Not the liberal elites whom you are railing against. The campaign was just as pathetic as you make it out to be. And Palin was just another gimmick. Which means that your syrupy narrative of American history - Jackson, Truman, and all that - is simply a well-worn, and not terribly compelling jeremiad.

But in this narrative of decline and disrepair, Douthat too looks down his nose at Sarah Palin. I wonder if he learned that at the private school? I wonder too when the people who run The Times will discern the strong negative correlation between the conservative leanings of their columnists and their ability to construct a plausible argument.

burn.

burn. is an evolving online journal for emerging photographers curated by magnum photographer david alan harvey. You can find it here.

Blogo-Iran

My friend Susan pointed out this interesting report in The Wall Street Journal about the shifting composition of the blog-o-sphere (a term I find quite infelicitous) in Iran. With all the rapture about how the opposition has used blogs and other new communication media to mobilize, it is important to remember the other uses to which political actors - say a repressive regime and its minions - can put the same technology.

Wilco

Jeff Tweedy and his son Spencer. Photograph © thesippycups.com.

If you've read this blog much you likely will have noticed that I am a pretty big fan of Wilco; this (like keeping a blog) is among my several age-inappropriate preoccupations. Well, the band has a new album out this week. My oldest son Douglas has been taunting me for some time now since he'd managed to download a pre-release version a while back. I've bought the CD but not really had the opportunity to listen to it very much. In any case, the release has occasioned some nice press - you can find a story in The New York Times here. That is where I found the picture I've lifted above. If I hadn't liked the band before, this image of Jeff Tweedy and his son would definitely have converted me.

Patriotism ~ An Example

Independence Day Speech at Rochester, New York
Frederick Douglass
4 July 1852

Fellow citizens, pardon me, allow me to ask, why am I called upon to speak here today? What have I, or those I represent, to do with your national independence? Are the great principles of political freedom and of natural justice, embodied in that Declaration of Independence, extended to us? and am I, therefore, called upon to bring our humble offering to the national altar, and to confess the benefits and express devout gratitude for the blessings resulting from your independence to us?

Would to God, both for your sakes and ours, that an affirmative answer could be truthfully returned to these questions! Then would my task be light, and my burden easy and delightful. For who is there so cold that a nation’s sympathy could not warm him? Who so obdurate and dead to the claims of gratitude that would not thankfully acknowledge such priceless benefits? Who so stolid and selfish that would not give his voice to swell the hallelujahs of a nation’s jubilee, when the chains of servitude had been torn from his limbs? I am not that man. In a case like that the dumb might eloquently speak and the "lame man leap as an hart."

But such is not the state of the case. I say it with a sad sense of the disparity between us. I am not included within the pale of this glorious anniversary! Your high independence only reveals the immeasurable distance between us. The blessings in which you, this day, rejoice are not enjoyed in common. The rich inheritance of justice, liberty, prosperity, and independence bequeathed by your fathers is shared by you, not by me. The sunlight that brought light and healing to you has brought stripes and death to me. This Fourth of July is yours, not mine. You may rejoice, I must mourn. To drag a man in fetters into the grand illuminated temple of liberty, and call upon him to join you in joyous anthems, were inhuman mockery and sacrilegious irony. Do you mean, citizens, to mock me by asking me to speak today? If so, there is a parallel to your conduct. And let me warn that it is dangerous to copy the example of nation whose crimes, towering up to heaven, were thrown down by the breath of the Almighty, burying that nation in irrevocable ruin! I can today take up the plaintive lament of a peeled and woe-smitten people.

"By the rivers of Babylon, there we sat down. Yea! We wept when we remembered Zion. We hanged our harps upon the willows in the midst thereof. For there, they that carried us away captive, required of us a song; and they who wasted us required of us mirth, saying, Sing us one of the songs of Zion. How can we sing the Lord’s song in a strange land? If I forget thee, O Jerusalem, let my right hand forget her cunning. If do not remember thee, let my tongue cleave to the roof of my mouth."

Fellow citizens, above your national, tumultuous joy, I hear the mournful wail of millions! Whose chains, heavy and grievous yesterday, are, today, rendered more intolerable by the jubilee shouts that reach them. If I do forget, if I do not faithfully remember those bleeding children of sorry this day, "may my right hand cleave to the roof of my mouth"! To forget them, to pass lightly over their wrongs, and to chime in with the popular theme would be treason most scandalous and shocking, and would make me a reproach before God and the world. My subject, then, fellow citizens, is American slavery. I shall see this day and its popular characteristics from the slave’s point of view. Standing there identified with the American bondman, making his wrongs mine. I do not hesitate to declare with all my soul that the character and conduct of this nation never looked blacker to me than on this Fourth of July! Whether we turn to the declarations of the past or to the professions of the present, the conduct of the nation seems equally hideous and revolting. America is false to the past, false to the present, and solemnly binds herself to be false to the future. Standing with God and the crushed and bleeding slave on this occasion, I will, in the name of humanity which is outraged, in the name of liberty which is fettered, in the name of the Constitution and the Bible which are disregarded and trampled upon, dare to call in question and to denounce, with all the emphasis I can command, everything that serves to perpetuate slavery?the great sin and shame of America! "I will not equivocate, I will not excuse"; I will use the severest language I can command; and yet not one word shall escape me that any man, whose judgment is not blinded by prejudice, shall not confess to be right and just.

