Saturday, December 31, 2011

2012



As we say good-bye to 2011 and hello to 2012, a few thanks are in order.

Thank you to all the extraordinary photographers we have been so fortunate to know, with special heartfelt gratitude to all photojournalists across the world.

Thank you to our friends, clients, and collectors for your support and encouragement.

Thank you to our blog readers, followers, and "social connections". May 2012 bring us all that we need.


"All of us live in history, whether we are aware of it or not, and die in drama. The sense of history and of drama comes to a man not because of who he is or what he does, but flickeringly, as he is caught up in events, as his personality reacts, as he sees for a moment his place in the great flowing river of time and humanity.

I cannot tell you where our history is leading us, or through what suffering, or into what era of war or peace. But wherever it is, I know men of good heart will be passing there."


 --Carl Mydans

Friday, December 30, 2011

The Case of Loving v. Bigotry


Hands of Mildred and Richard Loving on their kitchen table, King and Queen County, Va
Photograph by Grey Villet

January 1, 2012


In 1958, Richard and Mildred Loving were arrested in a nighttime raid in their bedroom by the sheriff of Caroline County, Va. Their crime: being married to each other. The Lovings — Mildred, who was of African-American and Native American descent, and Richard, a bricklayer with a blond buzz cut — were ordered by a judge to leave Virginia for 25 years. In January, the International Center of Photography is mounting a show of Grey Villet’s photographs of the couple in 1965. That exhibit is complemented by an HBO documentary, ‘‘The Loving Story,’’ directed by Nancy Buirski, which will be shown on HBO on Feb. 14. The film tells of the Lovings’ struggle to return home after living in exile in Washington, where Mildred, gentle in person but persistent on paper, wrote pleading letters to Robert F. Kennedy and the A.C.L.U. Two lawyers took their case to the Supreme Court, which struck down miscegenation laws in more than a dozen states. The Lovings’ belief in the simple rightness of their plea never wavered. Asked by one of his lawyers if he had a message for the Supreme Court, Richard said he did: ‘‘Tell the court I love my wife.’’
Julie Bosman








Special screening in Los Angeles January 10, 2012 with HBO at the Museum of Tolerance.

Additionally, on January 17th, The Loving Story will screen at the National Museum of African American History and Culture (NMAAHC) in Washington, DC.



Grey Villet's photographs are available from Monroe Gallery of Photography. View selected photographs of the Lovings during photo la at Monroe Gallery of Photography, Booth B-500.

Monday, December 26, 2011

THE 21st ANNUAL INTERNATIONAL LOS ANGELES PHOTOGRAPHIC ART EXPOSITION






Monroe Gallery of Photography is pleased to be exhibiting at the
2012 edition of photo l.a. We will be located in Booth B500, the
first booth at the right entrance to the fair. Our booth will feature
some of the finest examples of humanist and photojournalist
imagery from the 20th and 21st Century.


photo l.a. returns to the historic Santa Monica Civic Auditorium
for its 21st edition on January 12 - 16, 2012. Continuing the
discourse on photography’s place in the fine arts, photo l.a.
provides dealers from around the globe a platform for the
exhibition of vintage masterworks, contemporary photography,
as well as video and multimedia installations. This exciting
juxtaposition creates the character that is photo l.a.

In addition to our compelling program of lectures, panels,
book signings, and special installations, we are pleased to
announce Salon de Tableaux, an area of tabletop
presentations showcasing vintage, vernacular and unique
photography. Also we proudly introduce photoBOOK - a forum
with guest reviewers offering feedback to photographers on their
book proposals.

During the Martin Luther King holiday weekend, January 12-16,
2012, photo l.a. returns to the landmark Santa Monica
Civic Auditorium for the 13th time. As the Getty’s
Pacific Standard Time: Art in L.A. 1945-1980 initiative continues
into January, photo l.a. will include installations focusing on
post-WWII art created in Southern California. January is also
L.A. Arts Month, a collective marketing effort by the city and its
arts organizations to attract enthusiasts and collectors to Los
Angeles.

Please join us in January for a memorable four days of art,
education, and excitement. Check our website reguarly for
updates, and join our mailing list for news on ordering tickets,
special projects, and events.

photo l.a. website with details here.

Related: One of the world's most important annual photography events to be held at the Park Avenue Armory in March

LocationSanta Monica Civic Auditorium
1855 Main Street
Santa Monica, CA 90401-3209
www.santamonicacivic.org

Opening Night Gala
Thursday, January 12, 2012 6pm - 9pm
Benefiting the Los Angeles County Museum of Art‘s
Wallis Annenberg Department of Photography


Special host Moby

General Admission Fair Hours
Friday: January 13, 11am - 7pm
Saturday: January 14, 11am - 7pm
Sunday: January 15, 11am - 7pm
Monday: January 16, 11am - 6pm


Tickets
Visit photola21.eventbrite.com/ to purchase tickets

Contact
General Information: info@photola.com

www.photola.com
Tel: 323.965.1000
Fax: 323.937.5523

Thursday, December 22, 2011

The 'Girl In The Blue Bra'


Egyptian army soldiers arrest a female protester during clashes at Tahrir Square in Cairo on Dec. 17.

Stringer/Reuters/Landov
Egyptian army soldiers arrest a female protester during clashes at Tahrir Square
in Cairo on Dec. 17.

"This image now has the potential to impact national policy, and that has been one of the major attributes of photojournalism — images that move the hearts and minds of the public and policy makers".

