Best Shots (61) ~ Vanesssa Winship
Labels: Best Shots
“What we need is a critique of visual culture that is alert to the power of images for good and evil and that is capable of discriminating the variety and historical specificity of their uses.” - W.J.T. Mitchell. Picture Theory (1994).
Labels: politics, Rebecca Solnit
Labels: New Blogs
I have been photographing these activists and loggers since the summer of 2003. My connection to this project revolves around the passion and endless work that consumes these people who live in the back-country for months at a time; and who are willing to sacrifice their comforts' to stand up for their beliefs.The activists engage in civil disobedience - taking up residence in the treetops to prevent them from being cut, blocking logging roads, etc. - in hope of delaying or disrupting the 'harvesting' of forest lands. Their adversaries include the U.S. Forest Service and employees of logging companies. The conflict LaMarca chronicles are taking place in Southern Oregon very close to where my son August now lives. In that area logging is among the most stable and lucrative (if dangerous) ways of making a living - so the conflict here runs deep.
Although these activists are often seen as radicals or eco-terrorists, little has been documented about their activities outside of these stereotypes. These stunning landscapes will continue to be decimated due to political pressure and lack of education, these are some of last truly wild places left in America.
"Annie Leibovitz, the celebrated New York photographer who has captured many of the most memorable images of the icons of Hollywood and Washington over the past 30 years, is not the kind of person usually associated with going to a pawn shop. But it seems that in these extraordinary times even the likes of Leibovitz need to find cash in extraordinary places.The photographer, whose pictures of Michelle Obama adorn the March cover of Vogue, has turned to a company called Art Capital that specialises in lending money with fine art as the collateral.
The New York Times disclosed today that Leibovitz has borrowed about $15m (£10m) from the firm in two separate tranches.
Public records show that she secured the loan partly against property she owns, but also by putting up as collateral the copyright, negatives and contract rights to every photograph she has ever taken or will take in future.
Such an exceptional step, involving in essence the pawning of her entire life's work, may in Leibovitz's case be explained by the tumultuous few years she has been through. Her long-time friend Susan Sontag died in 2004, and she has been in costly litigation over the renovation of some of her properties."
Why frightening? Because even when she was relatively flush Leibovitz seemed to have no boundaries when it comes to pumping air into our over-inflated celebrity worship (e.g., [1] [2] [3] [4]). I suspect all propriety will now fall by the wayside.
Labels: Leibovitz
Always on the side of the egg*Had Murakami heeded the calls to boycott Israel, we'd not have this forthright statement. It raises the question of effectiveness and of what counts as political success. But that is something about which I have written here also. Look it up.
By Haruki Murakami
Ha'aretz (22 February 09)
"I have come to Jerusalem today as a novelist, which is to say as a professional spinner of lies.
Of course, novelists are not the only ones who tell lies. Politicians do it, too, as we all know. Diplomats and military men tell their own kinds of lies on occasion, as do used car salesmen, butchers and builders. The lies of novelists differ from others, however, in that no one criticizes the novelist as immoral for telling them. Indeed, the bigger and better his lies and the more ingeniously he creates them, the more he is likely to be praised by the public and the critics. Why should that be?
My answer would be this: Namely, that by telling skillful lies - which is to say, by making up fictions that appear to be true - the novelist can bring a truth out to a new location and shine a new light on it. In most cases, it is virtually impossible to grasp a truth in its original form and depict it accurately. This is why we try to grab its tail by luring the truth from its hiding place, transferring it to a fictional location, and replacing it with a fictional form. In order to accomplish this, however, we first have to clarify where the truth lies within us. This is an important qualification for making up good lies.
Today, however, I have no intention of lying. I will try to be as honest as I can. There are a few days in the year when I do not engage in telling lies, and today happens to be one of them.
So let me tell you the truth. A fair number of people advised me not to come here to accept the Jerusalem Prize. Some even warned me they would instigate a boycott of my books if I came.
The reason for this, of course, was the fierce battle that was raging in Gaza. The UN reported that more than a thousand people had lost their lives in the blockaded Gaza City, many of them unarmed citizens - children and old people.
Any number of times after receiving notice of the award, I asked myself whether traveling to Israel at a time like this and accepting a literary prize was the proper thing to do, whether this would create the impression that I supported one side in the conflict, that I endorsed the policies of a nation that chose to unleash its overwhelming military power. This is an impression, of course, that I would not wish to give. I do not approve of any war, and I do not support any nation. Neither, of course, do I wish to see my books subjected to a boycott.