But I fancy I hear someone of my audience say, "It is just in this circumstance that you and your brother abolitionists fail to make a favorable impression on the public mind. Would you argue more and denounce less, would you persuade more and rebuke less, your cause would be much more likely to succeed." But, I submit, where all is plain, there is nothing to be argued. What point in the antislavery creed would you have me argue? On what branch of the subject do the people of this country need light? Must I undertake to prove that the slave is a man? That point is conceded already. Nobody doubts it. The slaveholders themselves acknowledge it in the enactment of laws for their government. They acknowledge it when they punish disobedience on the part of the slave. There are seventy?two crimes in the state of Virginia which, if committed by a black man (no matter how ignorant he be,) subject him to the punishment of death; while only two of the same crimes will subject a white man to the like punishment. What is this but the acknowledgment that the slave is a moral, intellectual, and responsible being? The manhood of the slave is conceded. It is admitted in the fact that the Southern statute books are covered with enactments forbidding, under severe fines and penalties, the teaching of the slave to read or to write. When you can point to any such laws in reference to the beasts of the field, then I may consent to argue the manhood of the slave. When the dogs in your streets, when the fowls of the air, when the cattle on your hills, when the fish of the sea and the reptiles that crawl shall be unable to distinguish the slave from a brute, then will I argue with you that the slave is a man!

For the present, it is enough to affirm the equal manhood of the Negro race. Is it not as astonishing that, while we are plowing, planting, and reaping, using all kinds of mechanical tools, erecting houses, constructing bridges, building ships, working in metals of brass, iron, copper, silver and gold; that, while we are reading, writing and ciphering, acting as clerks, merchants, poets, authors, editors, orators, and teachers; that, while we are engaged in all manner of enterprises common to other men, digging gold in California, capturing the whale in the Pacific, feeding sheep and cattle on the hillside, living, moving, acting, thinking, planning, living in families as husbands, wives, and children, and above all, confessing and worshiping the Christian’s God, and looking hopefully for life and immortality beyond the grave, we are called upon to prove that we are men!

Would you have me argue that man is entitled to liberty? That he is the rightful owner of his own body? You have already declared it. Must I argue the wrongfulness of slavery? Is that a question for republicans? Is it to be settled by the rules of logic and argumentation, as a matter beset with great difficulty, involving a doubtful application of the principle of justice, hard to be understood? How should I look today, in the presence of Americans, dividing and subdividing a discourse, to show that men have a natural right to freedom? Speaking of it relatively and positively, negatively and affirmatively? To do so would be to make myself ridiculous and to offer an insult to your understanding. There is not a man beneath the canopy of heaven that does not know that slavery is wrong for him.

What, am I to argue that it is wrong to make men brutes, to rob them of their liberty, to work them without wages, to keep them ignorant of their relations to their fellow men, to beat them with sticks, to flay their flesh with the lash, to load their limbs with irons, to hunt them with dogs, to sell them at auction, to sunder their families, to knock out their teeth, to burn their flesh, to starve them into obedience and submission to their masters? Must I argue that a system thus marked with blood, and stained with pollution, is wrong? No! I will not. I have better employment for my time and strength than such arguments would imply.

What, then, remains to be argued? Is it that slavery is not divine; that God did not establish it; that our doctors of divinity are mistaken? There is blasphemy in the thought. That which is inhuman cannot be divine! Who can reason on such a proposition? They that can may; I cannot. The time for such argument is past.

At a time like this, scorching iron, not convincing argument, is needed. O! had I the ability, and could I reach the nation’s ear, I would today pour out a fiery stream of biting ridicule, blasting reproach, withering sarcasm, and stern rebuke. For it is not light that is needed, but fire; it is not the gentle shower, but thunder. We need the storm, the whirlwind, and the earthquake. The feeling of the nation must be quickened; the conscience of the nation must be roused; the propriety of the nation must be startled; the hypocrisy of the nation must be exposed; and its crimes against God and man must be proclaimed and denounced.

What, to the American slave, is your Fourth of July? I answer: a day that reveals to him, more than all other days in the year, the gross injustice and cruelty to which he is the constant victim. To him, your celebration is a sham; your boasted liberty, an unholy license; your national greatness, swelling vanity; your sounds of rejoicing are empty and heartless; your denunciation of tyrants, brass-fronted impudence; your shouts of liberty and equality, hollow mockery; your prayers and hymns, your sermons and thanksgivings, with all your religious parade and solemnity, are, to Him, mere bombast, fraud, deception, impiety, and hypocrisy - a thin veil to cover up crimes which would disgrace a nation of savages. There is not a nation of savages. There is not a nation on the earth guilty of practices more shocking and bloody than are the people of the United States at this very hour.

Go where you may, search where you will, roam through all the monarchies and despotisms of the Old World, travel through South America, search out every abuse, and when you have found the last, lay your facts by the side of the everyday practices of this nation, and you will say with me that, for revolting barbarity and shameless hypocrisy, America reigns without a rival.

U.S. Faces Resentment in Afghan Region

. . . so reads the headline to this report in The New York Times. Are we supposed to be surprised? This seems like an odd, un-self-conscious echo of the delusional Bush-Cheney-Rumsfeld view that the people of Baghdad were going to welcome us with open arms and jubilation.

Picturing Detroit

Photograph from Bruce Gilden's Magnum In Motion essay
"Detroit: The Troubled City". © Bruce Gilden/Magnum Photos.

This month I am in SE Michigan, teaching at the ICPSR Summer Program; this is something I do every year. In order to get to Ann Arbor from Rochester you have to drive through Detroit. And pretty much every year I make the effort to get over to the city for one or another reason. In any case, checking out the Magnum blog today I came across this new blog entry discussing this new photo essay "Detroit ~ The Troubled City" by Bruce Gilden. It seems to me that a couple of things need saying.

Let's stipulate that Gilden is a terrific photographer in the technical sense. He makes powerful images. Let's stipulate too, that his intentions are admirable. He is trying to call attention to what he sees as a travesty in America. Then let's ask if he has a clue. Because that is what I look for in photography. What is the photographer depicting and what are those depictions used for. In this case, I think Gilden misses a lot of the story. We get doom and gloom but nothing else. And, without wanting to come off as naive (something I am typically not accused of being), I think he misses a lot by taking too superficial a focus.* This leads him to be simultaneously overly optimistic and overly pessimistic.

In the first place, contrary to the connection Gilden is making, the dire scenes and streetscapes he offers are not a new phenomena. They have been exacerbated by the current financial crisis. But the physical disintegration of the city has been happening for decades, largely as a result of economic disinvestment. Gilden rightly complains about the moribund city government that has presided over the disaster in Detroit. He might have added remarks about the State and Federal governments too.

