Does the photo of the undercover cop pointing his gun at a photographer come with more social and editorial baggage than most can handle?
Continue ReadingA photography writer asked me the other day how the photos of the Ebola outbreak this year compared with those from the past two decades. What follows is an excursion with an eye on how news photos have changed.
Continue ReadingOne point I touched on was how liberally news photographs are experimenting with style, including channeling the cinema.
Continue ReadingGiven the “loaded nature” of the objects and the situation, there are certainly ways to capture a scene like this that is not only more sensitive (and more mundane), but steers clear of the exploitive associations to race and violence.
Continue ReadingEssentially what we have from a media standpoint — a picture worth a thousand words, and the caption not that many -- are black people rampaging with Old Glory.
Continue ReadingThe inference here is that a photo taken by a photojournalist for a news organization and one taken by a soldier to ennoble the military really has no difference.
Continue ReadingI don't know, looking at these covers they seem unusually inflamed.
Continue ReadingActually, Obama's summery change up was nothing short of a rescue.
Continue ReadingAs we stagger toward the merciful end of this cataclysmic summer, what's instructive is context, or how much the eye sees what its been conditioned to see.
Continue ReadingWhere are the ethics and the boundaries when the media engagement is so passive, even acquiescent, and the product, so indistinguishable from propaganda that the insurgents feel they can have their way with the exposure?
Continue ReadingIf the images and the tension, as seen through the photos and the media lens, felt more raw and spontaneous last week, I'm finding myself scaling back my diet of reporting and waiting for news.
Continue ReadingAt the expense of releasing to the public more "raw data," it's as if WIRED and Platon redact from us the actual man experiencing his actual and ongoing trials.
Continue ReadingFor these acts and images to do more than express the release of anger over one more senseless killing is still another textbook example of America's racial and class polarization.
Continue ReadingLet's call it "the drone factor."
Continue ReadingWhile media consumers are bombarded daily with the most gut wrenching images of dead and injured Palestinians, especially children, the battle rages as to whether the images represent atrocities or collateral damage and the use of human shields.
Continue ReadingThis photo just feels so wrong to me right now.
Continue ReadingAll that intensity makes the rest more unspeakable as we view the broken body of another cousin, futilely hanging on to life, as he's carried like a sack.
Continue ReadingJournalists have become targets in that many places for that long now that their vulnerability, and ultimately their fungibility, has ceased to even be noteworthy.
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