Saturday, December 31, 2011
2012
As we say good-bye to 2011 and hello to 2012, a few thanks are in order.
Thank you to all the extraordinary photographers we have been so fortunate to know, with special heartfelt gratitude to all photojournalists across the world.
Thank you to our friends, clients, and collectors for your support and encouragement.
Thank you to our blog readers, followers, and "social connections". May 2012 bring us all that we need.
"All of us live in history, whether we are aware of it or not, and die in drama. The sense of history and of drama comes to a man not because of who he is or what he does, but flickeringly, as he is caught up in events, as his personality reacts, as he sees for a moment his place in the great flowing river of time and humanity.
I cannot tell you where our history is leading us, or through what suffering, or into what era of war or peace. But wherever it is, I know men of good heart will be passing there."
--Carl Mydans
Friday, December 30, 2011
The Case of Loving v. Bigotry
Hands of Mildred and Richard Loving on their kitchen table, King and Queen County, Va
Photograph by Grey Villet
January 1, 2012
In 1958, Richard and Mildred Loving were arrested in a nighttime raid in their bedroom by the sheriff of Caroline County, Va. Their crime: being married to each other. The Lovings — Mildred, who was of African-American and Native American descent, and Richard, a bricklayer with a blond buzz cut — were ordered by a judge to leave Virginia for 25 years. In January, the International Center of Photography is mounting a show of Grey Villet’s photographs of the couple in 1965. That exhibit is complemented by an HBO documentary, ‘‘The Loving Story,’’ directed by Nancy Buirski, which will be shown on HBO on Feb. 14. The film tells of the Lovings’ struggle to return home after living in exile in Washington, where Mildred, gentle in person but persistent on paper, wrote pleading letters to Robert F. Kennedy and the A.C.L.U. Two lawyers took their case to the Supreme Court, which struck down miscegenation laws in more than a dozen states. The Lovings’ belief in the simple rightness of their plea never wavered. Asked by one of his lawyers if he had a message for the Supreme Court, Richard said he did: ‘‘Tell the court I love my wife.’’
Julie Bosman
Special screening in Los Angeles January 10, 2012 with HBO at the Museum of Tolerance.
Grey Villet's photographs are available from Monroe Gallery of Photography. View selected photographs of the Lovings during photo la at Monroe Gallery of Photography, Booth B-500.
Monday, December 26, 2011
THE 21st ANNUAL INTERNATIONAL LOS ANGELES PHOTOGRAPHIC ART EXPOSITION
Monroe Gallery of Photography is pleased to be exhibiting at the 2012 edition of photo l.a. We will be located in Booth B500, the first booth at the right entrance to the fair. Our booth will feature some of the finest examples of humanist and photojournalist imagery from the 20th and 21st Century. photo l.a. returns to the historic Santa Monica Civic Auditorium for its 21st edition on January 12 - 16, 2012. Continuing the discourse on photography’s place in the fine arts, photo l.a. provides dealers from around the globe a platform for the exhibition of vintage masterworks, contemporary photography, as well as video and multimedia installations. This exciting juxtaposition creates the character that is photo l.a.
In addition to our compelling program of lectures, panels,
book signings, and special installations, we are pleased to announce Salon de Tableaux, an area of tabletop presentations showcasing vintage, vernacular and unique photography. Also we proudly introduce photoBOOK - a forum with guest reviewers offering feedback to photographers on their book proposals.
During the Martin Luther King holiday weekend, January 12-16,
2012, photo l.a. returns to the landmark Santa Monica Civic Auditorium for the 13th time. As the Getty’s Pacific Standard Time: Art in L.A. 1945-1980 initiative continues into January, photo l.a. will include installations focusing on post-WWII art created in Southern California. January is also L.A. Arts Month, a collective marketing effort by the city and its arts organizations to attract enthusiasts and collectors to Los Angeles. Please join us in January for a memorable four days of art, education, and excitement. Check our website reguarly for updates, and join our mailing list for news on ordering tickets, special projects, and events.
photo l.a. website with details here.
Related: One of the world's most important annual photography events to be held at the Park Avenue Armory in March LocationSanta Monica Civic Auditorium 1855 Main Street Santa Monica, CA 90401-3209 www.santamonicacivic.org Opening Night Gala Thursday, January 12, 2012 6pm - 9pm Benefiting the Los Angeles County Museum of Art‘s Wallis Annenberg Department of Photography Special host Moby General Admission Fair Hours Friday: January 13, 11am - 7pm Saturday: January 14, 11am - 7pm Sunday: January 15, 11am - 7pm Monday: January 16, 11am - 6pm Tickets Visit photola21.eventbrite.com/ to purchase tickets Contact General Information: info@photola.com www.photola.com Tel: 323.965.1000 Fax: 323.937.5523 |
Saturday, December 24, 2011
Friday, December 23, 2011
The Weather Outside Is Frightful....
But very beautiful. Please join us this evening 4 - 6 to celebrate our 10th Anniversary in Santa Fe and the Holidays.
Thursday, December 22, 2011
The 'Girl In The Blue Bra'
Stringer/Reuters/Landov
Egyptian army soldiers arrest a female protester during clashes at Tahrir Square
in Cairo on Dec. 17.
"This image now has the potential to impact national policy, and that has been one of the major attributes of photojournalism — images that move the hearts and minds of the public and policy makers".
Via NPR The Picture Show: "The Girl in the Blue Bra"
Wednesday, December 21, 2011
FATHER FOR CHRISTMAS
Marisol rushes to her father as he surprises her during a Capshaw dance.
Luis Sánchez Saturno/The New Mexican
tears
Read the full article in the Santa Fe New Mexican here.
