20 January 2012
NEW COMMENTS POLICY ~
Unfortunately, I find it necessary to moderate comments on this blog.
I now no longer publish anonymous comments except in rare circumstances and only then at my sole discretion.
If you are interested in why I have implemented these policies, please scroll to the very, very bottom of the sidebar.
Revised ~ 21 August 2008
- THIS IS A NOT-FOR-PROFIT BLOG ~ I RUN NO COMMERCIAL ADVERTS
Now that the FTC has promulgated rules requiring full disclosure of any possible conflicts of interest, I feel obliged to note that I generally write about photography, books, recordings, and so on that I have paid for myself; if I ever do receive 'complimentary' copies of such works and then write about them, I will state that in the post. Having said that, my judgments about particular publications, (journalistic, artistic, or musical) works, or views are just that - judgments - if you take what I say as an "endorsement," that is your interpretation and you can act on it (or not) as you please. I'd say "caveat emptor!" but you are not actually buying anything here, so it is hard to see any basis for complaint.
NEED TRANSLATION?
Real Life
- Academy of American Poets ~ Poets.org
- ACORN
- Alternatives for Battered Women (Rochester)
- American Rights at Work
- Amnesty International
- Ella Baker Center for Human Rights
- Bread & Roses Cultural Project
- Breakthrough Institute
- Center for Constitutional Rights
- Center for Democracy & Technology
- Center for Reproductive Rights
- Center on Wrongful Convictions
- Coalition of Immokalee Workers
- Code Pink
- CPJ - Committee to Protect Journalists
- Critical Mass
- Cultural Survival
- Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières
- Emergency Contraception
- Fair Trade Clothing Coop (Toronto)
- Food Not Bombs
- Free the Slaves
- Highlander Research & Education Center
- Homeboy Industries
- Human Rights Watch
- International Campaign to Ban Landmines
- Iraq Body Count
- Jobs With Justice ~ NY
- Lawyers Without Borders
- Mines & Communities Website
- National Clearinghouse for the Defense of Battered Women
- National Lawyers Guild
- National Network of Abortion Funds
- No Sweat - 100% Union Made Apparel
- Poets Against the War
- Reporters Without Borders/ Reporters Sans Frontières/ Reporteros sin Fronteras
- Rights Exposure Project
- Ruckus Society
- Southern Poverty Law Center
- Ta'ayush
- United for a Fair Economy
- Women in Black
"The camera is an instrument that teaches people how to see without a camera." ~ Dorothea Lange
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"Photography is nothing - it's life that interests me." ~ Henri Cartier-Bresson
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"Photos always seem to exist as sort of stuffy, unnecessary antiques that we put in a drawer — unless we take them out, put them in current dialogue, and give them relevance." ~ Mark Klett
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"The job of the photographer, in my view, is not to catalogue indisputable fact but to try to be coherent about intuition and hope. This is not to say that he is unconcerned with the truth." ~ Robert Adams
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"Light, then, .... is indeed a wonderful instrument ..." ~ Mark Rothko
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"Kick Start Embodiment ~ A Portrait of Queer Life in America. I know it says they've reached their goal. So What. It is a Great Project and God Forbid that they Don't Have to Count Pennies!
"Turning a Crisis for the Banks into an Opportunity for the World"
Physicians for Human Rights Report on Torture as Public Policy in the U.S.
HERE IS A DISASTER NEEDING YOUR ATTENTION
AND, IN CASE YOU WEREN'T CONVINCED BY THE COUNT OF CORPSES ...
click here to learn more
KATRINA/RITA RELIEF
Support ABC No RIO Building Fund - A VERY Worthy OUTFIT!
In Thinking About Photography Here Is The Problem, Or Part Of It, At Least
"What the modern means of reproduction have done is destroy the authority of art and to remove it - or rather, to remove the images which they reproduce - from any preserve. For the first time ever, images of art have become ephemeral, ubiquitous, insubstantial, available, valueless, free. They surround us the way language surrounds us. [. . .]
The art of the past no longer exists as it once did. It's authority is lost. In its place there is a language of images. What matters now is who uses that language for what purpose." ~ John Berger
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"[P]hotographs depend for their meaning on networks of authority. The image supplies little in itself. What counts is its use and the power to fix a particular interpretation of the events, objects or people depicted. Some people, and especially some institutions, have much more clout in this processs than others do." ~ Steve Edwards
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"The first question must always be: Who is using this photograph, and to what end?" ~ David Levi Strauss
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"By contrast, almost all writing about photography in our times tends to begin with the alleged nature of the product rather than with its production and use." ~ Patrick Maynard
Property Rights
Any & all original material on this blog and its related pages is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 2.5 License.
Recent Posts (Archive at Bottom of Sidebar)
- Springsteen Invoking American Ideals, Again
- Democracy in Peril (2): United States
- Democracy in Peril: Hungary
- Kodak is Kaput
- SOPASTRIKE
- Mieko Mahi and the Enterprise of Ideology
- Marines Not Fighting for "Our Freedoms"
- Havel & Kundera
- Recommended Reading: Pragmatic Utopianism as "The ...
