Friday, August 31, 2012

Selections from People Get Ready: The Struggle For Human Rights



 
 
Cairo, Egypt — February 8, 2011
Yuri Kozyrev / NOOR for Time


"Beyond the revolutions in Egypt, Bahrain, Yemen and Libya, I also traveled to cover the protests in Moscow, Greece and Tunis. I came to the conclusion that each revolution must be assessed in its own context, because each had a distinctive impact. The drama of each revolution unfolded separately. Each had its own heroes, its own crises. Each, therefore, demands its own narrative. In the end, the differences between them may turn out to be more important than their similarities, however.  And the common thing about all these protests is the number of young people who really want to bring changes to their country. That’s what’s most incredible. We have a new generation of people who are sick and tired of what’s going on. Call it the Jasmine Revolution, the Arab Spring or the Facebook Revolution, there’s a powerful Sirocco blowing across the world, and young people realize there’s another life and they want to live differently." --Yuri Kozyrev

Previous Selections

People Get Ready: The Struggle For Human Rights exhibition continues through September 23, 2012

Thursday, August 30, 2012

"Their deaths represent the slipping away of a generation of war reporters that brought the reality of the conflict to the living rooms of America in unprecedented detail and horrifying close-up"




Browne's image of the Vietnamese Buddhist monk Thich Quang Duc, who set fire to himself in 1963, was published around the world. Photograph: Malcolm Browne/AP

"Nick, Eddie and Malcolm hold the first three places in the temple of the perfect photo. Nothing really comes close to the drama, the horror and downright importance of those images." David Hume Kennerly remembers Malcolm Browne via The Huffington Post.

Time LightBox: Malcolm Browne: The Story Behind The Burning Monk
The New York Times: Malcolm W. Browne, Pulitzer-Prize Winning Reporter, Dies at 81

The Guardian: Malcolm Browne obituary

Wall Street Journal: Burning-monk photographer Malcolm Browne dies

The Telegraph in Pictures: Malcolm Browne, Horst Fass and Roy Essoyan: the men who documented the Vietnam War  (slide show)

Washington Post: Death of Malcolm Browne represents slipping away of Vietnam War generation reporters
 

Monday, August 27, 2012

August 26, 1970: The Women's Strike for Equality





Women in Parade Down 5th Avenue on the 50th Anniversary of the Passage of the 19th Amendment, New York, 1970 -Photograph by John Olsen
Women in Parade Down 5th Avenue on the 50th Anniversary of the Passage of the 19th Amendment, New York, 1970 -Photograph by John Olsen


The Women’s Strike for Equality was a strike which took place in the United States on August 26, 1970. It celebrated the 50th anniversary of the passing of the Nineteenth Amendment, which effectively gave American women the right to vote. The rally was sponsored by the National Organization for Women (NOW). More than 20,000 women gathered for the protest in New York City and throughout the country

 At the march for Women’s Strike for Equality, the three preconditions for emancipation included child care, legal abortion and equal pay.

The Guardian: From the archive, 27 August 1970: US women find some advertising offensive, insulting and degrading



 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 




 
 
 

Happy Birthday Man Ray






Loomis Dean: Man Ray Holding Up "Lips" Print

Today is the birthday of avante-garde photographer and painter who came into this world as Emmanuel Radnitzky, and left as Man Ray. The renowned Surrealist and Dada figure would turn 122 if he were magically still alive today.  More

Friday, August 24, 2012

Selections from People Get Ready: The Struggle For Human Rights


© Bill Eppridge




Bill Eppridge received a call from his editors at Life magazine that Robert Shelton of the United Klans of America had consented to being photographed. He drove to Tuscaloosa, Alabama and Shelton allowed Eppridge to photograph him in his Imperial Wizard robes as he smoked a cigarette. Shelton drove him around town in a Cadillac that was equipped with police radios. Late in the afternoon, Shelton told Eppridge he knew a pilot and offered Eppridge a ride back to Birmingham in a small plane. Eppridge weighed his options - by the time he got to the airport, returned the rental car, checked his bags and re-packed his cameras, he thought it might take just as long driving back. He decided to drive and just kept going until he arrived in Birmingham a little over an hour later. Once back at his hotel, he went up to the room where the Life reporter was staying and knocked on the door. When it opened, the reporter's fave turned white and he said "You're dead!". "What are you talking about?" asked Eppridge. The reporter ten told him that he had received a phone call from Shelton telling him that Eppridge had been killed in a plane crash. Eppridge never found out if the crash was an accident, or if Shelton simply decided that he had revealed too much and wanted to get rid of the film and the photographer.


New York Times Obituary for Robert Shelton


Previous selections here.


Related: Echo Foundation presents Bill Eppridge exhibition.