Via NPR The Picture Show: "The Girl in the Blue Bra"

Wednesday, December 21, 2011

FATHER FOR CHRISTMAS


Marisol rushes to her father as he surprises her during a Capshaw dance. 
 Luis Sánchez Saturno/The New Mexican


Father for Christmas: Army veteran's surprise visit to Capshaw brings daughter to
tears

Read the full article in the Santa Fe New Mexican here.




Marisol Tapia, 12, a seventh-grader at Capshaw Middle School, is surprised Tuesday by a visit from her father, Lt. Col. Marcos Tapia of the U.S. Army Reserves, during a dance at the school. Marcos Tapia, who has been serving in the Middle East, was granted holiday leave until Jan. 3. - Luis Sánchez Saturno/The New Mexican

10th Anniversary of Monroe Gallery


PHOTOS WORTH 100 WORDS


Steve Schapiro: Martin Luther King, Selma, Alabama, 1965







by Matthew Irwin
4-6 pm, Dec 23, 2011 | Free
ARTS & CULTURE

In 1983, while serving as the director of a gallery in New York City, Sidney Monroe curated the first show for the great Life magazine photographer Alfred Eisenstaedt. The two talked about the lack of photo-journalist exhibitions, while collectors scooped up Eisenstaedt’s prints. Soon after, the Monroe's opened a SoHo gallery dedicated to narrative images taken from real life. “If you remove the event or the history, you often see composition, form, balance—elements you’d find in fine art photography,” Monroe says. Then 9.11 wiped out the gallery’s neighborhood, so Monroe and his wife, Michelle, moved, as a business decision. Monroe Gallery of Photography has now been in Santa Fe for 10 years, and the Monroes has about as many stories about their business as the photos have about the historical events they depict. (Matthew Irwin)

Holiday/Anniversary Reception: 4-6 pm Friday, Dec. 23. Free.
Monroe Gallery of Photography, 112 Don Gaspar Ave., 992-0800



Where: Monroe Gallery
Phone: 505-992-0800
Address: 112 Don Gaspar Ave.
Website: http://www.monroegallery.com

Tuesday, December 20, 2011

Police are roughing up journalists across U. S.



Alarmingly, we are seeing more and more posts about interference with the press, including photographers. UPDATED: "The Committee to Protect Journalists have released their report for 2011 which chronicles the attacks on journalists worldwide. They report that at least 43 journalists were killed including seven dead in Pakistan making it the deadliest country to work in as a journalist. Photojournalists suffered particularly heavy losses in 2011."


Via BuffaloNews.com



By Douglas Turner
News Staff Reporter
Updated: December 19, 2011, 6:30 AM

WASHINGTON — Half-dressed celebrities can’t get enough of them when posing along the rope lines of Hollywood or Dubai. Then there is the stale but true remark about how dicey it is to get between a certain legislator and the lens of a camera.

Beyond serving our amusements, the work of press photographers and reporters is deadly serious. The crux of the matter is that press photographers and reporters are our last guarantors of freedom.

Think Danny Pearl, beheaded by al-Qaida in 2002; Don Bolles, murdered by the mob in Arizona in 1978; and Lara Logan, brutally assaulted while monitoring the behavior of a dictator’s police during Egypt’s Arab Spring.

Worldwide, 889 journalists have been killed since 1992, according to the Committee to Protect Journalists. Today, photographers and reporters are being manhandled again in this country by police. Not in the smoky backwoods of the Deep South, as in the 1960s, but in cradles of so-called liberalism like New York, Los Angeles, Oakland and Rochester.

These cities are among dozens where the cops are moving out Occupy Wall Street protest encampments, and the police plainly don’t want citizens to see how they’re doing it. Photographers and reporters, with chains of credentials hanging off their necks like the Lord Mayor of London, are being handcuffed, herded into pens, hustled into police wagons and sometimes into court.

The cops under New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg are operating with impunity. Consider the timeline of a Buffalo lawyer, Mickey H. Osterreicher, who is in the middle of this swirl. Osterreicher, a former newspaper and television photographer, is general counsel of the National Press Photographers Association.

Osterreicher helped arrange a meeting with Bloomberg’s police commissioner, Ray Kelly, in Manhattan just before Thanksgiving to get Kelly to restrain his troops, who were roughing up demonstrators and journalists while closing down an Occupy encampment. Among the attendees were representatives of Thomson-Reuters, Dow-Jones and the New York Times.

On Nov. 21, Kelly sent out a pious-sounding directive to all police reminding them of the journalists’ constitutional rights and directing that they be treated with respect. “The next day,” Osterreicher said, “a photographer for the New York Daily News was interfered with. And there were absurd incidents involving journalists trying to cover the Thanksgiving Day parade.”

Last week, according to AtlanticWire. com, Kelly’s cops shoved a New York Times photographer down a set of stairs, then blocked him from shooting an Occupy protest. So much for Kelly’s paperwork.

In Los Angeles, police arrested a credentialed City News Service reporter trying to cover the dismantling of an Occupy site. A video shows police taking him to the ground as he tried to show his credentials. Police later claimed he was drunk.

Among Osterreicher’s cases is his defense of a student journalist in Rochester who was arrested trying to cover an Occupy protest there. In what Osterreicher claims is a “terrific waste of public resources,” the Monroe County prosecutor refuses to drop trespassing charges against the man.
Osterreicher sees some of the police-versus-press tension as cyclical. The Occupy movement and police anxiety following 9/11, he adds, prompt more of it. There is also some public myopia involved.

“Photographers were killed in Syria and Egypt,” he said. “What is seen as heroic overseas is looked on as offensive here.”

