Showing posts with label war. Show all posts
Showing posts with label war. Show all posts

Tuesday, November 14, 2023

New Project "The Missiles On Our Land" investigates the human and environmental risks of a new Air Force Nuclear Missile program


 

Nina Berman: 

"This is a project I’ve been working on the last year with colleagues at Princeton and Columbia about the US nuclear arsenal and our plans to spend nearly 2$ trillion building more weapons. It will be published as a package (video, podcast, print pieces) on Scientific American and on our website missilesonourland.org on Nov 14. Like most things that concern the US military, there has been almost no public engagement around these policies and so I hope you find it informative."


View the full project here

Tuesday, February 21, 2023

The Soldier in the Snow: A dark journey down the rabbit hole of war photos, blanketed in snow.

 

Via Patrick Witty, Field of View


White Death, Pvt. Henry Irving Tannebaum Ottre, Belgium 1945: Dead soldier covered in snow
Tony Vacarro


Private First Class Tony Vaccaro, carrying an M-1 rifle and an Argus C3 brick camera, photographed this scene January 11, 1945, during the Battle of the Bulge. At first glance, it looks like a painting - spartan and stark, the composition as cold as the day.

“I saw the soldier that was lying down so peacefully, so beautiful as if an artist had drawn it.” Vaccaro recollected in the excellent 2016 documentary Underfire: The Untold Story of Pfc. Tony Vaccaro. “Death, that is beautiful. It’s a contradiction. You want the ugliest aspect of mankind, death, to be beautiful. Otherwise it can not be a monument.”

Vaccaro died in 2022 at the age of 100. The photo, titled “White Death, Requiem for a Dead Soldier,” was published alongside Vaccaro’s obit in The New York Times.


Full article here



screen shot of the NY Times front page of February 26, 2022 with Tyler Hicks photograph of dead soldier in snow by a tank in Ukraine


Monday, January 9, 2023

War-scarred land: Nina Berman and Ashley Gilbertson featured in award-winning book depicting collateral damage of U.S. military at home

Via The Harvard Gazette


In her recent book and accompanying exhibition, “Devour the Land” — honored at the 2022 PhotoBook Awards — curator Makeda Best considers how photographers have responded to the U.S. military’s impact on the environment since the 1970s.

Below, the Richard L. Menschel Curator of Photography at the Harvard Art Museums walks us through a few of the images she selected. (Full post here)



a house is seen in dim light besides trees and open sky

A Housing Development Bordering the Starmet Superfund Site, Concord, Mass., USA” (July 3, 2016) by Nina Berman, American (b. New York, N.Y. 1960). © Nina Berman; image courtesy of Nina Berman

Just outside Walden Pond, a toxic dump

Nina Berman’s photograph was made in nearby Concord. Made at sites across the country, Berman’s series “Acknowledgment of Danger” takes its title from a waiver visitors must sign before entering the toxic grounds of a former military facility. In Concord, she photographed a new housing development in early morning light. Concord is known for its connections to the Revolutionary War and to the U.S. environmental movement. (The pictured site is six miles from Walden Pond, made famous by Henry David Thoreau’s 19th-century nature writing.) Here, Berman draws out this site’s link to modern warfare: Starmet Corp. (formerly Nuclear Metals Inc.) manufactured products from depleted uranium, primarily for armor-piercing ammunition, among other things. The company discharged toxic waste into an unlined holding basin for nearly 30 years, contaminating the soil and groundwater. In 2001, the facility was placed on the National Priorities List, an EPA registry of the nation’s most hazardous sites.


a  Resident Talks to Workers in the yards outside in the Hunter’s Point Neighborhood of San Francisco, Calif


 “A Resident Talks to Workers in the Hunter’s Point Neighborhood of San Francisco, Calif., on May 5, 2017.” From the series “Bombs in Our Backyard” by Ashley Gilbertson, Australian (b. Melbourne 1978). © Ashley Gilbertson/VII; image courtesy of the artist

Story of environmental racism

It was important to me that the exhibition speak to the fact that communities of color are disproportionately impacted by this pollution and toxicity. Ashley Gilbertson made this photograph in a neighborhood in my hometown of San Francisco, called Hunter’s Point. The neighborhood was largely built on a former naval base, today a Superfund site. Growing up, I knew kids who lived here — heard them talk about their eczema and asthma. In 2017-18, Gilbertson, a contributor to the catalog, acclaimed for his photographs of conflict in the Middle East, turned his attention to the U.S., documenting pollution caused by the military for the investigative journalism nonprofit ProPublica. Gilbertson collaborated with journalist Abrahm Lustgarten (another contributor to the catalog) to produce a series of in-depth reports on the pollution from former chemical weapons test sites and the harmful ways the military has chosen to dispose of chemicals and munitions. In his larger series, Gilbertson shows how people and toxins intersect — from illness to activism to labor and daily life in a poisonous environment.


