"I'm Nina Berman. I'm a Photographer"

A Short documentary about American photographer Nina Berman. Filmed and directed by Denise R. Gaberman.

Click here.                   

May 4, 1970: Kent State

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©John Filo: Mary Vecchio grieving over stain student, Kent State, May 4, 1970

Via Newseum: Today in News History: May 4, 1970: Four students were killed and nine others were wounded at Kent State University by members of the Ohio National Guard. John Paul Filo’s iconic image of the massacre received the 1971 Pulitzer Prize for spot news.


(Click above link for video interview with John Filo.)

Related: Kent State, 40 years on: the shredding of constitutional liberty still goes on

May 3, 2012

Dear Attorney General Eric Holder:

 The First Amendment has come under assault on the streets of America. Since the Occupy Wall
Street movement began, police have arrested dozens of journalists and activists simply for
attempting to document political protests in public spaces. While individual cases may not fall
under the Justice Department’s jurisdiction, the undersigned groups see this suppression of
speech as a national problem that deserves your full attention.


The alarming number of arrests is an unfortunate and unwarranted byproduct of otherwise
positive changes. A new type of activism is taking hold around the world and here in the U.S.:
People with smartphones, cameras and Internet connections have been empowered with the
means to report on public events. These developments have also created an urgent need for
organizations such as ours to defend this new breed of activists and journalists and protect their
right to record.

Freedom of speech, freedom of assembly and freedom of access to information are vital whether
you’re a credentialed journalist, a protester or just a bystander with a camera. In the digital age,
these freedoms mean that we all have the right to create and share information using all manner
of devices and lawful means.

In this new environment, we must guard these rights and protect the networks that give so many
the means to connect and voice their political beliefs. The First Amendment’s protections must
extend to everyone.

The right to record is an essential component of our rights at a time when so many of those
witnessing public protests carry networked, camera-ready devices such as smartphones.

Continuous access to the open Internet and social media — over both wired and wireless
networks — is also essential.
We the undersigned call on authorities at the local, state and federal level to stop their assault on
people attempting to document protests and other events unfolding in public spaces. We must
protect everyone’s right to record.

Sincerely,

Access

American Civil Liberties Union
Electronic Frontier Foundation
Free Press
National Press Photographers Association
New America Foundation
Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press
Reporters Without Borders
Witness

OPENING NIGHT: STEPHEN WILKES - DAY TO NIGHT

All Photographs by Hance Partners/Image Craft ©All Rights Reserved

On April 27, 2012, Monroe Gallery in Santa Fe, New Mexico, opened a one man show featuring photographer Stephen Wilkes' series of Day to Night images, Ten very large framed prints occupied the entire gallery in this first one man show of Stephen’s latest work.

Hance Partners/Image Craft, under the direction of master printer Richard Jackson, collaborated with Stephen to produce the prints said to be some of his most stunning images ever.

Hance Partners/Image Craft produces these magnificint images up to 80 inches wide, and also creates a complex four stage mounting and framing process to complete these works of art.

For more info on the images, please see the Hance Partners/Image Craft blog at:
imcraft.wordpress.com/2011/08/23/stephen-wilkes-ny-day-to...

World Press Freedom Day 2012

About World Press Freedom Day
Via UNESCO World Press Freedom Day

Every year, May 3rd is a date which celebrates the fundamental principles of press freedom; to evaluate press freedom around the world, to defend the media from attacks on their independence and to pay tribute to journalists who have lost their lives in the exercise of their profession.

3 May was proclaimed World Press Freedom Day the UN General Assembly in 1993 following a Recommendation adopted at the twenty-sixth session of UNESCO's General Conference in 1991.

It serves as an occasion to inform citizens of violations of press freedom - a reminder that in dozens of countries around the world, publications are censored, fined, suspended and closed down, while journalists, editors and publishers are harassed, attacked, detained and even murdered.

It is a date to encourage and develop initiatives in favour of press freedom, and to assess the state of press freedom worldwide.

It serves as a reminder to governments of the need to respect their commitment to press freedom and is also a day of reflection among media professionals about issues of press freedom and professional ethics. Just as importantly, World Press Freedom Day is a day of support for media which are targets for the restraint, or abolition, of press freedom. It is also a day of remembrance for those journalists who lost their lives in the exercise of their profession.

Exhibit: "People Get Ready: The Struggle for Human Rights"
Monroe Gallery of Photogrphy, June 22 - September 22, 2012

Related: Freedom of the Press?

