Tuesday, August 23, 2011

45 Years Ago Today: The First Earthrise

NASA: The Lunar Orbiter I took this first ever photo of the Earth from the vicinity of the moon on August 23, 1966

 The Backstory

Via TIME LightBox
| By Jeffrey Kluger

Geocentrism died on August 23, 1966. Centuries had passed since human beings first dispensed with the old notion that the Earth was the hub around which the universe turned. But what we know rationally and embrace intuitively are often two different things. No matter where we stood on our home planet, after all, no matter how high we climbed into — or even above — the atmosphere, Earth’s horizon still defined the limits of our vision. We could see how out-there looked from down-here, but what we never saw was the reverse. And then, 45 years ago this month, we all at once could.

In that otherwise unremarkable summer, NASA’s Lunar Orbiter 1 arrived at the moon. As it rounded the far side on one of its early orbits, it snapped this head-turning image of the Earth — carved to a mere crescent like our own little moon — rising over the dominating arc of the lunar horizon. Our species had seen the sun rise and the moon rise, but we had never seen an Earthrise. It was both an illuminating and a humbling experience — one, some scientists hoped, that would help us appreciate the fragility of our little soap bubble world. Two generations on, that’s a hope worth recalling.

Jeffrey Kluger is a senior editor for TIME and oversees science and technology reporting. He has written or co-written more than 35 cover stories for the magazine and regularly contributes articles and commentary on science and health stories. His notable cover stories include reports on global warming, the science of appetite, the Apollo 11 anniversary, and the roots of human morality.


Related: Time's LightBox was cited as one of today's leading examples of photojournalism during the special event Photojournalism: A Conversation


Monday, August 22, 2011

Phoenix Art Museum Exhibition Features Many of Gordon Parks' Most Memorable Images

Gordon Parks, American, 1912–2006; Alberto Giacometti, Paris, 1951, printed 2003; gelatin silver print, 16 x 20 inches; Lent by The Capital Group Foundation, 2002.02 © 2006 The Gordon Parks Foundation
PHOENIX, AZ.- Gordon Parks spent the majority of his professional career at the crossroads of the glamorous and the ghetto – two extremes the noted photographer knew well. Perhaps best recognized for his works chronicling the African-American experience, Parks was also an accomplished fashion photographer. Bare Witness: Photographs by Gordon Parks provides a revealing look at the diversity and breadth of Parks’s most potent imagery. Featuring 73 works specifically selected by Parks for the photographic collection of the Los Angeles-based Capital Group, Bare Witness divulges heart wrenching images, iconic moments, celebrities and slices of everyday life.

Born in 1912 in Fort Scott, Kansas, Parks, who died in 2006 at age 93, was an African American photographer who began working professionally in the 1930’s. Parks tackled the harsh truth and dignity of the black urban and rural poor in the United States. He photographed aspects of the Civil Rights movements and individuals associated with the Black Panthers and Black Muslims. For nearly 25 years, from 1948 to 1972, he served as staff photographer for Life magazine. He also established himself as a foremost fashion photographer, providing spreads for respected magazines such as Vogue.

Bare Witness features many of Parks’s most memorable images such as “American Gothic.” Taken during Parks’s brief time with the Farm Security Agency, the photograph depicts a black cleaning woman named Ella Watson standing stiffly in front of an American flag, a mop in one hand and a broom in the other. Also included in the exhibition is a series of photos from Parks’s most famous Life magazine essay about Flavio da Silva, a malnourished and asthmatic boy living in a Rio de Janerio slum. Portraits of Muhammad Ali, Duke Ellington, Alexander Calder, Ingrid Bergman, Langston Hughes and Malcolm X among others will also be on view.

“Whether photographing celebrities or common folk, children or the elderly, Harlem gang leaders or fellow artists, Parks brought his straightforward, sympathetic ear and mind to bear witness to late 20th century civilization,” commented Hilarie Faberman, the Robert M. and Ruth L. Halperin Curator of Modern and Contemporary Art at Cantor Arts Center and organizer of the exhibition. “His photographs balance the dichotomies of black and white, rich and poor, revealing his strengths and struggles as an artist and a man.”