 


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Saturday, July 2, 2022

Imagine a world without photojournalism exhibit Opens, Marks Monroe Gallery's 20th anniversary in Santa Fe

 Via Art Daily

July 2, 2022

color photograph thrugh train window of mother and child leaving Ukraine

David Butow, March 15, 2022. Two of the millions of refugees fleeing the war in Ukraine, this woman and her son leave for Poland and a completely unpredictable future. © David Butow. Courtesy Monroe Gallery of Photography.


SANTA FE, NM.- Monroe Gallery of Photography opened a major exhibition celebrating the Gallery’s 20th anniversary in Santa Fe. “Imagine a World Without Photojournalism” is a multi-photojournalist presentation of news events of the 20th and 21st Centuries. The exhibition will continue through September 18, 2022.

A special program with gallery photojournalists Nina Berman and David Butow will be held on Friday, July 22 at 5:30 PM, RSVP required, please contact the Gallery for information.


Imagine a world without photojournalism

Across America and throughout the world, photojournalists working to bring the world vital news have come under attack, often from authorities, governments, and groups using violence and repression as a form of censorship. Combined with deliberate misinformation creating public skepticism, the photojournalist’s mission of creating visual moments essential to understanding societal and political change may be threatened.

For 20 years, Monroe Gallery of Photography has presented exhibitions championing the critical work of photojournalists.

Photojournalism’s work and mission—one that can be put simply as documenting a news event through the medium of photographic images, has arguably become the most essential and enduring news messaging tool, and one that has gained only further traction and relevance in the 21st century.

On the occasion of Monroe Gallery of Photography’s 20th anniversary in Santa Fe, the gallery presents an exhibition of photojournalists that they have exhibited throughout the years which span almost 100 years of history.

Photographs in the exhibition cover 20th- and 21st- century societal and political change, from the battles of World War II to the Civil Rights struggles of the 1960s, from the frenzy of Presidential campaigns to the January 6 Insurrection on the United States Capitol. The exhibit includes a photograph from the 2019 Charlotte, North Carolina Gay Pride parade that the Gaston County manager ordered removed from a Gaston County museum exhibit on June 15, 2022.

Photographs in this exhibition are universally relevant; they reflect the past, the present, and the changing times. These unforgettable images are imbedded in our collective consciousness; they form a sort of shared visual heritage for the human race, a treasury of significant memories. Many of the photographs featured in this exhibition not only moved the public at the time of their publication, and continue to have an impact today, but set social and political changes in motion, transforming the way we live and think.


NINA BERMAN

Nina Berman is a documentary photographer, filmmaker, author and educator. Her wide-ranging work looks at American politics, militarism, post violence trauma and resistance. Her photographs and videos have been exhibited at more than 100 venues from the security walls of the Za'atari refugee camp to the Whitney Museum of American Art. She is the author of Purple Hearts – Back from Iraq, (2004) portraits and interviews with wounded American veterans, Homeland, (2008) an examination of the militarization of American life post September 11, and, An autobiography of Miss Wish (2017) a story told with a survivor of sexual violence which was shortlisted for both the Aperture and Arles book prizes. Additional fellowships, awards and grants include: the New York Foundation for the Arts, the World Press Photo Foundation, Pictures of the Year International, the Open Society Foundation, the Center for Documentary Studies at Duke University, the MIT Knight Science Journalism Fellowship and the Aftermath Project. She is a Professor at Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism where she directs the photography program. She lives in her hometown of New York City.