Police harassment of demonstrators and journalists doesn’t seem to trouble the Obama administration much. Rep. Jerrold Nadler, D-Manhattan, wrote to Attorney General Eric Holder on Dec. 6 asking for an investigation into police mauling of Occupy demonstrators. Holder hasn’t bothered to answer Nadler, ranking Democrat on a Judiciary subcommittee.


dturner@buffnews.com

Saturday, December 17, 2011

Bahraini activist ‘Angry Arabiya’ arrested




A police officer drags Zaynab al-Khawaja after handcuffing her when she refused to leave after a sit-in. (HAMAD I MOHAMMED - REUTERS)   


Zaynab al-Khawaja, 28, widely known as “Angry Arabiya” for her outspoken tweets on human rights abuses, has been arrested in Bahrain. Photos and a video show Khawaja, who is the daughter of jailed human rights activist Abdulhadi al-Khawaja, being disciplined and then handcuffed by police.


Full story here via The Washington Post.


Friday, December 16, 2011

The Art of War: A Look Back at 10 Important Works That Took on the Conflict in Iraq


Every newspaper and news report has been filled with stories about the "end" of the Iraq War. Artinfo.com has compiled  a list of "what seem to us to be the most notable examples" of art dealing with the war.



Courtesy the artist and Jen Bekman projects

Nina Berman's "Ty with gun," 2009, from "Marine Wedding," 2006/2008, pigment print

Iraq's future remains unclear, but whatever happens, the effects of the war are likely to remain with us for a long time. No work illustrates this more clearly than photographer Nina Berman’s “Marine Wedding" series (memorably seen in the 2009 Whitney Biennial as well as in the recent Dublin Contemporary in Ireland) documenting the marriage of former Marine sergeant Ty Ziegel to his high school sweetheart, Renee Kline. Ziegel was wounded in a suicide bomber’s attack in Iraq, leaving him terribly disfigured. Employing a straightforward and unflinching documentary aesthetic, Berman’s photos show him simply trying to live his life despite his horrible scars, driving his truck, walking his dog, or posing in uniform with his bride — who looks hauntingly lost — for a wedding portrait (the two divorced after a year). Though bordering on the exploitative, Berman’s work offers disturbing testimony to the way the Iraq War has torn through people’s lives, and how its affects are liable to be with us for a long, long time.


Related:  Nina Berman's Blog: Remember the Iraq War
Part 1
Part 2

Selections from "Marine Wedding" featured in the exhibition "History's Big Picture"





Thursday, December 15, 2011

Mick Rock Survives the ’70s to Shoot Again


Lee Clower for The New York Times
 
Via The New York Times

By BOB MORRIS
Published: December 14, 2011


COFFEE. Mick Rock, the rock ’n’ roll photographer as famous for his hedonistic lifestyle as for his iconic images of debauchery and excess, was drinking nothing more than coffee. It was 5 p.m. on a recent Tuesday, and while hotel guests drank cocktails at the lounge of the W New York Downtown, Mr. Rock, a slim and youthful man in his 60s in tinted glasses, got his fix.       

NYT Slideshow here

“Sometimes when I really want to go wild, I’ll have two cups,” he said.

It was the night before “Rocked,” an exhibition of his photographs, was to open on Dec. 7 with a big party, featuring a performance by Phantogram and a D.J. set by Mark Ronson. On the walls in the lounge around him, Madonna, Mick Jagger and Dave Grohl of the Foo Fighters stuck out their tongues with confrontational glee. A young Iggy Pop (sweaty and shirtless, of course) worked some gold lamé pants. Lou Reed, Freddie Mercury and David Bowie leered under so much mascara they could have been raccoons.

 Outside, beyond a balcony, the 9/11 memorial-in-progress gaped.

“It’s amazing, what’s going on down here,” Mr. Rock said of all the construction in a downtown he knew more for drug deals, illegal nightclubs and transsexuals, not patriotism and real estate speculators. “But I guess you just can’t keep New York down.”

You can pretty much say the same about him.

Born as Michael in West London, Mr. Rock was a typical good-looking bad boy of his day with a very nice mum named Joan, who sometimes still asks when he’s going to get a real job.

After rocketing out of Cambridge University in 1970, infatuated with Blake, Rimbaud, Verlaine, Mallarmé and poets who consumed as much opium and absinthe as sleep, he was drawn like a well-educated moth to the flaming scene of Syd Barrett, Roxy Music, David Bowie, the Sex Pistols and all types of punks and glam rockers in London. He then moved to New York in the mid-1970s to continue his career, photographing Blondie, the Velvet Underground, the New York Dolls, Joan Jett and other punk and big-hair bands.

“I was intuitive and lucky to be around,” he said. “I also looked like them, and that made it easier to accept me.”

As much the party instigator as chronicler, he would bounce up and down like a pogo-ing punk rocker while taking pictures, giddy as a child awaiting a gift. One time Andy Warhol pointed out that he was bouncing on a stack of Mr. Warhol’s finished canvases. “I guess you could just say I’m an enthusiast,” Mr. Rock said.

He was trustworthy, too, and did not sell photographs of drug abuse and other unseemly moments that could damage careers. But then, this was before the age of tear-down tabloids and blogs. “Newspapers and magazines didn’t want pictures of musicians behaving badly back then,” Mr. Rock said with a sunny working-class lilt. “Now, because of the Internet, that’s all the media wants.”

In his heyday, as he acquired his reputation as “the man who shot the ’70s,” he partied all night in New York with the stars he shot, dating the same women and sharing the same drugs. Many he knew fell to AIDS and heroin addiction. Others survived, and many thrived. “It’s a miracle that David Bowie, Lou Reed and Iggy Pop are actually still alive today, given how hard they lived,” he said.

