What the Photoshop Panic Should Have Taught Us About AI

 Via The Nation

...In that span of time, we have seen a technological revolution: the rise of smartphones, social media platforms, self-driving cars, drones, VR headsets, 3D printers, hoverboards (but not the kind we all actually wanted), and more. But what, shockingly, hasn’t seemed to change, is our visual literacy. Just as in 2004, the prospective voting public in 2024 was still duped by a picture roaming around the Web. How come we didn’t learn our lesson?... - full article here

Here and Now: Art heals: Through The Jingle Dress Project, Navajo artist honors missing and murdered women

 Via WBUR

September 16, 2025

Eugene Tapahe: Strength In Unity, Tetons National Park, the native land of the Shoshone, Bannock, Gros Ventre, and Nez Perce People, 2021

Listen here

Navajo artist and photographer Eugene Tapahe had a dream during the COVID-19 pandemic of women dancing in Yellowstone National Park in jingle dresses, traditional pow wow regalia. From that dream, he started The Jingle Dress Project, photographs of his daughters and two of their friends in various settings, as a gesture of healing and a way to bring attention to the issue of missing and murdered Indigenous women.

The exhibit is at the Monroe Gallery in Sante Fe, New Mexico, through September 28. Host Peter O'Dowd speaks with Tapahe and his daughter Dion Tapahe, who appears in the photographs.

This is a limited-edition image from the Art Heals: The Jingle Dress Project photo series. This image was captured at the Salt Flats in Utah, native land of the Goshute people. (Courtesy of Eugene Tapahe)

Trump Orders National Park to Remove Famed Photograph of Formerly Enslaved Man

 Via ArtNews

September 16, 2025

The Scourged Back, 1863

Photo Smith Collection/Gado/Getty Images

Following a threatened crackdown on what he his administration called “corrosive ideology” in American museums, Donald Trump has ordered a national park to remove a famous photograph of a formerly enslaved man baring his scarred back.

The Washington Post, which first reported the news on Monday night, did not specify which park would be impacted by the removal of the photograph and cited anonymous sources. But the article said it was one of “multiple” parks impacted by the orders, which target “signs and exhibits related to slavery at multiple national parks,” per the article.

Taken in 1863, the photograph shows a man who may have been named Peter who escaped a plantation in Louisiana and was subsequently examined by doctors who discovered the web of scars on his back that resulted from repeated, brutal whipping. The image was reprinted widely at the time as proof of the horrors of enslavement that some Americans could not personally witness firsthand. Informally, the picture is known as The Scourged Back.

It remains a key image of its era. Artist Arthur Jafa, for example, has included versions of it in recent installations. The National Portrait Gallery, the National Museum of African American History and Culture, the National Gallery of Art, and many other museum own prints of it.

According to the Washington Post, Trump’s order called for the removal of information and signage at the Harpers Ferry National Historic Park in West Virginia. The President’s House Site in Philadelphia may also be impacted, staffers told the Post.

In March, in an executive order that targeted Smithsonian-run museums, Trump singled out Independence National Historical Park, whose displays, he claimed, put forward the notion that “America is purportedly racist.”

A Parks Service spokesperson confirmed to the Post that exhibits under the organization’s aegis were under review, saying, “Interpretive materials that disproportionately emphasize negative aspects of U.S. history or historical figures, without acknowledging broader context or national progress, can unintentionally distort understanding rather than enrich it.”

It is not the first time Trump’s administration has gone after displays related to enslavement. In August, Trump claimed that the Smithsonian’s museums emphasize “how bad Slavery was,” a further sign that they were “OUT OF CONTROL.”

Federal judge hands press groups wins in lawsuits against LAPD, DHS: "The First Amendment demands better”

Via USA Today

September 15, 2025 

A federal judge handed press and civil liberties groups wins in two separate cases against the Los Angeles Police Department and Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem over the treatment of journalists covering immigration raid protests.

U.S. District Judge Hernan D. Vera's preliminary injunctions bar, among other actions, the police department from arresting journalists for failing to disperse or otherwise interfering with journalists' ability to cover Los Angeles protests. The Department of Homeland Security's officers are also barred from "dispersing, threatening or assaulting" journalists who haven't "committed a crime unrelated to failing to obey a dispersal order." --click to read full article

"There's an old line in policing: We can do this the easy way, or we can do this the hard way,” Adam Rose, press rights chair of the Los Angeles Press Club, said in a news release following the rulings. “Press organizations have been trying to help LAPD for years take the easy way, just asking them to train officers and discipline offenders. They wouldn't stop resisting. LAPD failed to police themselves. Now a judge is doing it for them."

