In the Hallowed Place Where There’s Only Darkness: Photography by Nina Berman, Essay by Ellen Schrecker

 Via VQR

July 10, 2025

Columbia University by Nina Berman

"For more than fifty years, I have been studying and writing about political repression and higher education, with a special emphasis on McCarthyism, long considered by historians to be the most serious assault on academic freedom since the emergence of the modern university. But, as Nina Berman’s photographs of Columbia University show, what has been happening to the American academy these days is incommensurably worse. Berman, who teaches in the journalism school at Columbia, has spent decades documenting protests and the like, and naturally did so again in 2024, when pro-Palestinian demonstrations unfolded on the campus where she teaches. In the year since, she has continued to photograph with an almost diaristic discipline, and has amassed a visual narrative of Columbia’s painful transformation. In these haunting images of a locked-down campus bristling with surveillance cameras and security guards, we see autocracy revealed in the form of a restive yet silent space under control. Because Columbia’s leaders have capitulated to the Trump administration, a once-proud citadel of higher learning and independent thought is losing its credibility." --click for full article 

Related: Podcast - Nina Berman: A Lens on Consequence

HELP THE EDDIE ADAMS WORKSHOP

Via RocketHub

The Eddie Adams Workshop is an intense, tuition-free photography workshop open annually to 100 students from around the world, led by the industry's top professionals who volunteer their time for the 4-day experience. Eddie Adams, the founder and namesake, created this first and only tuition-free photo workshop in 1988. Since then, through the help of corporate sponsorship and private donations, Eddie, his wife, Alyssa, and their friends have created a space for mentorship, motivation, and an irreplaceable family of photographers. We would like to thank our community for its assistance through donations and spreading the word to others for their support of our workshop.  We would also like to thank our partners who continue to sponsor the workshop, including our main sponsor Nikon, to help keep Eddie’s vision alive and strong.

Why keep this workshop alive and kicking? Well, just ask a few recent students:

"The Eddie Adams Workshop is the kind of place where, among other things, a senior photo editor at National Geographic gives you a lift to your assignment, influential photographers go from heroes to peers through the course of a conversation, an industry professional moonlights as your photo assistant, an award winning photographer serves you mashed potatoes for lunch, and you meet people who will become friends for life. The Eddie Adams Workshop was a lightning bolt of inspiration and I give it credit for triggering a metamorphosis that led me to where I am now." - Tamir Kalifa, Workshop 24

"Besides taking pictures, the Eddie Adams Workshop was the best thing I have done as a photographer." - Egill Bjarnason, Workshop 27

At the workshop, each student is part of a 10-person team that is sent out on assignment. In addition to working on and completing their assignment in four days' time, students attend portfolio reviews and discussions with world renowned photographers and editors such as James Damon Winter, Preston Gannaway, John Moore, Vincent Laforet, Andrees Latif, Rodrigo And, Nancy Andrews, James Balog, Al Bello, Jodi Cobb, Erika Larsen, Elizabeth Krist, Ami Vitale, Carolyn Cole, David Guttenfelder, Todd Heisler, Tyler Hicks, Lynn Johnson, David Hume Kennerly, Santiago Lyon, James Nachtwey, Eugene Richards, Stephanie Sinclair, John H White, Dan Winters, MaryAnne Golon, Jamie Wellford, Michele McNally, Gordon Parks, Alfred Eisenstaedt, Joe Rosenthal, Cornell Capa, Mary Ellen Mark, Chris Hondros, Platon, Bill Eppridge, Maggie Steber, Nick Ut and many more.

WORKSHOP RECOGNITION:

• 2014 PMDA Visionary Award Recipient, Eddie Adams Workshop (PhotoImaging Manufacturers and Distributors Association)
• 2010 Lucie Awards Visionary Award Recipient, Eddie Adams Workshop

RECENT PRESS:
TIME
The NY Times 
The Chicago Tribune
National Geographic

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