After bouncing, drinking, drugging and staying up till dawn for 20 years, he hit bottom in 1996, at 48, when he had a heart attack requiring a quadruple bypass. He’d had several attacks right before that, one during a shoot. His lifestyle was catching up with him.

“It was a warning that it was time to stop,” he said.

He had no health insurance. But he had powerful friends who wanted to pay to save him.

He came out of the operation with a faltering career but a newfound determination to stay sober. He was not, to quote a Blondie lyric, going to “die young and stay pretty.”
Industry friends were supportive, as were musicians and galleries who drew from his archives to create books and exhibitions of his work. By the new millennium, he was starting to rebound, and soon was busy shooting Snoop Dogg, Alicia Keys and other young stars.

“I did not want to be somebody who lived off his reputation,” he said. “I wanted to continue to be part of the modern music scene.” It seems to have worked out very nicely.

Now he’s smart enough to let others stay up late and carry on, “although these days all they have to do to shock people is light up a cigarette,” he said. Despite his legacy, he isn’t one to live in the past. He adores the young musicians he shoots — Lady Gaga, Janelle Monáe, and Theophilus London among them — and gets only a little weary when asked about the bad old days.

“Back then, to pick up the hottest women you had to wear makeup,” he said.
Today, a denim jacket and a scarf or two make up his uniform. Mr. Rock said he doesn’t preen, drink, smoke or imbibe any drugs stronger than coffee with sugar and (gasp) half-and-half. He lives in a Colonial house with a picket fence on a leafy Staten Island street with his wife, Pati, and sometimes a daughter, Nathalie, 21, who he said is unimpressed with a father who has seen it all. He gets up early and does yoga every day.

“I’ll need to get a good night’s sleep tonight,” he said in the lounge at the W as he finished his coffee, took a quick tour of his exhibition and left to go up to his room. It was massage time.

“I know it’s disappointing,” he said. “But all I am is a retired degenerate.”
Fair enough. It won’t be that long before the man who shot the ’70s will be close to 70 himself.

Steve Schapiro: Before the Tragedy

Med_wagner-wood-jpg
Natalie Wood and Robert Wagner on their yacht, 10/8/7
 © Steve Schapiro, Courtesy Everett Collection

Via La Lettre de la Photographie.  La Lettre shares and informs daily on the events in the world of photography.


Intimate images "taken by the photographer Steve Schapiro. Natalie Wood and Robert Wagner had invited him to spend the day on their boat, The Splendour, off Catalina Island in front of Los Angeles. Steve Schapiro recalls a loving couple that had married, divorced, and remarried. Not long after, tragedy struck."  Full post here.

Wednesday, December 14, 2011

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



Robert Stolarik barred from taking photos on Monday



You didn’t think that The Paper of Record was going to take the mistreatment of one of their photographers at Monday’s Occupy Wall Street Protest at the World Financial Center Plaza sitting down, did you? Absolutely not:

Once The New York Times confirmed that their own freelance journalist Robert Stolarik was captured on video being pushed down the steps of the atrium by a member of the NYPD and then blocked by another officer with a baton for trying to take pictures of the ensuing arrests, the editors wrote a strongly-worded email to the NYPD. Because the first time they told Ray Kelly and Michael Bloomberg that the harassment of credentialed journos would not be taken lightly, it worked out so well?

While we don’t have an exact copy of the memo, NYT‘s VP and assistant general counsel George Freeman said:
“It seemed pretty clear from the video that the Times freelance photographer was being intentionally blocked by the police officer who was kind of bobbing and weaving to keep him from taking photographs,” said Freeman, who expressed concern Tuesday that the commissioner’s “message that was sent out, while aimed with good intentions, doesn’t seem to have had much effect on the ground.”
And while the NYPD’s department head has acknowledged relieving the note, there has been no response from Commissioner Kelly or one of his representatives. Because who needs to answer to journalists anymore?

You Tube video here

NY Times: The Police, the Press and Protests: Did Everyone Get the Memo?

Related:  Columbia Journalism School letter to Mayor Bloomberg and NYPD
         
               NYPD Orders Officers Not To Interfere With Press


Tuesday, December 13, 2011

Citizen Journalism: Something for Nothing Won’t Last Long



 
As a police officer sprays pepper spray on protesters,
 citizen journalists record the action in Davis, California. (Photo by Louise Macabitas)


A very good read about the new "Citizen Journalism", with commentary by Monroe Gallery photographer Stanley Forman:

"There’s a bit of an exploitative relationship between citizen journalists and news organizations. You have to know enough to ask before you can get paid.” — Steve Myers, Managing Editor, Poynter.org

“It certainly has swung too far in one direction. Whether it’ll ever swing back or not, I don’t know.” –Stanley Forman, Photojournalist

Read the full post here, via Maria Purdy Young

Monday, December 12, 2011



We cordially invite you to join us for a holiday reception

celebrating our


10th

Anniversary

 in Santa Fe.


Friday, December 23

4 - 6 PM



Thank you to all for your support and encouragement.

We wish you a joyous Holiday season

and may 2012 bring

us all happiness.




Eye On New York: On Nanny-Photographer Vivian Maier

January, 1953, New York

January, 1953, New York


In this segment of Eye on New York, CBS 2's Mary Calvi speaks with Howard Greenberg about the story of nanny and photographer Vivian Maier.