In addition to his documentary and fashion photography, Parks was a filmmaker, author, musician and publisher. He was the first black artist to produce and direct a major Hollywood film, “The Learning Tree” in 1969, which was based on his early life experiences. He subsequently directed the popular action films “Shaft” and “Shaft’s Big Score.” He was a founder and editorial director of Essence magazine and wrote several autobiographies, novels and poems. In 1988, he received the National Medal of Arts award and throughout his lifetime was the recipient of 40 honorary doctorates from colleges and universities in the United States and England.

“Parks was a renaissance man whose career embodied the American ideal of equality and whose art was deeply personal."

Sunday, August 21, 2011

Sunday Focus: Joe McNally and the Faces of Ground Zero



Via JerseyStyle Photography
Because There's Style…And Then There's JerseyStyle…


The sky was falling and streaked with blood
I heard you calling me then you disappeared into the dust
Up the stairs, into the fire
Up the stairs, into the fire
I need your kiss, but love and duty called you someplace higher
Somewhere up the stairs into the fire….
- Into the Fire, Bruce Springsteen, from The Rising


Sometimes it’s hard to believe it happened 10 years ago already.
Sometimes it’s hard to believe it didn’t happen just yesterday.
Sometimes it’s hard to believe 9/11 even happened at all.

There are a number of things I’ll remember from that time. I was working for a pharmaceutical company back then, and living in Central New Jersey, about an hour from NYC. I remember my boss at the time coming into my office, on a beautiful early fall day, saying “A plane just hit the World Trade Center. It’s on CNN.” I remember going into his office to watch…and watching as reports broke that another plane hit the WTC.

I remember dust and rubble. I remember all of us there at work just not sure what was happening.

I remember, as I was driving home later that day, American flags flying at half mast. I remember going back to my apartment, walking my dog, still under an impossibly gorgeous sky, and then pouring myself a glass of Jack Daniels and watching the news for the rest of the night.

Fast forward a few months. I’m on the road, doing some corporate photo shoots with Joe McNally. I had known him for a couple of years at that point, and was always happy to get to work with him again (though my passion for photography hadn’t broken the surfaced yet.) I remember being somewhere in the Midwest with Joe and his assistant, and him telling me about this portrait project he did in the days right after 9/11..had something to do with a huge Polaroid camera.

Then came the first showing of the exhibit in NYC in 2002. Joe invited me to come see the opening. Joe, others, made speeches. Jewel sang. It was a big night out for me and this gal I was seeing then. I shot some crappy images with a 1.2 megapixel digital camera. (see above, regarding passion for photography item…)

NYC was rebounding.

Fast forward even further…ten years down the road… the gal I took to that opening is now my wife. People have married and divorced. Babies have been born, and children have grown up under the cloak of terrorism and war. We got Osama. NYC continues to rebound.

Joe is now blogging and tweeting. And he keeps shooting.

The portraits Joe shot soon after 9/11 continue to live on and draw inspiration. With the exhibit opening again this Wednesday, with some new portraits and video interviews included, I wanted to find out from Joe what has changed in the last 10 years, and what has stayed the same.

So, enough with this long preamble to the good stuff. Read on…
.
JSP Q: Take me back to 2001….after 9/11, how did you conceive this project and how did it all come about?