Marisol Tapia, 12, a seventh-grader at Capshaw Middle School, is surprised
Tuesday by a visit from her father, Lt. Col. Marcos Tapia of the U.S. Army
Reserves, during a dance at the school. Marcos Tapia, who has been serving in
the Middle East, was granted holiday leave until Jan. 3. - Luis Sánchez
Saturno/The New Mexican
10th Anniversary of Monroe Gallery
PHOTOS WORTH 100 WORDS 
Steve Schapiro: Martin Luther King, Selma, Alabama, 1965
by Matthew Irwin
4-6 pm, Dec 23, 2011 | Free
ARTS & CULTURE
In 1983, while serving as the director of a gallery in New York City, Sidney Monroe curated the first show for the great Life magazine photographer Alfred Eisenstaedt. The two talked about the lack of photo-journalist exhibitions, while collectors scooped up Eisenstaedt’s prints. Soon after, the Monroe's opened a SoHo gallery dedicated to narrative images taken from real life. “If you remove the event or the history, you often see composition, form, balance—elements you’d find in fine art photography,” Monroe says. Then 9.11 wiped out the gallery’s neighborhood, so Monroe and his wife, Michelle, moved, as a business decision. Monroe Gallery of Photography has now been in Santa Fe for 10 years, and the Monroes has about as many stories about their business as the photos have about the historical events they depict. (Matthew Irwin)Holiday/Anniversary Reception: 4-6 pm Friday, Dec. 23. Free.
Monroe Gallery of Photography, 112 Don Gaspar Ave., 992-0800
Where: Monroe Gallery
Phone: 505-992-0800
Address: 112 Don Gaspar Ave.
Website: http://www.monroegallery.com
Tuesday, December 20, 2011
Police are roughing up journalists across U. S.
Alarmingly, we are seeing more and more posts about interference with the press, including photographers. UPDATED: "The Committee to Protect Journalists have released their report for 2011 which chronicles the attacks on journalists worldwide. They report that at least 43 journalists were killed including seven dead in Pakistan making it the deadliest country to work in as a journalist. Photojournalists suffered particularly heavy losses in 2011."
Via BuffaloNews.com
By Douglas Turner
Updated: December 19, 2011, 6:30 AM
Beyond serving our amusements, the work of press photographers and reporters is deadly serious. The crux of the matter is that press photographers and reporters are our last guarantors of freedom.
Think Danny Pearl, beheaded by al-Qaida in 2002; Don Bolles, murdered by the mob in Arizona in 1978; and Lara Logan, brutally assaulted while monitoring the behavior of a dictator’s police during Egypt’s Arab Spring.
Worldwide, 889 journalists have been killed since 1992, according to the Committee to Protect Journalists. Today, photographers and reporters are being manhandled again in this country by police. Not in the smoky backwoods of the Deep South, as in the 1960s, but in cradles of so-called liberalism like New York, Los Angeles, Oakland and Rochester.
These cities are among dozens where the cops are moving out Occupy Wall Street protest encampments, and the police plainly don’t want citizens to see how they’re doing it. Photographers and reporters, with chains of credentials hanging off their necks like the Lord Mayor of London, are being handcuffed, herded into pens, hustled into police wagons and sometimes into court.
The cops under New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg are operating with impunity. Consider the timeline of a Buffalo lawyer, Mickey H. Osterreicher, who is in the middle of this swirl. Osterreicher, a former newspaper and television photographer, is general counsel of the National Press Photographers Association.
Osterreicher helped arrange a meeting with Bloomberg’s police commissioner, Ray Kelly, in Manhattan just before Thanksgiving to get Kelly to restrain his troops, who were roughing up demonstrators and journalists while closing down an Occupy encampment. Among the attendees were representatives of Thomson-Reuters, Dow-Jones and the New York Times.
On Nov. 21, Kelly sent out a pious-sounding directive to all police reminding them of the journalists’ constitutional rights and directing that they be treated with respect. “The next day,” Osterreicher said, “a photographer for the New York Daily News was interfered with. And there were absurd incidents involving journalists trying to cover the Thanksgiving Day parade.”
Last week, according to AtlanticWire. com, Kelly’s cops shoved a New York Times photographer down a set of stairs, then blocked him from shooting an Occupy protest. So much for Kelly’s paperwork.
In Los Angeles, police arrested a credentialed City News Service reporter trying to cover the dismantling of an Occupy site. A video shows police taking him to the ground as he tried to show his credentials. Police later claimed he was drunk.
Among Osterreicher’s cases is his defense of a student journalist in Rochester who was arrested trying to cover an Occupy protest there. In what Osterreicher claims is a “terrific waste of public resources,” the Monroe County prosecutor refuses to drop trespassing charges against the man.
Osterreicher sees some of the police-versus-press tension as cyclical. The Occupy movement and police anxiety following 9/11, he adds, prompt more of it. There is also some public myopia involved.
“Photographers were killed in Syria and Egypt,” he said. “What is seen as heroic overseas is looked on as offensive here.”
Police harassment of demonstrators and journalists doesn’t seem to trouble the Obama administration much. Rep. Jerrold Nadler, D-Manhattan, wrote to Attorney General Eric Holder on Dec. 6 asking for an investigation into police mauling of Occupy demonstrators. Holder hasn’t bothered to answer Nadler, ranking Democrat on a Judiciary subcommittee.
dturner@buffnews.com
Saturday, December 17, 2011
Bahraini activist ‘Angry Arabiya’ arrested
A police officer drags Zaynab al-Khawaja after handcuffing her when she refused to leave after a sit-in. (HAMAD I MOHAMMED - REUTERS)
Zaynab al-Khawaja, 28, widely known as “Angry Arabiya” for her outspoken tweets on human rights abuses, has been arrested in Bahrain. Photos and a video show Khawaja, who is the daughter of jailed human rights activist Abdulhadi al-Khawaja, being disciplined and then handcuffed by police.
Full story here via The Washington Post.
Friday, December 16, 2011
The Art of War: A Look Back at 10 Important Works That Took on the Conflict in Iraq
Every newspaper and news report has been filled with stories about the "end" of the Iraq War. Artinfo.com has compiled a list of "what seem to us to be the most notable examples" of art dealing with the war.