On Exhibit: Howard Greenberg Gallery December 15 - January 28, 2012
                    Monroe Gallery of Photography February 3 - April 22, 2012

Sunday, December 11, 2011

HELP-PORTRAIT IS A GLOBAL MOVEMENT OF PHOTOGRAPHERS USING THEIR TIME, GEAR AND EXPERTISE TO GIVE BACK TO THOSE IN NEED




By
The Albuquerque Journal
on Sun, Dec 11, 2011

More than 15 families had their portraits taken Saturday – many for the first time – as part of an international project that gives needy families free professional photos.

The event, organized by Journal photographer Morgan Petroski, drew 10 photographers from the Albuquerque area who spent the day shooting photos of young families. Each family received an 8-by-10-inch picture.

One of those families was Bettielen Kasuse and her children, 6-year-old Elizabeth and 2-year-old Nathaniel. Kasuse dressed up her little boy in a tie and put her daughter’s hair in curls for the special occasion.

“It feels good because we’ll have memories of them when they get older,” she said. “It was awesome.”
Kasuse said this was the first portrait they took as a family.

“I got up at like 5 this morning and got them all dressed up,” she said.

Like the 16 other families who were photographed Saturday, Kasuse received a gift certificate to clothing store Other Mothers for outfits for the special occasion. Local restaurants also donated food for the families while they waited to have their picture taken, processed and printed.

Sandra Contreras was waiting to have her portrait printed while son Xavier, 2, and daughter Julyssa,4, played in the lobby of Cuidando Los Niños, a nonprofit that works to end homelessness.

Cuidando Los Niños partnered with Help-Portrait, which was held worldwide Saturday, to bring together the families and photographers. Contreras said her family had never been photographed professionally. She said it was the first time she’s dressed up her little boy.

“It was fun to dress up,” Contreras said. “It was a neat experience.”

The Contreras family picture was taken by local photographer David Randall, who said it was the first time he’s taken part in Help-Portrait. This was the second year the event took place in Albuquerque.

Randall said he loves photography, volunteering and helping people, and that participating was “a great way to combine those three.”

He described the family’s excitement at the professional setup and photo session.

“When they first come in, they seem to be a little in awe of all the stuff going on,” he said. “Once they see the pictures, I hear little ‘oohs’ and ‘aahs’ and (see) smiles, and that’s a reward in itself.”

It was that sense of excitement Petroski was aiming for when she decided to organize the event. Petroski thought it was time to start giving back.

“I’ve always felt that giving back to the community is the best. After living here for two years, I hadn’t done anything,” she said.

Many of the families who were photographed told her this was their first family portrait.

“To hear something like that,” Petroski said, “it makes it all worth it.”

Exhibition of photographs from the largest fire in New Mexico state history

 

Corby Wilson photo of Las Conchas fire


Flames and Forest



In Los Alamos, inspiration rose from the flames.

The Los Alamos Historical Museum is showing 44 images from 30 photographers capturing the beauty and agony of last summer’s Las Conchas Fire, the largest wildfire in state history.

Opening at 5-7 p.m. Tuesday, the photographs encompass wildlife and mountains, charred trees and helicopters, night skies and daylight licked by flames.

Reflecting part of the town’s history, the show features works by just three professional photographers. The rest are amateurs, museum specialist Judith Stauber said. All are from around northern New Mexico. The photos tell the fire’s story through powerful visual landscapes sharing themes of the battle against smoke and fire as well as the surreal impact of the fire on the quality of light, land, night sky, mountain skyline, wildlife and people.

Area photographers submitted about 60 images.

“We chose at least one from everybody that submitted,” Stauber said. “The quality of the images really surprised me.”

The photographs are primarily landscapes, with few shots of people, including firefighters.

“One of the themes was the very surreal landscapes,” Stauber said. “How the smoke affects the light – the exhibit’s up now and I was looking at it with my mouth open.”

Photographers captured moments of helicopters diving and disgorging from a multiplicity of angles. One produced a haunting scene of a young doe standing amid blackened trees.

Los Alamos resident Ken Hanson shot an aerial image of felled and charred trees resembling the microscopic texture and detail of bacteria or threads of finely woven fabric.

“The texture of that really struck me as a close-up,” Stauber said. “Just the pattern of that charred landscape was striking. You don’t really know what you’re looking at. It’s this beautiful weaving. When you realize what it is, it’s shocking.”

Santa Fean Amanda Jay captured an eerily purple sun at dusk.

“She sent me a note that said, ‘This is not color corrected’,” Stauber said. “There’s a lot of different pigments in the photographs –– like a pink sky, colors you’re not used to seeing.”

Los Alamos’ Salvador Zapien created daylight views of the Pajarito ski lift against a backdrop of blue skies and churning smoke.

“There’s this gorgeous blue sky and the ski lift, and then you see these ominous clouds in the background,” Stauber said.

Corby Wilson, also from Los Alamos, documented the fire fighters dropping a load of red fire retardant into the trees.

The museum organized a photography exhibit for 2000′s Cerro Grande fire, but those photographs focused on what was lost.

“Our archives also collected pictures of every home that was destroyed,” Stauber said. “This fire had a very different effect on the community than the last one. While still frightening, it was much less personally painful. People are moving on more quickly and seem more resigned to living with fire in the mountains and canyons.

“There are some powerful images in the room,” Stauber said. “I just stand there in awe.”

The exhibition will be up until Jan. 5.