JM:
In the days immediately after the attacks, I was home, with the kids. Like everyone, I was a mixture and a mess of various feelings and sensations – sorrow, shock, anger, confusion. Being a photog, there was also that part of me that was screaming to get the cameras and just go there. But I didn’t. I couldn’t have added much at all to the immediate photographic record that was being compiled by the hundreds of photographers already on the streets of lower Manhattan. I stayed at home and tried to come up with some way of making a contribution, and harked back to this camera I had used once, a very singular, one of kind camera that made huge, instant photos – the world’s only giant Polaroid camera the brainchild of Dr. Land himself.
Fortuitously, it was located in a studio not too far from Ground Zero, and very near several FDNY firehouses that had suffered losses. I had the notion that this particular camera, which renders people life size, with a great deal of formality and stature, might be an appropriate instrument to use to document the people whose lives had intersected with 9/11 in dramatic fashion. I secured funding almost immediately, from Time-Life. We moved into the camera within about 10 days of the event, and started to work. All the shooting was completed within a month or so. During that month, I lived at the studio, sleeping in a loft bed over the camera, rarely straying more than a few blocks from it. We were taking crews from the pit at 2 a.m., 12 noon, late at night, you name it. We told everyone – if you come to the studio, we will take your picture.


Ladder Nine, Engine 33 was the first firehouse to come by. Word of mouth spread pretty rapidly about this project, and this giant camera. Ultimately the effort came to be known as Faces of Ground Zero, and it became a book and a traveling exhibit that assisted in the raising of nearly $2 million dollars for the relief effort. This is the core of the show that will be on the floor of the Time Warner Center, 10 years later.

JSP Q: You’re including a number of new portraits and interviews for the new showing of the Faces of Ground Zero. I know you’ve kept in touch with some of your Faces portraits subjects, like Louie Cacchioli, over the past 10 years. Have you kept in touch with others?

JM:
Yes, quite a number. I’m a “friend of the house” at a couple NYC firehouses, and I do photography for them when they have things like medal days etc. I’m close with a few people, and families. Doing this update 10 years later has been a welcome excuse to reach out to all these people again. They’re an amazing, resilient group of folks.




JSP Q: What were some of your biggest challenges working on the project back then and what were some of the challenges this time around?

JM:
A big challenge back then was simply trying to not sound like an unhinged lunatic on the phone with people. I mean, imagine getting a call during this highly emotional, stressed time period from someone you don’t know, trying to convince you to come to some outlandish, giant camera on the lower east side of NY. People were in shock, people had experienced grievous losses. The idea of coming to pose for a photo sounded ridiculous, even to me. But I think what overrode other feelings was people’s need at the time to be part of something, to tell their story, and to have a voice. The project gave them a dignified way of doing that.

So our success rate of persuading people to come to the camera was very high, indeed. The cumbersome nature of the giant Polaroid actually played in my favor here. Every sheet I used cost $300. So when people asked those familiar questions, “How long will this take? How many pictures are you going to shoot?” I could honestly say that it wouldn’t take long at all, because I would only make one picture. And that proved to be true, most of the time.

Challenges this time around involved updating the show with a series of photos that have power and clarity all on their own, and speak to the person’s life now, ten years later. Additionally, we did video interviews as well, so there’s an additional component to the visual reporting that we have done. The new photos have to compete with their very large counterparts, all these years later, in terms of interest and pictorial power. That was a big challenge.



JSP Q: Any surprises this time around?

JM:
No real surprises, I would say, maybe more of a refreshing feeling of relief. I knew right from the get go, from back in 2001, that these were very strong people. And sure enough, here they are 10 years on, still strong, still doing their jobs, still being who they are. They were not crushed by 9/11. There’s an enormous sense of the positive they exude. Ten years of raising kids, fighting fires, doing their work, helping other people – the power of life ongoing is very strong. I remain in awe of the whole bunch.

JSP Q: It seems as though you have special connection with the people that you shot for this project. Do you expect to continue shooting portraits to for this project?

JM:
Yes, I hope to. We will continue, and also continue our efforts to raise money for the support of the collection as it makes its’ transition to the 9/11 Memorial Museum, where it will reside in perpetuity.



It has been a bit of a saga, for me, as a lone freelance photographer, to shepherd this project for the last decade. But, it is a part of me, and I owe a great deal to the subjects of the project to safeguard their images, and to continue.

I guess to me, photographs have always been, very importantly, about memory, and the preservation thereof. Hence I continue to preserve these pictures and add to it as time goes on.



