Flat Head Tastes Flat Bread
The visuals are just too good to believe — as expose, I mean. Karen Hughes, self-described "Mom," supposed PR expert, Bush hand-holder and now US Undersecretary of State for Public Diplomacy and Public Affairs, is just wrapping up her first trip abroad, having visited Saudi Arabia, Egypt and Turkey. ...
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Iraq: The Game
If you missed it, this cover story in the NYT Mag a week ago was surprisingly informative for coverage of America’s war in Iraq. It outlines in disturbing detail how soldiers of fortune — oh sorry, I mean "private military companies" — oops, I meant "private security companies" or...
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Your Turn: Facing Fallujah
Is this the new face of occupation? After seeing one picture like this, I kept finding more and more variations of it. Most of these shots are coming from Fallujah, where the U.S. military is using retina scan technology to try and keep this ghost-city in lock-down. Because they...
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War Without Edit
If you’re faint of heart, I don’t recommend these images to you. But I commend Salon for running this article, "The Unseen War," along with the devastating photo gallery. As someone who is regularly featuring war images, I’m continuously uneasy that I’m mostly showing the "more consumable" content. Am...
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Your Turn: Fear of the Dark
In the wake of the London bombings, a number of op-ed pieces have begun to appear defending the use of racial profiling in random searches and security checks. This illustration accompanied such an article last week in the NYT. What I can figure out, however, is where the illustration...
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Osama Jumps The Turnstile
Once again, fear and loss spells more media bank. It’s been a while since I’ve seen Osama bin Ladin’s mug. Just give us two subway bombings in two weeks, however, and suddenly — despite a middle to high grade case of trauma still hovering over London — there...
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The Worst Day
At first, I couldn’t decide who had the worst day yesterday. Was it London’s “first responders” having to contend with the less lethal, but still terrifying and possibly more troubling replay of London’s 7/7 bombings? Was it anyone in London who is a member of the Islamic faith? Was...
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Drummed Out
Although this music store in Basra was there as of two weeks weeks ago, it’s possible it no longer exists. If you’ve been following the BAG, you know we’ve had the good fortune to have images, correspondence and also discussion participation from Alan Chin. Alan is a prominent photojournalist...
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Dead Batteries
One of the BAG’s co-analysts, Eric, alerted me to this. It’s a scrolling banner ad running in a loop with a series of other ads on Al Jazerra. The four screen shots above allow you to imagine it as it pans down the window — from top to bottom. ...
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Hate Head
I was out for dinner this evening with a few friends and I brought a copy of this image along. As it turned out, a lively debate ensued. One camp felt that this was an image of the suicide bomber. The other camp was just as sure that it...
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Your Turn: Enigma of Damascus
Whether the subject is Bush or Rummy, Santorum or Abbas, portraits are often the most interesting political images to deconstruct. Because of the conventional wisdom that Bashar al-Assad is a lightweight, I initially took the title of this week’s NYT Magazine cover story ("The Enigma of Damascus" – link)...
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Securing the Igloo
This shot accompanied a background piece in Sunday’s NYT about the development of safer military vehicles. More significantly, though, it appeared simultaneously with the administration’s weekend PR offensive to somehow fashion a more positive message on Iraq. After riding around Iraq last year in a steel-reinforced Rhino Runner (“designed...
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Away from Sesame Street
Who can account for Laura Bush this past May 25th? We know Mrs. Bush was in Egypt on May 22nd. That’s the day she was photographed with Suzanne Mubarak at the Itahedeya Palace in Cairo, the two sitting in the chairs President Mubarak uses to greet foreign dignitaries in...
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What Am I Doing?
Apparently, the story (and the picture of the story) the BAG has been following since last week about the joint U.S./Iraqi raid in Mahmudiya, Iraq just keeps getting more interesting. If you followed our comment thread on the original picture (Punching Up The Orange – link), you’ll know that...
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Orchestra Fan
One of the most outrageous charges against liberals is that we are invested in Iraq devolving into mayhem. From my perspective however, I don’t see why we can’t fault the Administration for fabricating a war rationale, pinpoint much of the mayhem as true evidence of an incoherent war/post-war strategy,...
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As Simple As That
As much as I’ve read about and seen images of car bombs and suicide attacks, I realize it’s actually next-to-impossible for me to relate to such a thing. On the other hand, the destruction of an awning at a roadside cafe? In that case, I more than understand the...
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Punching Up The Orange
This Sunday’s latest perfunctory Iraq story in the NYT seems to sum up what’s wildly wrong with the coverage of the war — as well as, perhaps, what’s wrong with the overall American military strategy. Simply put, there is no context to it. Take this image, for example. The...
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Marked Men
I don’t even know where to start with this image. Should we begin with the military signaling that the U.S has a two-dimensional view of the Arab world by turning detainees into human writing surfaces? Could we talk about how shockingly primitive and ill equipped our troops look for...
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