Japan Quake: The "Radiation Check" Photo
I’ve been thinking around the power of this picture as I’ve been seeing it everywhere. Of course, who can’t relate to that sweet face and its innocent confusion? There’s more to it, though.The way the device is being pointed and the child’s hands are raised, there is also the suggestion...
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Fukushima Explosion
Even if the explosion occurred in the turbine wall and not the reactor vessel, this screen grab alone -- beyond the terror it raises in the pit of my stomach -- puts nukes back on trial.
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Feeling Japan’s Earthquake in Lower Manhattan
We relate to pictures, especially trauma, in term of analogy. (It helps us feel it and also wrap our head around it.) This is Japan this morning following their massive earthquake, but — like the scenes burned in our memories from those lower Manhattan apartment windows — it also...
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Obama in Tucson: Scenes of Shift?
There were a lot of strong photos from Obama’s day in Tucson and the memorial service where he delivering the most tone-perfect and powerful speech/sermon since his campaign address on race. What I’m looking at most carefully though, and what I’m most curious about also, are signs and evidence...
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The Haiti Earthquake +1
Mario Tama has been commemorating ritual anniversaries by returning to specific places and re-photographing scenes he had captured before. On this one year anniversary of the Haiti earthquake, the images quietly express the overarching present reality of an event that so galvanized the world a year ago.
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Going Forward: Civility and the Picture of Rep. Giffords (and Commander Kelly)
What makes this event so profound, and perhaps even a game changer in terms of the enmity and gridlock in Washington (not to mention the career trajectories of divisive figures like Palin, Limbaugh and the like) is the natural counterpoint, visually and character-wise, that the previously little-known Gifford stands...
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Let the Year in Politics Begin!
I like it for capturing the love affair with spectacle, and the age old passion for pretty pictures, in spite of what the real hell is about.
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AIDS Day Visuals: How Grave is Your Ribbon?
If Bush was more committed to AIDS than Obama is, it's all the more reason why the big bow reads like a reflex action on the part of the Administration.
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Spencer Platt: Journey Through Cholera
Spencer Platt describes the moral uneasiness of working in Haiti during cholera outbreak.
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Chile Rescue: Crowning Achievement
What makes the photos of the Chilean mine rescue so visceral and primal is how much the rescue capsule evokes the emergence of life through the birth canal.
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9/11 Did Not Discriminate … So Why Must We?
For once, because it's the anniversary of 9/11 today and because portraits and expressions like these are so reminiscent, I'll let the photos speak for themselves.
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Katrina: Faces Of The Storm
The day of the anniversary itself: Alan Chin, Stanley Greene, Andy Levin, and Mario Tama in New Orleans.
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Katrina: Five Years Passing
Lee Celano, Alan Chin, and Mario Tama: Eyes on Katrina, Five Years Passing
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Beyond "Compassion Fatigue": A Tale of Two Cities
Those who decry “compassion fatigue” have plenty to support their claims, but if we look closely we might see differences that warrant less knee jerk reactions. As a case in point, consider the difference between the floods in Pakistan and the mudslide in Zhouqu County, China.
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Richard Misrach and the Wicked Witch of the Gulf
If Richard Misrach's "After Katrina" graffiti photos donated to the Museum of Fine Arts in Houston prove anything, it's that irony has finally caught up to the Katrina tragedy.
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Alan Chin: Compensation and Loss
Photographer Alan Chin in New Orleans: Ken Feinberg takes over the compensation claims process for the BP Deepwater Horizon oil spill.
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Brendan Hoffman: Haiti Far From The Madding Crowd
The fifth and last of Brendan Hoffman's series from Haiti six months after the earthquake. If so many Haitian farmers hadn't been driven off their land by cheap foreign goods, these photos would represent many more who survived the quake in the capital and were living a sustainable rural...
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Brendan Hoffman: Eyes on Haiti's Rapes
They were willing to identify themselves to a foreign journalist and tell their stories: "They felt that, at least someone is asking and concerned," but Brendan felt, "I wanted to preserve their anonymity as much as possible. So I shot really tight and cropped in on the eyes." Because this...
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