JSP Q: What’s next for Joe McNally?
JM: I would imagine, the next picture, the same way it has been for the last 35 years.
******************************************************************

Joe McNally and I have known each other for over 10 years now – first as business associates, then as friends. I’ve never asked him to be part of the my little Sunday Focus’. While he’s given me equal parts encouragement and inspiration towards my passion for photography, I never wanted to intrude on his time or play off that friendship for one of these posts.

But this one is a little different. I want to try to help get the word out about the new Faces of Ground Zero exhibit, so I asked Joe if he’d do this interview. I appreciate Joe taking the time to answer these questions in such a thoughtful manner. It was more than I expected, frankly, but then again, Joe doesn’t do anything halfway.

Nikon Inc. is the exclusive photographic equipment sponsor of the Faces of Ground Zero – 10 Years Later exhibit at the Time Warner Center. The free exhibit will take place from August 24 to September 12, 2011, and is open from 10:00 a.m. to 9:00 p.m. Monday – Saturday and from 11:00 a.m. to 7:00 p.m. on Sunday.

Adorama, Johnson & Johnson, JP Morgan Chase & Co. and others are also sponsors.
If you’re in the city and you get to see the exhibit, stop back here to let us know what you thought about it. Or if you Tweet about it, hashtag it #FGZ so that we can find it. It’s going to be powerful, I’m sure.

To find out more about the exhibit, or any of Joe’s work, follow him on Twitter and/or subscribe to his blog.

© Mark V. Krajnak 2011 | JerseyStyle Photography | All rights Reserved
Unless otherwise noted, images captured with a Canon 50D, SanDisk digital film, finished with PS4 or PSE6 and Nik Software
.

Saturday, August 20, 2011

FACES OF GROUND ZERO: TEN YEARS ON

Faces of Ground Zero: Louie Cacchioli, Firefighter, Engine 47, FDNY

Faces of Ground Zero: Louie Cacchioli, Firefighter, Engine 47, FDNY

 

"Faces of Ground Zero" on Display at Time Warner Center 8/24 - 9/12 in New York City

Starts Wednesday, Aug 24 10:00a to 9:00p
Price: Free
Marking the 10th Anniversary of Sept. 11 Time Warner Center Presents Joe McNally's "Faces of Ground Zero, Portraits of the Hereos of Sept 11, 2011."

This special exhibition will feature the original life-size Polaroids, along with new digital images and exclusive video interviews shot with Nikon D-SLR cameras revealing where the subjects are today and how 9/11 affected their lives.

Exhibit will run daily from 8/24 - 9/12 and is FREE


Read more: Ten Years On via Joe McNally's blog

Related: Joe McNally: Faces of Ground Zero

Friday, August 19, 2011

Stephen Wilkes Explores New York as an Emergent Life Form in 'New York: Day to Night'



Via The Village Voice Blogs

Welcome to blogs.villagevoice.com

Things We Like

Thursday, August 18, 2011

At 83, subject of ‘American Girl in Italy’ photo speaks out

Image: Ninalee Craig with "American Girl in Italy" photo
Keith Beaty / Toronto Star
Ninalee Craig, 83, is the woman in Ruth Orkin's 1951 photograph "American Girl in Italy." This photo taken on Aug. 12 shows Craig standing next to Orkin's iconic image and wearing the same orange shawl she wore in the photo nearly 60 years ago.

In case you misssed the TODAY Show on NBC today:

By Laura T. Coffey

Today Show


You know the photo. You’ve seen it a hundred times. A beautiful, statuesque young woman is walking down a street in Florence, Italy. She’s clutching her shawl, and she seems to be moving swiftly. More than a dozen men are staring at her longingly. One of them is grabbing his crotch.
The iconic 1951 image “American Girl in Italy” turns 60 on Monday. As its anniversary approaches, the stunning woman in the photo — Ninalee Craig, now 83 — is speaking up about it. She wants to explain what the photo represents, and what it doesn’t.