Courtesy the artist and Jen Bekman projects
Nina Berman's "Ty with gun," 2009, from "Marine Wedding," 2006/2008, pigment print
Iraq's future remains unclear, but whatever happens, the effects of the war are likely to remain with us for a long time. No work illustrates this more clearly than photographer Nina Berman’s “Marine Wedding" series (memorably seen in the 2009 Whitney Biennial as well as in the recent Dublin Contemporary in Ireland) documenting the marriage of former Marine sergeant Ty Ziegel to his high school sweetheart, Renee Kline. Ziegel was wounded in a suicide bomber’s attack in Iraq, leaving him terribly disfigured. Employing a straightforward and unflinching documentary aesthetic, Berman’s photos show him simply trying to live his life despite his horrible scars, driving his truck, walking his dog, or posing in uniform with his bride — who looks hauntingly lost — for a wedding portrait (the two divorced after a year). Though bordering on the exploitative, Berman’s work offers disturbing testimony to the way the Iraq War has torn through people’s lives, and how its affects are liable to be with us for a long, long time.
Related: Nina Berman's Blog: Remember the Iraq War
Part 1
Part 2
Selections from "Marine Wedding" featured in the exhibition "History's Big Picture"
Thursday, December 15, 2011
Mick Rock Survives the ’70s to Shoot Again
Via The New York Times
By BOB MORRIS
Published: December 14, 2011
COFFEE. Mick Rock, the rock ’n’ roll photographer as famous for his hedonistic lifestyle as for his iconic images of debauchery and excess, was drinking nothing more than coffee. It was 5 p.m. on a recent Tuesday, and while hotel guests drank cocktails at the lounge of the W New York Downtown, Mr. Rock, a slim and youthful man in his 60s in tinted glasses, got his fix.
NYT Slideshow here
“Sometimes when I really want to go wild, I’ll have two cups,” he said.
It was the night before “Rocked,” an exhibition of his photographs, was to open on Dec. 7 with a big party, featuring a performance by Phantogram and a D.J. set by Mark Ronson. On the walls in the lounge around him, Madonna, Mick Jagger and Dave Grohl of the Foo Fighters stuck out their tongues with confrontational glee. A young Iggy Pop (sweaty and shirtless, of course) worked some gold lamé pants. Lou Reed, Freddie Mercury and David Bowie leered under so much mascara they could have been raccoons.
Outside, beyond a balcony, the 9/11 memorial-in-progress gaped.
“It’s amazing, what’s going on down here,” Mr. Rock said of all the construction in a downtown he knew more for drug deals, illegal nightclubs and transsexuals, not patriotism and real estate speculators. “But I guess you just can’t keep New York down.”
You can pretty much say the same about him.
Born as Michael in West London, Mr. Rock was a typical good-looking bad boy of his day with a very nice mum named Joan, who sometimes still asks when he’s going to get a real job.
After rocketing out of Cambridge University in 1970, infatuated with Blake, Rimbaud, Verlaine, Mallarmé and poets who consumed as much opium and absinthe as sleep, he was drawn like a well-educated moth to the flaming scene of Syd Barrett, Roxy Music, David Bowie, the Sex Pistols and all types of punks and glam rockers in London. He then moved to New York in the mid-1970s to continue his career, photographing Blondie, the Velvet Underground, the New York Dolls, Joan Jett and other punk and big-hair bands.
“I was intuitive and lucky to be around,” he said. “I also looked like them, and that made it easier to accept me.”
As much the party instigator as chronicler, he would bounce up and down like a pogo-ing punk rocker while taking pictures, giddy as a child awaiting a gift. One time Andy Warhol pointed out that he was bouncing on a stack of Mr. Warhol’s finished canvases. “I guess you could just say I’m an enthusiast,” Mr. Rock said.
He was trustworthy, too, and did not sell photographs of drug abuse and other unseemly moments that could damage careers. But then, this was before the age of tear-down tabloids and blogs. “Newspapers and magazines didn’t want pictures of musicians behaving badly back then,” Mr. Rock said with a sunny working-class lilt. “Now, because of the Internet, that’s all the media wants.”
In his heyday, as he acquired his reputation as “the man who shot the ’70s,” he partied all night in New York with the stars he shot, dating the same women and sharing the same drugs. Many he knew fell to AIDS and heroin addiction. Others survived, and many thrived. “It’s a miracle that David Bowie, Lou Reed and Iggy Pop are actually still alive today, given how hard they lived,” he said.
After bouncing, drinking, drugging and staying up till dawn for 20 years, he hit bottom in 1996, at 48, when he had a heart attack requiring a quadruple bypass. He’d had several attacks right before that, one during a shoot. His lifestyle was catching up with him.
“It was a warning that it was time to stop,” he said.
He had no health insurance. But he had powerful friends who wanted to pay to save him.
He came out of the operation with a faltering career but a newfound determination to stay sober. He was not, to quote a Blondie lyric, going to “die young and stay pretty.”
Industry friends were supportive, as were musicians and galleries who drew from his archives to create books and exhibitions of his work. By the new millennium, he was starting to rebound, and soon was busy shooting Snoop Dogg, Alicia Keys and other young stars.
“I did not want to be somebody who lived off his reputation,” he said. “I wanted to continue to be part of the modern music scene.” It seems to have worked out very nicely.
Now he’s smart enough to let others stay up late and carry on, “although these days all they have to do to shock people is light up a cigarette,” he said. Despite his legacy, he isn’t one to live in the past. He adores the young musicians he shoots — Lady Gaga, Janelle Monáe, and Theophilus London among them — and gets only a little weary when asked about the bad old days.
“Back then, to pick up the hottest women you had to wear makeup,” he said.
Today, a denim jacket and a scarf or two make up his uniform. Mr. Rock said he doesn’t preen, drink, smoke or imbibe any drugs stronger than coffee with sugar and (gasp) half-and-half. He lives in a Colonial house with a picket fence on a leafy Staten Island street with his wife, Pati, and sometimes a daughter, Nathalie, 21, who he said is unimpressed with a father who has seen it all. He gets up early and does yoga every day.
