Wednesday, November 14, 2012

101 Images for Press Freedom






By Cristina Kladis


The fifth annual FotoWeek DC is upon us, and Reporters Without Borders is hosting one of its weightiest shows. “101 Images for Press Freedom” captures the history of photojournalism, beginning with the Spanish Civil War and culminating with the 2010 Haitian earthquake. Included in the exhibit are works by renowned photojournalists like Robert Capa and Henri Cartier-Bresson, as well as iconic images associated with major events, like the Tienanmen Square protests. The show’s goal is to remind viewers just how much photojournalists sacrifice on the job. In conjunction with the exhibit, tonight the Corcoran Gallery of Art hosts “Transforming Society Through Photos: The Role of Free and Independent Photojournalism,” a discussion with with Magnum Photo Agency photographers Larry Towell and Peter van Agtmael and Washington Post Director of Photography MaryAnne Golon about photojournalism’s role in society. Don’t go expecting too many Instagram shots.

In conjunction with the exhibit, the Corcoran Gallery of Art hosts “Transforming Society Through Photos: The Role of Free and Independent Photojournalism." Wednesday, Nov. 14, 2012.




The exhibition is open from 11 a.m. to 7 p.m., Nov. 10–Nov. 18 at the Warner Building, 1299 Pennsylvania Ave. NW. $5. fotoweekdc.org.

Tuesday, November 13, 2012

Tonight in NYC: "Eddie Adams: Saigon '68"

Via DocNYC
EDDIE ADAMS: SAIGON ’68
7:45 PM, Wed. Nov. 14, 2012 - IFC Center - Buy Tickets

Expected to Attend: Douglas Sloan, Morley Safer, Bob Schieffer, Hal Buell, Bill Eppridge, James S. Robbins
 
WORLD PREMIERE “Photographs do lie,” said Eddie Adams who took one of the Vietnam War’s most arresting photos of a point-blank execution. Filmmaker Douglas Sloan (Elliott Erwitt: I Bark at Dogs) investigates this famous image, revealing the complicated back-story of Adams and Nguyen Ngoc Loan, seen in the photo pulling the trigger. Sloan will screen his 15 min short featuring interviews with Peter Arnett, Bill Eppridge, Richard Pyle, Morley Safer and Bob Schieffer; followed by a live conversation about Adams’ legacy and the questions raised by the film.

Co-presented with the International Center of Photography.

Official Site: http://Saigon68.com
 
Director:Douglas Sloan
Producer: Tania Sethi
Cinematographer: Jack Donnelly
Editor: Charly Bender
Music: Hank Aberle
Running Time: 15 min

Related: Interview with  “Saigon ’68” Director Douglas Sloan

"It quickly became obvious that the story was not about the photograph but rather is the story of perception: of how a man takes a picture, the world responds, and that response leads him to a more nuanced, truthful understanding of the power of the media, the evils of war, and the complexities of human nature — Eddie Adams’ included."

 

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
 
 
 
 
 

Friday, November 9, 2012

WAR/PHOTOGRAPHY Opens Veterans Day, Sunday, November 11, in Houston



WAR/PHOTOGRAPHY: Images of Armed Conflict and Its Aftermath
Museum of Fine Arts, Houston  


Admission on opening day is free to all visitors, in recognition of Veterans Day; admission remains free to active-duty military and veterans through the run of the exhibition

WAR/PHOTOGRAPHY travels nationally to Annenberg Space for Photography, Los Angeles; Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington, DC; and Brooklyn Museum through February 2014

Houston—September 2012—On November 11, 2012, the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, debuts an unprecedented exhibition exploring the experience of war through the eyes of photographers. WAR/PHOTOGRAPHY: Images of Armed Conflict and Its Aftermath features nearly 500 objects, including photographs, books, magazines, albums and photographic equipment. The photographs were made by more than 280 photographers, from 28 nations, who have covered conflict on six continents over 165 years, from the Mexican-American War of 1846 through present-day conflicts.

Read more here.



Related:

"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.

CNN: Classic andHistoric Portraits of War


Financial Times: War and Peace (with slide show)


NY Daily News: War photography exhibit debuts in Houston museum


 KPRC TV Houston  Exhibition showcases war photos (with video)


Houston Chronicle: "It's a subject that has deep impact, and because most of us don't experience war first-hand, photographs are our collective memory of it"
 

The New York Times: "Battlefield Images, Taking No Prisoners"


Photo District News: War Correspondence


Modern Art Notes Podcast features the new Museum of Fine Arts Houston exhibition “War Photography: Images of Armed Conflict and its Aftermath.