Finally, however, after careful consideration, I made up my mind to come here. One reason for my decision was that all too many people advised me not to do it. Perhaps, like many other novelists, I tend to do the exact opposite of what I am told. If people are telling me - and especially if they are warning me - "don't go there," "don't do that," I tend to want to "go there" and "do that." It's in my nature, you might say, as a novelist. Novelists are a special breed. They cannot genuinely trust anything they have not seen with their own eyes or touched with their own hands.
And that is why I am here. I chose to come here rather than stay away. I chose to see for myself rather than not to see. I chose to speak to you rather than to say nothing.
This is not to say that I am here to deliver a political message. To make judgments about right and wrong is one of the novelist's most important duties, of course.
It is left to each writer, however, to decide upon the form in which he or she will convey those judgments to others. I myself prefer to transform them into stories - stories that tend toward the surreal. Which is why I do not intend to stand before you today delivering a direct political message.
Please do, however, allow me to deliver one very personal message. It is something that I always keep in mind while I am writing fiction. I have never gone so far as to write it on a piece of paper and paste it to the wall: Rather, it is carved into the wall of my mind, and it goes something like this:
"Between a high, solid wall and an egg that breaks against it, I will always stand on the side of the egg."
Yes, no matter how right the wall may be and how wrong the egg, I will stand with the egg. Someone else will have to decide what is right and what is wrong; perhaps time or history will decide. If there were a novelist who, for whatever reason, wrote works standing with the wall, of what value would such works be?
What is the meaning of this metaphor? In some cases, it is all too simple and clear. Bombers and tanks and rockets and white phosphorus shells are that high, solid wall. The eggs are the unarmed civilians who are crushed and burned and shot by them. This is one meaning of the metaphor.
This is not all, though. It carries a deeper meaning. Think of it this way. Each of us is, more or less, an egg. Each of us is a unique, irreplaceable soul enclosed in a fragile shell. This is true of me, and it is true of each of you. And each of us, to a greater or lesser degree, is confronting a high, solid wall. The wall has a name: It is The System. The System is supposed to protect us, but sometimes it takes on a life of its own, and then it begins to kill us and cause us to kill others - coldly, efficiently, systematically.
I have only one reason to write novels, and that is to bring the dignity of the individual soul to the surface and shine a light upon it. The purpose of a story is to sound an alarm, to keep a light trained on The System in order to prevent it from tangling our souls in its web and demeaning them. I fully believe it is the novelist's job to keep trying to clarify the uniqueness of each individual soul by writing stories - stories of life and death, stories of love, stories that make people cry and quake with fear and shake with laughter. This is why we go on, day after day, concocting fictions with utter seriousness.
My father died last year at the age of 90. He was a retired teacher and a part-time Buddhist priest. When he was in graduate school, he was drafted into the army and sent to fight in China. As a child born after the war, I used to see him every morning before breakfast offering up long, deeply-felt prayers at the Buddhist altar in our house. One time I asked him why he did this, and he told me he was praying for the people who had died in the war.
He was praying for all the people who died, he said, both ally and enemy alike. Staring at his back as he knelt at the altar, I seemed to feel the shadow of death hovering around him.
My father died, and with him he took his memories, memories that I can never know. But the presence of death that lurked about him remains in my own memory. It is one of the few things I carry on from him, and one of the most important.
I have only one thing I hope to convey to you today. We are all human beings, individuals transcending nationality and race and religion, fragile eggs faced with a solid wall called The System. To all appearances, we have no hope of winning. The wall is too high, too strong - and too cold. If we have any hope of victory at all, it will have to come from our believing in the utter uniqueness and irreplaceability of our own and others' souls and from the warmth we gain by joining souls together.
Take a moment to think about this. Each of us possesses a tangible, living soul. The System has no such thing. We must not allow The System to exploit us. We must not allow The System to take on a life of its own. The System did not make us: We made The System.
That is all I have to say to you.
I am grateful to have been awarded the Jerusalem Prize. I am grateful that my books are being read by people in many parts of the world. And I am glad to have had the opportunity to speak to you here today.
Labels: boycotts, Israel, literature, Prizes
Labels: fair use, Stephen Colbert
Labels: Local Event, Music
"And I don't believe they need any compassion. If the person looking at my pictures only feels compassion, I will believe that I have failed completely.”What he hopes to do, instead, is prompt viewers to think, to understand that there may be solutions to, remedies for, the dire circumstances the people he depicts inhabit. And that, of course, is not a matter of compassion and the gestures it prompts, but of politics.