“I’ll need to get a good night’s sleep tonight,” he said in the lounge at the W as he finished his coffee, took a quick tour of his exhibition and left to go up to his room. It was massage time.
“I know it’s disappointing,” he said. “But all I am is a retired degenerate.”
Fair enough. It won’t be that long before the man who shot the ’70s will be close to 70 himself.
Steve Schapiro: Before the Tragedy
Natalie Wood and Robert Wagner on their yacht, 10/8/7
© Steve Schapiro, Courtesy Everett Collection
Via La Lettre de la Photographie. La Lettre shares and informs daily on the events in the world of photography.
Intimate images "taken by the photographer Steve Schapiro. Natalie Wood and Robert Wagner had invited him to spend the day on their boat, The Splendour, off Catalina Island in front of Los Angeles. Steve Schapiro recalls a loving couple that had married, divorced, and remarried. Not long after, tragedy struck." Full post here.
Wednesday, December 14, 2011
The New York Times Sends Angry Letter to NYPD Over Blocked Photographer
You didn’t think that The Paper of Record was going to take the mistreatment of one of their photographers at Monday’s Occupy Wall Street Protest at the World Financial Center Plaza sitting down, did you? Absolutely not:
Once The New York Times confirmed that their own freelance journalist Robert Stolarik was captured on video being pushed down the steps of the atrium by a member of the NYPD and then blocked by another officer with a baton for trying to take pictures of the ensuing arrests, the editors wrote a strongly-worded email to the NYPD. Because the first time they told Ray Kelly and Michael Bloomberg that the harassment of credentialed journos would not be taken lightly, it worked out so well?
While we don’t have an exact copy of the memo, NYT‘s VP and assistant general counsel George Freeman said:
“It seemed pretty clear from the video that the Times freelance photographer was being intentionally blocked by the police officer who was kind of bobbing and weaving to keep him from taking photographs,” said Freeman, who expressed concern Tuesday that the commissioner’s “message that was sent out, while aimed with good intentions, doesn’t seem to have had much effect on the ground.”And while the NYPD’s department head has acknowledged relieving the note, there has been no response from Commissioner Kelly or one of his representatives. Because who needs to answer to journalists anymore?
You Tube video here
NY Times: The Police, the Press and Protests: Did Everyone Get the Memo?
Related: Columbia Journalism School letter to Mayor Bloomberg and NYPD
NYPD Orders Officers Not To Interfere With Press
Tuesday, December 13, 2011
Citizen Journalism: Something for Nothing Won’t Last Long
As a police officer sprays pepper spray on protesters,
citizen journalists record the action in Davis, California. (Photo by Louise Macabitas)
A very good read about the new "Citizen Journalism", with commentary by Monroe Gallery photographer Stanley Forman:
"There’s a bit of an exploitative relationship between citizen journalists and news organizations. You have to know enough to ask before you can get paid.” — Steve Myers, Managing Editor, Poynter.org
“It certainly has swung too far in one direction. Whether it’ll ever swing back or not, I don’t know.” –Stanley Forman, Photojournalist
Read the full post here, via Maria Purdy Young
Monday, December 12, 2011
Eye On New York: On Nanny-Photographer Vivian Maier
January, 1953, New York
In this segment of Eye on New York, CBS 2's Mary Calvi speaks with Howard Greenberg about the story of nanny and photographer Vivian Maier.
On Exhibit: Howard Greenberg Gallery December 15 - January 28, 2012
Monroe Gallery of Photography February 3 - April 22, 2012
Sunday, December 11, 2011
HELP-PORTRAIT IS A GLOBAL MOVEMENT OF PHOTOGRAPHERS USING THEIR TIME, GEAR AND EXPERTISE TO GIVE BACK TO THOSE IN NEED
The Albuquerque Journal
More than 15 families had their portraits taken Saturday – many for the first time – as part of an international project that gives needy families free professional photos.
The event, organized by Journal photographer Morgan Petroski, drew 10 photographers from the Albuquerque area who spent the day shooting photos of young families. Each family received an 8-by-10-inch picture.
One of those families was Bettielen Kasuse and her children, 6-year-old Elizabeth and 2-year-old Nathaniel. Kasuse dressed up her little boy in a tie and put her daughter’s hair in curls for the special occasion.
“It feels good because we’ll have memories of them when they get older,” she said. “It was awesome.”
Kasuse said this was the first portrait they took as a family.
“I got up at like 5 this morning and got them all dressed up,” she said.
Like the 16 other families who were photographed Saturday, Kasuse received a gift certificate to clothing store Other Mothers for outfits for the special occasion. Local restaurants also donated food for the families while they waited to have their picture taken, processed and printed.
Sandra Contreras was waiting to have her portrait printed while son Xavier, 2, and daughter Julyssa,4, played in the lobby of Cuidando Los Niños, a nonprofit that works to end homelessness.
Cuidando Los Niños partnered with Help-Portrait, which was held worldwide Saturday, to bring together the families and photographers. Contreras said her family had never been photographed professionally. She said it was the first time she’s dressed up her little boy.
“It was fun to dress up,” Contreras said. “It was a neat experience.”
The Contreras family picture was taken by local photographer David Randall, who said it was the first time he’s taken part in Help-Portrait. This was the second year the event took place in Albuquerque.
Randall said he loves photography, volunteering and helping people, and that participating was “a great way to combine those three.”
He described the family’s excitement at the professional setup and photo session.
“When they first come in, they seem to be a little in awe of all the stuff going on,” he said. “Once they see the pictures, I hear little ‘oohs’ and ‘aahs’ and (see) smiles, and that’s a reward in itself.”
It was that sense of excitement Petroski was aiming for when she decided to organize the event. Petroski thought it was time to start giving back.
“I’ve always felt that giving back to the community is the best. After living here for two years, I hadn’t done anything,” she said.