But the underlying problem has been that economic agents - firms and employers - have abandoned Detroit (and many other cities like, for instance, Pittsfield Mass., where I grew up and Rochester, New York where I now work). They have taken their money and the jobs and moved away. The result has been an emaciated tax base and rampant unemployment. Those residents who could've moved out of the cities to follow the jobs often have done so. Those who could not have been left behind. In other words, the collapse of Detroit is not just a story about continuing corruption and buffoonery on the part of local politicos (look here for the most recent installment). That would make it a story of failure when, in fact, it is a story about processes integral to the operation of the American political-economy. We cannot fix what's wrong with Detroit simply with more FBI investigations.

On the other hand, by focusing on the surface - on the foreclosures and abandoned property, Gilden may be missing dynamic processes that are taking place out of his sight. Not long ago I noted here a series of essays by Rebecca Solnit about how residents of American cities are struggling against considerable odds (and also against the expectations of many more comfortably situated Americans) to bootstrap themselves out from decay and devastation. One of Solnit's essays is about Detroit (you can find it here). Solnit, of course, peddles hope and in the process seeks out actions, events and people who afford us grounds for it. I admire her for that. But I also admire her for not being naive. She isn't. Just as the voices in Gilden's photo-essay speak of resorting to criminal violence and fomenting insurrection, some of those Solnit describes are racists or despairing or both. But she also points to other creative, organized responses to urban decay and abandonment too. She has collected her essays into a book - A Paradise Built in Hell - which is due out later this summer. In a very short recent interview about the book Solnit remarks:

"Being in a situation where people die and systems are disrupted can have powerful emotional consequences, but to think that everyone who is in such a situation is damaged doesn't address the importance of people's strength and the support they find. This vision of human frailty ties into related pictures of human nature: that we fall apart in disasters, that we need institutions to regulate us because of our weakness and wickedness, and that we should be afraid of a great many things. These serve an authoritarian and divided society, and maybe what one of my sources calls “the trauma industry,” but don't serve most of us well at all."

It seems to me that, despite his intentions, Gilden risks contributing to the overly dire and pessimistic view that Solnit describes and thereby risks abetting the social-political-economic agents and institutions and organizations that will spring up to exploit fear and anxiety. I may not want to follow Solnit everywhere she goes politically. But I think she points us in what (potentially at least) is a considerably more productive direciton than does Gilden.
__________
* In fairness there is a discrepancy between what Gilden writes in the blog post and the voices he presents in the photo essay. So I am not being entirely fair.

P.S.: (5 July 09) I just happened across yet another lament for Detroit here at openDemocracy; the author, Ross Perlin, is significantly less sanguine, I think, that is Solnit. He looks at the decay of the city and the local agricultural and artistic responses it has elicited and concludes: "The artists deliver a harangue to accompany the decay, a raging against the dying of the light, but no end to the decay itself."

Unger to Leave Minister's Post

Regular readers will know that I admire the work of Roberto Mangabeira Unger. According to this report in Reuters, Unger will be leaving his ministerial position in the Brazilian Cabinet.

Different Trains

"Different Trains began because of my childhood four-day train trips across America between my divorced parents. There was also the American tradition of train songs: 'John Henry', 'Night Train', 'Soul Train', 'Chattanooga Choo Choo'. I got recordings of American and European trains. Then I started making recordings of my childhood nanny, Virginia, who accompanied me, and Mr Davis, a retired Pullman Porter from that era. I then realised these were the same years that Hitler was taking over Europe and killing every Jew he could find. So I went to sound archives of holocaust survivors speaking about what happened to them – and the trains they rode. Then I set myself a rule: don't change the pitch of the voices by using a computer. This was an homage from the living to the dead and I had to preserve the integrity of all the voices. So every time there is a new speaker, there is a different tempo and a different key. And that constraint forced me into coming up with a completely different musical work, one that both looked back to my earliest work with speech tape-loops, and forward to what I would do in the future with video artist Beryl Korot. If someone had suggested that I write 'a piece about the Holocaust' I'd have said 'absolutely no' – it's too enormous to presume to deal with. But, just as I was using the actual voices of my nanny and the Pullman Porter talking about their lives, I could use the actual voices of Holocaust survivors talking about their lives as well. This created a piece where the documentary reality and the musical reality become one and the same. And if it works – and I believe it does – that's why." ~ Steve Reich

__________
* From The Guardian here.

Best Shots (77) ~ Martin Schreiber

(104) Martin Schreiber ~ Madonna, 1979 (24 June 2009).

Update: Talking About Diversity In Photo-Land

Earlier in the month I added my two cents to the discussion that the folks at PDN prompted by seating an all white jury in their annual distribution of awards and recognition. You can find relevant links in my earlier posts. Fortunately, the discussion has been taken up over at lightstalkers ~ go here if you're interested. I don't see much progress in the conversation, mostly lots of defensiveness, naive claims that 'what really counts is the work,' and so forth. But there are some insightful contributions and the fact that the topic of diversity is being discussed at all is, itself, a good thing.

Democratizing Arts Organizations?

I came across a couple of provocative recent columns [1] [2] by Barry Johnson (no relation) in The Oregonian. He first raises and then defends the notion that major arts organizations, many of which are struggling financially, ought to be opened up and democratized. I have to say that I'm pretty sympathetic to his arguments. Around Rochester, for instance, the boards of arts outfits tend to be filled with rich folks. They tend, in my estimation, to be exceedingly risk-averse in their programming. I don't think that convergence is coincidental. More generally, as I argued here in an earlier post, they tend to envision their role as guiding spaces of presentation rather than fostering spaces for creativity. In the former role they hope to tempt suburbanites to venture into the city for an evening or two each year. If they could help provide spaces for creativity they might not only energize the arts for audiences, they might contribute to the social and economic revitalization of the city.