Thursday, August 23, 2012

The Echo Foundation Presents Global Photojournalism Project; Bill Eppridge Exhibition



-Bill Eppridge Photographic Exhibit Highlighting the Legacy of Robert F. Kennedy

-International Photojournalism Student Competition Winners Announced


CHARLOTTE, N.C., Aug. 23, 2012 /PRNewswire/ -- Affirming the power of free speech and expression, The Echo Foundation celebrates powerful photojournalism with a two-part series that addresses justice, democracy and humanity. While honoring the work of a respected force in photojournalism, the foundation engages the next generation of emerging photographers.

Echo's election year series – "We the People. The Voices and Vision of Democracy." – proudly presents the extraordinary work of revered photographer Bill Eppridge and his exhibit entitled "One America, One American: Robert F. Kennedy Through the Lens of Bill Eppridge." Housed in The Charlotte Observer gallery, the exhibition is open to the public September 4October 19.

Eppridge, a veteran photojournalist, has worked for prominent publications including National Geographic, LIFE Magazine and Sports Illustrated. The exhibit contains nearly 40 intimate RFK photographs and reflections by Eppridge, who traveled the campaign trail with the senator in 1966-1968.


Installation photograph by Stephanie Ansaldo


To inspire students worldwide, Echo's international photojournalism competition invited students to submit original photography responding to the question, "What does democracy or tyranny; justice or injustice look like?" More than 500 entries from students representing 40 countries across the globe were submitted.

New York Times Senior Photographer Tyler Hicks judged the competition and awarded the grand prize to Tobin Jones, a graduate student at the University of Westminster in the United Kingdom, who submitted a photo taken in the Kibera slum of Nairobi, Kenya.

The student photojournalist describes his photo, titled "Religious Healing," as a priest in a Kenyan slum trying to exorcise a demon tormenting one of his parishioners. Jones says, "In Kibera, religion, as a money-making opportunity, has taken on a whole new dimension; often cheating people in the slum of their hard earned money."

Hicks explains, "Telling the story succinctly in a single image, this photograph speaks not only to injustice in Kibera, but also to a larger audience about the endemic poverty crisis in Africa."

Jones will travel to Charlotte during the Democratic National Convention where his winning photograph will be on display next to Eppridge's iconic pieces in the exhibit. In addition, Jones has the opportunity to photograph for one day alongside Eppridge during the convention.

A special opening ceremony of "One America, One American" takes place on September 3, as part of Echo's 15th Annual Award Gala. To purchase tickets, please visit www.echofoundation.org.


About The Echo Foundation
The Echo Foundation was founded in 1997 to carry on the message Nobel Peace Prize winner Elie Wiesel brought to Charlotte that year – a call to action for human dignity, justice and moral courage. Through comprehensive education programs, Echo equips individuals with moral and intellectual tools necessary to create positive change. For more information, please visit www.echofoundation.org.


Related posts:  History, Lived and Documented

   2011 Lucie Awards: Bill Eppridge is Honoree for Achivement in Photojournalism

Wednesday, August 22, 2012

"the conference will reflect upon on how human rights and individual agency can be promoted and violated through the camera"




Via Jim Johnson at (Notes On) Politics, Theory, and Photography
(Highly recommend that you bookmark this blog)

Call For Papers: Picturing Others: Photography and Human Rights

Picturing Others: Photography and Human Rights
Cardiff, 17-18 January 2013


This 2-day conference will bring together photography practitioners, academic researchers, press officers, journalists and members of community groups to discuss how photographs are used to represent people in situations of conflict or disaster, and to consider the real-world effects that photographic representation can have on the lives of people migrating from one country to another. The conference aims to create an initial forum for on-going dialogue between photographers, media officers, journalists and researchers on photography.

The conference will focus on the ways in which photographs from past times can affect how people are represented today; on the ways in which different sectors use photography to inform or educate; and on how the photographic images used in different sectors communicate with each other and with their publics. The conference will also engage with how people from areas of conflict or disaster view images of themselves by others, and how they use photography themselves. More broadly, the conference will reflect upon on how human rights and individual agency can be promoted and violated through the camera; and the choices that photographers, broadcasters and campaigners make when using photographic images.

We invite paper proposals of 200 words for submission by 8 October 2012 from all those with an interest in photography and human rights. Decisions on proposals will be communicated by e-mail by 22 October 2012. Proposals should be sent to the organising committee at migration@cf.ac.uk and may discuss any aspect of the questions suggested below.

We warmly invite presentations taking a practical, personal or theoretical approach, and referring to any historical period or geographical area. Conference presentations will be of 20 minutes’ length.

