"Every photograph is a product of the photographer’s experiences in their entire life"

In case you missed this important interview with photojournalist Ben Lowy by Jonathan Blaustein on A Photo Editor, we have posted the links below. A must read.


I caught up with Ben Lowy in August. He’s a busy man, juggling family and personal projects with a super-charged career. In the last year alone, he was in Libya, on Jon Stewart, won the photojournalist of the year award from the ICP, and had his book, “Iraq Perspectives” published by the Center for Documentary Studies at Duke.



Ben Lowy Interview – Part 1

"I’m an open book. I’ve got nothing to hide. I was pretty fucked up by things that happened in 2007. And I felt really guilty about surviving."

Ben Lowy Interview – Part 2


"Photography, regardless if it’s photojournalism, or some sort of esoteric contemporary art, you’re putting a bit of your soul in it. That soul is what makes you take a picture at that instant. It’s what makes you compose, to wait for things to happen. For serendipity.

Every photograph is a product of the photographer’s experiences in their entire life. It’s everything that comes together that makes them want to take that picture at that instant. Otherwise, we would all be robots."


Via APhotoEditor

VOTE

Steve Schapiro: "Vote", Selma March,1965

 

 

 

 If you have any trouble voting, if anyone turns you away, call 1-866-MYVOTE1

 

Know Your Voting Rights: State-by-State Voter Information 

 

Your Right to Record at the Voting Booth

LIVE STREAM! WAR/PHOTOGRAPHY: Images of Armed Conflict and Its Aftermath

Dmitri Baltermants, Russian, born Poland, 1912–1990, Attack—Eastern Front WWII, 1941, gelatin silver print, printed 1960, the MFAH, gift of Michael Poulos in honor of Mary Kay Poulos at “One Great Night in November, 1997,” 97.463. © Russian Photo Association, Razumberg Emil Anasovich 

The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston (MFAH) is pleased to announce that TWO public programs connected to the highly-anticipated exhibition WAR/PHOTOGRAPHY: Images of Armed Conflict and Its Aftermath will be available for free online as a live stream which will provide a close-up view of the speakers and includes their slide presentations. Additionally, as the live stream platform is interactive, you may pose questions which may find their way into the panel discussions!

 

REGISTRATION IS FREE. To register in advance, click HERE
 

Friday, Nov 9, 2012 at 6 p.m. 

An overview of the exhibition presented by Anne Wilkes Tucker, Gus and Lyndall Wortham Curator of Photography, MFAH.

Saturday, Nov 10, 2012 at 1 to 5 p.m.

Six photographers lead three panel discussions moderated by exhibition co-curators: Anne Wilkes Tucker, Will Michels, and Natalie Zelt. 

1. War-Related Photography for Newspapers vs. Magazines featuring Carolyn Cole and Jonathan Torgovnik 

2. Postwar Long-term Humanitarian Projects featuring Jim Goldberg and Susan Meiselas 

3. Combat Photography featuring Don McCullin and James Nachtwey

The Symposium on Saturday will be a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to hear from six  distinguished photographers about their profession and projects, as this is a unique subset of photographers who enter combat zones, who document assassinations and attempted genocides, who use their camera lenses to capture both inhumane cruelty and humanitarian compassion.

The Ruth K. Shartle Symposium is made possible by generous funding from The Brown Foundation, Inc.

Museum to open balcony where U.S. civil rights leader Martin Luther King was shot

Dr. Martin Luther King assassination, Memphis,Tenn., April 4, 1968; Photograph by Joseph Louw

WASHINGTON (AFP).- The motel balcony in Memphis, Tennessee where US civil rights leader Martin Luther King, Jr. was assassinated on April 4, 1968 is being opened to the public, a spokeswoman said Friday.

It is the first time that visitors to the erstwhile Lorraine Motel, now the National Civil Rights Museum, will be able to stand on the very spot outside Room 306 where King was gunned down by sniper James Earl Ray.

Connie Dyson, the museum's communications coordinator, said the upper-floor balcony will be open from November 19 as the historic landmark in downtown Memphis undergoes a $27 million facelift due to finish in early 2014.