DAVID BUTOW

David Butow is a freelance photojournalist whose projects and assignments have taken him to over two dozen countries including Afghanistan, Burma, Iraq, Peru, Yemen and Zimbabwe. His new book, BRINK, chronicles politics in the United States from the 2016 presidential election through the chaos of the Trump presidency, the turmoil of 2020 and concludes with the insurrection and its aftermath at the U.S, Capitol in January 2021.

Born in New York and raised in Dallas, he has a degree in Government from the University of Texas at Austin. After college he moved to Los Angeles and worked in newspapers before beginning a freelance career for magazines in the 1990's. From the mid-90's through the late-2000's he worked as a contract photographer for US News and World Report magazine covering social issues and news events such as post- 9/11 in New York, the Palestinian/Israeli Intifada, the 2003 U.S. invasion of Iraq, the 2019 Hong Kong protests, the funeral of Nelson Mandela, and the death of Pope John Paul II at the Vatican.

Most recently, his photographs from Ukraine and Ulvalde, Texas have been published in Politico, Time, and The New York Times

David's photographs have been shown in numerous exhibitions including the Asia Society NY, the United Nations NY and Visa Pour l'Image in Perpignan, France. They have also appeared in books and magazines worldwide.

Tuesday, April 26, 2022

Reflections of the L.A. uprising: Revisiting the photographs with David Butow

 Via The Los Angeles Times

April 26, 2022




Welcome to Los Angeles in the last few days of April 1992.

"David Butow witnessed many historical events through the lens of his camera as a freelance photojournalist, including the 1992 uprisings in L.A., the 2003 invasion of Iraq, and the 2019 protests in Hong Kong. Most recently, he was in Ukraine shooting photographs of the war."


David Butow recalls taking photos of burning rubble just a couple blocks from his L.A. apartment in 1992.  (View these historical images overlaid on present-day 360ยบ video in this immersive piece, and hear from the photographers themselves. Scan the QR codes using Snapchat on your smartphone to walk through an augmented reality doorway to examine the space around you.)

Thursday, March 31, 2022

David Butow: From Ukraine

 Via Design Arts Daily

March 31, 2022


photograph through train window of woman and her son leaveing Ukraine for  for Poland

"March 15, 2022. Two of the millions of refugees fleeing the war in Ukraine, this woman and her son leave for Poland and a completely unpredictable future. Lviv is one of the funnel points for people trying to get out of the country. I just finished several days photographing these refugees, tracing their steps to the border and beyond.

The escape from Ukraine has become increasingly desperate. More than 2.6 million people have fled the country as Russian troops move closer to major metro areas, shelling civilian infrastructure at random and forcing people to find last-minute transportation to take them to safety.

Train stations are constantly crowded. Aid groups are meeting civilians with food, water and donated clothes. Polish families are taking in Ukrainian refugees, offering up their homes as temporary shelters. The U.S. so far has donated over $100M to help Ukrainians by providing safe drinking water, sanitation and hygiene supplies as well as surgical kit"s. --David Butow


Photographer David Butow, a longtime subscriber and contributor to DART, arrived in Ukraine the second week of March to cover the effects of war on ordinary people who were caught in the indiscriminate shelling of cities like Lviv and Chernevo. He covered the growing humanitarian crisis amid the escalating attacks, with people seeking shelter in makeshift camps in Poland, Moldova and Romania. David departed earlier this week through Poland; following are some of his photos and reportage for @politico (click for full article)

Thursday, March 17, 2022

David Butow in Ukraine for POLITICO

screen shot of a family walking past a church on their way to the border crossing with Poland.

 


In January, we were honored to host photojournalist David Butow for an exhibition and discussion about his new book "Brink".

He is now covering the massive humanitarian crisis inside Ukraine and along its borders. POLITICO recently featured his photographs in the essay "On the ground in Ukraine, in photos: Millions flee their homes amid intensifying Russian attacks." Click to view.



Tuesday, October 19, 2021

A Nation of Neglect: 'Devour The Land' Special Exhibition

 

Via The Harvard Crimson

By Ebubechi J. Nwaubani, Contributing Writer

October 19, 2021

On Sept. 17, The Harvard Art Museum opened its doors to the new “Devour the Land” photography exhibition. The showing is divided into three rooms and travels through the ramifications of nuclear war, environmental poisoning, and urbanization in six parts titled: “Arming America” Part 1 and Part 2, “Slow Violence,” “Regeneration,” “Other Battlefields,” and “Resistance.”