MFAH debuts unprecedented exhibit of war photography

Time LightBox: "War/Photography, on view from Nov. 11 to Feb. 3, is a magnificent, wide-ranging exhibition at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston"

Wednesday, November 7, 2012

"Vivian Maier’s story had come to an end. To the world, it was only just beginning."


Via New York Times Lens

The still unfolding legend of Vivian Maier has been one of photographic genius discovered only after a lifetime of shooting. Now hailed as a master of street photography, she spent most of her working life in obscurity as a nanny in New York, where she was born, and Chicago, where she died in 2009 at age 83.

In her later years, her oeuvre – more than 100,000 images – sat unseen in storage, along with much of her earthly possessions. When she was unable to keep up with the storage fees, they were auctioned off in 2007. After her death two years later, a collector who had bought one of the lots began to put her images online. Within weeks, she had a global following.

The latest chapter in this endlessly fascinating tale is the publication this year of “Vivian Maier: Out of the Shadows,” by Richard Cahan and Michael Williams (CityFiles Press). The following essay is excerpted from that book.






It’s the end of the day. The TV has been flipped on. A small fire is tended in the backyard. The marquee of the Wilmette Theater is being changed over. Parents’ night at the local school is wrapping up. The children are asleep as Vivian Maier heads home with her camera by the glow of the streetlights.

Maier continued to document her life throughout the 1980s and 1990s. She shot Ektachrome, packing tens of thousands of the color transparencies into sleek yellow Kodak slide boxes. But her days with the Rolleiflex, with which she had taken her most personal and important photographs, were mostly over by the 1970s.

DESCRIPTION
Vivian Maier On the beach at Coney Island during the early 1950s.
Vivian Maier learned to photograph using a box camera, which lends an impressionistic look to her early work.
 
Work as a nanny continued. When Zalman and Karen Usiskin interviewed her to be their housekeeper and baby sitter in the 1980s, she announced: “I come with my life, and my life is in boxes.” Zalman told her that would not be a problem since they had extra room in the garage. “We had no idea how many boxes,” he later said.

Around 1990, Maier took a job caring for Chiara Baylaender, a teenage girl with severe developmental disabilities. Maier was good company for her: they played kick the can and amused themselves with pop beads. Maier dressed Chiara in mismatched clothes from the Salvation Army. “But it’s Pendleton,” Vivian told the girl’s sister when she protested. It didn’t matter. “My sister looked like a junior Vivian,” she recalled.
 
DESCRIPTION
New, Old Photos
 
Ever since her street photography was “discovered” in 2009, Vivian Maier has received increasing attention and accolades. Lens has posted on Ms. Maier before:
 
And Maier proved an uninterested housekeeper, too. “It’s just going to get dusty again,” she would say. Having filled the Baylaenders’ storage room, she piled her bedroom five feet deep with books, leaving only a narrow path to her bed. Then she covered that — and slept on the floor.

In the mid-1990s, Maier went to work as a caretaker for an older woman. After the woman moved to a nursing home in 1996, Maier stayed on in her Oak Park house for a couple of months to get it ready to sell. Maier made overtures about working for the family of the woman’s daughter, but she was not needed.

Over the years, leaving was never easy. Despite being close to these families, Maier was an outsider. During the late 1960s, she photographed the light coming from the homes she passed. Always looking in. At seventy, she was looking for work in North Chicago or Waukegan, almost an hour north of Chicago. With little saved and no family of her own, she was determined to keep living independently.

Acquaintances recall Maier as an imposing, confident, stolid woman in her later years. Jim Dempsey, who worked the box office at the Film Center of the School of the Art Institute, saw her most every week for over a decade. She would dig through her purse looking for money, sighing until Dempsey let her in. She often stopped to talk — about movies, life, anything but herself — although he never got her name.

Bindy Bitterman, who ran the antiques store Eureka in Evanston, knew Maier only as Miss V. Smith, the name she gave to hold an item. She was the only customer who ever bought Ken, a long-forgotten liberal magazine from the 1930s. Roger Carlson, who ran Bookman’s Alley nearby, knew her full name but was scolded when he introduced her to another customer by it. She visited his shop as late as 2005 and bought Life magazines, talked politics (“Her judgment was pretty harsh on everyone”), and agonized about how difficult it was to find work.