If you go
WHAT: “Las Conchas Fire Community Photographs”
WHEN: Opening reception 5-7 p.m. Tuesday, Dec. 13. Through Jan. 5.
WHERE: Los Alamos Historical Museum, 1050 Bathtub Row, Los Alamos
CONTACT: 505-662-6272

Saturday, December 10, 2011

People attend a rally in St. Petersburg

Protesters rally in St Petersburg, some placing ‘No voice’
stickers over their mouths. 
Photograph: Alexander Demianchuk/Reuters




Friday, December 9, 2011

Charlie Rose Interview With John Loengard: "A great photographer has the knack of putting a great picture in front of his camera"






John Loengard appeared on the Charlie Rose program to discuss his new book: "Age Of Silver - Encounters With Great Photographers". Watch the interview here, as Loengard recounts photographing Annie Liebovitz, Henri-Cartier Bresson, and Jacques Henri-Lartigue; and Charlie Rose airs part of an interview with Henri-Cartier Bresson.


View John Loengard's photography here.

Photo District News: John Loengard - Photos of the Day

John Loengard: The Development of Photography

La Lettre de la Photographie: John Loengard: Age of Silver

Thursday, December 8, 2011

John Loengard: Encounters With Great Photographers

Wegman-LL
William Wegman. All images © John Loengard/Courtesy Monroe Gallery



PDN Photo of the Day displays photographs selected by the editors of Photo District News, a publication for photo professionals.

The photos on this blog come from a variety of sources. All images are published with permission of the photographer or copyright owner, are handouts provided for press use, or are images known to be in the public domain. PDN cannot give you permission to copy or publish these images. Whenever possible, we provide a link to the copyright owner or publisher of the original image.

PDN Photo of the Day, December 8, 2011:

A new exhibition of the work of LIFE magazine staff photographer and editor John Loengard’s black-and-white photographs is currently showing through the end of January at the Monroe Gallery in Santa Fe, New Mexico.

Full post here.

"We firmly believe and we maintain that nothing can be more powerful than the truth”

 

Reporters Without Borders - Le Monde Prize for Press Freedom

Published on Thursday 8 December 2011



2011 Press Freedom Prize awarded to Syrian cartoonist Ali Ferzat and Burma’s Weekly Eleven News.
With the support of TV5MONDE, Reporters Without Borders and Le Monde are pleased to award the 2011 Press Freedom Prize to two symbols of courage, Syrian newspaper cartoonist Ali Ferzat and the Burmese newspaper Weekly Eleven News . The award ceremony was held today at the Le Monde auditorium in Paris.

“This year we are honouring a courageous journalist who has been the victim of brutal repression by an obsolete government,” Reporters Without Borders secretary-general Jean-François Julliard said. “Ali Ferzat fully deserves this award. His cartoons target the abuses of a desperate regime with its back to the wall and encourage Syrians to demand their rights and to express themselves freely.

“We are also honouring a newspaper that has never bowed to Burma’s censors. Weekly Eleven News has always stood up to the military junta, using extraordinary ingenuity to slip through the censorship net and inform the Burmese public. Its editors and reporters have taken considerable risks and deserve our encouragement. At a time when Burmese political life and society seem to be showing signs of opening up, Weekly Eleven News has more than ever a key role to play.”

Ferzat was chosen as 2011 Journalist of the Year because of the quality of his cartoons and his commitment to defending media freedom. Original and rebellious, his non-conformist attitude and creativity earned him powerful enemies such as Iraq’s Saddam Hussein, who threatened to have him killed after an exhibition of his cartoons in Paris in 1989. He was banned from visiting Jordan, Iraq and Libya for years.

Al-Domari, the satirical newspaper Ferzat launched in 2000, was the first independent publication since the Baath Party takeover. The authorities forced it to close three years later. Since this spring, the street protests and ensuing crackdown have been at the centre of his work. For denouncing the corruption and abuses of Bashar Al-Assad’s rule, he was attacked in August by masked gunmen, who broke his hands as a warning.

“I would have liked to have been with you this evening to take part in this beautiful event,” Ferzat said in a letter read out by the French cartoonist Plantu. “I dedicate this award to the martyrs, to those who have been injured and to those who struggle for freedom. May thanks be given to all those who have turned the Arab Spring into a victory over darkness and repression.”

Presenting the 2011 Media of the Year prize to Weekly Eleven News, the writer and journalist Jean Rolin, winner of the Albert Londres Prize in 1988, paid tribute to Reporters Without Borders’ local correspondents and to all journalists working on the ground in difficult parts of the world.

Burma is one of the world’s most repressive countries for the media, and the staff at Weekly Eleven News often risk prison by daring to run stories on subjects that the authorities regard as sensitive. In August, it paid a high price for defying government orders not to cover the flooding in the northern city of Mandalay. Several of its journalists were arrested and it was forbidden to publish for several weeks.

“At Weekly Eleven News, we firmly believe and we maintain that nothing can be more powerful than the truth,” the newspaper’s spokesman said. “We are honoured to receive this award, but we are also very sad when we think of all the Burmese journalists who are still in prison. We must never forget the sacrifices that some have made so that change come to Burma.”

The American photojournalist Stanley Greene, founder of Noor Agency was the guest of honour this year. He paid tribute to his fellow photographers who died this year, especially Tim Hetherington, Chris Hondros and Lucas Dolega.

The Reporters Without Borders Prize has been awarded every year since 1992 to a journalist and a news media in different parts of the world that have made a significant contribution to the defence and promotion of press freedom. The prize winners are selected by an international jury of journalists and human rights activists.

Le Monde decided to become a partner in the prize this year. The newspaper’s publisher, Erik Izraelewicz, explains : “From Sidi Bouzid to Sanaa, from Rangoon to Benghazi, from Damascus to Cairo, there has been no shortage of major developments in 2011. The international media have covered them without forgetting that local journalists, often at risk to their lives, have for years been combating the constant violations of media freedom in these places. For 20 years, the Reporters Without Borders Prize for Press Freedom has been reminding the public that their struggle is also our struggle. Le Monde is pleased to join Reporters Without Borders in this undertaking.”