According to curator Makeda Best, “Devour the Land” originates from General William Tecumseh Sherman’s description of a devastated and desolate land following the Union Army’s “scorched earth” policy during the Civil War. Images captured by photographer George Barnard, who accompanied General Sherman on this campaign, depicted “destruction with a certain beauty,” according to Best. This tragic beauty is a thread throughout the three rooms — and a sentiment shared by attendees.

“It’s quite deep, and unfortunately, sad, but there’s also a beauty,” said security guard Patricia A. Daly while standing in front of a series of photos by influential photographer Richard Misrach. In the center of a sun bleached landscape stands a yellow school bus ravaged by nuclear weapons and rot; the photograph is labeled “School Bus Target.”

Disparities within the artwork scenes were picked up by other onlookers as well. Visitor Michael E. Halwes said “The pieces that have really contrasted the war on terror aspects of the Gulf War were pretty compelling and then also the ones where you get a good juxtaposition of the industrial masking [of] the audience's view of the nature behind it.”

This contrast is most prominent in Frederica Armstrong’s photo series “In Plain Site.” Armstrong captures suburban areas of Silicon Valley in her series, areas which have an aura of the mundane: and parking lot, a street corner at sunset. Below each image is the corresponding EPA classification number that identifies it as a superfund site. “The National Priorities List creates lists of sites that are so toxic as to need a superfund [which is] a fusion of federal dollars to clean up and kind of get it under control,” says Best, waving finger quotations in the air around the words “clean up.” Below two images read “Site ready for use: No.”

In a glass box in the center of one of the rooms of the exhibit lies a card titled “Nuclear Mail” with the date August, 1982 in the top left corner. The card reads: “WASHINGTON, D.C. — U.S. Postal Service officials revealed plans to assure mail delivery in the event of nuclear war. … Should Washington D.C. be destroyed, the national postal service will be run from Memphis, Tenn. If Memphis is also devastated, San Bruno Calif. will take over.” Best touches on these effects, saying that “the military is the number one polluter in the country.” Best spoke to the exhaustion of resources done by the scorched earth policy. “We’re still doing that, we’re using up our land, but we’re only poisoning ourselves. We’re only destroying ourselves this time.”

The exhibit stands out from most atomic photography presentations in that it addresses the long term effects of this war on land. Best credits “Slow Violence and the Environmentalism of the Poor” by Rob Nixon as her inspiration for the third section of the exhibit “Slow Violence.” Best says the book makes “recognition of violence as attritional versus spectacular.” A series of photographs depict an area in Louisiana known as Cancer Alley, which has one of the largest concentrations of petrochemical plants and refineries in the nation. Most citizens of the area are descendants of slaves. Best addresses the question of geographical racism thoroughly throughout the exhibit. One frame depicts the bright lights of a penitentiary — whose prisoners are disproportionately black — against a pitch black sky. In response, Best says “Many prisons in the country are superfund sites, so what does that mean?”

This exhibition, as much great art does, asks the question: “What’s next?” Attendee Micheal E. Hawles admits that he feels pessimism about the future but says, “People have a responsibility to bear witness to what’s going on in the world around them. … There’s always the chance that someone is going to be exposed to new information and I think it's just about the constant drumming of building public sentiment against these sorts of practices that, ideally, get reflected in policy changes.”

Attendee Ashley M. Kelley was also emotionally impacted by the exhibit. “It's important to take note, [that] even though you aren’t able to see what’s around you, and if you’re privileged enough, know that this is still going on and health hazards have large effects on families and generations,” says Kelley.

It’s clear that the issue of nuclear warfare is not a linear one, but one with many starting points and stories that run parallel to each other throughout history. This exhibition stands as a testament to these parallel stories and, hopefully, points towards an end to such damaging practices.


Monroe Gallery photographers Nina Berman and Ashley Gilbertson are contributors to this exhibition.

Monday, May 31, 2021

Tony Vaccaro, who photographed World War II in Europe describes 6 of his photos that reveal the 'insanity of war'

 Via Business Insider

Memorial Day, May 31, 2021

photo of dead solding in WWII
A dead GI in Germany's Hurtgen Forest in 1944. 
Tony Vaccaro/Tony Vaccaro Studio


Michelantonio "Tony" Vaccaro wanted to serve his country with a camera during World War II, so he tried to join the US Army Signal Corps. But under Uncle Sam's rules, the 20-year-old draftee was too young for that branch.