"It is our most unique artifact, the balcony," Dyson told AFP by telephone.

"But with the entire Lorraine building being closed during renovations, we wanted to offer the public an access to the balcony and the room where Dr King stayed, since that was one of the highlights of the (pre-renovation) tour."

With its slightly disheveled bed, black dial-up telephone and unfinished cups of coffee, Room 306 has been left untouched since the evening when King, 39, was fatally shot at the height of the civil rights movement.

"Nobody's ever stayed in the room (since King's death). It's been a shrine ever since," Dyson said.

Visitors who until now could peer into Room 306 via a sealed glass window along the interior hallway will, during the renovations, "get a chance to peek... from the outside," Dyson added.

Ray, a white drifter with a criminal record, was convicted of shooting King with a rifle from a building across the street from the Lorraine. Sentenced to 99 years in prison, he died in April 1998 at the age of 70.

In October 2011 King became the first African American to be honored with a monument along the National Mall in Washington, engraved with words from his stirring 1963 "I Have a Dream" speech for racial equality.

 

 

 

Picture dated April 4, 1998 shows former Memphis sanitation workers Eugene Brown (L), James Jones (C), and Lafayette Shields (R) standing in front of the National Civil Rights Museum, the site where Martin Luther King was assassinated, after a memorial service for the late civil rights leader in Memphis. The motel balcony in Memphis, Tennessee, where US civil rights leader Martin Luther King, Jr. was assassinated on April 4, 1968 is being opened to the public, a spokeswoman said on November 2, 2012. It is the first time that visitors to the erstwhile Lorraine Motel, now the National Civil Rights Museum, will be able to stand on the very spot outside Room 306 where King was gunned down by sniper James Earl Ray. AFP PHOTO/FILES/Andrew CUTRARO.


via Artdaily.org
© 1994-2012 Agence France-Presse

"Fifty Years Defending Freedom"

Via Syndication

In 1962 a group of dedicated civil libertarians came together to form the ACLU of New Mexico to defend and extend our most basic freedoms. Much has changed since then, and the ACLU has been such an important part of our state’s progress.


In honor of their fiftieth year defending freedom in New Mexico, the ACLU has produced the below short film, “Fifty Years Defending Freedom”. In this 17 minute film, you will hear from some of the key people from the organization’s past and present speak about the values that drive the important work of the organization and the historic civil liberties victories they have won over the past half century.

 

 

 

Check-out some ACLU NM News here, including:
 

• ACLU Sues Border Patrol for Retaliating against Agent for Political Beliefs
• Marriage Is About Love, Commitment and Family—Not Discrimination
• VIDEO: Voter Suppression in Albuquerque
• “I won’t fill your birth control prescription.”
• Real ID is Dead. New Mexico IDs Will Continue to be Valid.

With the help of local supporters, the ACLU has grown from a tiny, all-volunteer organization to the largest, hardest-hitting civil liberties organization in the state. Today, the government knows that if they violate people’s rights, the ACLU WILL hold them accountable to the law.



Related: Steve Schapiro

In lower Manhattan now at night, with no power, cell phone service, light is from police and ambulance lights, red, orange, blue, or from the little flashlights people carry while they’re walking their dogs, or from car lights, and just Tuesday night, buses.

The point of reference, like the North Star, is the Empire State Building, the line of demarcation. Everything North of the Building is normal, as though little happened. South of it is like another world, unreal, quiet, like a movie set.

© Nina Berman, 30 October 2012

 

 

 

 

The images and first-person descriptions from the East Coast are almost incomprehensible. For all of our family members, friends, clients, colleagues, and everyone affected, our thoughts and prayers are with you.

 

 

 

How to help.