She was a fighter to the end, Carlson said.

The boys who had thought of Vivian Maier as a second mother tried to keep track of her for years. They made overtures to help, but she resisted. She loved the Gensburgs and kept up with the family — going to weddings, graduations, baby showers — but it was hard for her to ask for help.


DESCRIPTION
Vivian Maier Self-portrait, Los Angeles. 1955.
Because of her pride and her need for privacy, Maier remained elusive for years. When the Gensburgs found her, she was on the verge of being put out of a cheap apartment in the western suburb of Cicero. The brothers offered to rent a better apartment for her on Sheridan Road at the northern tip of Chicago, but they told her she needed to clean up her Cicero place before she left. She agreed, showed them the Clorox and rags, pulled up a chair, sat back with The New York Times, and told Lane to start with the walls and bathroom.

Even in her new apartment, Maier made it difficult for the family to keep track of her. The Gensburgs bought her a cellphone, but she refused to use it. So they just dropped by when they wanted to see her.

In November 2008, Maier fell on the ice on Howard Street not far from her home and hit her head. She was taken, unconscious, by paramedics to St. Francis Hospital in Evanston. When she came to, she refused to tell the emergency room staff what had happened and demanded to leave. Lane Gensburg was called. Doctors assured the family that she would recover, but she never did. For the next several months, she resisted eating and was barely responsive. Too weak to return to her apartment, Maier was transported in late January 2009 to a nursing home in Highland Park, where her health continued to decline. She died there on April 21, 2009.

The Gensburgs had Vivian Maier cremated and scattered her ashes in a forest where she’d taken the boys fifty years earlier. They considered having a funeral but knew she would have abhorred such an observance. So they paid for a death notice in the Chicago Tribune: “Vivian Maier, proud native of France and Chicago resident for the last 50 years died peacefully on Monday. . . . A free and kindred spirit who magically touched the lives of all who knew her.”

To the faithful Gensburgs, Vivian’s story had come to an end. To the world, it was only just beginning.


DESCRIPTION
Vivian Maier Vivian Maier, Highland Park, Ill. 1965.

"Every photograph is a product of the photographer’s experiences in their entire life"






In case you missed this important interview with photojournalist Ben Lowy by Jonathan Blaustein on A Photo Editor, we have posted the links below. A must read.


I caught up with Ben Lowy in August. He’s a busy man, juggling family and personal projects with a super-charged career. In the last year alone, he was in Libya, on Jon Stewart, won the photojournalist of the year award from the ICP, and had his book, “Iraq Perspectives” published by the Center for Documentary Studies at Duke.



Ben Lowy Interview – Part 1

"I’m an open book. I’ve got nothing to hide. I was pretty fucked up by things that happened in 2007. And I felt really guilty about surviving."

Ben Lowy Interview – Part 2


"Photography, regardless if it’s photojournalism, or some sort of esoteric contemporary art, you’re putting a bit of your soul in it. That soul is what makes you take a picture at that instant. It’s what makes you compose, to wait for things to happen. For serendipity.

Every photograph is a product of the photographer’s experiences in their entire life. It’s everything that comes together that makes them want to take that picture at that instant. Otherwise, we would all be robots."


Via APhotoEditor

Monday, November 5, 2012

LIVE STREAM! WAR/PHOTOGRAPHY: Images of Armed Conflict and Its Aftermath




Dmitri Baltermants, Russian, born Poland, 1912–1990, Attack—Eastern Front WWII, 1941, gelatin silver print, printed 1960, the MFAH, gift of Michael Poulos in honor of Mary Kay Poulos at “One Great Night in November, 1997,” 97.463. © Russian Photo Association, Razumberg Emil Anasovich 


The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston (MFAH) is pleased to announce that TWO public programs connected to the highly-anticipated exhibition WAR/PHOTOGRAPHY: Images of Armed Conflict and Its Aftermath will be available for free online as a live stream which will provide a close-up view of the speakers and includes their slide presentations. Additionally, as the live stream platform is interactive, you may pose questions which may find their way into the panel discussions!
 
REGISTRATION IS FREE. To register in advance, click HERE
 

Friday, Nov 9, 2012 at 6 p.m. 

An overview of the exhibition presented by Anne Wilkes Tucker, Gus and Lyndall Wortham Curator of Photography, MFAH.