“Some people want to use it as a symbol of harassment of women, but that’s what we’ve been fighting all these years,” Craig said in a telephone interview from her home in Toronto. “It’s not a symbol of harassment. It’s a symbol of a woman having an absolutely wonderful time!”

Back in 1951, Craig was a carefree 23-year-old who had chucked her job in New York and secured third-class accommodations on a ship bound for Europe. She spent more than six months making her way through France, Spain and Italy all by herself — something very few women did in the years following World War II.

She traveled as inexpensively as she could, so she was thrilled when she found a hotel right on the Arno River in Florence where she could stay for $1 a day. There, she met another adventurous solo female traveler: Ruth Orkin, a 29-year-old photographer who came to Italy after completing an assignment in Israel.

Image: "American Girl in Italy," Florence, 1951
© 1952, 1980 Ruth Orkin
Ruth Orkin's "American Girl in Italy" photo has become so famous over the years that a Canadian newspaper recently described it as "the image that has endured from dorm-room walls to French bistro loos."
“She was living from day to day, nickel-and-diming it,” Craig recalled. “We talked about traveling alone and asked each other, ‘Are you having a hard time? Are you ever bothered?’ We both found that we were having a wonderful time, and only some things were a little difficult.”

In the course of that conversation, an idea was hatched: They would head out together the next morning, wander around Florence and shoot pictures of what it was really like to travel alone as a young single woman.


“We were literally horsing around,” Craig said, reminiscing about the bright orange shawl she wore that day.

Orkin captured her famous “American Girl in Italy” photograph during those two hours of silliness and fun. Her contact sheets from that day reveal that she shot only two frames of that particular street scene.

“The big debate about the picture, which everyone always wants to know, is: Was it staged? NO!” Craig said. “No, no, no! You don’t have 15 men in a picture and take just two shots. The men were just there ... The only thing that happened was that Ruth Orkin was wise enough to ask me to turn around and go back and repeat [the walk].”

Orkin died in 1985. Her daughter, Mary Engel, has devoted her life to protecting her mother’s photographic archive and promoting her legacy as a documentary photographer. Engel agreed with Craig’s account of what happened on that August day in Florence, and she added one more contextual detail.

“She told the man on motorcycle to tell the other men not to look at the camera,” said Engel, director of the Orkin/Engel Film and Photo Archive. “But the composition, it just happened. And my mother got it. That’s what she was good at. ... She didn’t take loads and loads of photos. She waited for
shots.”

Image: "Jinx and Justin Flirting at the Cafe," Florence, Italy, 1951
This photo is called "Jinx and Justin Flirting at the Cafe," Florence, Italy, 1951.

Of course, a good documentary photograph welcomes viewers into a scene and invites their interpretations. That’s understandable, say Craig and Engel — but both of them stress the same point about “American Girl in Italy”: The photo is primarily a celebration of strong, independent women who aren’t afraid to live life.

“Men who see the picture always ask me: Was I frightened? Did I need to be protected? Was I upset?” Craig said. “They always have a manly concern for me. Women, on the other hand, look at that picture, and the ones who have become my friends will laugh and say, ‘Isn’t it wonderful? Aren’t the Italians wonderful? ... They make you feel appreciated!’”

Craig said she certainly did feel appreciated in Italy and elsewhere in Europe. She turned plenty of heads wherever she went because she was 6 feet tall and traveling alone. She knows the men in the photo appear to be leering and lascivious, but she insists they were harmless.

“Very few of those men had jobs,” Craig said. “Italy was recovering from the war and had really been devastated by it … I can tell you that it wasn’t the intent of any man there to harass me.”
OK, but how about the man committing that not-so-innocent-looking gesture with his hand?