Topics for discussion may include, but are not limited to:

• Are there patterns in the ways in which people in conflict or distress elsewhere are represented in photography?
• How do these patterns of representation affect how people who migrate to other countries are perceived and how well they can integrate and settle?
• How do past photographic representations of people from elsewhere link to contemporary photographs of countries in conflict or disaster situations and the way they are presented?
• How do non-photographic media, such as text and radio journalism, affect responses to photographs of other people?
• How do photographed people in situations of conflict or disaster, or in peacetime, interact with their media representations?
• What kinds of images do indigenous media and NGOs use to represent people in situations of conflict or disaster in their own countries and localities?
• What are the decision-making processes used by photographers picturing conflict and disaster?
• How do image the choices made in news media affect how images are used by development organisations or community groups, and vice versa?
• Where migration is concerned, what are the effects of images on perceptions of migrants, on social integration in host countries, and on the resolution of conflicts at home and in host countries?
• How is the educational role that images of others can have connected to issues of wider power relations between the global South and the global North in making, publishing/broadcasting and viewing images?

 Rachael Langford
School of European Languages, Translation and Politics, Cardiff University
Cardiff, Wales, UK
tel +55 2920 875643
Email: langfordre@cf.ac.uk

Monday, August 20, 2012

The World Through the Lens of Bob Gomel: Spotlight Nepal





Thursday, August 23
6:30 to 8:00 p.m.115 Hyde Park Blvd.
Houston, Texas 77006


Photojournalist Bob Gomel will share photographs of his international travels including Argentina, Brazil, Cambodia, Chile, India, Israel, Laos, Nepal, Russia, South Africa, Spain, Tibet, and Vietnam. A collection of Gomel’s images, taken over a decade working with LIFE Magazine, will be exhibited as well. He will also offer valuable tips on taking great photographs.


Bob Gomel earned a journalism degree from New York University in 1955 and then served as a U.S. Navy aviator. In 1959 he joined the immensely popular magazine LIFE. He later shot national advertising campaigns for Audi, Bulova, GTE, Merrill Lynch, and Shell Oil, among others.

This program is for Supporting, Donor, Patron, Council Cabinet and Young Professional Members.

Online Registration

To begin the registration process please select one of the following fees.
DescriptionAmount
Supporting/Donor/Cabinet Members





Coming to Monroe Gallery of Photography: "Bob Gomel: LIFE in the 1960's" October 5 - November 18. Bob Gomel will be in atendance for the opening reception Friday, Oct. 5, 5 - 7 PM.
$10.00


Register
fee ends 8/23/2012













Sunday, August 19, 2012

John Edwin Mason: Margaret Bourke-White in South Africa



We have held that Margaret Bourke-White, although highly acclaimed during her career years, has been largely overlooked in modern photography. We highly recommend this post from John Edwin Mason. See part One here.



Margaret Bourke-White in South Africa: Part 2, the Black Problem

Now about the mines. One thing that’s happened to me... from now on I just hate gold and diamonds.
--Margaret Bourke-White
* * *


Note: It's a sad coincidence that I'm posting this piece on the day after over 30 striking platinum miners were killed and nearly 80 were wounded by police bullets in Marikana, South Africa. When I began my research on Margaret Bourke-White's 1949-1950 South African photos nearly a year ago, I was initially drawn to the subject by her powerful and sympathetic portrait of two gold miners. [See below.] She had come to understand the exploitation and degradation that defined their working lives. For her, the men embodied the strength and endurance of all black South Africans in face of odds that were overwhelmingly stacked against them.

It will take some time for conflicting accounts of this tragedy to be sorted out. It seems clear, however, that the root causes of the strike are low wages, dangerous working conditions, and abysmal housing. Just as important is the miners' sense of having been betrayed by their union and abandoned by their government. Eighteen years after the coming of democracy to South Africa, too little has changed in the lives of the country's miners.

You can read reports about these awful events in the South African Mail and Guardian and the New York Times. The South African Daily Maverick has a good piece on the background to the strike.
* * *



Life, 18 September 1950, pp. 110-111. [The magazine was much larger than it looks here -- approximately 14 inches high and (opened) 22 inches across.]


"Visually dazzling but surprisingly naive." In Part 1 of this brief series, that what I had to say about "South Africa Enshrines Pioneer Heroes", the first of two long photo-essays about South Africa that Margaret Bourke-White produced for Life magazine in 1950. In accounting for Bourke-White's unexpected naivete -- she was, after all, one of most highly regarded photojournalists of her generation -- I noted that she had been in the country for a very short time when she shot the story on the dedication of the Voortrekker Monument. She was also seduced, I thought, by the sheer spectacle of the occasion and the warmth of the people that she met


Full Post here.


Related: "The Daring Camera Girl"