- Best Shots (189) ~ Simone Lueck
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ATOM via Feedburner
Blowing My Own Horn - Media Mentions
- The Guardian (June 2009)
- SOURCE Photographic Review (August 2009)
- Chronicle of Higher Education (May 2007)
My Writings on Blog-Relevant Topics
- "Disaster, Political Not Natural - Review of Rebecca Solnit and Richard Misrach"Invisible Culture #16 (March 2011)
- "Review of George Lewis, A Power Stronger than Itself: The AACM and American Experimental Music."Art Signal (July/August 2008)
- "What to do With Invidious Distinctions." Art Signal (May 2007)
- "Review of David Levi Strauss, Between the Eyes." Afterimage (March/April 2004)
- "The Arithmetic of Compassion: Rethinking the Politics of Photography" British Journal of Political Science (2011)
- "Review of Mark Reinhardt, et. al Beautiful Suffering: Photography & the Traffic in Pain" Journal of Politics (2007)
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Assorted Artists, Authors, Thinkers, Provocateurs
"Apolitical art and artless politics are the fruit of a divide-and- conquer strategy that weakens both; art and politics ignite each other and need each other." ~ Rebecca Solnit
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"... hard and fast categories ... tend to be instruments used by the victors." ~ Václav Havel (1986)
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"The opinion that art should have nothing to do with politics is itself a political attitude." ~ George Orwell (1946)
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"Can it still be controversial to say that an apparently disengaged poetics may also speak a political language - of self-enclosed complacency, passivity, opportunism, false neutrality . . . ?" ~ Adrienne Rich (2006)
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"I think art always is political, one way or another. That is, on purpose or by default." ~ Allan Sekula (2005)
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“Those who say that art should not propagate doctrines usually refer to doctrines that are opposed to their own.” ~ Jorge Luis Borges (1952)
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"My position is that you cannot work towards peace being peaceful. If the peace is to be one where everybody’s quiet and doesn’t open up ... share what’s unspeakable ... offer unsolicited criticism ... defend others’ rights to speak and encourage discourse — that peace is worth nothing. It reminds me of the kind of peace that was secured in my old country under the Communist regime. That is the death of democracy. That might have consequences as bad as war—bloody war and conflict. So, to prevent the world from bloody conflict, we must sustain a certain kind of adversarial life in which we are struggling with our problems in public." ~ Krzysztof Wodiczko
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“I am interested in a political art, that is to say an art of ambiguity, contradiction, uncompleted gestures, and uncertain endings; an art (and a politics) in which optimism is kept in check and nihilism at bay.” ~ William Kentridge (1998)
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"The function of art has always been to break through the crust of conventionalized and routine consciousness." ~ John Dewey (1927)
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Paris Review: Is it a concern to effect social change with your plays?
August Wilson: I don’t write particularly to effect social change. I believe writing can do that, but that’s not why I write. I work as an artist. All art is political in the sense that it serves someone’s politics. Here in America whites have a particular view of blacks. I think my plays offer them a different way to look at black Americans. For instance, in Fences they see a garbage man, a person they don’t really look at, although they see a garbage man every day. By looking at Troy’s life, white people find out that the content of this black garbage man’s life is affected by the same things—love, honor, beauty, betrayal, duty. Recognizing that these things are as much part of his life as theirs can affect how they think about and deal with black people in their lives.Paris Review: How would that same play, Fences, affect a black audience?
August Wilson: Blacks see the content of their lives being elevated into art. They don’t always know that it is possible, and it’s important for them to know that.
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- A|V (Rochester)
- ABC No Rio (NYC)
- A-Infos Radio Project
- The Algebra Project
- ArtRage/Norton Putter Gallery (Syracuse)
- Margaret Atwood
- John Berger
- Reverend Billy
- Bread & Puppet Theatre
- CREATIVE TIME
- Critical Art Ensemble
- Mr. Fish
- Free Radio Berkeley
- fulana
- Hallwalls Art Center (Buffalo)
- Václav Havel
- Lewis Hyde
- Alfredo Jaar
- William Kentridge
- Lawrence Lessig
- David Levi Strauss
- Susie Linfield
- Deborah Meier
- Lize Mogel
- Walter Mosley
- Trevor Paglen
- Raj Patel
- Katha Pollitt
- Pragmatism Cybrary
- Project Row Houses (Houston)
- Project Tupa (Transmitters Uniting People of the Americas)
- ProPublica
- Redhouse Arts Center (Syracuse, NY)
- Rochester Contemporary Art Center
- Martha Rosler
- Arundhati Roy
- Sebastião Salgado
- Sanctuary for Independent Media (Troy, NY)
- 16 Beaver (NYC)
- smudge studio
- Rebecca Solnit
- Julian Stallabrass
- subRosa
- Instituto Terra
- Think Again
- Hank Willis Thomas
- Edward Tufte
- Roberto Mangabeira Unger
- The Vigiliante Journalist
- Raymond Williams Foundaiton (UK)
- Krzysztof Wodiczko
- The Yes Men
- Howard Zinn
Critical Art Ensemble Defense Fund
New Corporate Friendly Postal Regulations Threaten Independent Media
NEWS ABOUT RIGHTS OF PHOTOGRAPHERS IN NYC
News, Comment, Letters & Arts- And I surely do not mean "fair and balanced"!
