Unrequited Love? Simon Norfolk in Afghanistan
Labels: Afghanistan, Simon Norfolk
“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: Afghanistan, Simon Norfolk
"What do the U.S. government and Silicon Valley already have in common? Above all, they want to remain opaque while making the rest of us entirely transparent through the capture of our data. What is arising is simply a new form of government, involving vast entities with the reach and power of government and little accountability to anyone."Rebecca Solnit, who as I have said here numerous times, is among our brightest, most insightful public intellectuals, has a new book. You can find it here. This week I used my first trip to Literati, the new independent bookshop in Ann Arbor to pick up a copy. So, while I have the book, I've not read it yet. You can find an interview with Solnit here at NPR. And you can find an even more recent offering - an essay dissecting the insidious usurpations of high-tech corporations in Silicon Valley. For Solnit, San Francisco - the city were she lives - is like the canary in the mine shaft. That said, her lament is not just for the ways money and privilege and cluelessness are undermining life in that city. At a more general level Solnit reminds us, as in the passage I lifted above, of Foucault's warning that visibility is a trap.
Labels: Ann Arbor, Foucault, Independent Purveyors of Books and Music, New Books, Rebecca Solnit
Labels: documentary, FSA, photo agencies, photojournalism, Salgado, Shahidul Alam
"You can be a journalist who is an advocate and advances a political point of view. Or one who remains politically agnostic. Both are legitimate. But what really matters is the information that enters the public sphere, its validity, how it is presented, and any debate it provokes. Not who put it there in the first place, or even why they did it."My friend Michael Shaw forwarded a link to this smart commentary by John McQuiad at Forbes (of all places) on the more or less hysterical reaction in the mainstream press to Glenn Greenwald's role in breaking the NSA surveillance story. The commentary is mis-titled "Why Glenn Greenwald Drives the Media Crazy." McQuaid actually does not do more than document that Greenwald does drive them nuts. He never gets around to telling us "why."
Labels: Greenwald, Journalists, Media Politics, NSA
Labels: Ann Arbor
Labels: non-violence, politics, protests, Turkey
Labels: Conservatives, elections, Legal, politics, Posner, rights
Labels: Ai Weiwei, drones, Laurie Anderson, Music
Labels: Data Graphics, Tufte
Labels: Data Graphics, Power Point, Tufte
Labels: Anger, Arendt, Humor, James Scott, Michael Kimmelman, politics, Public Space
Labels: bicycles, Conservatives, Data Graphics
Labels: Ai Weiwei, China, TIME Magazine
"We are concerned by the reports of excessive use of force by police. We obviously hope that there will be a full investigation of those incidents and full restraint from the police force." - John Kerry, U.S. Secretary of StateThe Obama administration is speaking out on the violent official response to political protests in Turkey. And they are right to do so. Here is the series of images encapsulating that response.
Labels: Benhabib, democracy, dissent, non-violence, OWS, Pamuk, protests, Rodrik, Turkey, violence
Labels: Americana, Enthusiasms, Music
Labels: James Agee, New Books, recommended reading, Walker Evans
__________Separation*
Your absence has gone through me
Like thread through a needle.
Everything I do is stitched with its color.
Labels: Media Politics, photojournalism