Malick Sidibé

Christmas Eve, 1963. Photograph © Malick Sidibé

According to this report in Agence France-Presse, Malian photographer Malick Sidibé has received the top prize at this year's PhotoEspana. Sidibé has won numerous awards and prizes
and is perhaps best known for his portraits. I think his work too is a standing counterexample to those who insist on forcing discussion of African photographers (and of photography about Africa more generally) into the dichotomy of optimism and pessimism. Where does Sidibé's work, created over the course of several decades, fit?

Optimism & Pessimism ~ About Africa in Particular

At The Guardian yesterday Jonathan Jones published this provocative post on South African photographer Guy Tillim. Jones seems to start off contentiously:

"You won't often hear me call a photographer a genius. I think there's too much homage paid to an art that's basically just holding up a piece of machinery and pushing a button.

There are great photographs and great photographers. But far too much fuss is made now of average photographs by average artists. It's not so much a cult of the camera as of the run-of-the-mill."

But notice that, having denied the appellation"genius" to anyone engaged in so mechanical a process as "pushing a button," he then more or less immediately takes it back. The alternative would be to appear just plain silly and, of course, to deprive himself of a subject - namely Tillim. The problem is not with photography but with the art world and those who inhabit it as, regardless of medium, tends to push the mediocre work of "artists" in the cause of making a buck.

O.K., let's not use the word "genius." How about talented, insightful, or whatever. Tillim is indeed a terrific photographer. The portraits to which Jones links are pretty ominous. And here Jones really raises some important issues. There has been a push recently to decry "Afro-Pessimism" [1] [2] and how it informs the conventions that frame too much of how photographers depict events and conditions on vast, variegated African continent. It seems fair enough to complain that we too often get predictable images of tragedy, violence, deprivation, and chaos and little more. But it also seems fair to insist that there is too much of such such things across Africa and, as Jones intimates, ignoring them does not make them go away.

"Tillim is a South African photographer whose work is at once a report on contemporary Africa and an artistic image of it. His pictures deliver the shock of classic photojournalism as he traverses the continent, visiting crisis zones such as the Democratic Republic of Congo or, on his home ground, downtown Jo'burg. But they are at the same time chosen and composed images. Tillim photographs Africa in a way that communicates ambivalent and disturbing ideas and perceptions; every one of his pictures is at the same time a record of something seen and something he seems to have thought about for a long time.

Tillim is a provocative artist. At a time when art museums in the rich world often seem to want to create a fictionalised modern Africa – as if by celebrating something that does not exist it can be brought into being – he portrays a continent in chaos. His portraits of child soldiers are particularly scary. In his recent body of work, Avenue Patrice Lumumba, he documents buildings whose modernist idealism dates from the early years of African independence. Today these buildings are in various states of decay and transformation. It is not an optimistic series.

But I don't think Tillim is a dubious gloater over misery and poverty. He is a truth-teller. And it's in telling the truth - directly or indirectly, prosaically or poetically - that photography discovers its artistic power."

The most obvious problem in this discussion, I think, is that it is cast in dichotomous terms ~ optimism or pessimism. I don't think this dichotomy captures Tillim's work. Nor does it capture the work of other terrific African photographers such as David Goldblatt, Andrew Esiebo, Phillip Cartland, Santu Mofokeng or others whom I've commented on here in the past. Nor does it capture the work of non-African photographers who have depicted the continent ~ James Nachtwey, Robert Lyons, Sebastiao Slagado, Ron Haviv and so on. Even when such photographers depict tragedy, violence, deprivation, and chaos, they hardly do so because they think such conditions are irremediable. If they did they would be either wasting their time, or playing the role of voyeur in which critics like Sontag notoriously cast them. If the latter interpretation (or some variation on it) were not so common, it would be too obviously shallow to merit a response.

A second problem is that in thinking of the problems Africans confront and the accomplishments of which they can boast the parties to this disagreement reduce the role of photography to how this or that photographer is representing one or another truth. What about thinking of a conversation among photographers - one that does not rely solely on textless images, which I think is a hackneyed conceit of the profession - as though a picture (or set of pictures) speaks for itself? Different photographers might bring different perspectives and talents to bear on the continent. And we might recognize that there is way more in "Africa" than any one photographer might capture. So we could tack back and forth between the work of the many talented and insightful folks who are working there.

A third problem is related to the last. Photography does not simply depict reality; it does not simply capture some pre-existing "truth." It can also be transformative and prefigurative. And while Jones is no doubt correct to say that we cannot simply bring something into being by celebrating our aspirations (a form of dangerous wishful thinking that does not take the travails off real people seriously), he is way to harsh in his judgement. Why? Because photography can also play a role in prefigurative role in social and political change. It cannot accomplish such change on its own. But it can enter into movements for change and hold out possibilities that will motivate actors and animate movements. Call me naive or utopian. Want an example? Think of Josef Koudleka's (anonymous) photographs of Prague in 1968. Did they stop the Soviet brutality? No. Could they? No. But they entered into the politics of oppositions across Eastern Europe and came back to haunt the Soviets. I am sure you can think of other examples. Chuck your pessimism and cynicism overboard.

So Long, Kodachrome

Sharbat Gula, Afghan Girl, at Nasir Bagh refugee camp
near Peshawar, Pakistan, 1984. Photograph © Steve McCurry.

I rarely comment on technical aspects of photography, since I don't know much about them and there are lots of other places to read about such things. But this story also has local resonance in Rochester, where I live and work. Kodachrome is no more. You can find the story here and here and here among other places. As the story in The Guardian notes, one of the most famous pictures in contemporary photography - Steve McCurry's "Afghan Girl" (1985) - was made with Kodachrome. What is interesting about that photo, however, is less how it was made than the uses to which it subsequently has been put. In that regard I highly recommend the essay "Cover to Cover: The Life Cycle of an Image in Contemporary Visual Culture" by Holly Edwards. You can find it in the terrific book she co-edited - Beautiful Suffering ~ Photography & the Traffic in Pain. And, of course, our current path in Afghanistan may well provide McCurry's image with renewed relevance.