Labels: Berger, Compassion, John Berger, Salgado
Labels: Rio Branco
Labels: political economy, Stiglitz
Labels: politics
Labels: Cool Designs and Other Things, fair use, Graphics, Milton Glaser, Shepard Fairey
Labels: New Blogs
Labels: Robert Frank
Labels: bi-partisanship, BushCo, Obama, torture
Labels: poverty, World Press Photo
Vallée is talking about the Terrorism Act of 2008 which goes into effect on Monday and, as I noted here recently, tightly constrains the ability of photographers in Britain to take pictures in public and especially of the police. He goes on: "This is why I will be outside New Scotland Yard at 11am on Monday 16 February 2009 with hundreds of other photographers, filmmakers and the wonderful Mark Thomas to exercise my democratic right to take a photograph in a public place. Feel free to come along and join us, and remember to bring your camera." This protest is being coordinated in part by the National Union of Journalists. If I lived in London, I'd be there too.
Labels: Legal, Rights of Photographers
Labels: political economy, politics, socialism
Why would you want to deal with the Republicans if (as I think is the case) Krugman's portrait is accurate?One might have expected Republicans to act at least slightly chastened in these early days of the Obama administration, given both their drubbing in the last two elections and the economic debacle of the past eight years.
But it’s now clear that the party’s commitment to deep voodoo — enforced, in part, by pressure groups that stand ready to run primary challengers against heretics — is as strong as ever. In both the House and the Senate, the vast majority of Republicans rallied behind the idea that the appropriate response to the abject failure of the Bush administration’s tax cuts is more Bush-style tax cuts.
And the rhetorical response of conservatives to the stimulus plan — which will, it’s worth bearing in mind, cost substantially less than either the Bush administration’s $2 trillion in tax cuts or the $1 trillion and counting spent in Iraq — has bordered on the deranged.
[. . . ]
And the ugliness of the political debate matters because it raises doubts about the Obama administration’s ability to come back for more if, as seems likely, the stimulus bill proves inadequate.
[. . .]
The best may not lack all conviction, but they seem alarmingly willing to settle for half-measures. And the worst are, as ever, full of passionate intensity, oblivious to the grotesque failure of their doctrine in practice.
Labels: bi-partisanship, political economy, politics
Labels: political economy
"As a public library, we welcome everyone who comes through our doors. The library is a public institution, and one of the only remaining educational and cultural institutions free and open to all regardless of age, gender, socioeconomic status, race, ethnicity — or housing situation. All have equal access to our treasures and knowledge, and to the facilities that house them."Buffalo is very cold and very snowy this time of year - it is an extremely harsh climate in which to survive if you are poor or homeless. And it is inspiring to hear Quinn-Carey re-assert in so forthright a way what being a public institution implies. Her statement, however, reminds me of two things. First, it reminds me of how economically inhospitable the U.S. actually is for large numbers of people. Second, her statement reminds me of just how little public space actually remains. You will not be surprised to learn that I think the prevalence of economic hardship and the evisceration of public space are deeply political problems, each in a different way a threat to democracy.
Labels: Political Not Ethical
Labels: Legal, Rights of Photographers
"But it's time to let that new reality sink in. The transition is over. We have moved from aspiration to destination. Obama has arrived. Tempting though it may be to savor the lingering aftertaste of a sweet, sweet victory, progressives need to take the posters down and the buttons off. These are no longer the emblems of resistance but of power.A movement that does not champion the cause of the powerless has no right to call itself progressive. And a movement that attaches itself unequivocally to power does not have the credibility or wherewithal to call itself progressive. That distinction is of course much easier in times when those in power attack us and our values with impunity. But it is no less necessary when they don't.
[. . .]
Our support for Obama has always been (or should always have been) contingent, as opposed to unconditional. That does not necessarily mean an antagonistic relationship but at the very least an independent one. So to remove his likeness from our walls, hats, chests and homes signals not a souring of the relationship between progressives and Obama but a maturing of it. For many this will be difficult.
[. . .]
The Obama signs, in all their various forms, came to represent a badge of belonging--particularly outside Democratic strongholds. In the small town of Roanoke in conservative southwest Virginia, where I spent much of the campaign, an Obama poster on a popcorn machine in an ice cream and soda store was the sign for some patrons that they could talk freely about their support for him without being harangued. It signaled that, regardless of Fox News talking points your family members, fellow parishioners or colleagues might have been spouting, there was a world out there in which you were not entirely crazy and your values had some value.
To some, bearing the sign marks a form of premature nostalgia for the days when all they dared do was hope. There is a place for that. But as Shepard Fairey's iconic poster of Obama goes up in the National Portrait Gallery, that place is rightfully in a museum. Along with the buttons calling to Free Angela Davis or Nelson Mandela, posters for the Poor People's March or placards to defend the Rosenbergs, they are important pieces of the nation's liberal history because they illustrate an important moment. But that moment has passed.