So Vaccaro, the orphaned son of Italian immigrants, became a private first class in the 83rd Infantry Division. By June 1944, days after the first wave of 156,000 Allied troops descended on the beaches of Normandy, Vaccaro landed on Omaha Beach, where he saw row after row of dead soldiers in the sand.

Vaccaro was armed with an M1 rifle. He also brought along his personal camera: A relatively compact Argus C3 he'd purchased secondhand for $47.50 and had become fond of using as a high-school student in New York.

In addition to fighting on the front lines during the Battle of Normandy and the ensuing Allied advance, Vaccaro photographed what he was seeing. At night, he'd develop rolls of film, mixing chemicals in helmets borrowed from fellow soldiers. He'd hang the wet negatives on tree branches to dry and then carry them with him.

When he had enough to fill a package, he'd generally mail them home to his sisters in the US for safekeeping and to ensure the images would survive even if he did not.


Then-GI Tony Vaccaro on the wing of a B-17 Bomber in 1944.

                                Then-GI Tony Vaccaro on the wing of a B-17 Bomber in 1944. 

Tony Vaccaro/Tony Vaccaro Studio


From 1944 to 1945, he moved through France, Belgium, Luxembourg, and Germany.

Along the way, he took photographs that few others — even the press and Signal Corps photographers — were in a position to take: a fellow soldier's last step before shrapnel tore through him, a jubilant kiss between a GI and a young French girl in a newly liberated town, and many stomach-churning portraits of ransacked corpses that still haunt him.

During 272 days at war, he captured thousands of photos. After the Allied victory, he felt sickened and debilitated by the devastation he saw. He wasn't ready to return to the US. And he never wanted to photograph armed conflict again.

He bought a Jeep and traveled with his camera, eventually photographing brighter moments, like the reconstruction of Europe and the beauty in the lives of famous artists and everyday people.

Vaccaro went on to make a name as a fashion and culture photographer. He traveled the world shooting for magazines like Look and Life and taking portraits of bigwigs including John F. Kennedy, Pablo Picasso, Frank Lloyd Wright, Georgia O'Keeffe, and many more.

A half-century would pass before Vaccaro began publishing the bulk of his surviving wartime photos. The surviving images have been shared widely, including in the 2016 HBO documentary "Underfire: The Untold Story of PFC. Tony Vaccaro," in which Vaccaro revisits the history that he had to break Army rules to chronicle.


photo of Tony Vaccao in his studio


Tony Vaccaro. Manolo Salas/courtesy of Tony Vaccaro Studio


Vaccaro, now 98, survived a bout with COVID-19 last spring that put him in the hospital.

He continues roaming his neighborhood photographing everyday people and selling prints through Monroe Gallery of Photography. From his Queens, New York, studio more than seven decades after World War II, he closes his eyes and thinks of the brutality he documented as an infantryman.

"I see death," Vaccaro told Insider. "Death that should not happen."

Below, he describes six of his photos that he says capture "the insanity of war."


photo of dead soldir in snow


'White Death', Near Ottrรฉ, Belgium, January 1945.

Tony Vaccaro/Tony Vaccaro Studio


Vaccaro developed the roll containing this image while on leave in 1945. He remembers calling this photograph "Death In The Snow" at first, later deciding that "White Death" was a more "elegant" and fitting name to honor Pvt. Henry Tannenbaum's service and sacrifice. Tannenbaum was killed in action on January 11, 1945, during the Battle of the Bulge.

"When I first took this photo of a GI dead in the snow, I was not aware of who he was. What I did was to chip the snow away and look for his right arm, because in those days, [on] the right arm we carried our dog tags. He was Pvt. Henry Irving Tannenbaum. He was one of the soldiers who fought there, just like me. We fought in the snow. He died in the snow. He was my friend. I knew he had a son. … Many years later I got a call from his son."

dead burned soldier in WWII


'Gott Mit Uns', Hรผrtgen Forest, Germany, 1944

The burned body of a German tank driver, as seen through Vaccaro's lens.

Tony Vaccaro/Tony Vaccaro Studio

.