Stephen Wilkes DAY TO NIGHT Photo Shoot Feature On CBS News Sunday Morning Show Nov 11

Bethesda Fountain, Day To Night

In his series, “Day to Night,” Stephen Wilkes photographs a scene “for a minimum of ten hours, from the same perspective, capturing a fluid visual narrative of day into night within a single frame.” CBS News Sunday Morning correspondent Martha Teichner joined Stephen Wilkes in a crane suspended over New York's Central Park during the recent creation of one of Wilkes "Day To Night" photographs. A special CBS Morning News segment, produced by Meggie Miao, was broadcast on November 11 - check local listings for time in your area.

WATCH IT HERE

"Day To Night", an exhibition of large-scale color photographs (up to 50 x 80 inches) was held at Monroe Gallery of Photography in Santa Fe April 27 through June 16, 2012, the first time the full collection was exhibited together. A selection of these photographs remains on view in the gallery.

 For more than two decades Stephen Wilkes has been widely recognized for his fine art, editorial, and commercial photography. With numerous awards and honors, as well as five major exhibitions in the last five years, Wilkes has made an impression on the world of photography. His most recent series features vibrant photographs of Times Square, Park Avenue, Coney Island, and Central Park, among other iconic New York locations, and capture, in a single frame, the transition from “Day to Night”. Using digital composites of images of the same site taken over a period of up to 15 hours, the photographs have a time-traveling quality, with the hustle and bustle in the afternoon sun giving way to the glow of city lights in darkening, cloud-streaked skies.


View the full "Day To Night collection here.  December 1, 2012 UPDATE: Contact the gallery for news about the newest international addition to the collection: Jerusalem, Day To Night.)


"Anything one can imagine one can create. Over the last several years, photographic technology has evolved to a point where anything is possible. I imagined changing time in a single photograph. I began to explore this fascination with time in a new series of photographs called: “Day to Night”. Photographing from one camera angle continuously for up to 15 hours, capturing the fleeting moments throughout the day and night. A select group of these images are then digitally blended into one photograph, capturing the changing of time within a single frame."

"Day to Night embodies a combination of my favorite things to photograph; documentary street photography melded with epic cityscapes. The work is a personal reflection of my deep love for New York. As this series has evolved, I discovered that the photographs began to highlight a form of emergent behavior within the daily life of the city. Studying the communication between pedestrians on sidewalks, cars and cabs on the street, these individual elements become a complex life form as they flow together to create the chaotic harmony that is Manhattan."

"Henri Cartier Bresson once said, “Photography is the recognition of a rhythm in the world of real things.” I am forever fascinated by the rhythm that is New York, the city’s relentless energy from “Day to Night”'.--Stephen Wilkes



Wilkes' photographs are in the permanent collection of The Library of Congress, Washington, D.C.; George Eastman House, Rochester, New York; Museum of Fine Arts, Houston; Dow Jones & Company, New York City; The Jewish Museum, New York City; and in numerous important private collections throughout the world. His work has graced the covers of numerous international publications, including Sports Illustrated, Fortune, Vanity Fair, The New York Times Magazine, Life Magazine, and Time Magazine.

For further information, please contact the Gallery.

Related:

THE Magazine Review: Stephen Wilkes: Day to Night

 Opening Night: Stephen Wilkes "Day To Night"

Bill Eppridge, noted photojournalist, will present keynote lecture on his experiences documenting the 1960s at Photo LA 2013

photo l.a. features new and established galleries from around the world that present classic, vintage and contemporary photography. Providing a visual discourse on photography's place in contemporary art, photo l.a. is an exciting forum for collectors and exhibitors.

Photography publications, and artist produced books, have become increasingly more important in the field of photography and contemporary art. We are delighted to announce photoBOOK LA as a new platform for boutique publishers and book artists. Since it's inception photo l.a. has contributed to the increased appreciation of photography and collecting in Los Angeles. We are certain that photoBOOK LA will be an excellent addition to this tradition.

With over 10,000 visitors photo l.a. is the best platform for meeting with collectors, curators and artists in Los Angeles. Our outstanding programming series continues to address the most current topics in the converging worlds of art and photography.


• Los Angeles County Museum of Art curator Britt Salvesen (Robert Mapplethorpe: XYZ) and Curator of Photographs at the Getty Research Institute, Francis Terpak (In Focus: Robert Mapplethorpe), will discuss the simultaneous exhibitions of the artist's work.