"Most of all photography is probably an instrument for showing things, a device for displaying them." - Urs Stahel
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"The most political decision you make is where you direct people's eyes. In other words, what you show people, day in and day out, is political. . . . And the most politically indoctrinating thing you can do to a human being is to show her, every day, that there can be no change." ~ Wim Wenders
© Jacob Lawrence
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- Radical Society [R.I.P.(?) late 2009]
- Red Pepper (UK)
- Reset Doc
- SEED
- SeeingBlack.com
- Sign & Sight dot com
- Signal to Noise
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- Tehelka (New Dehli)
- Three Monkeys Online
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- UbuWeb
- Upside Down World
- The Walrus
- War News Radio
- The Wire ~ Adventures in Modern Music
- WireTap Magazine
- World Policy Journal
- Words Without Borders
"Democracy is a proposal (rarely realised) about decision making; it has little to do with election campaigns. Its promise is that political decisions be made after, and in the light of, consultation with the governed. This is dependent upon the governed being adequately informed about the issues in question, and upon the decision makers having the capacity and will to listen and take account of what they have heard. Democracy should not be confused with the “freedom” of binary choices, the publication of opinion polls or the crowding of people into statistics. These are its pretense.
Today the fundamental decisions, which effect the unnecessary pain increasingly suffered across the planet, have been and are taken unilaterally without any open consultation or participation." ~ John Berger
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Inclusion, Exclusion & the Politics of Photography
"I have said that a photograph bears witness to a human choice being exercised. The choice is not between photographing x and y, but between photographing at x moment or y moment. . . . What varies is the intensity with which we are made aware of the poles of absence and presence. Between these two poles photography finds its proper meaning. ... A photograph, while recording what has been seen, always and by its nature refers to what is not seen. It isolates, preserves and presents a moment taken from a continuum. ... Hence the necessity of our understanding a weapon we can use and which can be used against us." ~ John Berger
Photography Magazines, Etcetera - Print and OnLine
- The Photography Post
- Afterimage
- AK47
- Almanac Magazine
- Aperture
- AphotographicMAGAZINE
- Blind Spot Magazine
- Blueeyes Magazine
- burn
- Capricious
- Daylight Magazine
- Democratic Books
- Flak Photo
- FOAM Magazine
- Foto8
- Fotografia
- Fraction
- Gomma Magazine
- Hotshoe
- lensculture
- LensWork
- Magenta
- MediaStorm
- Next Level
- Nutopia Forum
- OjodePez
- 100 Eyes
- 1000 Words
- PHOTO HISTORIES
- photo-eye
- (photographs)
- photography-now.com
- photojournal-e
- photoworks (UK)
- Picture Projects
- PixelPress
- Polar Inertia
- Prefix Photo
- PRIVATE
- Purpose
- ReVue
- seesaw magazine
- 7.7
- Shots
- SOURCE
- Unless You Will
- vewd
- Visura Magazine
- Covering Photography
- BBC News - The Week in Pictures
- Guardian Unlimited: In Pictures
- New York Times: Multimedia/Photos
- Slate: Today's Pictures
- Photo Journal Blog ~ WSJ
- Washington Post: Camera Works
- Lens (NY Times)
- Errol Morris (NY Times)
- Photo Booth (The New Yorker)
- The Picture Show (npr)
- Light Box TIME
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Relevant Academic Journals
Photographic Locations: Real & Virtual
- Afriphoto
- Fratelli Alinari (Florence)
- Aperture Foundation (NYC)
- Arles Rencontres de la Photographie (France)
- Australian Center for Photography (Paddington, NSW)
- Belfast Exposed Photography (Northern Ireland)
- California Museum of Photography (Riverside, CA)
- Canadian Museum of Contemporary Photography/ Musée Canadien de la Photographie Contemporaine (Ottawa, ONT)
- Center (Santa Fe, N.M.)