"He's burning. This was frontline. You can smell him. We knocked out his German tank. We knocked it out, and he jumped out of there and fell dead in front of us. He was the pilot of this tank. Similar age [to me]. Here he's gone. … But [before the photograph] I heard him scream, 'Muter, muter.' He was calling for his mother."

"I took cover [by lying down next to him] and read his belt buckle: 'Gott mit uns.' … It means 'God is with us.' [Before the war] I had seen people that die and go to the church, and from church they go to the cemetery, like my father when I was four. This was a different death."


soldier hit by shrapnel in WWII

'Final Steps of Jack Rose', Ottrรฉ, Belgium, January 11, 1945.

Tony Vaccaro/Tony Vaccaro Studio


Vaccaro captured this image of a soldier he identifies as US Army Pvt. 1st Class Jack Rose of the 83rd Infantry Division, still upright, just after shrapnel from a mortar explosion severed his spine. The explosion, visible between Rose and the fence, threw Vaccaro back many feet. Rose, 23, was killed in action.

"That was Jack Rose. The last step. I was photographing him when this shell comes and explodes. He got killed there, in the village. … The shell could have come to me, too. I was lucky."


battlefield scene in Rhineland in WWII


'Rhineland Battle', Near Walternienburg, Germany, April 1945.

Tony Vaccaro/Tony Vaccaro Studio


Vaccaro says the streaking on some of his war photos comes from the grueling conditions he was in — he didn't have time to properly process and store his work in combat — and possibly from water damage due to a flood in the office where the images were stored after the war.

"We were going forward when a shell comes in, in the back, and explodes. This was Rhineland Battle. I was in a hole as the mortar exploded. I raised my arm up with the camera in my hand above the hole to catch this picture. If that shell had come 20 yards over, I was with these two [soldiers seen in the picture], and my hole was here, and if the shell came [where the two soldiers were or where Vaccaro was], I wouldn't be here talking today."


dead soldier in WWII


The Family Back Home', Hรผrtgen Forest, Germany, January 1945.

Tony Vaccaro/Tony Vaccaro Studio



When Vaccaro encountered this dead German soldier, it appeared that other American soldiers had already looted his valuables.

"This is a man who we killed in frontline [fighting]. … That was it. The family back home. A dead German soldier with the pictures he was carrying of his family. … Of course I had photos of my family too. … It reminds me of the tragedy of mankind. He's not a German. He's a human being."

"We just must stop using 'I'm Italian. I'm French. I'm Spanish. I'm German.' That's what makes us enemies of each other. We're all humans. In Spain. In Germany. It's a terrible mistake that man has made. We are humans. And nothing else."

Defeated German soldier returns home after WW!


'Defeated Soldier', Frankfurt, Germany, March 1947.

Tony Vaccaro/Tony Vaccaro Studio



Vaccaro captured this image after the war, while photographing the reconstruction of Europe for Stars.

"This man came back [from being a prisoner of war in the US]. He's crying. … He gave up. You see where his family had been. The war is over. He came back, and his house had been destroyed. That's why I call this the defeated soldier. He was German. … Later I was told that he lived here."

"The point is, you see, on this Earth there is only one species, one church. Unfortunately we take this one species and create hundreds and thousands of churches, and each one is different from the next. And that's why man is not attaining peace yet."



View the Tiny Vaccaro collection here

Watch the video "Tony Vaccaro at 98" here 

Monday, August 17, 2020

Ashley Gilbertson: 'I am here today because another man died'

 


Via BBC


 



 Iraq War: 'I am here today because another man died'


At the start of the Iraq War in 2003, over 600 journalists and photographers are given permission by the US government to follow the conflict as embedded reporters.

Photographer Ashley Gilbertson is working for The New York Times when he enters the city of Fallujah with a US marine battalion.

Fallujah, 40 miles outside Baghdad, would be the deadliest battle the marines would fight since the Vietnam War.

Just over a week after entering the city, a small group of them is ordered to escort Ashley on a recce of a local minaret - what happens next will change their lives forever.

Friday, May 8, 2020

Tony Vaccaro on VE Day - 'We Just Did Our Bit:' WWII Vets Recall War 75 Years Later


Photo by Maria Vaccaro


Via the New York Times
May 8, 2020

LONDON — Seventy-five years after World War II ended in Europe,
The Associated Press spoke to veterans who endured mortal danger,
oppression and fear. As they mark Victory in Europe Day on
 Friday, they also are dealing with loneliness brought on by the
coronavirus pandemic. Here is some of their testimony.