Fame

I've been keeping this blog since late September 2005. It has been fun, interesting (to me, at least) and a source of sanity amidst some really difficult times. I appreciate the visitors and (nearly all) of those who leave comments, but never really thought of anything like recognition. This post on the "Camera Club" blog over at The Guardian site recommends my blog. Thanks Guy! I would add that the company is quite good. It is quite nice to be included on the list.

Statement on Iran

Faezeh Hashemi, daughter of former president Ali Akbar Hashemi
Rafsanjani, attended a rally for Mir Hussein Moussavi. Iranian state
television reported on Sunday that Ms. Hashemi and four other
members of the family had been arrested.
Photograph/Caption: New York Times.

By all accounts the political situation in Iran has become increasingly dire. At The Atlantic, Andrew Sullivan has posted a statement that "defeated" reform candidate Mir Hussein Moussavi issued yesterday. From the perspective of Western liberals (to say nothing of progressives) it is complicated. Having said that there is no reason to remain silent in the face of government repression in Iran.

Political theorist Ramin Jahanbegloo has had his share of confrontational interactions with the theocrats in Iran [1] [2] [3]. You can view an interview with him regarding the Iranian election and subsequent events at ResetDOC. Here is a statement for which Jahanbegloo is soliciting support (it is being circulated by various folks here in the U.S.):

"Dear friends and colleagues,

Ramin Jahanbegloo, an Iranian-Canadian intellectual, has sent us this statement, asking us to solicit the signatures of our editors and writers. Both of us have signed it and urge you to do so. We plan on posting the letter and the names of signatories on our website, and Ramin also plans to send the statement to the New York Times and various other news sources.

If you would like to be added to the list of signatories, please respond to this email or email David Marcus at marcus@dissentmagazine.org

-Michael Walzer and Michael Kazin

We, the undersigned scholars, academics and writers around the world, are concerned about the human rights crisis in Iran. We request the United Nations to condemn the current coup d’état and support Iranians in their demand for a fair and democratic election. Deeply worried by the reports of Iranian paramilitary groups and security forces firing upon and arresting peaceful civilian demonstrators, we demand that the international community act now to prevent further violence and bloodshed. We call on the government of Iran to respect and uphold the right to peaceful protest. We call upon democratic institutions and organizations around the world to condemn government-sponsored violence against peaceful Iranian protestors. We also call on governments around the world to ask the UN Secretary General, the High Commissioner for Human Rights, and the Human Rights Council to appoint a UN special commission to monitor the post-election situation in Iran and to inform the Security Council about the arbitrary arrest and detention of student activists and leading reformists in Iran."

You can find insightful analyses on the general situation in Iran at Dissent, openDemocracy, and MERIP Online. Of course, events are quickly outrunning these general assessments.

At What Cost ~ Human Trafficking, Forced Labor, Child Labor

I would like to call attention to this project, entitled "At What Cost ~ Human Trafficking, Forced Labor, Child Labor," scheduled to begin touring in 2010. It is interesting for a couple of reasons. First, on a substantive level it addresses a set of themes that I have taken up here since the outset (e.g., 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9) and that are excruciatingly important. Second, it involves a prominent political theorist Thomas Pogge who has contributed one of several essays that are part of the project (I have not yet read or even acquired it). Finally, and importantly for present purposes, it raises a set of theoretical questions - actually seems to make a set of unfortunate, but conventional, assumptions about - the uses of photography. Here is some text from the project web page:

“Global Forced Labor
The Statistics
949,000 in Asia Pacific
1,320,000 in Latin America and the Caribbean
660,000 in Sub-Saharan Africa
260,000 in Middle East and North Africa
210,000 in transitional countries
360,000 in industrialized countries
12,300,000 in all
Almost half of them children
International Labour Organization, 2005

The Stories
Mark Kwadwo is 5 years old.
He was sold to a fisherman in Kete Krachi, Ghana.
Instead of having a childhood, he works each day scooping water from a leaky boat while he is hungry and scared.
Mark cannot swim.
New York Times, 10.29.06

One story can change the world.

AT WHAT COST ~ Human Trafficking/Forced Labor/Child Labor will be a traveling, outdoor exhibition designed to bring public, official, and mainstream media attention to the global crisis of human trafficking and labor abuse towards children and adults. In focusing on the tragically commonplace occurrence of abusive practices in the production of goods and the provision of services by international workers of all ages and ethnicities, the exhibition will present the portraits and stories of ten individuals who have experienced these atrocities.

The project, told in photographs and recorded voices, will focus on the individual experiences of ten people who have been forced to work under abusive conditions in such industries as agriculture, mining, seafood production, domestic service, sexual services, and textile fabrication. Individuals will share not only their images but their stories, which listeners can both read and hear as they connect with the portraits before them. By focusing on the individual story, rather than statistics about these abuses, viewers will be able to identify with those impacted and are more likely to follow through with their own personal support towards abolishing such practices.

Launching in 2010 with a tour of international academic centers the exhibition team will work with venues to create rich programming around each of the issues explored.

In the instance of Mark Kwadwo an individual story in a newspaper prompted a woman thousands of miles away to provide the funding to rescue him from slavery. At a larger scale these stories can allow us, as a society, to abolish slavery.”

The efforts and intentions of the people involved in this project seem admirable and in some ways (e.g., the incorporation of text and voices and music) innovative.* But the undertaking does prompt deep skepticism in me. Here are a set of what seem to me to be pretty obvious questions:

First, the project seems to assume that statistics are simply useless or boring or impenetrable or intimidating or something. And so the "individual stories" are opposed to statistics. How about finding creative ways to convey the statistics and to incorporate them into the project? This is a theme about which I have posted repeatedly. The practices that this project calls our attention to are precisely not simply a series of individual predicaments; they are complex, large-scale aggregate, dare I say political problems. If we hope to remedy them we need to see and grasp their true nature.