• Matthew Thompson, curator and author of The Anxiety of Photography, will lead a round table discussion with a mix of younger Los Angeles artists including Andrea Longacre-White, Anthony Pearson and David Benjamin Sherry, who hybridize photography with some other practice to explore its materiality.



• Point Of View: selections from Los Angeles collectors will be on view. A round table discussion some of the collectors will elaborate on their collecting motivations



• Bill Eppridge, noted photojournalist, lectures on his experiences documenting the 1960s, specifically, Robert F. Kennedy's final campaign.



• Meg Partridge, Filmmaker, will speak about her father, Rondal Partridge, and his photographic work. The son of Imogen Cunningham, his mentors and colleagues included Ansel Adams, Dorothea Lange and Edward Weston



• Artillery magazine hosts one of its infamous Face Off Debates.



• New Sales Platforms roundtable with Heritage Auctions, 1stdibs and artnet.



• Private docent tours of the fair with experts in the field of photography history, the market and museum exhibitions.



• Josephine Sacabo, will discuss her trajectory from a documentary street photographer to her current work using the etched photogravure as her exclusive form of print making.



• photoBOOK LA, a new platform for boutique publishers & book artists at photo l.a.



photo l.a., the 22nd Los Angeles International Photographic Art Exposition, takes place January 18 - 21, 2013 at the historic Santa Monica Civic Auditorium. Opening with a gala reception on Thursday, January 17, 2012. Please visit www.photola.com for fair and programming.

Visit Monroe Gallery of Photography during the fair at booth #M150.

Statue of Liberty Crown Reopens

Margaret Bourke-White: Statue of Liberty, New York Harbor, 1952

For one of the best views of New York, you have to get inside a great lady’s head.

Via NBC News

Starting this weekend, it’s possible again as the Statue of Liberty crown reopens to the public on Sunday after a year of renovations. Visitors seeking magnificent vistas of the Big Apple and a glimpse of the famous monument’s inner workings are already snapping up tickets online.

“It’s an experience that stays with you for your entire lifetime,” said Chris Heywood, a spokesman for New York City’s official tourism agency NYC & Company, who still remembers making the climb as a child.

“The Statue of Liberty remains one of the city’s most iconic attractions and there certainly will be a pent up demand for visitors to want to go up and see the crown.”

The renovations promise better access and safer conditions. There are two new staircases, a new elevator inside the pedestal and a lift that will take visitors who are mobility impaired higher into the monument than ever before, said Mindi Rambo, a spokeswoman for the National Parks of New York Harbor.

“For the first time, people in wheelchairs will be able to go up to the top of the pedestal and actually see into the statue, whereas before, the highest level that they ever really got to was the museum level,” Rambo said.

“The lift is brand new, we’ve never had that before and we’re very excited about it.”

There is no elevator service from Lady Liberty’s feet to her head, so visitors must still go up a double spiral staircase to reach the crown. Official pamphlets warn it’s a strenuous journey, but Heywood recalled that it feels short “when you’re looking forward to a view that’s stunning.”

It takes adults up to 20 minutes to make the climb depending on whether they stop to examine the statue’s inner architecture and copper skin, Rambo said.

“You can see the folds of the robe, the interior of the statue, and many people find that fascinating. They stop to take photos and point things out to their kids like, ‘Oh, that looks like the back of her heel,’” Rambo said.

Once at the top, only 10 adults can fit inside the crown, a space that’s much smaller than people expect, Rambo added. Visitors often tell park rangers that they have come because they remember making the trip as a child and want their kids to have the same experience.

 

“I think part of that is just driven by the ability to say that they have made that climb and to look out into the harbor and, I suppose in a way, to look back in time to when people came on the big steam ships,” Rambo said.

 

The crown will be open each week from Thursday through Sunday. If you’d like to visit, you must make a reservation through Statue Cruises – the monument’s ferry transportation provider.

