dispatches

Pt. Lobos in NYT

For you rock-sea-sky photographers out there (and I count myself among the brethren), there's a nice piece in today's NY Times on Pt. Lobos and Edward Weston. It's in the travel section, not the arts, which makes a kind of sense: artistic homage as an organizing principle of a journey. It's hard to argue with the penultimate line in the article, “Photography at Point Lobos died with him,” but just try and visit the place and not feel a sense of urgency to capture it photographically.

"Snap Judgments"

As an elitist media consumer, I am a big fan of NPR's On The Media, a show that never fails to amaze me with their nuanced metaview. Today they devoted 15 minutes to an in-depth look at the ethical and practical issues around political and celebrity portraiture. This is so worth a listen. I have never seen the issues looked at with this degree of complexity. It changed my mind regarding the Jill Greenberg controversy regarding her portrait of John McCain, which is the lead example in the piece.

I initially agreed with Rob Haggart's opinion on the matter (Jill Greenberg Is Not Afraid to Dump All Her Clients At Once). The story goes like this. Jill had an assignment to photograph John McCain for The Atlantic. She loathes the man. After the Atlantic portrait shot, she led him to a second lighting setup, where the strobe lit him only from below, the classic malevolent lighting setup. The modeling lights were rigged in such a way that this wasn't apparent to anyone who didn't know how these things work. “I do the job that's asked of me that day, and what I do beyond that is not really anyone's business,” was her rationalization. She was roundly condemned, rightly, I thought at the time. Now, I'm not so sure.

Here is Bob Garfield's penultimate summary, 10 minutes in. “In photography, this reality thing is hard to pin down. Each of a sitting's dozens or hundreds of shots is a frozen two dimensional representation of a living, moving three dimensional being. A laser sliced instant invisible in real time. It may be a reasonable likeness, it may express some mood or personality, but it is, by definition, out of context, altered by angle, lighting and optics.”

Platon: “It's such a strange artistic process, that it's very difficult to express in words. I mean, you could say, I'm a disturber, or, I'm a professional outsider, and I come in and try to disturb the status quo. To be honest, I'm often surprised that I'm allowed to carry on doing what I do every day. But I haven't been stopped yet, and I'm still waiting to be sent out of the country for bad photographic behaviour. ”

What constitutes the photographic equivalent of“gotcha journalism,” what is creative assertion of a point of view, what about the marketplace demand for an off kilter image to cut through newsstand clutter,  how about naiveté from political subjects? These are great questions. Listen to the piece.

I'm obviously not busy enough

I appear to be thinking about a book.

I am motivated by an avoidance of working on another book, the contra dance project, which is creatively becalmed right now. And I appear to be home more this month than I anticipated, so I'm making a project for myself. I'm also acting on my revelation the other day that I have an inordinate number of photographs of one place, Montlake Fill, the old garbage dump behind Husky Stadium that's the premier birding hotspot in Seattle.

To keep things sane I'm only looking at my digital shooting, from which I have a hundred and a quarter odd selects (from 3500 images). I'm not even considering my previous two decades of shooting film there—it's been that kind of place in my life. I have them disarrayed on work tables, pinned to my display wall, scattered about my mind as I ride my bike and wash the dishes. I have no idea what I'm doing. I am a terrible editor of sequence.

The end result will be a Blurb book, in time for the holidays. But to get from here to that—I am stymied. Anyone know a good editor who can help me?

Good Olympics blogs

Two blogs I'm following that give deep insight into the Chinese Olympics mania:

Vincent LaForet is a Newsweek photographer blogging on the subject of covering the Olympics from his vantage as a world class sports photographer. He is sincere, modest, and revealing, and I'm so glad I don't have his job.

James Fallows is the pre-eminent Atlantic correspondent, who is writing about the Chinese Olympics as an expat observer. An erudite viewpoint you won't get anywhere else.

I really am an American

A notable sensation when whizzing down Washington, DC streets is the catch in the throat as you glimpse iconic national landmark after iconic national landmark. Oh, there's the Capitol Dome, there's the White House, the Washington Monument, the Jefferson Memorial. The latter we took a cab to in order to photograph some students admiring the cherry blossoms, which are at their peak this week. We had to share the path with 80,000 other people however--finding a spot with any semblance of serenity took some doing.

While waiting for our couple to show up (it took them a half hour to park), I visited the Jefferson Memorial. Despite the Boy Scout troops and school groups and throngs of tourists, I found a kind of  serenity in this rotunda. And then I read the words inscribed in marble, and I was moved to tears. “We hold these truths to be self evident, that all men are created equal...” And also, “...I tremble for my country when I reflect that God is just, that his justice cannot sleep forever. Commerce between master and slave is despotism. Nothing is more certainly written in the book of fate that these people are to be free...”