Second, the project seems to assume that a focus on individuals caught in the network of despicable labor practices will motivate audiences (or at least some members of audiences) who view their portraits to do something toward "abolishing such practices." But motivate how? To do what? In concert with whom? Perhaps the project staff have answers to theses questions - or some of them, at least - but it is unclear at the moment what they have in mind.

Third, the example that the text does give is of one individual providing relief to one other individual. Admirable perhaps. But, the efforts of wealthy westerners to buy individuals out of slavery can indeed have perverse consequences. If traffickers suspect there is real money - of the sort that rich philanthropists can offer - in the market for slaves they have increased incentive to take more slaves for purposes of selling them.

Finally, how precisely are we to make the transition from an individual moral or political response to despicable practices to a political movement that might eliminate or markedly curtail them? This returns us to the questions I raised at #2 above. For what the individual story changed was the life of a boy (singular) and, as important as that is, that does not change the world.

Perhaps I am being overly critical - especially since I've not seen the exhibition or read the texts. We'll see.
____________
* You can find a list of the individuals involved on the project web page. The project is being coordinated by Artworks with design by de.Mo.

Elegy for a Bookstore

At the beginning of next week I will start my annual summer teaching gig in Ann Arbor. It is in many ways a nice town, (if not quite as special as many of its denizens seem to imagine. In particular it has, over the years been overrun by the same chain stores and restaurants that you can find in virtually every other city college town in the U.S.. This has meant, really, the demise of what is unique about the place. Two years ago I noted the demise of Schoolkids Records and just a few months back, I'd commented on the difficulties that the folks at Shaman Drum Books were experiencing. Well, I just read this post by Anna Clark at Isak that Shaman Drum will close at the end of this month. It means that I will need to find something else to do to decompress after teaching since I typically would spend some time browsing the shelves and spending money at Shaman Drum. It means too the town is now dominated by Borders and Barnes & Noble both of which are distinctly limited in their offerings of serious fare (especially non-fiction). This is sad news. It hastens the already rapid cultural homogenization in Ann Arbor.

Hey Rush Limbaugh, Meet Some of Your Bigoted Fellow Republicans!

So, Rush Limbaugh, notoriously perceptive observer of American racial relations, has pronounced that racism is largely imaginary in the U.S.; and he infers that African-Americans and Latinos have simply been misled politically. Why? Because the Democrats, after all these years, have not been able to eliminate racism. The moral of the story is that racial minorities in the U.S. really ought to support Republicans. That would solve the problem of racism (which, recall, really is all in the imagination in the first place). Get it?

Yes, I think that the African-American and Latino population in the U.S. should embrace the Republicans. They might be especially interested in chatting with South Carolina Republican Rusty DePass who recently likened a Gorilla that escaped from a zoo to Michelle Obama's ancestors. Or, maybe they could have coffee and discuss politics with Sherri Goforth (who works for Republican State Senator from Tennessee Dianne Black) who emailed this "Historical Keepsake Photo" - depicting all 44 U.S. Presidents - to a list of her fellow Republicans.

Sure, these are small-minded right-wingers acting badly. And there surely are more substantial things to worry about in politics these days than their petty bigotry. But Sherri and Rusty are probably quite close to the median Republican voter on racial matters too. The implications for Limbaugh's diagnosis are pretty clear. It hardly takes much imagination to figure that one out.

Best Shots (76) ~ Doug DuBois

(103) Doug Dubois ~ Lartigue redux, 2004 (18 June 2009).

At the Margins The Times Acknowledges the Already Marginalized

... in this essay by Barbara Ehrenreich; since the poor are mostly invisible in "normal" times, why dwell on their predicament in "hard" times. After all, we are supposed to feel badly about the affluent who are laid low, not for those who've been poor and struggling all along.

My Whereabouts

I have been remiss about posting for the past few weeks because I've been spending time with August. His mom, her lawyer and the court connived (and that is a polite description) to insure that he does not get to spend much time with me or his brother or, say, my parents. And his mom has gone out of her way to interfere even with the limited time I am allocated by the draconian legal agreement. Instead of pondering the perverse psychological make-up that compels her to act out, I prefer to cherish the days we do actually get to spend together. We have been swimming a lot, eating hot dogs and ice cream with abandon, watching the despicable Lakers win the championship, playing with the dogs, spending time with his big brother Doug, and generally having a swell time - all that abetted by my love Susan. In any case, August will fly back across the continent with mommy dearest tomorrow. I miss him already. But I'm making plans too, for the next time we get to see one another.

Best Shots (75) ~ Thomas Ruff

(102) Thomas Ruff ~ Kyoto, Japan, 2002 (12 June 09).

The PDN Folks Practice the Bureaucratic Two-Step

Well, the folks at PDN have issued this statement about the color-blindness I noted in my post the day before yesterday. I suppose one might think that is something. And it is. Only it is not at all clear what sort of "thing" it is. Here is the nugget from their mea culpa:

"Yesterday some blogs circulated a note about the fact that of the 24 judges of the 2009 PDN Photo Annual contest, all of them are white. It's a valid point, and one that everyone who works on PDN’s contests has given a lot of thought. While the lack of any judges of color wasn’t intentional, it is regrettable. Thanks to the huge number of entries it draws from around the world, the Photo Annual offers us our best opportunity to see a wide range of work from different perspectives. We should make sure our judges represent a wide range of perspectives as well."

Not bad, huh? Actually, no; this is pretty lame. First, of course, Stan Banos had raised the issue with PDN way before "yesterday." So this generally glacial response conveys a certain, shall we say, lack of enthusiasm for dealing with a pretty amazingly bad judgement.

Second, the passive voice is sooooo useful when you want to deflect responsibility. No one actually did anything! So there is no need for anyone to be responsible. And, of course, there is no need to specify any steps that any specific person ("everyone who works on PDN's contests " hardly is a viable locus of decision-making) might take to avoid similar situations in the future. Eventually the statement gets around to an active sentence (the final one in the paragraph) but by then we readers have been so dulled by ass-covering-bureaucracy-speak that it is hard to notice. And, even there, there is no assignable person who will make sure that the problem is corrected in future years. The statement is signed by Holly Hughes who edits PDN. She doesn't take responsibility. Nor does she identify those who will. She just gives us the royal "we."