Press Freedom Prize received the support of TV5MONDE. Marie-Christine Saragosse, director general, added: “This is a logical involvement for a French-language TV station whose universal values are transmitted every day in the 200 countries where we are present. TV5MONDE has decided to participate in this prize and thereby join with those who constantly strive to bear witness, often at the cost of their freedom or their lives, to a world in rebellion and to the realities of war.”

Wednesday, December 7, 2011

The Post, NYT and WSJ show same scene of Kabul carnage via different photos

Intersting discussion amongst photoeditors, via The Washington Post

"The images that came out of the suicide bombing of a Shiite mosque in Kabul on Tuesday were graphic, showing dozens of people killed. One scene in particular stood out from the rest. At the center a woman in green was standing, surrounded by the injured and dead, including several children and a baby.

We spoke to Post visuals editor David Griffin, director of photography Michel Ducille, and deputy director of photography Sonya Doctorian about the Post’s photo choices, as well as NYT photo editor Michele McNally and deputy photo editor Meaghan Looram, and Wall Street Journal director of photography Jack Van Antwerp about their choices"

Full post here.


See also: "Amid a Horrific Scene, Tears": Massoud Hossaini recounts making Tuesday's photos of bombing in Kabul, Afghanistan

The most unforgettable images of the year / Best photographs of 2011




UPDATED Dec. 30, 2011

"2011 was a year of global tumult, marked by widespread social and political uprisings, economic crises, and a great deal more. We saw the fall of multiple dictators, welcomed a new country (South Sudan), witnessed our planet's population grow to 7 billion, and watched in horror as Japan was struck by a devastating earthquake, a tsunami, and a nuclear disaster. From the Arab Spring to Los Indignados to Occupy Wall Street, citizens around the world took to the streets in massive numbers, protesting against governments and financial institutions, risking arrest, injury, and in some cases their lives."  Via The Atlantic





National Post: 25 best Occupy photos of 2011

The White House: 2011 Year in Photos by Pete Souza

NOOR: 2011 Year in Review

Telegraph: Pictures of the year 2011: weird news photos

Washington Post: Iconic and Memorable Images From 2011


The Guardian: Cameraphones capture the images of the year – in pictures

LA Times Framework: The Year in Pictures

Via Bag News Notes: The Best 2011 Photos We Never Saw – Reuters Edition

The Frame: Looking Back at Images From 2011

Review of the year 2011: pictures of Libya and Egypt by Telegraph photographers

Photos: 2011 The Denver Post Year’s Best Photos


BBC News Pictures of the Year 2011



The Guardian: Pictures of 2011



The Guardian: Favourite Photographs of the Year 2011

Wall Street Journal: Photos of the Year 2011


AP Video Sights and Sounds: Looking Back at 2011

Yahoo: Top Viral Photos of 2011

The Guardian: iPhone photos of 2011 - in pictures


US News and World Report: Best News Photos of 2011


Globe and Mail: Pictures of the year: The best photos from 2011

Globe and Mail Photojournalists pick their favorite images of 2011

Bloomberg: 2011: A Year of Firsts Remembered


The Telgraph: Pictures of the year 2011: UK news stories


Best of Washington Post Photojournalists 2011


New York Daily News Top 100 Photos from 2011: A Year In Review


The New York Times Lens : New York The Year in Pictures


New York Times Sunday Review: 2011 Year in Pictures Arab Spring


New York Times Sunday Review: 2011 The Year in Pictures

TIME’s Best Photojournalism of 2011


TIME Looks Back at The Best Photos… of Photos from 2011



Getty Images: Year In Focus: The Images That Defined 2011

2011 Getty Best News Photos Of The Year from Around The World


NPR Picture Show: 2011 Replayed in Iconic Photographs

The Big Picture: 50 Best Photos from The Natural World


The Big Picture: The Year in Pictures: Part I

                           Part 2

                           Part 3


Unicef photo of the year 2011


Reportage Year in Review 2011


Via BBC: The story behind the news pictures of 2011

Part 1: A year in the life of a press photographer: Leon Neal

Part 2: Matt Dunham looks back at his year covering the biggest news
stories for the Associated Press


Wall Street Journal: Photos of the year 2011 (10 catagories)


Wall Street Journal: New York Photos of the Year 2011

MSNBC The Year in Pictures 2011

Chicago Tribune Photojournalist Scott Strazzante - 2011 best news photos

TIME Picks the Most Surprising Photos of 2011

Pete Muller: TIME Picks the Best Photographer on the Wires

The Guardian UK: The best photography of 2011: Sean O'Hagan's choice

The Atlantic 2011: The Year in Photos (Part One)
Part Two
Part Three

TIME's Top 10 Photos of 2011

TIME Picks the Best Viral Photos of 2011


Buzzfeed: The 45 Most Powerful Images Of 2011

Best News Pictures of 2011: Your Picks From Nat Geo News

Reuters: Best Photos of the Year 2011

UPI: 2011 News Photos of the Year

International Business News Year 2011: Best Photographs From Around the World

LIFE: 2011 Pictures of the Year   


David Schonauer's Annual World Tour  Part 1
                                                               Part 2

Vanity Fair’s Year in Photos, 2011

Obama, Euro Crisis, Buffett, Tsunami, NYC Demo: Bloomberg Best Business and Finance  Photos 2011

Conscientious: My favourite photobooks this year


Bookmark this page to see additions as they are published from around the world.

