groundglass

Photography as a Weapon

On August 11, 2008, the New York Times ran an interesting article titled "Photography as a Weapon."  The author, Errol Morris, asked "Do [images] provide illustration of a text or an idea of evidence of some underlying reality or both? And if they are evidence, don’t we have to know that the evidence is reliable, that it can be trusted?"

The article, which can be found here, discusses the July 10, 2008, faked photograph of Iran's launch of four (or was it three) missiles.  It also links to the Little Green Footballs website, which may have been the first to point out the fraudulent photographs to the media.  In response, Wired Blog Network and Boing Boing ran contests labeled "Attack of the Photoshopped Missiles" and "Iran: You Suck at Photoshop" to see who else could photoshop a missile launch, with some pretty funny results.

Washington, D.C., Memorials

Vietnam War Memorial

Lincoln Memorial

Lincoln Memorial

Clamming on Tomales Bay

 

 

Here's Looking at You...

Every once in a while the stars and planets come into alignment and present a wonderful image.  The rest of the time you just happen upon things that demand to be immortalized...

Paul Strand

Paul Strand made a movie in 1921 with Charles Sheeler.  It can be seen on the amazing UbuWeb site. See "Manhatta."

Bill Jay Archive

For those of you who are fans of Bill Jay's writings on photography, he has recently archived more than 100 of his essays at his website.  He has made the complete text of the essays available for downloading in PDF format, and has granted authorization to print the essays for personal use.

Video Interviews with Photographers

Pix Channel offers video interviews with several well-known photographers.  The video screens are small.  The interviews are interesting none the less.  Photographers whose interviews are currently available:

Eddie Adams
Ruth Bernhard
Eliott Erwitt
David Fahey
Ralph Gibson
Pirkle Jones
David Hume Kennerly
Mary Ellen Mark
Sheila Metzner
Duane Michals
Graham Nash
Arnold Newman
Judd Pilossof
Andy Summers
Jerry Uelsmann
Nick Ut
Stephen Wayda
Jack Welpott

Josef Koudelka

Recently I bought the book Koudelka, published by Aperture in 2007.  It is a striking book, containing striking images.  I urge you to buy it and read it again and again, as I am.  If you can find it in your local bookstore for the retail price ($65.00) snap it up.  Amazon sells it for $250 and more, with autographed copies going for over $1200.

Koudelka's images are difficult to find on the internet, and none of the internet images do justice to the images in his books.  However, some of Koudelka's images can be seen on the Magnum website, Koudlelka having become a Magnum photographer 1974, and some can be seen on the Graeme Mitchell blog in an article comparing Koudelka to Eggleston. 

Koudelka began using a panoramic camera later in his career with marvelous results, not just as landscape images, but as images of people and cities.  Before he started using the panoramic camera he cropped his square negatives to create panoramas.  He cropped these images with a one-to-three ratio.  Some examples from his panoramic work can be found here, here, here and here.  (These are small images that make full appreciation of his work difficult.)

After reviewing  his work for a few hours I decided to crop some of my images from the Lee Vining workshop in a one-to-three ratio.  Some worked; some didn't.  Here are some I believe worked.

"Fern Spring"

"Below Bridalveil Falls"

"Rhyolite"

and "Do not feed alligators" (no, not Lee Vining)

Weegee

Here is an interesting video from the New York Times of Weegee, the famous New York crime photographer who coined the term "The Naked City" in his book of the same name.