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Towell from Kiev (and Canada): the Cream Rises to the Top - Updated
this photo is jarring for the woman in the fashionable jacket putting her hand to the shield -- as if pushing (or pushing back) with the strength of modernity.
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Netanyahu Gives Merkel Hitler's Mustache. Or: How Photos So Easily and Often Remind Us of Other Things
Sometimes the connection between one visual and another is so blatant, it commandeers our mental hard drive. Of course, what raises the Netanyahu Merkel Hitler photo to "epic" is all the irony that gets baked in too.
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Those News Anchor Threesomes with Frank and Claire Underwood
Maybe the vanity and professional incest in Washington is so matter-of-fact, one wouldn't stop to think anything at all about the nature of the cameos.
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More on the Photo Exploitation of Kiev: Esquire's Hashtag Mining
Going back again, you can see how Esquire was looking for matches that were not only the most dramatic, garish or ironically artful but made the subject in the "before" photo seem almost clownish or callously vain.
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The Petal
Isn't it interesting how much a subject's personality can influence the way we respond to a more impressionistic photo?
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Stacy Kranitz: The Rape of Appalachia
I find Caudill’s complicated legacy a reminder that there is a lot more to the evolution of a people than the victimhood that has been placed upon them.
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The Real Winners of World Press Photo 2014: The Palestinians
If it's a sad commentary on the state of the Western news media gaze, it's a pleasure and a relief to see Palestinians as "not one thing" -- to see Palestinians who are secular and devout; who do "regular things"; who don't spend every moment seething; and who experience...
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Pussy Riot vs. Cossacks at the Olympics: A War of Images (This Time)
Who knows what will happen when the Olympic spotlight is no longer trained on Putin.
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The Pictures Standing Out: Kiev Afire
Between the newswire and the Twitterverse, yesterday's photos from Ukraine were both intense and inescapable. Here's a collection of the most prominent.
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Sochi is Boring
Not that the Olympics aren't a hallowed institution, by the way, but so were college athletics before the Sports-Industrial Complex ate them.
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Thoughts on John Stanmeyer's 2014 World Press Winning Photo
In a day and age where specific conflicts, atrocities and human rights abuses beg for poignancy and advocacy, feting Stanmeyer's photo can either be seen as the loss of an opportunity, or else an incredibly daring choice inviting multiple conversations about what the photo is/ isn’t and does/doesn’t.
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If We Had Only Seen Hoffman in Pain
One of the profound things about photographs is how they can live simultaneously in the present and the past. People do not though.
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Sports Illustrated's Michael Sam "Coming Out" Cover: Gay Alien or Perfectly Macho?
Speaking just for the picture, you're either "a scary, awesome beast" that won't tolerate whining, or you're not SI cover material.
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David Schalliol from Chicago: After the Projects, New (Physical and Emotional) Landscapes
The work is different now: it’s less a need to understand life in a place than to understand how life changes when one leaves a place with so many attachments.
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Looking at Trevor Paglen's NSA Photos for the Greenwald/Intercept Launch
Given Paglen's gifts and his reputation, coupled with the excitement and sky high expectations of this new venture, people were likely expecting the sublime.
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Game Change: POYi Meets NFL Meets Queer Nation
Of course, the idea that the population of American sports fans wouldn't be proportionally populated with gays and lesbians makes no sense at all. Stereotypes and homophobia in professional sports being what it is, however, the subjects coming together in this photo feel surprising and new.
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Why I Disagree with Picture of the Year's First Place Choice of "Final Embrace"
The truth is, this photo doesn't valorize the workers who died in Rana Plaza as much as it sentimentalizes.
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Judging the Photography Awards: Why Not Just Paint It?
Photographs can favor artistry over other values such as documentary witness, hard-boiled realism, formal simplicity, or critical provocation. But should they win awards for it?
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The Pet Goat, Revisited. (Or: The 9/11 Photo I Never Saw Before.)
Given the intense criticism Bush endured for not responding immediately to that cataclysmic event, why is this photo now enshrined in the Bush Library's 9/11 photo gallery?
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