Why all the Photos of People Taking Photos, Especially When Heavy Things Are Going Down?
The utter ubiquity of camera phones, portable screens as well as digital circulation has given citizen spectators a whole new way of registering their voice—or is it their gaze?
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The Masking of Damaged Vets (With an Appearance by Hannibal Lecter). Photo by Lynn Johnson.
While the mask purports to give voice to his inner pain, it also makes it possible for us to observe him (from a distance) without actually seeing him.
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… the more things stay the same.
The photograph stands as notice that the problem of black-white relations is the true American tragedy.
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Cold War Kiss: On Russia, the U.S. and the “Return to Normalcy"
It could be humans caught up in the worldly tensions between Eros and Thanatos. Or, it could be a “Return to Normalcy” where the war was “cold” and we could identify who our enemies were.
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There is Shooting and There is Shooting
Among photography's many virtues, it slows the world down, indeed, it stops the world in ways that normal sight is often hard pressed to do—at 1/800th of a second, for example—inviting us not just to look at the world around us, but to see it, sometimes with fresh eyes.
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“A Well Regulated Militia, Being Necessary …”
The point here is not that we should eliminate the right to keep and bear arms, but that the conditions that animated the original intent of this amendment no longer abide.
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The Priceless Privilege: Times Square Kiss and Sexual Assault
The real challenge here then is not so much to critique the blind sexism of an earlier moment in our history, however much it might be mischaracterized as a golden past, but to question why we continue to refuse to see what might now be before our eyes.
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How Much More War You Can See in Magenta
When infrared film is used, the invisible becomes visible forcing us to look again at what we are seeing.
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Pictures After the Tornados: A Meditation on Things Lost—and Found
That the tornado could destroy everything but the stoop is an indication of its power, to be sure, but it's also an indication of its limitations.
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Perhaps It’s a Wonder Vet Suicide Rate as Low as It Is
Brian Scott Ostrom, an honorably discharged Marine veteran served two tours of duty in Iraq. Ostrom did not commit suicide, but as the fresh stitches that mark his wrist indicate, he made a serious attempt at doing so. In fact, it was his second attempt. The...
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Flying Too Close to the Sun
As Don Quixote’s sidekick Pancho reminds him, “whether the stone hits the bottle or the bottle hits the stone … its always bad for the bottle.”
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Ironing Out the Wrinkles
But in the end there is Governor Romney, his hair carefully coifed and even his American flag steam ironed so that none of its wrinkles will show.
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How the Other Half Lives
What we see in these two images when juxtaposed is a glimpse at a possible future, a world divided between the haves and the have-nots with little room in between. In short, we see a world in which the middle class itself has been erased.
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“Out, Damn Spot!”
In America's war on terrorism (given our Christian sensibilities), "cleanliness is next to godliness.”
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Facing Our Warriors (Before, During and After)
Taken as a piece, the three portraits mark the subtle, psychic metamorphosis of a young man who has encountered the experience of war.
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Another Picture of Normalcy from Afghanistan: What Would Tweedledee and Tweedledum Say?
One more scene of the normalization of life in Afghanistan. It appeared prominently at nearly every one of the mainstream media slideshows that I visited, Only one, though, seemed to have challenged the theme of normalcy.
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