On the west end of the reflecting pool is the Lincoln, even more moving in its simplicity (it is unfortunate the same cannot be said for the monstrosity at the other end, the WWII, which reeks of triumphalism and heavy-handed symbolism). On one side is inscribed the Gettysburg Address, on the other, his second inaugural speech. This one completes the sentiment in Jefferson's, only now Lincoln avers that God has seen fit to wreak his judgment upon the nation for our stain. It is a moving speech, worth the effort to plow through the nineteenth century syntax.

Visiting these pilgrimage sites I feel powerfully stirred in my patriotism, and my devotion to my identity as an American. Our country has an exceptional status in the course of human history, and these ideals, particularly when we are not living up to them, are worth fighting to preserve. These monuments of Washington, DC, they are the temples for our American secular religion.

Which one is it?

As a typical liberal, elitist, latte-sipping irony connoisseur, I eagerly await the April 1st edition of All Things Considered to see which is going to be the spoof piece. I am on the road, so I had to search the NPR site for this year's version. It took me five tries through the playlist before I found it. I thought for sure it would be "McCain Competing with NFL in Primetime," which was a true account of the NFL moving the season opening game to acccomodate McCain's acceptance speech at the convention. Really. Surely, then, it was going to be the "Oregon Uses Lottery Approach for Healthcare Insurance." Sadly, this one is true. "Colorado Flushes Salmonella?" Nope. Come on, it's gotta be the "Profile of a Superdelegate." No, this is one is typical earnest NPR material. Not even "Oil Executives Defend Profits To Congress"? An April fools joke if ever there was one.

They whimped out of anything remotely controversial, electing instead to skewer high-art music in "Fluegel's 'B-Flat' Starts On A Good Note."

The BBC, however, has a good one here. 

Fair and balanced

Good news from the college front

Two great articles in today’s Sunday New York Times on the state of college kids these days. One is a front page article on the effort of the likes of Princeton, Harvard, and Williams to address class inequality in their admissions. The opening paragraph strikes at the reality of these college environments:

"The discussion in the States of Poverty seminar at Amherst College was getting a litle theoretical. Then Anthony Abraham Jack, a junior from Miami, asked pointedly, "Has anyone here ever actually seen a food stamp?"

It’s a great success story, and indicates a heartening institutional willingness to be engines of social progress. You can read it here.

The other is in Thomas Friedman’s column, "The Quiet Americans," on the optimism in the current crop of college graduates. I can personally attest to the accuracy of his observations. This is a great generation coming through college just now. You have to be a subscriber to access this column online, (but this link is good through midday Monday) so I’ll liberally quote some elections here.

[From departing GWU president Stephen J. Trachtenberg] " ‘I’ve been a college president for 30 years, and these kids are more optimistic about the future than any I have ever seen—perhaps more than they have any reason to be,’ he said. ‘They still believe that the world is their oyster and go ahead with abandon. Notwithstanding everything, they remain optimistic.’"

"...It was not only the pride with which they wore those uniforms that was palpable, but also the respect they were accorded by their classmates. I spoke to one young man who was going from graduation at Rensselaer right out to sea with the United States Navy. As bad as Iraq is, they just keep signing up. I have been equally impressed by the number of my daughter’s friends who have opted to join Teach For America.

"And that can-do-will-do spirit is a good thing, because we will need it to preserve our democracy from those who want to steal the openness and optimism that make democracy work."

Scary retouching

Another example of the scary extremes of retouching in Joerg Colberg’s post, "How extensively are professional modeling photos retouched?" Follow his links. The scary part is that we accept this as normal.

Robin pointed this out—anyone else catch the juxtaposition in the Sunday New York Times Magazine between the anorexia article, immediately followed by the Style photo by Joel-Peter Witkin, of a size 2 nude woman?

 

Pardon the gloating

Except for tangential observations, I avoid politics in this blog. I want anyone who comes upon this site to feel comfortable and welcome here. But today is too big to ignore. My conservative friends, please be tolerant of me for a moment.

It has been a very long time since I have felt happy the day after an election. I generally feel marginalized and irrelevant the day after, just another minority member of that latte-sipping class in that tiny, liberal enclave of Seattle, with no voice in the affairs of this nation. I don’t expect nor want my individual views to be the ones that dominate the national politics. My viewpoint is too narrow for that. But I sure would like my side to have an influence, and it feels like it has been a very long time since that has been so. 1992 was the last good election. The last time before that when I felt as good was watching the resignation of Nixon. These are almost once in a generation events.

It feel almost too good to savor this schadenfreude, to see the Republicans reap the harvest of their hubris and hypocrisy. I can still feel my blood pressure rise remembering the Clinton impeachment hearings and the utter meanness of it all. There is a Jacobin part of me, I’m not proud of it, but I’m not entirely not proud of it, that wants revenge. I want subpoena power, I want hearings, I want to make life as miserable for the Republicans as they made it for the Democrats. I want to make them pay.

This, though, is no good for my blood pressure either. Nor for the longer term success of progressive causes. The fact is, there’s more of them (conservatives) than us (latte-sipping liberals). A middle way is what I most fervently hope will emerge.

The last word on this: Obama in 08!!!