- Center For Creative Photography (Tucson, AR)
- Center for Documentary Studies (Durham, NC)
- Center for Photographic Art (Carmel, CA)
- Center for Photography (Woodstock, NY)
- Central European House of Photography (Bratislava, Slovakia)
- Centre for Contemporary Photography (Fitzroy, Australia)
- CPIF - Centre Photographique d'Ile de France (Pontault-Combault, France)
- Centro de le Imagen (Mexico City)
- Centro Nazionale di Fotografia (Padova, Italy)
- Centro Português de Fotografia (C.P.F.) (Porto, Portugal)
- CEPA Gallery (Buffalo, NY)
- Charleston Center for Photography (South Carolina)
- Danmarks Fotomuseum/Danish Museum of Photography (Herning, Denmark)
- The Darkroom (New Orleans, LA)
- Dazibao ~ Centre de Photographies Actuelles (Montréal)
- Detroit Focus (Michigan)
- Durham Centre for Advanced Photographic Studies (Durham, UK)
- George Eastman House (Rochester, NY)
- EXPOSURE: A Center for Photojournalism, Documentary Studies, and Human Rights (Medford, MA)
- Ffotogallery Cardiff (Wales)
- Finnish Museum of Photography (Helsinki)
- Fifty Crows Foundation (San Francisco)
- Florida Museum of Photographic Arts (Tampa)
- En Foco (NYC)
- Fondation Henri Cartier-Bresson (Paris)
- FORMA ~ Centro Internazionale di Fotographia (Milan)
- Fotografie Forum International (Frankfurt am Main, Germany)
- FOAM - Fotografimuseum Amsterdam (NL)
- Fotogalerie Wien (Vienna)
- Foto Vision (San Francisco)
- Fotomuseum Provincie Antwerpen (Antwerp, Belgium)
- Fotomuseum Winterthur (Switzerland)
- Galerie Fotohof (Salzburg, Austria)
- Fox Talbot Museum (Wiltshire, UK)
- Gallery of Photography (Dublin, IRE)
- Gallery 44 (Toronto)
- Gallery TPW (Toronto)
- The Griffin Museum of Photography (Winchester, Mass)
- HASSELBLAD CENTER (Göteborg, Sweden)
- Houston Center for Photography (Texas)
- Huis Marseille (Amsterdam)
- Humble Arts Foundation
- Hungarian House of Photography (Budapest, Hungary)
- Hungarian Museum of Photography (Kecskemét, Hungary)
- IDEA Photographic: after modernism (Santa Fe, NM)
- Ikon Gallery (Birmingham, UK)
- iN-PUBLiC
- Independent Photographers gallery (Battle, Sussex, UK)
- International Center of Photography (NYC)
- Jeu de Paume (2 Locations in Paris)
- K*MoPA - Kiyosato Museum of Photographic Arts
- Latvian Museum of Photography (Riga)
- The Light Factory (Charlotte, NC)
- LightWork (Syracuse, NY)
- Maison Europeenne de la Photographie (Paris)
- Minnesota Center for Photography (Minneapolis)
- Moscow House of Photography
- Musée de l'Elysée (Lausanne, Switzerland)
- Musée de la Photographie (Charleroi, Belgium)
- Musée Français de la Photographie(Bièvres, FR)
- Musée Nicéphore Niépce (Chalon sur Saône, France)
- Museo di Fotografia Contemporanea (Milan)
- Museum für Photographie (Braunschweig, Germany)
- Museum of Contemporary Photography (Chicago)
- Museum of Photographic Arts (San Diego, CA)
- Museum of Photography, The Hague (NL)
- National Media Museum (Bradford, UK)
- Nederlands Fotomuseum (Rotterdam, NL)
- New York Public Library, Photography Collection (NYC)
- Noorderlicht Photography (Groningen, NL)
- Photeur.net (Web,Photography of East/Central Europe)
- Photo Espagna (Madrid)
- Photo Voice (UK)
- Photo Voice
- PhotoAlliance (San Francisco)
- Photographer's Gallery (London)
- PCNW -Photographic Center Northwest (Seattle, WA)
- Photographic Resource Center (Boston)
- Die Photographische Sammlung/SK Stiftung Kultur (Köln, Germany)
- Photoworks (Brighton, UK)
- Prague House of Photography (Czech Republic)
- Presentation House Gallery (North Vancouver, BC)
- Queensland Centre for Photography (Bulimba, AUS)
- redeye (Manchester/Liverpool, UK)
- Rekjavik Museum of Photography/ Ljósmyndasafn Reykjavíkur (Iceland)
- Salt Institute (Portland, Maine)
- SCALO Gallery (Zurich, SW)
- SF Camerawork (San Francisco)
- Shpilman Institute for Photography (SIP)
- Silver Eye Center for Photography (Pittsburgh)
- Smithsonian Photography Initiative (Washington, DC)
- Société Française de Photographie (Paris)
- Society for Contemporary Photography (Kansas City, Mo) [R.I.P 2/07]
- Soros Foundation - Documentary Photography Project (NYC)
- Southeast Museum of Photography (Daytona Beach, FLA)
- Thessaloniki Museum of Photography (Thessaloniki Greece)
- Tokyo Metropolitan Museum of Photography
- VCP ~ Vermont Center for Photography (Brattleboro)
- Visual Studies Workshop (Rochester, NY)
- Women in Photography International
- Women in Photography ~ NYC
- World Press Photo (Amsterdam, NL)
- ZoneZero
- Vera List Center for Art & Politics
"Art patronage has always been a kind of money-laundering, a pretty public face for fortunes made in uglier ways." ~ Rebecca Solnit
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If We Use Photography to Help us Think, How Should We Understand the Processes of Thinking?
"605. One of the most dangerous ideas for a philosopher is, oddly enough, that we think with or in our heads.
