"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"