Many of the families who were photographed told her this was their first family portrait.
“To hear something like that,” Petroski said, “it makes it all worth it.”
Exhibition of photographs from the largest fire in New Mexico state history
Flames and Forest
In Los Alamos, inspiration rose from the flames.
The Los Alamos Historical Museum is showing 44 images from 30 photographers capturing the beauty and agony of last summer’s Las Conchas Fire, the largest wildfire in state history.
Opening at 5-7 p.m. Tuesday, the photographs encompass wildlife and mountains, charred trees and helicopters, night skies and daylight licked by flames.
Reflecting part of the town’s history, the show features works by just three professional photographers. The rest are amateurs, museum specialist Judith Stauber said. All are from around northern New Mexico. The photos tell the fire’s story through powerful visual landscapes sharing themes of the battle against smoke and fire as well as the surreal impact of the fire on the quality of light, land, night sky, mountain skyline, wildlife and people.
Area photographers submitted about 60 images.
“We chose at least one from everybody that submitted,” Stauber said. “The quality of the images really surprised me.”
The photographs are primarily landscapes, with few shots of people, including firefighters.
“One of the themes was the very surreal landscapes,” Stauber said. “How the smoke affects the light – the exhibit’s up now and I was looking at it with my mouth open.”
Photographers captured moments of helicopters diving and disgorging from a multiplicity of angles. One produced a haunting scene of a young doe standing amid blackened trees.
Los Alamos resident Ken Hanson shot an aerial image of felled and charred trees resembling the microscopic texture and detail of bacteria or threads of finely woven fabric.
“The texture of that really struck me as a close-up,” Stauber said. “Just the pattern of that charred landscape was striking. You don’t really know what you’re looking at. It’s this beautiful weaving. When you realize what it is, it’s shocking.”
Santa Fean Amanda Jay captured an eerily purple sun at dusk.
“She sent me a note that said, ‘This is not color corrected’,” Stauber said. “There’s a lot of different pigments in the photographs –– like a pink sky, colors you’re not used to seeing.”
Los Alamos’ Salvador Zapien created daylight views of the Pajarito ski lift against a backdrop of blue skies and churning smoke.
“There’s this gorgeous blue sky and the ski lift, and then you see these ominous clouds in the background,” Stauber said.
Corby Wilson, also from Los Alamos, documented the fire fighters dropping a load of red fire retardant into the trees.
The museum organized a photography exhibit for 2000′s Cerro Grande fire, but those photographs focused on what was lost.
“Our archives also collected pictures of every home that was destroyed,” Stauber said. “This fire had a very different effect on the community than the last one. While still frightening, it was much less personally painful. People are moving on more quickly and seem more resigned to living with fire in the mountains and canyons.
“There are some powerful images in the room,” Stauber said. “I just stand there in awe.”
The exhibition will be up until Jan. 5.
If you go
WHAT: “Las Conchas Fire Community Photographs”
WHEN: Opening reception 5-7 p.m. Tuesday, Dec. 13. Through Jan. 5.
WHERE: Los Alamos Historical Museum, 1050 Bathtub Row, Los Alamos
CONTACT: 505-662-6272
Saturday, December 10, 2011
Friday, December 9, 2011
Charlie Rose Interview With John Loengard: "A great photographer has the knack of putting a great picture in front of his camera"
John Loengard appeared on the Charlie Rose program to discuss his new book: "Age Of Silver - Encounters With Great Photographers". Watch the interview here, as Loengard recounts photographing Annie Liebovitz, Henri-Cartier Bresson, and Jacques Henri-Lartigue; and Charlie Rose airs part of an interview with Henri-Cartier Bresson.
View John Loengard's photography here.
Photo District News: John Loengard - Photos of the Day
John Loengard: The Development of Photography
La Lettre de la Photographie: John Loengard: Age of Silver
Thursday, December 8, 2011
John Loengard: Encounters With Great Photographers
William Wegman. All images © John Loengard/Courtesy Monroe Gallery
PDN Photo of the Day displays photographs selected by the editors of Photo District News, a publication for photo professionals.
The photos on this blog come from a variety of sources. All images are published with permission of the photographer or copyright owner, are handouts provided for press use, or are images known to be in the public domain. PDN cannot give you permission to copy or publish these images. Whenever possible, we provide a link to the copyright owner or publisher of the original image.
PDN Photo of the Day, December 8, 2011:
A new exhibition of the work of LIFE magazine staff photographer and editor John Loengard’s black-and-white photographs is currently showing through the end of January at the Monroe Gallery in Santa Fe, New Mexico.
Full post here.
"We firmly believe and we maintain that nothing can be more powerful than the truth”
Reporters Without Borders - Le Monde Prize for Press Freedom
Published on Thursday 8 December 2011
2011 Press Freedom Prize awarded to Syrian cartoonist Ali Ferzat and Burma’s Weekly Eleven News.
With the support of TV5MONDE, Reporters Without Borders and Le Monde are pleased to award the 2011 Press Freedom Prize to two symbols of courage, Syrian newspaper cartoonist Ali Ferzat and the Burmese newspaper Weekly Eleven News . The award ceremony was held today at the Le Monde auditorium in Paris.
“This year we are honouring a courageous journalist who has been the victim of brutal repression by an obsolete government,” Reporters Without Borders secretary-general Jean-François Julliard said. “Ali Ferzat fully deserves this award. His cartoons target the abuses of a desperate regime with its back to the wall and encourage Syrians to demand their rights and to express themselves freely.
“We are also honouring a newspaper that has never bowed to Burma’s censors. Weekly Eleven News has always stood up to the military junta, using extraordinary ingenuity to slip through the censorship net and inform the Burmese public. Its editors and reporters have taken considerable risks and deserve our encouragement. At a time when Burmese political life and society seem to be showing signs of opening up, Weekly Eleven News has more than ever a key role to play.”