Saturday, Nov 10, 2012 at 1 to 5 p.m.

Six photographers lead three panel discussions moderated by exhibition co-curators: Anne Wilkes Tucker, Will Michels, and Natalie Zelt. 

1. War-Related Photography for Newspapers vs. Magazines featuring Carolyn Cole and Jonathan Torgovnik 

2. Postwar Long-term Humanitarian Projects featuring Jim Goldberg and Susan Meiselas 

3. Combat Photography featuring Don McCullin and James Nachtwey

The Symposium on Saturday will be a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to hear from six  distinguished photographers about their profession and projects, as this is a unique subset of photographers who enter combat zones, who document assassinations and attempted genocides, who use their camera lenses to capture both inhumane cruelty and humanitarian compassion.

The Ruth K. Shartle Symposium is made possible by generous funding from The Brown Foundation, Inc.

Sunday, November 4, 2012

Museum to open balcony where U.S. civil rights leader Martin Luther King was shot



Dr. Martin Luther King assassination, Memphis,Tenn., April 4, 1968; Photograph by Joseph Louw

WASHINGTON (AFP).- The motel balcony in Memphis, Tennessee where US civil rights leader Martin Luther King, Jr. was assassinated on April 4, 1968 is being opened to the public, a spokeswoman said Friday.

It is the first time that visitors to the erstwhile Lorraine Motel, now the National Civil Rights Museum, will be able to stand on the very spot outside Room 306 where King was gunned down by sniper James Earl Ray.

Connie Dyson, the museum's communications coordinator, said the upper-floor balcony will be open from November 19 as the historic landmark in downtown Memphis undergoes a $27 million facelift due to finish in early 2014.

"It is our most unique artifact, the balcony," Dyson told AFP by telephone.

"But with the entire Lorraine building being closed during renovations, we wanted to offer the public an access to the balcony and the room where Dr King stayed, since that was one of the highlights of the (pre-renovation) tour."

With its slightly disheveled bed, black dial-up telephone and unfinished cups of coffee, Room 306 has been left untouched since the evening when King, 39, was fatally shot at the height of the civil rights movement.

"Nobody's ever stayed in the room (since King's death). It's been a shrine ever since," Dyson said.

Visitors who until now could peer into Room 306 via a sealed glass window along the interior hallway will, during the renovations, "get a chance to peek... from the outside," Dyson added.

Ray, a white drifter with a criminal record, was convicted of shooting King with a rifle from a building across the street from the Lorraine. Sentenced to 99 years in prison, he died in April 1998 at the age of 70.

In October 2011 King became the first African American to be honored with a monument along the National Mall in Washington, engraved with words from his stirring 1963 "I Have a Dream" speech for racial equality.
 
 
 
Picture dated April 4, 1998 shows former Memphis sanitation workers Eugene Brown (L), James Jones (C), and Lafayette Shields (R) standing in front of the National Civil Rights Museum, the site where Martin Luther King was assassinated, after a memorial service for the late civil rights leader in Memphis. The motel balcony in Memphis, Tennessee, where US civil rights leader Martin Luther King, Jr. was assassinated on April 4, 1968 is being opened to the public, a spokeswoman said on November 2, 2012. It is the first time that visitors to the erstwhile Lorraine Motel, now the National Civil Rights Museum, will be able to stand on the very spot outside Room 306 where King was gunned down by sniper James Earl Ray. AFP PHOTO/FILES/Andrew CUTRARO.


via Artdaily.org
© 1994-2012 Agence France-Presse

Saturday, November 3, 2012

"Fifty Years Defending Freedom"



Via Syndication

In 1962 a group of dedicated civil libertarians came together to form the ACLU of New Mexico to defend and extend our most basic freedoms. Much has changed since then, and the ACLU has been such an important part of our state’s progress.


In honor of their fiftieth year defending freedom in New Mexico, the ACLU has produced the below short film, “Fifty Years Defending Freedom”. In this 17 minute film, you will hear from some of the key people from the organization’s past and present speak about the values that drive the important work of the organization and the historic civil liberties victories they have won over the past half century.




 
 
 
Check-out some ACLU NM News here, including:
 

With the help of local supporters, the ACLU has grown from a tiny, all-volunteer organization to the largest, hardest-hitting civil liberties organization in the state. Today, the government knows that if they violate people’s rights, the ACLU WILL hold them accountable to the law.



Related: Steve Schapiro