Image: "Negotiating with the Shopkeeper," Florence, Italy, 1951
During a whimsical, two-hour photo shoot, Ruth Orkin captured Ninalee Craig negotiating with shopkeepers and having other adventures as a solo female traveler.
“That young man is not whistling, by the way; he’s making a happy, yelping sound,” Craig said. “And where you see him touching the family jewels, or indicating them, with his hand — well, for a long time that was considered an image people should not look at. That part was airbrushed out for years ... But none of those men crossed the line at all.”
 

Today, she’s a grandmother of 10, a great-grandmother of seven and an avid supporter of Toronto’s arts scene. She’s elated that her friend Ruth Orkin’s photographs and other works are on display at the Stephen Bulger Gallery in Toronto, in part to honor the 60-year anniversary of the moments Orkin captured on that unforgettable day.

“My life has been wonderful,” Craig said. “I’m ready for more.”

Ruth Orkin’s “American Girl in Italy” photograph and other works are on display now through Aug. 27 at the Stephen Bulger Gallery, 1026 Queen St. W., Toronto, Ontario, Canada. Ninalee Craig and Mary Engel will attend a public reception at the gallery from 2 to 5 p.m. on Saturday, Aug. 20.

Tuesday, August 16, 2011

The 60th Anniversary of the "American Girl in Italy" photograph by Ruth Orkin



An American Girl in Italy, 1951


August 22, 2011 marks the 60th anniversary of the photograph “American Girl in Italy by Ruth Orkin (1921-1985). The subject of this famous photograph is Ninalee Craig (then known as Jinx Allen), who now lives in Toronto.

The two were talking about their shared experiences traveling alone as young single women, when Orkin had an idea. “Come on,” she said, “lets go out and shoot pictures of what it’s really like.” In the morning, while the Italian women were inside preparing lunch, Jinx gawked at statues, asked military officials for directions, fumbled with lire and flirted in cafes while Orkin photographed her. Orkin’s best known image, “American Girl in Italy” was also created as part of this series.

Ruth Orkin was 17 when she took a cross-country trip by herself, bicycling and hitchhiking from her home in Los Angeles to New York, snapping pictures along the way. She later moved to New York, where this spirit of adventure continued. She  photographed Tanglewood’s summer music festival, honed her craft in nightclubs, joined the Photo League, and with her first published story in Look magazine, became “a fullfledged photojournalist.” In 1951, Life sent her on assignment to Israel and from there she went to Italy.

Exhibition: Stephen Bulger Gallery

Sunday, August 14, 2011

VJ-DAY, TIMES SQUARE, NEW YORK, AUGUST 14, 1945


The V-J Day picture of the white-clad nurse by photographer Alfred Eisenstaedt captured an epic moment in U.S. history and became an iconic image marking the end of the war after being published in Life magazine.
It is probably the most iconographic image associated with LIFE, photojournalism, and World War II. Eisenstaedt recounts how he got the shot: “I was walking through the crowds on V-J Day, looking for pictures. I noticed a sailor coming my way. He was grabbing every female he could find and kissing them all – young girls and old ladies alike… The sailor came along, grabbed the nurse, and bent down to kiss her. Now if this girl hadn’t been a nurse, if she’d been dressed in dark clothes, I wouldn’t have had a picture. People tell me that when I’m in heaven, they will remember this picture.”

Via Monroe Gallery of Photograpy Blog

"V-J Day, Times Square" is featured in the exhibition "History's Big Picture", through September 25

Why Study History?


The Surbanan Dweller
Via The Westport Patch

  • By Sally Allen

  • Whether or not we remember the past, we're probably still 'doomed to repeat it.' But studying history has an enduring--and hopeful--purpose.

    The idea that we should study history in order to learn from and prevent the mistakes of the past is a lovely notion but not an entirely convincing mandate. A cursory survey of major historical developments reveals that, in fact, we frequently make the same mistakes, even when theoretically we should ‘know better.’

    A very silly example from my own life: I continue to consume popcorn at the movies when I know, with absolute certainty, that doing so will result in a horrible stomachache three hours later. I mean, I will feel like a porcupine is doing somersaults in my stomach, and I will fervently wish I’d just gotten the chocolate-covered peanuts instead. But the next time, I always get the popcorn anyway.
    Is this a random folly, a single example of a foolish individual who refuses to heed the lesson of her history?