Panel Discussion With Nina Berman: The Personal and Collaborative: Women Photographers on Relationship–Focused Modes of Representation

 Via Ballarat International Foto Biennale

September 9, 2025

Panel Discussion: The Personal and Collaborative: Women Photographers on Relationship–Focused Modes of Representation

Nina Berman and Raphaella Rosella in conversation with Fiona Morris and Gemma Turnbull

Online Event - Book here

Contemporary documentary photographers and photomedia artists seek to address issues of representation and testimony by utilising new storytelling approaches, including nonlinear narratives, repurposing archival footage and collaborative practices. There has been a move from photographers recording ‘the other’ to working with non-artist individuals to share their own lived experiences. This turn towards the personal and collaborative has been led by women, rejecting the selective history which has been represented by the dominantly white, male, heteronormative gaze of the documentary mode. The work still questions and highlights social issues, including gender, representation and displacement, but from personal perspectives.

This online panel exploring the ethics, benefits and challenges of a collaborative documentary approach will focus on two women photographers: American documentary photographer Nina Berman’s whose work An Autobiography of Miss Wish (2017) is the product of a 25–year exchange between her and friend and collaborator Kimberly Stevens and Australian artist Raphaela Rosella who has spent decades co-creating photo-based projects alongside significant women in her life––low socio-economic communities with limited access to adequate support and opportunities. It will be led by Dr Gemma Turnbull and Fiona Morris, both Australian photographers and academics.

Participants will be emailed a Zoom link prior to the panel.

Please note: parental guidance may be needed for participants under the age of 18.

About the Panel

Nina Berman is a documentary photographer, filmmaker, journalist and educator.  Her work explores American politics, militarism, environmental issues and post violence trauma.  She is the author of Purple Hearts – Back from Iraq, (Trolley, 2004) portraits and interviews with wounded American veterans, Homeland, (Trolley, 2008) an examination of the militarization of American life post September 11, and An autobiography of Miss Wish (Kehrer, 2017) a story told with a survivor of sexual violence which was shortlisted for both the Aperture and Arles book prizes. Her work has been exhibited at more than 100 international venues from the Whitney Museum Biennial to the concrete security walls at the Za’atari refugee camp. Public collections include the Smithsonian National Museum of American History, the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, the Museum of the City of New York, the Harvard Art Museums and the Bibliothèque nationale de France among others. She has participated in workshops around the world for young photographers and writes frequently on photojournalism for the Columbia Journalism Review. She is a professor at Columbia University’s Graduate School of Journalism in New York City.

Fiona Morris is an Associate Lecturer in Visual Arts and Photography at the University of Wollongong where she is also a PhD candidate. Her photographic practice and research explore representation and personal narratives in the expanding field of documentary photography. With over 15 years of experience, Fiona has worked extensively across media and non-governmental organisations, including as a photographer for Fairfax Media, Getty Images, Greenpeace Australia, and Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF). Her work has been exhibited in galleries and festivals both nationally and internationally, with shows in the United States, France, Lithuania, and Hong Kong.

Raphaela (Rosie) Rosella is an Italian Australian artist from Nimbin – an over-policed, low socio-economic community in New South Wales. For over fifteen years, she has worked at the intersection of socially engaged art and documentary practice, co-creating lens-based works alongside her sisters, friends, and family – women directly impacted by the Prison Industrial Complex (PIC). Together, they have built a co-created archive spanning photography, moving image, audio, and the collection of ephemera and state-issued documents, to resist bureaucratic representations of their lived experiences. Beyond the gallery, their work plays a critical role in legal and personal spaces – appearing in family albums, memorials, custody disputes, and courtrooms. It has supported successful bail and parole applications and contributed to reduced custodial sentences. Rosella holds a PhD from RMIT’s School of Art (2025). From an abolition feminist standpoint, her research offers a relational framework for decarcerating archives within long-form and collaborative documentary photography projects.

Gemma Turnbull is an Australian artist, researcher, and educator whose work exposes and challenges the historical weaponisation of photography against marginalised communities. She positions collaborative practice as a reparative approach to documentary storytelling, focusing on amplifying images made by and with people typically excluded from mainstream art spaces.

