Taking A Simple Notice
I like the outstretched, unembodied hand (suggestive of an anonymous tragedy), and the illusion that it actually makes contact with two others, one the gathering, impassioned hand of another brown-sleeved, brown man. If you survey the visual coverage from yesterday's Darfur rally in Washington, the most repeated element (besides George...
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Flight 93 Crashes In … New York?
The BAG, on the other hand, has been particularly attentive to World Trade Center imagery, whether for political or commercial use. I accept that the director and the majority of those who developed this film brought to it the highest ideals and best of intentions.... From the trailer and,...
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Super-Sizing The Reflecting Pool
You can boil down yesterday's lead NYT Week In Review article to one question: how important is fear in mobilizing concern for global warming? (Of course, images provide much of the raw material behind this debate.) I didn't appreciate it before, but the April 3rd TIME cover (with the polar...
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Campaign Update: Tower Three
As the Moussaoui trial devolves into disaster porn, "America's Mayor" couldn't have gained a better campaign platform on Thursday. If discretion generally governs depiction of the stricken World Trade Towers, this courtroom drawing practically turns Rudy's head into a surviving Tower Three. Of course, placement and scale not only...
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Air Conditioned Drive Through Category Five
us line debuts tour of stricken New Orleans http://www.publicbroadcasting.net/wned/news.newsmain?action=article&ARTICLE_ID=861445 Rev. Judith Kelsey-Powell, left, photographs storm damage as her husband, Rev. Keith, from Chicago, watches during a tour flood ravaged New Orleans, La., Wednesday Jan. 4, 2006. The couple were among the passengers on the first Hurricane Katrina bus tour...
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West Virgina: Positively Negative
Using a montage of front page covers, The Talent Show has an interesting visual analysis of the media coverage of the mining disaster in West Virginia (Undoing A Miracle - link). In a debacle reminiscent of "Dewey Defeats Truman," it had been initially (and erroneously) confirmed that all the...
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New Orleans Update: Siege Mentality
Louisiana Sees Faded Urgency in Relief Effort http://www.nytimes.com/2005/11/22/national/nationalspecial/22louisiana.html?ex=1290315600&en=96a67d624f89c525&ei=5090&partner=rssuserland&emc=rss The New Orleans native and Nerve photographer, Clayton James Cubitt (aka Siege) blog: http://operationeden.blogspot.com/ image gallery: http://www.claytoncubitt.com/publish/katrina/ http://operationeden.blogspot.com/ contribute page: http://www.wangmedia.com/operation_eden/index.html Tuesday, November 08, 2005 We had gotten to Seaside Heights the night before, to chill out and fuck off.... ...
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Bush City
"The idea that — in a community where we could place people in the private housing market to reintegrate them into society — we would put them in ghettos with no jobs, no community, no future, strikes me as extraordinarily bad public policy, and violates every conservative principle...
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Breaking News/Pakistan Earthquake
I was struck by the face of this man looking back at this destruction. Just before calling it a night (or morning), I found out about the tremendous earthquake in South Asia. I anticipate much quiet speculation about what these times must have in store for us, and how...
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St. Rita Ongoing
In considering all the failures associated with the Katrina disaster, how are we to understand the abuse of the grief process? Because we’re all pretty much friends here now, and I, along with you, have tacitly contracted to participate in the ongoing analysis of the prominent political images of...
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No Autopsy For Teddy?
I still think one of the biggest Katrina stories is the environmental one. There is a lot of information on the net about the ecological situation, and most of it is pretty disturbing. According to the Wall Street Journal (via SEEN), for instance, at least 193,000 barrels of oil...
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Katrina Aftermath: And Then I Saw These
Until last night, I thought the news images we had seen from New Orleans during the worst days of Katrina were fundamentally unvarnished. And then I saw these. Among his peers, Alan Chin is regarded as one of the finest photojournalists in the field -- and I say that...
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Your Turn: In The Ruins
“You don’t really think about the situation rationally at such an overwhelming time, of course. If it’s home, elegiac competes with angry for emotional first place.” I’ve been holding on to this illustration, and have been continuing to look at it for about two weeks. What’s been particularly strange...
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The Weeks After New Orleans: A Presidential Retrospective (#4)
Hurricane Rita Approaches Landfall September 23rd, 2004 Slightly more than three weeks after Hurricane Katrina lays waste to New Orleans, a new hurricane threatens the Gulf Coast. Not to be seen as “out of touch,” the President and his PR team realize he needs to appear fully engaged. The...
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Rita Madness: Getting Schooled On An Evacuation
If the image of partly submerged school buses is destined to become an enduring reminder of the Katrina debacle, a picture like the one just below it could well earn a similar designation in connection to hurricane Rita. While the Republicans — running interference for Bush and FEMA —...
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Rita Madness
If not a “finest hour,” the media coverage in the immediate aftermath of Katrina was at least one of the “better hours.” With a new storm brewing off Florida and aiming for Eastern Texas, however, it appears the press is acting like underestimation is unaffordable. As if preparing for...
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A Little Separation
Time races, and then time slows down and you recollect. On the morning of September 1st, I clearly remember the shocking headline at the top of the NYT website reporting a catastrophe on a bridge in Kadhimiya, outside Baghdad. Almost 1,000 Shiite pilgrims had died in a stampede started...
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9/11 All Over Again
Dubya is back! (And the graphics couldn’t be more loaded.) With Bush’s third visit to the Gulf Coast, Rove has retooled the visual vocabulary. In a reprise of “the glory days,” Bush posed yesterday with New York firefighters in New Orleans. The gratuitous caption states that the firemen “also...
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