    Well, back in 1912, the White Star Line said The Titanic was ‘designed to be unsinkable.’ As we all know, it sank on its maiden voyage. After this tragic outcome and massive loss of life (over 1,500 of the over 2,200 passengers perished), the press latched onto this phrase with the fervor of a starving infant, and the words ‘unsinkable’ and ‘The Titanic’ have since been inextricably linked in history, a stark and horrific reminder of the price of hubris.

    Did we ‘learn our lesson’ about the perils of grandiosity? Not really. Just two years after the ocean liner sank, British author H.G. Wells purportedly popularized the term ‘war to end war’ in relation to World War I. He was one of a number of prominent authors the British government apparently recruited to infuse patriotic sentiments into their work, thus drumming up support for a war that, four years later, would leave 9 million soldiers and an estimated 12 million civilians dead and another 21 million soldiers wounded.

    Oh, and twenty years later, we had World War II.

    Shortly after that came the Korean War, then the Vietnam War, etc. This isn’t a commentary on whether or not these, or any other, wars were necessary or just. I’m observing that they keep happening, even though at one time we imagined that we could end them.

    Even if, by studying history, it were possible to stop making the same mistakes, we’d make other ones. Because making mistakes is a defining characteristic of the human condition. We all make them. Whether large or small, mistakes are inevitable.

    If studying history doesn’t prevent us from making mistakes, what does it enable?

    This week, I visited the Fairfield Museum and History Center (FMHC) at 370 Beach Road in Fairfield, where they are currently showing a retrospective of photojournalist and Connecticut resident Bill Eppridge’s work. His iconic images, which are on display until Aug. 28, capture seminal events of the 1960s that, though I didn’t live through them, shaped the world I live in today.

    Photographs on display include 12-year old Ben Chaney with his mother at the 1964 funeral of his brother, civil rights activist James Chaney. Ku Klux Klan members, in collusion with law enforcement, murdered Chaney along with two other activists, who were working to register African-American voters in Mississippi during Freedom Summer.

    The exhibit also features Eppridge’s photos of Robert Kennedy’s presidential campaign, including images taken immediately after he was shot in the Ambassador Hotel. The breathtaking curating (which also includes campaign paraphernalia, LIFE Magazine covers, and Eppridge’s equipment) tells the story of the day. Images show Kennedy walking through the hotel’s kitchen, busboy Juan Romeo kneeling over him moments after the shooting, and Ethel Kennedy clasping him in her arms as personnel swarm the scene.

    This combination of art and history provides me with a tangible link to events that are not mine through experience but through legacy.

    Director of Exhibitions and Programs Kathleen Bennewit, noted that FMHC—which lies in the heart of historic Fairfield, on the site of the original town green where Roger Ludlowe founded Fairield in 1639 and which then included what we now call Westport—is moving towards a more regional focus. This strikes me as entirely appropriate when we consider that our towns weren’t always separate. When we talk about the history of Fairfield, we are also talking about the history of Westport as well as other surrounding towns.

    And even if it wasn’t my ancestors whose houses the British burned to ash in 1779, for as long as I live here, I’m part of the history of this town, and so the events of both the past and the present belong, in part, to me too. We’re not connected by blood or even by traditions or events but by an idea that is forever evolving in the hands of those who live here.

    In this way, we are all connected, and there is hope in this. Though I probably will still order the popcorn next time I’m at the movies.



    Bill Eppridge's photographs will be on exhibit at Monroe gallery of Photography September 30 - November20, 2011

    Thursday, August 11, 2011

    GOING FISHING



    Going Fishing, Texas, 1952
    John Dominis: Going Fishing, Texas, 1952



    Things might get a little slow here and on our Twitter and Facebook feeds for a few days - as summer begins to wind down, its time to enjoy some swimming, fishing, and grilling. We'll be checking in!