Tickets became available on October 1 and sales have been brisk: just a few dates in December remain available for 2012.

This is the second time in recent years that the National Park Service is reopening the statue’s crown. The attraction was closed after the 9/11 attacks for security reasons and then reopened on July 4, 2009.

National Park Service

Visitors to the crown of the Statue of Liberty get a great look at New York Harbor.

 

 

National Park Service         

National Park Service staff and the media greeted visitors when Lady Liberty's crown reopened on July 4, 2009, after being closed following the 9/11 attacks.

 

The chance to make the climb will give travelers just one more reason to visit New York, which is on track to set another record year for tourism, Heywood said.

Sunday’s crown reopening also coincides with the 126th anniversary of the statue’s dedication.

Margaret Bourke-White: Statue of Liberty

Photojournalists Stephanie Keith, Charles Meacham; the National Press Photographers Association Sue NYC for violated their First, Fourth, and Fourteen amendment rights during Occupy Wall Street protests in 2011

Via pdn

NYC Sued for Systematic Civil Rights Violations During Occupy Protests

Occupy Wall street protesters, New York City council members, and several journalists have filed suit against the City of New York, the Metropolitan Transit Authority, JP Morgan Chase and other defendants, alleging widespread civil rights violations during the Occupy Wall Street process in 2011. The lawsuit was filed today in Federal District Court in New York City.

The plaintiffs--including photojournalists Stephanie Keith, Charles Meacham, the National Press Photographers Association, several citizen journalists and five New York City council members--allege that the New York City Police Department .

"The City of New York in concert with various private and public entities have employed Officers of the New York City Police Department (NYPD) and others acting under color of state law, to intentionally and willfully subject Plaintiffs and the public to, among other things, violation of rights of free speech, assembly, freedom of the press, false arrest, excessive forces, false imprisonment, and malicious prosecution and, furthermore, purposefully obstructing plaintiffs carrying out their duties as elected officials and members of the press," the lawsuit asserts.

It goes on to say that police conduct was intended to obstruct, chill, deter and retaliate against the plaintiffs for engaging in "constitutionally protected activity." It accuses the NYPD of unreasonable search and seizure of the individual defendants (a Fourth Amendment violation) and deprivation of due process (a Fourteenth Amendment violation.)

The plaintiffs are seeking an unspecified amount of "compensatory and monetary damages," as well as injunctions to force the NYPD to allow citizens to protest peacefully in public spaces, and to prevent the police from barring the access of journalists to protests.

The suit includes allegations of specific acts of police misconduct against each individual defendant. More generally, it alleges that police prevented citizens from gathering lawfully and peacefully in public spaces; that police violated privacy by retaining photographs of protesters who were arrested then released without charges; that police detained people for extended periods without charges; that police charged the plaintiffs without probable cause, and for crimes not committed; that police used excessive force to discourage people from exercising free speech and other constitutional rights; and that police justified the use of excessive force under false pretenses.

It also alleges that police barred journalists from covering the eviction of protesters from Zuccotti Park on November 15, 2011. "The NYPD's use of force in general, and against journalists in particular is on-going and well-documented," the lawsuit alleges, with references to many reports about police conduct.

It also paints a picture of the NYPD as an unaccountable, insular organization that covers up the misconduct of individual police officers. "These practices, policies and customer engender perverse incentive for officers to commit acts of misconduct against civilians without consequences," the lawsuit alleged.

The lawsuit goes on to say, "by employing the NYPD in its present condition to police protests while failing to provide meaningful avenues of police accountability, the [City of New York] chills each plaintiff, and indeed each citizen, from engaging in Constitutionally protected speech by setting up the NYPD, in effect, as the arbiter of the content of speech in a democratic society."

Related:

Here we go again: Occupy Wal Street Arrests Photographers

 Suppressing Protest: Human Rights Violations in the U.S. Response to Occupy Wall Street
Report issued by The Global Justice Clinic (NYU School of Law) and the Walter Leitner International Human Rights Clinic at the  Leitner Center for International Law and Justice (Fordham)