606. The idea of thinking as a process in the head, in a completely enclosed space, gives him something occult.
607. Is thinking a specific organic process of the mind, so to speak - as it were chewing and digesting in the mind? Can we replace it by an inorganic process that fulfills the same end, as it were a prosthetic apparatus for thinking? How should we have to imagine a prosthetic organ of thought?" ~ Ludwig Wittgenstein
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"If one takes the view ... that human mental activity depends for its full expression upon being linked to a cultural tool kit - a set of prosthetic devices, so to speak - then we are well advised when studying mental activity to take into account the tools employed in that activity." ~ Jerome Bruner
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"...[H]uman thought is basically both social and public - ... its natural habitat is the house yard, the marketplace, and the town square. Thinking consists not of 'happenings in the head' (though happenings there and elsewhere are necessary for it to occur) but of a traffic in what have been called by G.H. Mead and others, significant symbols - words for the most part but also gestures, drawings, musical sounds, mechanical devices like clocks, or natural objects like jewels - anything, in fact, that is disengaged from its mere actuality and used to impose meaning on experience. From the point of view of any particular individual, such symbols are largely given. ... While she lives she uses them, or some of them, sometimes deliberately and with care, most often spontaneously and with ease, but always with the same end in view: to put a construction upon the events through which she lives, to orient herself within 'the ongoing course of experienced things,' to adopt a vivid phrase of Johns Dewey's." ~ Clifford Geertz
Some Photo Agencies
- Aevum
- Amazonas Images
- Anarchy Images
- Anzenberger Agency
- Atlas Press Photo
- Autograph
- Black Star
- Contact Press Images
- Drik
- Eve Photographers
- Eyedea
- Gamma
- Galbe.com
- laif ~ agentur für photos & reportagen
- Luna Photo Collective
- Magnum
- Majority World
- Metro Collective
- Moment Agency
- Noor Agency
- Œil Public [R.I.P. ~ January 2010]
- Panos
- Patker
- Polaris Images
- Redux Pictures VII
- Stillpictures
- Veras Images
- l'agence vu
- Webistan
- World Picture Network
Some Interesting Blogs
- A Photo Editor (Rob Haggart)
- A Shrewdness of Apes
- American Philosophy
- Anti-Advertising Agency
- AmericanSuburbX (Doug Rickard)
- Art Threat
- Avant Music News
- BAGnewsNOTES
- Balkinization
- Becker-Posner Blog
- On the Economy (Jared Bernstein)
- BLDGBLOG
- Bridging Differences (Deborah Meier & Diane Ravitch)
- David Campbell ~ Photography, Multimedia, Politics
- Changing Society (Dan Little)
- Cocktail Party Physics
- Juan Cole
- Josep Colomer
- Conscientious
- David Corn
- Crooked Timber
- Mrs. Dean
- Deliberately Considered (Jeffrey Goldfarb)
- Democracy Arsenal
- Democratic Individuality (Alan Gilbert)
- DIRELAND
- Eat Local Challenge
- Effect Measure
- Barbara Ehrenreich
- Encyclopedia of Decency
- Destination OUT
- Feministing
- first efforts
- 5B4
- Focal Point Daily
- Glenn Greenwald @ Salon.com
- Hiding in Plain Sight
- Huffington Post
- 1mag3 [Inactive 1/07]
- In Search of Enlightenment
- Information Aesthetics
- Information is Beautiful (David McCandless)
- Inhabitat
- The Intersection (Chris Mooney)
- Isak (Anna Clark)
- Jazz & Blues Music Reviews (Tim Niland)
- Jazz Beyond Jazz (Howard Mandel)
- Jazz Note SDP (Ken Blanchard)
- Knowledge & Experience
- Lawyers, Guns & Money
- Brian Leiter
- Lawrence Lessig
- Magnum
- Majikthise
- Marginal Revolution
- Monbiot.com
- The Monkey Cage
- Muse-ings
- Next Left (Fabian Society)
- No Caption Needed
- No Comment (Scott Horton @ Harper's)
- Normblog
- of the garage (Michael Franklin)
- On Art & Politics (Rebecca Walker)
- On Landscape (Mauro Thon Giudici)
- Open Eye Photography
- Philosophy Bites
- Philosophy Up Front (Alan Malachowski)
- Photo Américain (Michelle Woodward)
- Photography Pages (Brenda Burrell)
- photographylot
- Photojournalism Links
- Photo Op (Rick Slater)
- Phronesisaical
- Pictures of Numbers (Mike Dickison)
- Pinakothek (Luc Sante)
- Political Arithmetik
- Press Think (Jay Rosen)
- Progressive Economics Forum (CA)
- Public Reason
- REAL ART (and politics and culture)
- Reciprocity Failure (Stan B)
- Dani Rodrik
- Sadly, No!