The T-shirts and buttons served as a shorthand for a makeshift progressive community that gathered around a candidate. That community--or at least that desire for community--still exists. But the moment it gathers around a president, it ceases to be progressive."
Just so.
"Obama's poor, beat-up stimulus bill is hated by the Republicans because, hey, it's government spending, and its hated by Democrats because it's not as big and substantial and country-saving as it should be. If Obama's philosophy is the art of the possible, well, he fucked up by thinking that a good-faith effort to make a bill palatable to moderate conservatives would actually work to appease any of them.And so he's out there selling something he knows isn't actually that good, which is why he's forced to couch his pitch entirely in negative tones: if we don't pass this bill, if we do nothing, we are all seriously fucked. Not, like, "once we pass this bill things will get better," but just pure it's-better-than-nothing. Inspirational!"
Labels: bi-partisanship, Obama, politics
Labels: fair use, Obama, Shepard Fairey
"But I still think photography is a strong tool in advocating a world without poverty.Shotsman's advice is clear. Treat aggregate catastrophes like genocide, famine, epidemic, war, and so forth, as well as the displacement, hardships and suffering they generate, as problems for remediation by charity. Treat the ensuing hardships as tasks for individuals to overcome provided, of course, they receive a philanthropic hand. Focus on our common human dignity even in the face of hardship and deprivation. Ignore, at least by implication, the political and economic forces that continuously create catastrophes. Neglect the political actions groups or communities take in hopes of addressing their shared predicament collectively, taking aim at what they see as its probable source. That would require that we acknowledge and strategize about collective problems and their structural sources. And that would distract us from giving alms.
Not by trying to capture the big contemporary issues, like climate change and food crises in a general way.But by telling small stories of people trying to live a small but happy life. Not by tryng to show 'the truth,' but by showing that the truth has many faces.
Not by showing harsh images alone but trying to lure people into another reality by showing the love and beauty that exists, even in the most deprived situations. Showing the similarities between those viewing an image and the victims, rather than the huge differences.
We all love our children and good food. We all need a safe place to stay, reliable neighbors and friends. Focusing on the strength of the people, not as powerless victims but as capable individuals in need of support to gain control (again) of their own lives."
"For people to become interested they need to be moved in an emotional and esthetical way.If Don Rumsfeld, or Dick Cheney or Karl Rove had uttered something like this in public, there would be an outcry. (I am confident they thought something very much like this!) And, of course, groups like Oxfam do important work trying to clean up large scale messes that trail in the wake of political and economic catastrophes. Yet, insofar as the work of photographers is shaped and constrained by the strictures Shotsman lays out, photography is disabled politically.
So all techniques, manipulations and enhancements are allowed to highlight the emotional quality of the photo. In this sense I see the need for the photojournalist to become the photo artist of reality."
Labels: embedded, Political Not Ethical
Labels: political economy, Simon Norfolk
Labels: Iceland, Rebecca Solnit
The squat was always intended as a protest as well as a place to live, and it succeeded. Most of the squatters have been rehoused or compensated by the government. For Bittencourt, however, it was never a political project: it was about the people he met. "I wanted to show them in a different way. Even though the walls are dingy, you see a lot of dignity from the people."Instead of agents seeking to fend for themselves and their compatriots by making claims on resources and on the state, we instead get bearers of abstract human dignity. You might think this is simply another of my tired left-wing efforts to find some political dimension everywhere. But go ahead and google "homeless movement Brazil." You'll get a sense of just how far out of his way Bittencourt has to go in order to divert attention from the politics involved. You don't need to read about the ongoing movements among landless and homeless in Brazil in any of the links to wacky leftist publications (although you can - should - do that too). You can simply have a look here at the BBC News. Among the photographs accompanying that story you'll find this unattributed image:
Labels: Julio Bittencourt, Political Not Ethical, slums
". . . to appease the centrists, a plan that was already too small and too focused on ineffective tax cuts has been made significantly smaller, and even more focused on tax cuts. . . .So much for post-partisanship. So much for "change." So much for leadership from the Democrats in Congress and the White House.
The real question now is whether Obama will be able to come back for more once it’s clear that the plan is way inadequate. My guess is no. This is really, really bad." ~ Paul Krugman
Labels: bi-partisanship, Democrats, political economy
Labels: fair use, Obama, Shepard Fairey
Labels: Iceland, Rebecca Solnit, Stephen Colbert