I wouldn't have imagined seeing a photo yesterday -- initially, a Twitter blip amidst the moments of silence, the first responders, the enormous flags in the football stadiums, the burning embers, the falling men -- that would actually cause me to look on that day anew.
Continue ReadingIf the Foley and Sotloff videos felt like a piercing blow, if just from the bloodless screen shots, what is it that so pierced us?
Continue ReadingThe new wrinkle is on how the prisoners are allowed more contact with each other as long as they demonstrate good behavior.
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 ReadingI imagine you’ve seen this gentleman posing here in his outdoor boudoir?
Continue ReadingAP is not just validating, packaging and sanctioning this scene for the Western media news stream, its caption complements the terrorist’s narrative.
Continue ReadingThe question is, why is Western media suddenly so obsessed with the propaganda of ISIS in Iraq, and gratuitously publishing the groups factually-ambiguous terror scenes?
Continue ReadingPerhaps the couple is an anomaly. Perhaps not, however. Maybe what we're seeing is the emergence of the female far-right revolutionary and domestic terrorist.
Continue ReadingI’d like to tell you that such images are anomalous, but sadly that is not the case.
Continue ReadingNotebooks, uniforms, their own clothes and finally photographs of the girls themselves. They are ordinary things that in this extraordinary context start to build up into a sad, touching image of some of the lives that have been torn away from their normal course.
Continue ReadingThe deal to trade Bergdahl for five high profile Gitmo detainees threatens to dust off the visual genre of the "war on terror," a vocabulary that has been more in remission.
Continue ReadingThe crime scene still taped and the blood barely dry, members of the media historicize another driveway, lawn or storefront and ennoble another witness or survivor telling his or her tale.
Continue ReadingIs the objectification of women so entrenched in our culture and media that it's inescapable, even in the visual reporting of this extraordinarily troubling story?
Continue ReadingWhat the girls represented was a blind spot -- active evidence that the web isn't, in fact, omniscient, and our digital experience -- as much as it feels like the essence of inclusivity -- is overwhelmingly exclusive and exclusionary.
Continue ReadingThe controversy over the politics of representation in #BringBackOurGirls must be used to bolster the broader campaign for women’s safety, autonomy, and right to consent.
Continue ReadingThe 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.
Continue ReadingThe narrow aperture is as salient as the face behind it, while the blinds on each side make a thick frame designed to obscure. The message is clear: what you see through the aperture of the camera is not the whole picture.
Continue ReadingIt's interesting how the flood of memorial portraits in the West marginalize or soft-peddle, but also get stuck on Mandela's ferocity and engagement with the tool of violence.
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