 

          The New York Times Sends Angry Letter to NYPD Over Blocked Photographer

MAY 1 AND DOROTHY DAY

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Vivian Cherry: Dorothy Day, founder of the Catholic Worker newspaper, picketing against the Atomic Bomb, New York, 1959

May 1 marks the 79th anniversary of Dorothy Day’s great achievement: a movement whose vision of activist faith couldn’t be farther from the moralizing of the religious right that has seemed to define Christianity’s incursion on politics since the 1980s. The Catholic Worker, which Day founded with Peter Maurin, a French immigrant, was — and remains — a philosophy, a social initiative, a way of life. Its understanding of personal responsibility maintains not that we all must rely on ourselves, but rather that we are all beholden to better the lives of the less fortunate. On May 1, 1933, during the height of the Great Depression, Day took to Union Square handing out the first copies of her newspaper, also called The Catholic Worker, which delivered the message of compassion and justice at the cost of one penny; the price has never gone up. 

A Different Intersection of Church and Politics   Via The New York Times

Marcus Yam for The New York Times

PROTESTING: Loren Hart, a member of the Catholic Worker Movement, on Thursday.

Forthcoming Exhibition: People Get Ready: The Struggle For Human Rights

Monroe Gallery of Photography

June 22 - September 2

1 World Trade Center becomes NY's tallest building today

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Carolyn Schaefer: World Trade Center and Washington Square Arch, New York, 1998

On Monday, April 30, 2012, at approximately 2:00 p.m., the Port Authority will mark a major milestone in the construction of One World Trade Center with the installation of steel columns that will make the skyscraper the tallest building in New York. When the columns are put in place, the building will officially surpass the height of the Empire State Building, which currently is the tallest structure in New York.


An inside look of construction on the 91st Floor of One WTC

"Cowboys of the sky.” The New York Times Magazine featured a series of images by Damon Winter, who spent five days in July, 2011 with the ironworkers who are rebuilding the Manhattan skyline atop 1 World Trade Center

Ron Antonelli for the New York Daily News

OPENING RECEPTION TONIGHT, 5 - 7: STEPHEN WILKES - DAY TO NIGHT

Pasatiempo

Santa Fe--Monroe Gallery of Photography, 112 Don Gaspar, is pleased to present "Day To Night", an exhibition of large-scale color photographs (up to 50 x 80 inches) by leading contemporary photographer Stephen Wilkes. The exhibition opens with a public reception with Stephen Wilkes from 5 - 7 PM tonight, Friday, April 27. The exhibition continues through June 16. 

More.

Worldwide Pinhole Photography Day is April 29!

 

Via Worldwide Pinhole Photography Day
What is Pinhole Day?

Anyone, anywhere in the world, who makes a pinhole photograph on the last Sunday in April, can scan it and upload it to this website where it will become part of the annual Worldwide Pinhole Photography Day celebration's online gallery.

The next pinhole day is April 29, 2012

Locate a workshop near you.

Worldwide Pinhole Photography Day is an international event created to promote and celebrate the art of pinhole photography.

On this unique day, we encourage people throughout the world

• to take some time off from the increasingly technological world we live in and to participate in the simple act of making a pinhole photograph.
• to share their visions and help spread the unusual beauty of this historical photographic process.

VIVIAN MAIER: Deceased April 21, 2009; Exhibit Closes Today

Via The Obit Patrol

....John Maloof set out to learn more about Vivian Maier. His first Google searches had fizzled, but in April 2009, he spotted her name scrawled on the lab envelope of a roll of developed film. He tried again.

This time, he found an obituary in the Chicago Tribune. "Oh, my God," he said.

Vivian Maier had died just days earlier.

"Vivian Maier, proud native of France and Chicago resident for the last 50 years died peacefully. ... A free and kindred spirit who magically touched the lives of all who knew her. Always ready to give her advice, opinion or a helping hand. Movie critic and photographer extraordinaire ..."

Her 83 years on earth, summed up in 96 words. But one sentence stood out: "Second mother to John, Lane and Matthew." Maloof wondered. Perhaps she was their stepmother?

Maloof called the Tribune, but the newspaper's leads turned out to be dead ends.

Then came one of those serendipitous moments: As he was filing loose negatives and about to throw out a shoe box that had been stuffed in the larger box, he spotted an address in north suburban Highland Park.

Bingo. A starting point.


 And, as they say, the rest is History. Today, Sunday, Aprl 22, 2012 is the final day of VIVIAN MAIER: DISCOVERED.  The gallery will be open from 10 to 5.