- The Sandbox (Digest hosted by Gary Trudeau)
- sans everything
- Savage Minds
- Simplicity (John Maeda)
- Sirotiablog (David Sirota)
- SSRC Blogs (Several from the Social Science Research Council)
- Alec Soth [Abandoned 9/07]
- The Space In Between (Stacy Oborn)
- The Spark of Accident [Sporadic post-6/07]
- The Spinning Head (Asim Rafiqui)
- State of the Art
- Statistical Modeling, Causal Inference & Social Science
- Talking Pictures
- That's A Negative
- 3 Quarks Daily
- True/Slant
- Thinking About Labor & Politics ('Lavinia')
- Unclaimed Territory @ Salon.com (Glen Greenwald)
- Understanding Society (Dan Little)
- VERVE PHOTO (Geoffrey Hiller)
- Visual Methods
- White Noise of Everyday Life (Adrian Chapman)
- What's Going On? (Dawoud Bey)
- wood's lot
- Wooster Collective
NET NEUTRALITY
NET NEUTRALITY AGAIN
Electronic Frontier Foundation: Support Bloggers' Rights
Resources For Bloggers Needing Anonymity
"Just the Facts Ma'am"?
"Many persons seem to suppose that facts carry their meaning along with themselves on their face. Accumulate enough of them and their interpretation stares out at you. ... But ... no one is ever forced by just the collection of facts to accept a particular theory of their meaning, so long as one retains intact some other doctrine by which he can marshall them. Only when the facts are allowed free play for the suggestion of new points of view is any significant conversion of conviction as to meaning possible. ... In any event, social philosophy exhibits an immense gap between facts and doctrines." ~ John Dewey (1927)
"When the right-wing noise machine starts promoting another alleged scandal, you shouldn’t suspect that it’s fake — you should presume that it’s fake, until further evidence becomes available." ~ Paul Krugman (2010)
- FactCheck.org
- FiveThirtyEight
- Media Matters for America
- Politifact.com
- Real Clear Politics
Dewey is Right, But So Is Krugman ~ It Is Good to Know if Someone is Simply Making Stuff Up!
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- Applied Research Center
- Center on Budget & Policy Priorities
- Center for Economic and Policy Research
- Center for Land Use Interpretation
- Center for Science in the Public Interest
- Commonwealth Institute
- Crimes of War Project
- Cry Wolf Project
- GAPMINDER.org
- Economic Policy Institute
- Food First/Institute for Food and Development Policy
- International Association for Research on Income & Wealth
- Institute for Defense & Disarmament Studies
- Legal Information Institute (Cornell Law School)
- National Priorities Project
- National Security Archive
- Organization For Competitive Markets
- The Sentencing Project
- 360degrees (US Criminal Justice System)
- Union of Concerned Scientists
- University of Minnesota Human Rights Library
- World Policy Institute (New School)
- Worldwatch Institute
Music Links ("without category") - More to Follow
"It's odd I suppose, ... but I have always had an aversion to the marriage of music and politics. Leaving the discussion of instrumental music aside, I have always admired songwriters, wished I could have been one myself. I love a song that tells a story, and when it tells of a man's suffering or a woman's hopelessness or dreams, one can certainly argue the case for political meaning, and in fact I would. But when people start telling me how to change the world over a G-major chord, that's when I generally leave the room. With all due respect, I always felt Joan Baez's 'I Dreamed I saw Joe Hill' was the moment in the movie 'Woodstock' to go out and get popcorn. It's a long movie after all. I was waiting for Sly and the Family Stone and I still am - "I want to take you higher - baby, baby, baby light my fire" - now there's a message!" ~ Wayne Horvitz
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"Music speaks. It speaks in its own language differently to each of us. I believe in music as a contribution to the discussion about who we are and where we are headed. ... The unruly thing about music is that it demands its own meanings that are beyond any explanation. You might be able to decipher the nuts and bolts, but in the end, you can't unscramble the mystery of how music makes you feel. That's why I don't often write about my music. Words can so often obscure the feelings and the sense of music. Music is not an argument, it lives in its own universe and refuses to be pinned down." ~ Dave Douglas
- AACM (Chicago)
- AACM (NYC)
- Bang On A Can
- Jazz Discography Project
- Live at the Village Vanguard (npr)
- Other Minds
- Muhal Richard Abrams
- Ambrose Akinmusire
- Pheeroan akLaff
- Geri Allen
- J.D. Allen
- Scott Amendola
- Joan Armatrading
- Art Ensemble of Chicago
- Avantango
- Balanescu Quartet
- The Band
- Billy Bang
- Joe Beard
- Black Dub
- Carla Bley
- Arthur Blythe
- The Blue Nile
- Paul Brady
- Billy Bragg
- Anthony Braxton
- Brodsky Quartet
- T Bone Burnett
- Burnt Sugar
- Laverne Butler