Ferzat was chosen as 2011 Journalist of the Year because of the quality of his cartoons and his commitment to defending media freedom. Original and rebellious, his non-conformist attitude and creativity earned him powerful enemies such as Iraq’s Saddam Hussein, who threatened to have him killed after an exhibition of his cartoons in Paris in 1989. He was banned from visiting Jordan, Iraq and Libya for years.
Al-Domari, the satirical newspaper Ferzat launched in 2000, was the first independent publication since the Baath Party takeover. The authorities forced it to close three years later. Since this spring, the street protests and ensuing crackdown have been at the centre of his work. For denouncing the corruption and abuses of Bashar Al-Assad’s rule, he was attacked in August by masked gunmen, who broke his hands as a warning.
“I would have liked to have been with you this evening to take part in this beautiful event,” Ferzat said in a letter read out by the French cartoonist Plantu. “I dedicate this award to the martyrs, to those who have been injured and to those who struggle for freedom. May thanks be given to all those who have turned the Arab Spring into a victory over darkness and repression.”
Presenting the 2011 Media of the Year prize to Weekly Eleven News, the writer and journalist Jean Rolin, winner of the Albert Londres Prize in 1988, paid tribute to Reporters Without Borders’ local correspondents and to all journalists working on the ground in difficult parts of the world.
Burma is one of the world’s most repressive countries for the media, and the staff at Weekly Eleven News often risk prison by daring to run stories on subjects that the authorities regard as sensitive. In August, it paid a high price for defying government orders not to cover the flooding in the northern city of Mandalay. Several of its journalists were arrested and it was forbidden to publish for several weeks.
“At Weekly Eleven News, we firmly believe and we maintain that nothing can be more powerful than the truth,” the newspaper’s spokesman said. “We are honoured to receive this award, but we are also very sad when we think of all the Burmese journalists who are still in prison. We must never forget the sacrifices that some have made so that change come to Burma.”
The American photojournalist Stanley Greene, founder of Noor Agency was the guest of honour this year. He paid tribute to his fellow photographers who died this year, especially Tim Hetherington, Chris Hondros and Lucas Dolega.
The Reporters Without Borders Prize has been awarded every year since 1992 to a journalist and a news media in different parts of the world that have made a significant contribution to the defence and promotion of press freedom. The prize winners are selected by an international jury of journalists and human rights activists.
Le Monde decided to become a partner in the prize this year. The newspaper’s publisher, Erik Izraelewicz, explains : “From Sidi Bouzid to Sanaa, from Rangoon to Benghazi, from Damascus to Cairo, there has been no shortage of major developments in 2011. The international media have covered them without forgetting that local journalists, often at risk to their lives, have for years been combating the constant violations of media freedom in these places. For 20 years, the Reporters Without Borders Prize for Press Freedom has been reminding the public that their struggle is also our struggle. Le Monde is pleased to join Reporters Without Borders in this undertaking.”
Press Freedom Prize received the support of TV5MONDE. Marie-Christine Saragosse, director general, added: “This is a logical involvement for a French-language TV station whose universal values are transmitted every day in the 200 countries where we are present. TV5MONDE has decided to participate in this prize and thereby join with those who constantly strive to bear witness, often at the cost of their freedom or their lives, to a world in rebellion and to the realities of war.”
Wednesday, December 7, 2011
The Post, NYT and WSJ show same scene of Kabul carnage via different photos
Intersting discussion amongst photoeditors, via The Washington Post
"The images that came out of the suicide bombing of a Shiite mosque in Kabul on Tuesday were graphic, showing dozens of people killed. One scene in particular stood out from the rest. At the center a woman in green was standing, surrounded by the injured and dead, including several children and a baby.
We spoke to Post visuals editor David Griffin, director of photography Michel Ducille, and deputy director of photography Sonya Doctorian about the Post’s photo choices, as well as NYT photo editor Michele McNally and deputy photo editor Meaghan Looram, and Wall Street Journal director of photography Jack Van Antwerp about their choices"
Full post here.
See also: "Amid a Horrific Scene, Tears": Massoud Hossaini recounts making Tuesday's photos of bombing in Kabul, Afghanistan
"The images that came out of the suicide bombing of a Shiite mosque in Kabul on Tuesday were graphic, showing dozens of people killed. One scene in particular stood out from the rest. At the center a woman in green was standing, surrounded by the injured and dead, including several children and a baby.
We spoke to Post visuals editor David Griffin, director of photography Michel Ducille, and deputy director of photography Sonya Doctorian about the Post’s photo choices, as well as NYT photo editor Michele McNally and deputy photo editor Meaghan Looram, and Wall Street Journal director of photography Jack Van Antwerp about their choices"
Full post here.
