I recently stumbled upon a site called the InternetArchive (http://www.archive.org) that is trying to become an authorative internet library. Good luck on that project, but what is interesting is that they are creating an archive of documentary films and movies.
Cambridge in Colour has a very nice section titled Digital Photography Tutorials: "This section includes tutorials on how to acquire, interpret and process digital photographs." It includes topics such as:
The British Medical Journal online web site reports: Image of disabled children wins award (Cohen 331 (7511): 254 -- BMJ):
Alone in the Dark, part of a series of three photographs focussing on disabled children in institutional care in India by photographer Kurt Tong, was the winner of this years Luis Valtuea International Humanitarian Photography Award.The award, established in Spain in 1998 by Mdicos del Mundo, part of the Mdecins du Monde network, was set up as a tribute to humanitarian workers killed while working in Rwanda and Bosnia-Hercegovina.
... The exhibition is at The Frontline Club, 13 Norfolk Place, London W2 1QJ from until 5 September. See www.thefrontlineclub.com.
The New York Daily News reports that the MTA has a secret film file on photographers:
"MTA investigators are keeping a secret database of people stopped and questioned for filming or photographing bridges and tunnels as part of the agency's efforts to thwart terror, the Daily News has learned.The information is used to try to determine whether shutterbugs are simply putting together vacation slide shows - or gathering intelligence to plot mayhem, law enforcement sources said."
If this is true, this is very disturbing. Both amateur and professional photographers are being turned into modern day boogeypeople. And when a terrorist incident happens, what do the authorities want? They want people to send them their tourist snapshots so that they can try to see if they can spot the bad guys before the act. Argh!!
Peter Myers has a wonderful essay titled Enough Already! on the Luminous Landscape website:
When I am out in the field photographing, I enter what for me is a "sacred space." By this, I mean that I do not want to be disturbed in the field by the technology of the camera. Rather, I want to feel free, open to the moment and absorbed by the beauty of the view in front of me. It's not about the camera, but about the moment. Given my feelings, I do not want a computer strapped to the back of my lens, with twenty-plus levels of menus, more buttons than are needed to launch a nuclear missile, and the perpetual pause to monitor that "all systems are GO!"The Leica M series camera has been in continuous development for FIFTY YEARS -- one camera body and lens system -- the same camera body and lens system.
Over the Leica M's fifty-year lifespan, this camera system has been refined in actual field use by some of the most prestigious names in photography, such Henri Cartier-Bresson, Alfred Eisenstaedt and Sebastiao Salgado. The camera has been slowly and conservatively shaped to create the essence of the minimal requirements of photography, at maximum performance. The camera system simply disappears, and it becomes a link between the photographer and the lens -- the two covalent elements of photography as an art form. "
The Prickly Pear pamphlets, mostly in experimental methods in anthropology, the crisis of representation, philosophy and anthropology, and the like, have been published on the internet in pdf format!!! Authors include Anna Grimshaw, Marilyn Strathern, Richard Rorty, David MacDougall, and Melissa Llewelyn-Davies!Update 2006.06.07: The publisher of the Prickly Pear pamphlets has a new address: http://www.srcf.ucam.org/~jrs71/pricklypear/
AoG.2y.net has a new blog entry consisting of anti-Japanese children's drawings found in a (South) Korean subway station. Am I allowed to find them intensely cute?
Via Mehyar.
NPR has an online audio story on "Photographers as Security Concerns:"
Morning Edition, June 16, 2005 · Photographers across the country have complained of getting harassed by law enforcement officials citing security concerns since the September 11 terrorist attacks.
The NY Times (2005.06.25) has a short article about Bill Gates as potential anthropologist:
Bill Gates as AnthropologistMARGARET MEAD. Louis Leakey. Bill Gates?
Grouping the founder of Microsoft among great anthropologists is not as strange as it first sounds, according to the current issue of Fortune Small Business.
In an effort to grow ever closer to its customers, Microsoft has hired numerous social scientists, including anthropologists, to help it understand the natives, who in this case are the small-business owners who use its software.
IF you are a working stiff like me, you probably have to travel, and travel a lot. And unless you travel by private jet - a treat I had again last week - you probably suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous travel fortune: long lines; maddening, foot-tapping fellow passengers; hotel rooms that smell like gymnasiums; noisy neighbors; hard-to-find taxis; meals that leave you clutching your abdomen at 3 in the morning.
Regular readers of my blog know that I generally do not take photographs without the permission of the photographed except in exceptional circumstances. This is one element, I think, that differentiates my work from traditional street photography -- which from the time of Henri Cartier Bresson has had elements of stealth and deception that are generally anathema to anthropology.
Clayton Cubitt's Used Future blog links to an article on the NY Post that street photographer Philip-Lorca diCorcia has been sued by one of the people he surreptitiously photographed on the street:
"DiCorcia rigged strobe lights to scaffolding and trained his lens on an "X" he taped to the sidewalk. From 20 feet away, he took shots of Nussenzweig and thousands of other unsuspecting subjects. Later that year, diCorcia exhibited this image under the title "#13" at a Pace Wildenstein gallery show called "Heads" in Chelsea. The photographer said multiple prints of Nussenzweig's picture sold for about $20,000 each. The picture also was published in "Heads," a book that sold several thousand copies, diCorcia said. (NY Post)
There is quite an interesting discussion attached to Clayton Cubitt's blog entry, I'd encourage people to read through it. The fundamental legal question is whether diCorcia's fine art photography is editorial or commercial work. It'll be interesting to see the outcome in the courts, but my guess is that diCorcia will settle before then.