Try this instead:

"I failed to consider how an all white panel of judges might effect the perception of, to say nothing of the outcomes to, our contests. This oversight is a departure from our past practice. Since I recognize that theses choices have impact on the lives and careers of individuals and on the fortunes of organizations, I regret this failure. In the future I plan to do X, Y, Z to insure that our panels are not simply composed of accomplished individuals but are diverse as well. That will include making sure that there is a specific person on staff here at PDN whose job it is to scrutinize our internal practices."

Unfortunately the remainder of the statement is even less confidence inspiring.

"Past judges of PDN photo contests have included African-Americans, Latinos and Asians who work as photo editors, art directors, web designers and educators. We didn’t choose them out of tokenism. (Yesterday when we were reading the blog comments about this issue, PDN Custom Media Project Manager John Gimenez, who works with the judges during the judging process, noted that he usually doesn’t know the race of the judges until they send him their head shots, and by then the judging is done.) We don’t like to put the same judges through this grueling task too often, and the lack of diversity in the photo community as a whole means that it requires effort to compose a diverse panel year after year. But it is an effort that’s worth making. "

First, I will take the PDN folks at their word. It is great that past panels have been more diverse than the monochromatic one they put together this year. And it is great too (if we can judge by Mr. Gimenez's surname) that they even have something of an ethnically diverse staff. Your subtlety has not been lost Ms. Highes. But, I read this paragraph as an admission that any past diversity was more or less accidental. Even Mr. Gimenez didn't know the composition of the panel he was working with until he saw their head shots! Well, that is wholly beside the point, really. Is Mr. Gimenez responsible in any way for selecting the panels or for identifying in advance rosters of individuals who might be solicited to serve as a judge? If the profession is so bereft of accomplished men and women of color, one would think that whomever put the panels together would have been taking great care to try to insure a diverse group of judges. There is no indication that that has been the case. I have no confidence, based on this statement from PDN that anything will actually change. Do you?
_________
P.S.: In a related matter, yesterday PDN published this interesting interview with Miriam Romais on "Confronting the Photo Industry's Lack of Diversity." In her statement Ms. Hughes explicitly states that "our interview with Romais was not spurred by questions about PDN’s own commitment to diversity. " Of course not. The interview had been in the works for some time. But are we to believe it is wholly conincidental that PDN managed to finally respond to Stan Banos on the very same day that it published the interview? I was born at night, but not last night!

The interview is insightful. It addresses the scope of the difficulty that confronts not only photography but most professions. But it does two things in the current context. First, it allows the PDN folks to divert attention from a quite specific problem - the composition of their panel of judges - by pointing to a broader, undeniably troubling, pattern. Second, given that the interview has been in the works for so long, it makes one wonder why the PDN folks could not look in the mirror and see the specific ways they were contributing to the overall pattern by neglecting diversity in their panel of judges.

The "All White Jury" at PDN

Life here in bucolic Western NY has been unusually wacky lately. So I am late calling attention to this matter. But the inimitable Stan Banos has pointed out something odd about the emperor's new suit. And he has rightly chastised me for not speaking out too. Stan has (now repeatedly) pointed out the exclusively Caucasian character of panels of winners and judges at PDN (Photo District News). Most recently he has pointed out - here - that the panel of 24 judges that named the "players" in the 2009 PDN Photo Annual is completely, totally, without exception white folks ~ an "all white jury" as he named it. Stan's observation has been taken up by a number of bloggers - David White and Benjamin Chesterton at duckrabbit have offered a $1K bounty for anyone who can rationalize the pattern Stan observed, and Pete Brook at Prison Photography, Rob Haggart at A Photo Editor have been egging everyone on. Good.

The issue here is not quotas or tokens. The issue is change. Sure, one can lament (even sincerely so) the disproportionately small numbers of racial and ethnic minorities in any field of endeavor. (As an academic, this is a standard lament.) Photography is not alone in that. But in part the problem is to find ways to alter that state of the world. And hand wringing is not enough. Having people of color* in positions of influence when prizes are decided upon, grants awarded, short lists compiled, photo-spreads assigned, shows mounted, Kudos bestowed, and so forth is a good place to start. For those are the very people who are more likely (I suspect) to notice the otherwise invisible - the young, the aspiring, the overlooked or obscure.** And, as I have mentioned here before, there are good systematic reasons to claim that diversity contributes to better decision-making in groups and organizations period.

And, by the way, Pete Brook suggests that the pattern Stan observed is "passive racism." I tend to disagree. Why? Because Stan had already called their attention to the matter - in a letter to the editor that they published last year. This seems like more or less conscious indifference on the part of the folks at PDN. And if the members of the jury - this goes for each and every one of the 24 members - sat around a table (or, if they didn't meet physically, even simply looked down the list of names) and did not recognize and object to the obviously monochromatic composition of the group, are we to suppose that they simply failed to notice? If they did why should we want their judgment on anything ? Perhaps worst of all, thus far no one from PDN or the jury seems to have the gumption to even address the issue. Could it be that they simply and truly do not give a shit?
__________
* Before all the resentful cries arise, need I say accomplished people of color? Let's grant that there are plenty of mediocre white guys in positions of influence across the professions, photography included. We surely don't want to replicate that state of affairs. I am not suggesting having African-American or Hispanic or Asian members on the jury just because they are of whatever particular variety they happen to be. I am suggesting that accomplishment - as photographer, editor, curator, gallery owner, or whatever - can be your first filter and race, ethnicity, gender and so forth a second.

** Sonia Sotomayor is right about that with respect to judges more generally.

Picture Me

"Cameras at the end of the runway" ~ still from Picture Me.

It has been a while since I posted on the vacuousness and exploitation of fashion photography and the photographers who traffic in it. Today I came across this review/interview of a new documentary Picture Me by model turned filmmaker Sarah Ziff in The Guardian. Are you surprised?