SURVIVING NORMANDY AND COVID-19

Tony Vaccaro is one of the few people alive who can claim to
 have survived the Battle of Normandy and COVID-19.

He was dealt a bad hand early, as his mother died during
childbirth a few years before tuberculosis claimed his father.
 By age 5, he was an orphan in Italy, enduring beatings from
an uncle. By World War II he was an American G.I.

Now, at age 97, he is recovering from COVID-19. He attributes
his longevity to “blind luck, red wine” and determination.

To me, the greatest thing that you can do is challenge the world,”
 he said. “And most of these challenges I win. That’s what keeps
me going.”

Vaccaro’s grit carried him into a lifetime of photography that
began as a combat infantryman when he stowed a camera and
captured close to 8,000 photographs.

One of his famous images,
Kiss of Liberation,” showed a U.S. sergeant kissing a French 
girl at the end of Nazi occupation.

Vaccaro documented the reconstruction of Europe and
returned to the U.S. where he worked for magazines
such as Look and Life and has fond memories of
photographing celebrities including Sophia Loren, J
ohn. F. Kennedy, Georgia O’Keefe and Pablo Picasso.

Vaccaro lives in Queens, the New York City borough ravaged
by the coronavirus, and next to his family.

He might have caught the virus in April from his son or in
their neighborhood, his daughter-in-law Maria said. He was in
the hospital two days and spent another week recovering.

“That was it,” she said. “He’s walking around like nothing happened.”












Friday, November 3, 2017

Texas Book Festival panel discussion of "Eddie Adams: Bigger than the Frame"



The Briscoe Center invites you to a Texas Book Festival panel discussion of:

"Eddie Adams: Bigger than the Frame"
A Co-publication of the Briscoe Center and the University of Texas Press

Sunday, November 5, 2017
12:00 p.m.–12:45 p.m.

Moderator: Don Carleton
Panelists: Alyssa Adams and Anne Wilkes Tucker
Location: The Contemporary Austin–Jones Center
...
Drawn from the Briscoe Center's Eddie Adams Photographic Archive, "Bigger Than the Frame" presents a career-spanning selection of a renowned photographer's finest work. In addtion to Adams's much-praised Vietnam War photography, the book includes images that uncannily reflect the world and domestic issues of today, including immigration, conflict in the Middle East, and the refugee crisis. They attest to Adams's overwhelming desire to empathize with others and tell their stories–as he once observed, "I actually become the person I am taking a picture of. If you are starving, I am starving, too." Best known for Saigon Execution, his Pulitzer Prize–winning photograph that forever shaped how the world views the horrors of war, Adams won more than five hundred awards, including the George Polk Award for News Photography three times and the Robert Capa Gold Medal.

Books will be available for purchase at the event.

The Jones Center is located at Seventh Street and Congress Avenue. Street and garage parking are available nearby.




Eddie Adams' fine art prints are available from the Monroe Gallery of Photography.

Thursday, August 14, 2014

“Police militarization has been among the most consequential and unnoticed developments of our time, and it is now beginning to affect press freedom.”

Occupied Ferguson.
Occupied Ferguson. (AP Photo/Jeff Roberson)


“Police militarization has been among the most consequential and unnoticed developments of our time, and it is now beginning to affect press freedom.”


HuffPost, Washington Post reporters assaulted, arrested in Ferguson


Police firing tear gas at a TV news camera crew, in Ferguson, Mo., which is a city in the United States of America


"A SWAT team. To take out cameras. In the United States of America. Because you know how dangerous it is when people start pointing those things around"




The fiasco in Ferguson shows why you don't give military equipment to cops


You have a right to record the police
The Militarization of U.S. Police: Finally Dragged Into the Light by the Horrors of Ferguson


 NYPD sends memo telling officers they're allowed to be photographed


Photos: Protests continue for fourth night in Ferguson


"The gentleman on the left has more personal body armor and weaponry than I did while invading Iraq"


Ferguson or Iraq? Photos Unmask the Militarization of America's Police


"During the Obama administration, according to Pentagon data, police departments have received tens of thousands of machine guns; nearly 200,000 ammunition magazines; thousands of pieces of camouflage and night-vision equipment; and hundreds of silencers, armored cars and aircraft"


How the Post-Dispatch’s photo staff is covering Ferguson






Related:   FREEDOM OF THE PRESS?