George Eastman Museum acquires prints by Mark Peterson and Bing Guan

 September 8, 2025

The George Eastman Museum has acquired prints by Mark Peterson and Bing Guan for their permanent collection.

Mark Peterson: Waiting for election results at a Trump watch party at the Palm Beach Convention Center, November, 2024

Bing Guan: New York Police officers in riot gear enter Hamilton Hall at Columbia University, New York, April 30, 2024

Mark Peterson is a photographer based in New York City. His work has been published in the New York Times Magazine, New York Magazine, The New Yorker, Time, Fortune, National Geographic, Geo Magazine and other national and international publications. In 2018 he was awarded the W. Eugene Smith grant for his work on White Nationalism. This photograph was published in The New York Times and selected as one of the "photos that defined 2024."

Bing Guan 管秉宸  is a Chinese American  photographer and journalist. He is based between New York City and Southern California. He is currently an adjunct professor of photography at the Columbia Graduate School of Journalism. Bing is a regular contributor to Reuters, Bloomberg, and The New York Times. 

The George Eastman Museum is located in Rochester, New York, on the estate of George Eastman, the pioneer of popular photography and motion picture film. Founded in 1947 as an independent nonprofit institution, it is the world’s oldest photography museum and one of the oldest film archives. The museum holds unparalleled collections—encompassing several million objects—in the fields of photography, cinema, and photographic and cinematographic technology, and photographically illustrated books. The institution is also a longtime leader in film preservation and photographic conservation.

"Throughout its history, our institution has collected and exhibited photographs and films that address timely and timeless topics."

In an era dominated by misinformation and digital manipulation, photojournalism plays a vital role in restoring trust and authenticity in media. Verified images serve as undeniable evidence of events, countering false narratives and providing clarity in a world overwhelmed by conflicting information. This power makes photojournalism an indispensable tool in the fight against fake news.

Watch Refractions: A Conversation with Sidney S. Monroe and Michelle A. Monroe

 Via B&H Photo Refractions

September 4, 2025

About Stephen Mallon

Stephen Mallon is a photographer and filmmaker who specializes in the industrial-scale creations of mankind at unusual moments of their life cycles. 

Mallon’s work blurs the line between documentary and fine art, revealing the industrial landscape to be unnatural, desolate and functional yet simultaneously also human, surprising and inspiring. It has been featured in publications and by broadcasters including Smithsonian Magazine, The New York Times, National Geographic, NBC, The Wall Street Journal, The Daily Mail, MSNBC, PBS, GQ, CBS, the London Times and Vanity Fair. Mallon has exhibited in cities including Miami, Los Angeles, Philadelphia, St. Louis and New York, as well as in England and Italy. 

Stephen’s project following the MTA’a artificial reef project where over 2000 subway cars were placed in the Atlantic was shown at The New York Transit Museum’s Grand Central Terminal Gallery. Over 60,000 people experienced the exhibition and was featured by Gothamist, Artnet, Yahoo, Fox News, and numerous other outlets. 

As David Schonauer wrote in Pro Photo Daily, “Mallon’s word harkens back to the heroic industrial landscapes of Margaret Bourke-White and Charles Sheeler, who glorified American steel and found art in its industrial muscle and smoke during the Great Depression.” He has also been compared to photographers including Edward Burtynsky, Thomas Struth and Chris Jordan. 

Mallon served as a board member of the New York chapter of the American Society of Media Photographers from 2002 until 2020 and served as president from 2006 to 2009. He is represented by Front Room Gallery in New York.

Eugene Tapahe Art Heals: The Jingle Dress Project Exhibit Extended

 

Drawing thousands of attendees and counting, the important exhibition by artist Eugene Tapahe titled Art Heals: The Jingle Dress Project has been extended through September 28, 2025. 

Word of mouth and the recent article in Pasatiempo: Standing On Ceremony. has sparked tremendous enthusiasm, with many guests making repeated visits and an overwhelming number of requests to extend the exhibit for school groups and those who have not yet seen the exhibit.

The public response to the exhibition has been overwhelming, with viewers visibly moved by the powerful photographs that have raised awareness of many Native American issues, such as land acknowledgment, women’s rights, and, most importantly, the epidemic of Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women (MMIW). 

View the exhibit on-line here.

Read the article in Hot Mirror: "Eugene Tapahe's photographs from his Art Heals project commanded attention—not merely for their striking colors juxtaposed against nature's beauty, but for the profound story they tell."