See also: "Amid a Horrific Scene, Tears": Massoud Hossaini recounts making Tuesday's photos of bombing in Kabul, Afghanistan
The most unforgettable images of the year / Best photographs of 2011
UPDATED Dec. 30, 2011
"2011 was a year of global tumult, marked by widespread social and political uprisings, economic crises, and a great deal more. We saw the fall of multiple dictators, welcomed a new country (South Sudan), witnessed our planet's population grow to 7 billion, and watched in horror as Japan was struck by a devastating earthquake, a tsunami, and a nuclear disaster. From the Arab Spring to Los Indignados to Occupy Wall Street, citizens around the world took to the streets in massive numbers, protesting against governments and financial institutions, risking arrest, injury, and in some cases their lives." Via The Atlantic
National Post: 25 best Occupy photos of 2011
The White House: 2011 Year in Photos by Pete Souza
NOOR: 2011 Year in Review
Telegraph: Pictures of the year 2011: weird news photos
Washington Post: Iconic and Memorable Images From 2011
The Guardian: Cameraphones capture the images of the year – in pictures
LA Times Framework: The Year in Pictures
Via Bag News Notes: The Best 2011 Photos We Never Saw – Reuters Edition
The Frame: Looking Back at Images From 2011
Review of the year 2011: pictures of Libya and Egypt by Telegraph photographers
Photos: 2011 The Denver Post Year’s Best Photos
BBC News Pictures of the Year 2011
The Guardian: Pictures of 2011
The Guardian: Favourite Photographs of the Year 2011
Wall Street Journal: Photos of the Year 2011
AP Video Sights and Sounds: Looking Back at 2011
Yahoo: Top Viral Photos of 2011
The Guardian: iPhone photos of 2011 - in pictures
US News and World Report: Best News Photos of 2011
Globe and Mail: Pictures of the year: The best photos from 2011
Globe and Mail Photojournalists pick their favorite images of 2011
Bloomberg: 2011: A Year of Firsts Remembered
The Telgraph: Pictures of the year 2011: UK news stories
Best of Washington Post Photojournalists 2011
New York Daily News Top 100 Photos from 2011: A Year In Review
The New York Times Lens : New York The Year in Pictures
New York Times Sunday Review: 2011 Year in Pictures Arab Spring
New York Times Sunday Review: 2011 The Year in Pictures
TIME’s Best Photojournalism of 2011
TIME Looks Back at The Best Photos… of Photos from 2011
Getty Images: Year In Focus: The Images That Defined 2011
2011 Getty Best News Photos Of The Year from Around The World
NPR Picture Show: 2011 Replayed in Iconic Photographs
The Big Picture: 50 Best Photos from The Natural World
The Big Picture: The Year in Pictures: Part I
Part 2
Part 3
Unicef photo of the year 2011
Reportage Year in Review 2011
Via BBC: The story behind the news pictures of 2011
Part 1: A year in the life of a press photographer: Leon Neal
Part 2: Matt Dunham looks back at his year covering the biggest news
stories for the Associated Press
Wall Street Journal: Photos of the year 2011 (10 catagories)
Wall Street Journal: New York Photos of the Year 2011
MSNBC The Year in Pictures 2011
Chicago Tribune Photojournalist Scott Strazzante - 2011 best news photos
TIME Picks the Most Surprising Photos of 2011
Pete Muller: TIME Picks the Best Photographer on the Wires
The Guardian UK: The best photography of 2011: Sean O'Hagan's choice
The Atlantic 2011: The Year in Photos (Part One)
Part Two
Part Three
TIME's Top 10 Photos of 2011
TIME Picks the Best Viral Photos of 2011
Buzzfeed: The 45 Most Powerful Images Of 2011
Best News Pictures of 2011: Your Picks From Nat Geo News
Reuters: Best Photos of the Year 2011
UPI: 2011 News Photos of the Year
International Business News Year 2011: Best Photographs From Around the World
LIFE: 2011 Pictures of the Year
David Schonauer's Annual World Tour Part 1
Part 2
Vanity Fair’s Year in Photos, 2011
Obama, Euro Crisis, Buffett, Tsunami, NYC Demo: Bloomberg Best Business and Finance Photos 2011
Conscientious: My favourite photobooks this year
Bookmark this page to see additions as they are published from around the world.
Tuesday, December 6, 2011
"To flip through the pages of this handsome book inevitably elicits a wave of nostalgia, a desire to roll back the years to a time when print was king and a dime could buy this singular curated version of the world"
Sunday Book Review
"Now comes “75 Years: The Very Best of Life,” a coffee-table behemoth weighing nearly seven pounds, featuring unforgettable photographs (Alfred Eisenstaedt’s famous kiss, “V-J Day, Times Square, New York City, 1945”) as well as never-before-published photos from the archives."
Read full article here.
75 YEARS
The Very Best of Life
Illustrated. 224 pp. Life Books. $36.95
"Nothing makes a better case for the First Amendment than good video of a police officer behaving badly"
Via American Journalism Review
Arrested for Doing Their Jobs
The rising tension between news photographers and law enforcement officials. Mon., December 5, 2011Saturday, December 3, 2011
LONE PROTEST
Mohammed Mirza, via Yfrog
As the security forces in Bahrain fired tear gas at protesters on Saturday, Zainab Alkhawaja, an activist and blogger, blocked a line of police vehicles.
Friday, December 2, 2011
LIFE photographers: "He or she needs to bring empathy, insight, patience and frequently courage"
America in Pictures: The Story of Life Magazine, BBC Four
How the camera captured America's golden age
Via The Arts Desk
Friday, 02 December 2011
Before the internet and the Kindle were invented, generations of Americans saw their lives refracted through the pages of Life magazine. In particular, through its photography, since writers at Life were largely relegated to supplying glorified picture captions. They were also allowed to carry the photographers' equipment.
Obviously the idea of being an object of reverence appeals to photographers. Portrait and fashion snapper Rankin has long admired the work of the great Life lenspersons, and in this film he reviewed their accomplishments and tracked down some of the magazine's fabled survivors. Not that Rankin is the world's greatest TV presenter, frankly. His voice is the sort of nondescript Home Counties drone that American satirists love to parody. As an inquisitor, he looked a bit blank when he found himself face to face with the likes of Burk Uzzle, now retired to small-town North Carolina after a vivid career in which one of many highlights was being assigned to document Hugh Hefner and his voluptuous Playmates at Hef's mansion.
Luckily, though, most of his subjects were rather awesome characters who had no difficulty in filling the screen unaided (Life photographer Bill Eppridge, pictured right). Indeed, this seemed to be rather the point - a photographer isn't, or shouldn't be, just some geek who knows how to work a camera and programme an array of electronic flashguns. He or she needs to bring empathy, insight, patience and frequently courage to an assignment if they're going to bring back anything that will resonate with readers.
Amid a mostly male roll call, Margaret Bourke-White inevitably stood out, not only because she was a fabulous photographer, but also for the way she candidly used her sexuality to gain maximum professional advantage. A highly successful tactic was bedding American generals in order to get priceless wartime scoops. A rival lensman was chastised by Life HQ because she was beating him to the best stories. He cabled back: "Bourke-White has a piece of equipment that I don't have."