"A Place Weeping"

. . . reflections on Gaza by John Berger is here . . . from the Summer '09 issue of Threepenny Review (via Woods Lot).

Recording Climate Change

A very deep layer of ice covered the Imja glacier in the
1950s (top photo). Over the next 50 years, small meltwater
ponds continued to grow and merge, and by the mid 1970s
had formed the Imja lake. By 2007, the lake had grown to
around 1km long. Photograph: Erwin Schneider/Alton
Byers/The Mountain Institute.

These images provide a pretty striking contrast. They accompanied this story in The Guardian.

Local Event ~ Hot Blues for the Homeless (2009)

This is (at least) the third installment of this event [1] [2] ~ a worthy effort without doubt. It is part of an ongoing tribute to Rochester resident Son House with proceeds going to the Catholic Family Center's Francis Center shelter for the homeless. This year the line up includes a group of local musicians - most notably Joe Beard - and, from out of town, the inimitable John Hammond. The performances are scheduled for this Sunday, June 7th (4:00-9:00 pm) at Water Street Music Hall, located at 204 N. Water Street, Rochester. Tickets are available via the hot blues web page, ticketmaster, or at several local establishments - the Bop Shop, Abilene, Record Archive, and Mercury Posters. Advance concert tickets cost $15 or $20 at the door. Both the concert and a June 7 guitar workshop featuring Fred Vine costs $25.

Best Shots (74) ~ Joel Meyerowitz

(101) Joel Meyerowitz ~ "This was the corner of 59th Street and
Madison Avenue in New York, one day in 1974 or 1975"
(4 June 2009).

Terrorism on the American Right

The murder of Dr. George Tiller, a physician who was willing to insure that the legal right of women to abortion is not simply lip service, is not a tragedy. It is a crime. It is a crime sustained by right wing theocratic ideology. And it is a reflection of an extreme asymmetry in American politics. In the "debate over abortion, as Katha Pollitt succinctly notes: "Only one side wants to force women to live by its so-called morality, and only one side murders and bombs to make its point. Only one side has a terrorist wing." Just so.

Remembering Tiananmen

Bodies of dead civilians lie among mangled bicycles near Beijing's
Tiananmen Square, 4 June 1989. Photograph: AP

Typically discussion of the 1989 events at Tiananmen Square focus on this photograph of defiance. We rarely see images depicting victims of of the brutal suppression of the opposition. The Guardian recently ran this image along with this recollection of the protests by writer Ma Jian and this slide show. And, of course, there have been a good many stories about how the Chinese government is shutting down communications in anticipation of the anniversary of the suppression of the protests. Speak up.
__________
P.S.: Today at Lens the newish photo blog at The New York Times, Patrick Witty posted this series of four variations on the iconic image of the man in the white shirt carrying shopping bags in a standoff with tanks at Tiananmen Square. Witty contacted the four photographers - Charlie Cole, Stuart Franklin, Jeff Widener, and Arthur Tsang Hin Wah - and solicited their recollections of the event. Witty's post also links to this PBS/Frontline episode on the the event. You might also see the chapter that Robert Hariman & John Lucaites devote to the "tank man" photo in their No Caption Needed.

The Visual Economy of HIV/AIDS

In my last post, I mentioned David Campbell, a political scientist who has done what I consider path breaking work exploring the intersection of politics and photography. One of the earliest posts I wrote here was about the project Imaging Famine of which David was among the principal architects. I have noted his work again several times, most recently calling attention to his web page and blog, which you can find here. Among the important features of David's work is his creative use of the Internet. Well, I just discovered another project that David has undertaken, namely this web page on The Visual Economy of HIV/AIDS. This page, like the one that accompanied the Imaging Famine exhibition, is an incredibly useful resource and an exemplar of how academics might use the web to disseminate research.

Symposium: The Aesthetics of Catastrophe

Today I received an email announcing this symposium scheduled for this Friday in Evanston. If you are in the Chicago area you should definitely attend. David Campbell, Robert Lyons and Aric Mayer are all terrific,(read talented and smart). And Bob Hariman, the organizer is all of those things too!

Symposium: The Aesthetics of Catastrophe
Northwestern University
Friday, June 5, 2009
Annie May Swift Hall Auditorium

This symposium addresses questions of visual representation and public advocacy as they are evident in contemporary economic, environmental, and political disasters. Events such as floods, fires, terrorism, and genocide generate heightened media coverage, compelling images, and questions about the limits of photographic representation of events that involve massive disruption and loss. In the US, a series of disasters including 9/11, Katrina, and the economic crash have pushed photojournalists and media scholars alike to ask whether the available conventions for documentary witness need to be extended or reworked. This symposium provides images and arguments dedicated to provoking and guiding extended discussion of topics such as the violent image, visual fragmentation and political distribution, emergency status and citizenship, and the iconography of a “catastrophile” society.

Schedule:

9:00 – Coffee

9:30 – Ann Larabee, Michigan State University, “Brownfields, Ghostboxes, and Orange Xs: Reading Disaster and Catastrophe in the Urban Landscape”

10:45 – Robert Lyons, Photographer, “Intimate Enemy: Images and Voices of the Rwandan Genocide”

1:00 – David Campbell, Durham University, UK, “Constructed Visibility: Photographing the Catastrophe of Gaza”

2:15 – Aric Mayer, Photographer, “Representing the Unrepresentable: Disaster, Suffering, and Locating the Political in the Viewer-Image Exchange”

3:30 – Lane Relyea, Northwestern University, “From Spectacle to Database: On the Changed Status of Debris and Fragmented Subjectivity in Recent Art Culture”

4:45 – Reception

Free and open to the public. Organized by Robert Hariman. Sponsored by the Program in Rhetoric and Public Culture, the Center for Global Culture and Communication, the School of Communication, and the Alice Kaplan Institute for the Humanities, Northwestern University. For more information, please contact Patrick Wade at wpatrickwade@gmail.com.