                "Is there too much press freedom? Ask 72 dead journalists"


                 "unprecedented rise in the number of journalists killed and imprisoned in the past year"


                 Comprehensive investigation of threats to press freedoms under the Obama administration







Sunday, May 25, 2014

Bedrooms of the Fallen: Honoring the Casualties of War





BEDROOMS OF THE FALLEN

Over 5,000 men and women have died serving the United States in the Iraq and Afghanistan wars. This is a project about who they were - sons, daughters, sisters, brothers - and the bedrooms which they once called their own.

About This Project

These bedrooms once belonged to men and women who died fighting in the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. These fallen men and women were blown up by IEDs, RPGs, hand grenades and suicide bombers. They were shot down in ambushes and by snipers. They died in helicopters, in humvees, and in tanks. It all took place thousands of miles away from home, and the country they fought to defend.

The purpose of this project is to honor these fallen – not simply as soldiers, marines, airmen and seamen, but as sons, daughters, sisters and brothers – and to remind us that before they fought, they lived, and they slept, just like us, at home.

Bedrooms of the Fallen was conceived in 2007 as a way to memorialize soldiers and marines who died in Iraq. It was expanded to include casualties from Afghanistan in 2009. Order the book here.



Related: Time LightBox
Bedrooms of the Fallen: Honoring the Casualties of War

Thursday, March 13, 2014

The Wall That Heals comes to Santa Fe

Washington, DC, 2006


Via The Santa Fe New Mexican


Schedule of events
The exhibit is a half-scale replica of the actual wall, and will be on display at Fort Marcy Field in Santa Fe, N.M. Viewing is permitted 24 hours a day from March 19, 4 p.m. — March 24, 6 a.m. There is no charge for admission.


Tuesday, March 18, 2014
1:00 p.m. — VVMF Traveling Wall arrives, escorted by the American Legion Riders Post 26 and NM Patriot Guard Riders

Wednesday, March 19, 2014
8:00 a.m. — VVMF Traveling Wall Set-up
4:00 p.m. — Open to the Public

Thursday, March 20, 2014
11:00 a.m. — Welcoming Ceremony and speech by the founder on the History of the Wall

Saturday, March 22, 2014
5:00 p.m. — Reading of the 398 New Mexican names on the wall, followed by a candlelight vigil

Sunday, March 23, 2014
11:00 a.m. — Honoring Ceremony

Monday, March 24, 2014
6:00 a.m.— Viewing of the Traveling Wall ends
8:00 a.m. — Tear down begins








Sunday, November 11, 2012

Veteran's Day, 2012






Revealing Side Of Combat
There are sides of war we are not exposed to but a new photographic exhibit in River North is giving us a glimpse. CBS 2's Vince Gerasole reports: click for video
 
 
 
"People don't think this war has any impact on Americans? Well here it is," Nina Berman says of the image of a somber bride staring blankly, unsmiling at the camera, her war-ravaged groom alongside her, his head down.
 
 
 
Related: War/Photography
 
 
 
 
 

Sunday, May 27, 2012

MEMORIAL DAY 2012


©Eric Smith: Funeral for Iraq War Soldier, Lake Orion, Michigan,2006

A link for reflection on this Memorial Day:


BEDROOMS OF THE FALLEN

"These bedrooms once belonged to men and women who died fighting in the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. These fallen men and women were blown up by IEDs, RPGs, hand grenades and suicide bombers. They were shot down in ambushes and by snipers. They died in helicopters, in humvees, and in tanks. It all took place thousands of miles away from home, and the country they fought to defend.

The purpose of this project is to honor these fallen – not simply as soldiers, marines, airmen and seamen, but as sons, daughters, sisters and brothers – and to remind us that before they fought, they lived, and they slept, just like us, at home." Click to view


See Also:

  "As Memorial Day Nears, a Single Image That Continues to Haunt"

                 Memorial Day at Arlington National Cemetery

                Monroe Gallery of Photography: Memorial Day, 2011
         
                                                                      Memorial Day, 2010