Tuesday, December 6, 2011

"To flip through the pages of this handsome book inevitably elicits a wave of nostalgia, a desire to roll back the years to a time when print was king and a dime could buy this singular curated version of the world"







Sunday Book Review


"Now comes “75 Years: The Very Best of Life,” a coffee-table behemoth weighing nearly seven pounds, featuring unforgettable photo­graphs (Alfred Eisenstaedt’s famous kiss, “V-J Day, Times Square, New York City, 1945”) as well as never-before-published photos from the archives."

Read full article here.


75 YEARS

The Very Best of Life
Illustrated. 224 pp. Life Books. $36.95

"Nothing makes a better case for the First Amendment than good video of a police officer behaving badly"





Via American Journalism Review

Arrested for Doing Their Jobs   

The rising tension between news photographers and law enforcement officials. Mon., December 5, 2011

By Deborah Potter
Deborah Potter (potter@newslab.org) is executive director of NewsLab, a broadcast training and research center, and a former network correspondent.

Covering fires is a routine part of a television news photographer's job. Clint Fillinger has been doing it for more than 40 years in Milwaukee, so he knows the drill: Stay behind the yellow police tape and roll on everything. But this fall, while doing exactly that, Fillinger went from shooting the news to making it when he was knocked down, handcuffed and arrested at the scene of a house fire. When did videotaping become a crime?
 
Several recent incidents suggest a disturbing new trend: public safety officials targeting photographers, including professionals. "Cops don't want to be identified," says Lucy Dalglish, executive director of the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press. "They don't want their pictures taken."

The relationship between journalists and police officers has always been tense, of course. "They're both aggressive professions, and sometimes they get in one another's face," says John Timoney, former police chief in Miami and Philadelphia.
 
But something clearly has changed. "It used to be guys with a reputation for not following orders" who wound up in confrontations with police, Dalglish says. "These days, it's folks keeping their mouths shut and doing their jobs."
 
In the Milwaukee case, Fillinger was charged with obstructing a police officer after he objected to being forced back "for safety" while members of the public were allowed to stay put, watching the house fire from across the street. His boss concedes that he used an expletive and raised his arm when the officer closed in on him, but says the arrest was not justified.
 
"While the language was coarse, I truly believe Clint had no intention of touching the officer, and the whole thing certainly did not rise to the level of being dropped to the ground and handcuffed," says Jim Lemon, news director at Milwaukee's Fox affiliate, WITI. "It was a bad spur-of-the-moment decision made by the police commanders on the scene."
 
Two recent cases in Suffolk County, New York, reflect similar bad decisions. In late July, a photographer for a local TV news service was arrested while videotaping the end of a police chase. An officer ordered Phil Datz to leave the scene, even though he was standing on a public street with other people. When Datz asked where he was supposed to go, the officer responded, "I don't care where you go, just go away." After Datz set up in the next block and started shooting video again, the officer jumped in his squad car, raced up to Datz and arrested him for obstruction. The charges were dropped.
 
A few weeks after that incident, an emergency services official in the same jurisdiction manhandled a photojournalist for New York's NBC-owned station, WNBC, as he tried to videotape the cleanup of a chemical spill. The official grabbed the photographer's camera and tried to wrestle it away.
 
What's different now, some say, is the proliferation of cellphone cameras on the street combined with heightened concern about terrorism. "I think that post 9/11 police treat everyone with a camera as suspect," says Mickey Osterreicher, general counsel for the National Press Photographers Association. "In certain instances, news photographers are singled out because of their high visibility."
 
Photojournalists aren't the only ones who have been targeted. Cases are pending in several states against citizens who have been arrested and had their cameras confiscated after videotaping police action. And the arrests keep coming, even though the police keep losing in court. The latest ruling, from an appeals court in Massachusetts, said the First Amendment "unambiguously" protects the right of citizens to videotape police officers performing their duties in a public space. Journalists clearly deserve the same protection.
"The press may have no greater rights than those of the general public," Osterreicher says. "They certainly have no less right of access on a public street."
 
Police officers should know better than to run anyone in just for taking pictures. "We tell them constantly at the academy, 'Take it for granted, you're going to be on camera,'" Timoney says. "Everybody has a camera and they're entitled to use it. We police have to suck it up."
 
Journalism groups say officers need training to make sure they understand the rights of professionals and citizens alike to take pictures of police activity in public places. But Timoney doubts that more training is the answer. "If police don't understand this now, all the training in the world isn't going to help."
 
Piling up victories in court probably won't help either. When charges against photojournalists are dismissed, as they inevitably are, the police officers involved pay no penalty and face no sanctions. Suing for false arrest might make a difference, Dalglish says, by hitting the police department where it hurts – in the budget. But it's unlikely any cash-strapped news organization would be willing to shoulder the cost of a lawsuit just to make a point.
 
So what's to be done? Keep shooting, I say. Nothing makes a better case for the First Amendment than good video of a police officer behaving badly.

Saturday, December 3, 2011

LONE PROTEST

As the security forces in Bahrain fired tear gas at protesters on Saturday, Zainab Alkhawaja, an activist and blogger, blocked a line of police vehicles.
Mohammed Mirza, via Yfrog
As the security forces in Bahrain fired tear gas at protesters on Saturday, Zainab Alkhawaja, an activist and blogger, blocked a line of police vehicles.

Friday, December 2, 2011

LIFE photographers: "He or she needs to bring empathy, insight, patience and frequently courage"

America in Pictures: The Story of Life Magazine, BBC Four
How the camera captured America's golden age
Via The Arts Desk

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