- Don Byron
- Regina Carter
- Johnny Cash
- John Cephas & Phil Wiggins
- The Civil Wars
- Nels Cline
- Leonard Cohen
- Holly Cole
- Ornette Coleman
- John Coltrane
- Elizabeth Cook
- cosmo cosmolino
- Elvis Costello
- Cowboy Junkies
- Robert Cray Band
- Marilyn Crispell
- Olu Dara
- Miles Davis
- Jack DeJohnette
- Dave Douglas
- Hamid Drake
- Bob Dylan
- Steve Earle
- Kathleen Edwards
- Duke Ellington
- Marty Erhlich
- Kahil El'Zabar
- Flatlanders
- Anat Fort
- Bill Frisell
- Quartetto Gelato
- Lafayette Gilchrist
- Eliza Gilkyson
- Robert Glasper
- Philip Glass
- Dennis Gonzalez
- Drew Gress
- Charlie Haden
- Matt Haimovitz
- Mary Halvorson
- John Hammond
- Craig Harris
- Emmylou Harris
- Heartless Bastards
- Levon Helm
- Andrew Hill
- Robin Holcomb
- Dave Holland
- Jolie Holland
- J.C. Hopkins
- Wayne Horvitz
- Daniel Humair
- Abdullah Ibrahim
- Vijay Iyer
- Hank Jones
- Norah Jones
- Janis Joplin
- Diana Krall
- Kronos Quartet
- Ray LaMontagne
- Daniel Lanois
- Latin Playboys
- Los Lobos
- Joe Lovano
- Lyle Lovett
- Loretta Lynn
- Taj Mahal
- Rebecca Martin
- Eric McPherson
- Myra Melford
- Natalie Merchant
- Buddy & Julie Miller
- Charles Mingus
- Thelonious Monk
- Jason Moran
- Tom Morello
- Butch Morris
- Van Morrison
- Paul Motian
- David Murray
- Jacqui Naylor
- Randy Newman
- Ozomatli
- Leon Parker
- William Parker
- Dan Penn
- Ralph Peterson
- Madeleine Peyroux
- Liz Phair
- Kelly Joe Phelps
- Pink Martini
- Pittsburgh Collective
- Odean Pope
- Chris Potter
- Quartsemble
- Rage Against the Machine
- Bonnie Raitt
- Steve Reich
- Carrie Rodriguez
- SF JAZZ Collective
- Jenny Scheinman
- Archie Shepp
- Patti Smith
- Luciana Souza
- Bruce Springstein
- Tomasz Stanko
- Marcus Strickland
- Los Super Seven
- Horace Tapscott
- Chip Taylor . . . & friends
- Allen Toussaint
- Greg Trooper
- Uncle Tupelo
- TV on the Radio
- James Blood Ulmer
- Townes van Zandt
- Son Volt
- Tom Waits
- Myron Walden
- Gillian Welch
- Randy Weston
- White Stripes
- Chris Whitely
- Trixie Whitley
- Wilco
- Lucinda Williams
- Cassandra Wilson
- Reggie Workman
- World Saxaphone Quartet
- Lizz Wright
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Questions & Answers
" ... the questions a photographer raises may be more profound than the answers the medium permits." ~ Rebecca Solnit
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"Because, you know, the photographs . . . are more a question than a reply." ~ Sebastião Salgado
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"A picture can be an answer as well as a question but if you can't answer your question try to question your question. There are clever questions and stupid answers as well as stupid questions and clever answers. There can be questions without answers but no answers without questions." ~ Ernst Haas
Patronize Independent Purveyors of Books & Music - Help Maintain our Intellectual & Cultural Ecology - Nearly All These Places Take Orders OnLine
- Book Culture (NYC)
- The Bop Shop (Rochester)
- City Lights (San Francisco)
- CornerHouse (Manchester, UK)
- Downtown Music Gallery (NYC)
- Forced Exposure (Boston)
- Grimey's (Nashville)
- Harvard Book Store (Cambridge)
- Jazz Record Mart (Chicago)
- Labyrinth Books (New Haven & Princeton)
- Lakeshore Record Exchange (Rochester)
- Left Bank Books (St. Louis)
- Lift Bridge Books (Brockport, NY)
- Melody Record Shop (Washington, D.C.)
- Music Coop (Ashland, Ore)
- Park Avenue CDs (Orlando)
- Politics & Prose (Washington, DC)
- Record Archive (Rochester)
- Seminary Coop Bookstore (Chicago)
- Shaman Drum Bookshop (Ann Arbor) [R.I.P June 09]
- Soundscapes (Toronto)
- CD Baby
- COALITION OF INDEPENDENT MUSIC STORES
- From The Guardian - 20 of the Best Independent Record Shops in Britain (10/06)
- Indie Jazz
- The Jazz Loft
- Maple Music (Music from Canadian Artists)
- SMALL PRESS DISTRIBUTION
- Book Sense
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- Jefferson Public Radio (Oregon - California)
- KCRW (Santa Monica)
- KXZI ~ LP 101.9 FM (Creston, Montana)
- WEMU (Ypsilanti)
- WGMC Jazz 90.1 FM (Greece/Rochester)
Radio, Radio
YOU WON'T EVER BE DECISIVE IN THE OUTCOME, BUT YOU CAN VOICE YOUR VIEWS AND CONTRIBUTE TO THE CACAPHONY ~ SO REGISTER, FIND A CANDIDATE, HOWEVER HOPELESS THEIR CHANCES, AND VOTE
Cool Designs and Other Things (More to Follow)
"The best art makes your head spin with questions. Perhaps this is the fundamental distinction between pure art and pure design. While great art makes you wonder, great design makes things clear." ~ John Maeda
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"I don't bring an essentialist view to my background as a designer. But design gave me an opportunity to observe and learn about the social politics of production, distribution, and use. Use is very important." ~ Krzystof Wodiczko
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- Alchemy Architects Design Wee Houses (Minnesota, etc.)
