Central African Gunman Loose in Paris … Fighting for Photography
It's interesting to see this group take photojournalism, as a provocative exercise, to the streets. I just can't tell if this photo has their back or not.
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How They See Us: The World Trade Center
As much as the Freedom Tower is all about America’s grief and will, to the Russian on holiday it's just one more stop between the Chrysler Building and Liberty Island.
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About Those Callous Selfies
I'm not prepared to say that this photo or its innumerable cousins have any moral implications at all.
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Viral, But Why? That Photoshop Swarm over LAX
I'm entranced, too, but I'm wondering why architectural photographer, Mike Kelley's beautiful and meticulous LAX photoshop image, "Wake Turbulence," went viral.
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Drone Visuals, Selfies and Human Agency
The drone and the selfie inhabit different ends of an image spectrum. Both in terms of production and consumption, the selfie is all us and the drone is all them. We know us well. We don’t know them at all.
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On Pieter Hugo's Portraits of Reconciliation from Rwanda
It being both fair and audacious to call them couples, it feels like these pairs have been through hellfire, then grafted together.
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Some Random Thoughts on Charles Ommanney's Americans with Guns
At this point, they only strap on the babies to tweak the Liberals.
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Trial by Slide Show? On Lens, Molhem Barakat and the Reuters Scandal
It's troubling to think that the last word on Molhem's reputation might hinge on the slideshow, the visual association to a thickening scandal and a more nominal connection to suspect deeds.
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Random Acts of Photography … and Public Good
Whatever else happened on February 25th, there was someone in Vancouver who wasn’t working on branding, who wasn’t worried about others free-riding, who was willing to spend time and money and effort to improve the commons.
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On that 26-Year-Old "Putin" – Reagan Photo in Moscow
All told, the photo is compelling for reasons that have little to do with its underlying accuracy.
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Murder as Damn(ed) Good Art: Robert Hariman on Organized Crime World Press Winner
The mob knew it wasn’t enough to kill its enemies; the killings had to be displayed to the viewing public. But the photographer isn’t a lackey of the mob.
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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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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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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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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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Communications from Above
What I'm not able to tell is if Nachtwey is being ironic or he's serious about placing this modern ritual on such a spiritual plane.
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The Face of the Future in Kiev’s Battle for Middle Earth
I’ve argued before that conflict photography is accumulating evidence of a of disturbing change in the political and cultural dimensions of modern violence: that it is becoming less modern.
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