But there were many other stars in the dazzling Life firmament. Alfred Eisenstaedt (pictured left with Marilyn Monroe) was the magazine's grand eminence, and a pioneer of the "candid" style in which he used a Rolleiflex camera held unobtrusively at waist level. W Eugene Smith did pioneering work in the photo-essay genre, gaining extraordinarily intimate access to his subjects in stories like "Career Girl" or "Country Doctor". Rankin noted that "Smith was a tortured genius, Life's Van Gogh." John Loengard shot Marilyn Monroe, The Beatles and the Vietnam War.
Life became so singular and influential during the mid-20th century, when 100 million readers would see it every week, that the question inevitably arose of to what extent the magazine was making the news rather than merely recording it. John Shearer's assignments covering the Civil Rights protests in the 1960s became a part of the fabric of social change, as did his astonishing work during the 1971 Attica prison riot. Shearer spent four days inside the jail as a ferocious miniature war raged, leaving 41 men dead.
Life took a dim view of the Vietnam conflict and ignored demands to tone down its frequently shattering battlefield photographs. British photographer Larry Burrows (seen in clips from a 1969 Omnibus film) talked about his concerns that he was exploiting wartime deaths and suffering, but felt his pictures were justified if they "contribute to the understanding of what others were going through". He was killed in Laos in 1971 (Larry Burrows, pictured right).
Rankin reckoned that it was the arrival of celebrity culture in the 1970s which pulled the carpet out from underneath Life, which published its last issue in December 1972. Celebs were going to rule, and the intimate, deeply researched work that Life had specialised in would become outmoded. Glaswegian snapper Harry Benson, a transplanted Daily Express veteran, was in at the death of Life, and famously became the man who gained access to mad chess genius Bobby Fischer as he played his epic tournament against Boris Spassky in Iceland. The recent documentary Bobby Fischer Against the World gave the impression that Benson had become friendly with Fischer, but the photographer didn't see it that way.
"Everyone knew he was a piece of shit, he was terrible!" he declared. "But it was worth fighting for, to get as close as you can and then get out." He never, ever wanted to become friends with any of his subjects, he added. Photography was apparently no mere popularity contest.
How the camera captured America's golden age
Via The Arts Desk
Friday, 02 December 2011
Before the internet and the Kindle were invented, generations of Americans saw their lives refracted through the pages of Life magazine. In particular, through its photography, since writers at Life were largely relegated to supplying glorified picture captions. They were also allowed to carry the photographers' equipment.
Obviously the idea of being an object of reverence appeals to photographers. Portrait and fashion snapper Rankin has long admired the work of the great Life lenspersons, and in this film he reviewed their accomplishments and tracked down some of the magazine's fabled survivors. Not that Rankin is the world's greatest TV presenter, frankly. His voice is the sort of nondescript Home Counties drone that American satirists love to parody. As an inquisitor, he looked a bit blank when he found himself face to face with the likes of Burk Uzzle, now retired to small-town North Carolina after a vivid career in which one of many highlights was being assigned to document Hugh Hefner and his voluptuous Playmates at Hef's mansion.
Luckily, though, most of his subjects were rather awesome characters who had no difficulty in filling the screen unaided (Life photographer Bill Eppridge, pictured right). Indeed, this seemed to be rather the point - a photographer isn't, or shouldn't be, just some geek who knows how to work a camera and programme an array of electronic flashguns. He or she needs to bring empathy, insight, patience and frequently courage to an assignment if they're going to bring back anything that will resonate with readers.Amid a mostly male roll call, Margaret Bourke-White inevitably stood out, not only because she was a fabulous photographer, but also for the way she candidly used her sexuality to gain maximum professional advantage. A highly successful tactic was bedding American generals in order to get priceless wartime scoops. A rival lensman was chastised by Life HQ because she was beating him to the best stories. He cabled back: "Bourke-White has a piece of equipment that I don't have."
But there were many other stars in the dazzling Life firmament. Alfred Eisenstaedt (pictured left with Marilyn Monroe) was the magazine's grand eminence, and a pioneer of the "candid" style in which he used a Rolleiflex camera held unobtrusively at waist level. W Eugene Smith did pioneering work in the photo-essay genre, gaining extraordinarily intimate access to his subjects in stories like "Career Girl" or "Country Doctor". Rankin noted that "Smith was a tortured genius, Life's Van Gogh." John Loengard shot Marilyn Monroe, The Beatles and the Vietnam War.Life became so singular and influential during the mid-20th century, when 100 million readers would see it every week, that the question inevitably arose of to what extent the magazine was making the news rather than merely recording it. John Shearer's assignments covering the Civil Rights protests in the 1960s became a part of the fabric of social change, as did his astonishing work during the 1971 Attica prison riot. Shearer spent four days inside the jail as a ferocious miniature war raged, leaving 41 men dead.
Life took a dim view of the Vietnam conflict and ignored demands to tone down its frequently shattering battlefield photographs. British photographer Larry Burrows (seen in clips from a 1969 Omnibus film) talked about his concerns that he was exploiting wartime deaths and suffering, but felt his pictures were justified if they "contribute to the understanding of what others were going through". He was killed in Laos in 1971 (Larry Burrows, pictured right).Rankin reckoned that it was the arrival of celebrity culture in the 1970s which pulled the carpet out from underneath Life, which published its last issue in December 1972. Celebs were going to rule, and the intimate, deeply researched work that Life had specialised in would become outmoded. Glaswegian snapper Harry Benson, a transplanted Daily Express veteran, was in at the death of Life, and famously became the man who gained access to mad chess genius Bobby Fischer as he played his epic tournament against Boris Spassky in Iceland. The recent documentary Bobby Fischer Against the World gave the impression that Benson had become friendly with Fischer, but the photographer didn't see it that way.
"Everyone knew he was a piece of shit, he was terrible!" he declared. "But it was worth fighting for, to get as close as you can and then get out." He never, ever wanted to become friends with any of his subjects, he added. Photography was apparently no mere popularity contest.