- Design for Democracy
- Design 21 ~ Social Design Network
- Center for the Study of Political Graphics
- de.MO
- Inhabitat
- Visual Complexity
SOME COMMENTS LOOKING FOR A HOME
“I don’t think it is the function of art to be pleasing. ... Art is not democratic.” ~ Richard Serra
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"We may distinguish between two types of imaginative process: the one starts with the word and arrives at the visual image and the one starts with the visual image and arrives at its verbal expression." ~ Italo Calvino
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"There is something embarrassing in ... the way in which, ... turning suffering into images, harsh and uncompromising though they are, ... wounds the shame we feel in the presence of the victims. For these victims are used to create something, works of art, that are thrown to the consumption of a world which destroyed them. The so-called artistic representation of the sheer physical pain of people beaten to the ground by rifle-butts contains, however remotely, the power to elicit enjoyment out of it. The moral of this art, not to forget for a single instant, slithers into the abyss of its opposite. The aesthetic principle of stylization ... makes an unthinkable fate appear to have had some meaning; it is transfigured, something of its horror removed. This alone does an injustice to the victims; yet no art which tried to evade them could confront the claims of justice." ~ T.W. Adorno
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"The test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in the mind at the same time, and still retain the ability to function. One should, for example, be able to see that things are hopeless and yet be determined to make them otherwise." ~ F. Scott Fitzgerald
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"A photograph is a moral decision taken in one eighth of a second, or one sixteenth, or one one-hundred-and-twenty-eighth. Snap your fingers; a snapshot's faster." ~ Salman Rushdie
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"I cannot find any good use for the term postmodernism. ... I have no idea what is supposed to make a painting, or a novel, or a political attitude, "postmodern." ~ Richard Rorty
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"The greatest obstacle to transforming the world is that we lack the clarity and imagination to conceive that it could be different." ~ Roberto Mangabeira Unger
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"Another world is not only possible, she is on her way. On a quiet day, I can hear her breathing." ~ Arundhati Roy
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[1] "A limited imagination defends itself against recognizing the world as a system of connected vessels; it also is incapable of moving beyond the familiar."
[2] "Great numbers, however, cause particular difficulties for our imagination. As if we observe humanity in a way that is not permitted for humans, and allowed only to gods. ... In other words, they can think in categories of masses. A million people more, a million less - what difference does it make?" ~ Czeslaw Milosz
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"Politics depends, to a great extent, on judging what is actual relative to what is possible. [. . .] However, we have an inherently weak grasp of what is 'possible' and most societies are not set up so as naturally to improve this, or to make us aware of possibilities we may have ignored or taken with insufficient seriousness." ~ Raymond Geuss
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"Start doing the things you think should be done, and start being what you think society should become. Do you believe in free speech? Then speak freely. Do you love the truth? Then tell it. Do you believe in an open society? Then act in the open. Do you believe in a decent and humane society? Then behave decently and humanely." ~ Adam Michnik
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SHE WHO LAUGHS LAST ....
- The Colbert Report
- The Daily Show
- Nicole Hollander (Sylvia)
- ... find Sylvia on-line
- Aaron McGruder (Boondocks)
- ... find Boondocks on-line
- Tom Tomorrow (This Modern World)
- ... find TMW on-line
- Gary Trudeau (Doonsbury)
- xkcd
Administrative Matters From Here On Down
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FAIR USE
Posts to this blog may contain images and excerpts for the use of which I have not sought prior authorization. Wherever possible I endeavor to provide credit and accurate attribution to authors, artists and copyright holders. All material on this blog is made available for the purpose of analysis and critique, as well as to advance the understanding of politics, political theory and the arts. The ‘fair use’ of such material is provided for under U.S. Copyright Law. In accordance with U.S. Code Title 17, Section 107, material on this site (along with credit links and attributions to original sources) is viewable for educational and intellectual purposes.
COMMENTS POLICY
I allow comments on nearly all posts. In fact, I encourage comments and usually am happy to offer replies. That said, I will feel free to enforce standards of civility here.
I am completely willing to delete boorish comments ~ e.g., those involving name-calling, cursing, or that are generally disrespectful toward me or other readers. The same goes, especially, for various forms of bigotry. The same goes for comments that are not germane to the post or comment thread.
Except in very rare instances, I do not publish anonymous comments. Experience suggests that unless a reader is willing to identify himself and take responsibility for his views, he too often proves willing to act like an ass. (Apologies for the gendered language, but it seems appropriate in this context.) So, like boorish, anonymous is a more or less direct route to comment oblivion. Life is too short.
I treat this blog like I treat my living room. If you come here and act like an ass, I'll show you the door. And, as is true of my living room (& yours no doubt, too), I am the sole judge of what counts as acting like an ass. Fair warning.
Revised ~ 21 August 2008
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