A place to remember and to share articles, videos, and information about art and culture. My primary audience is students of the arts, with the purpose of expanding the discussion and encouraging research.
The headline reads: Eastman Kodak Files for Bankruptcy - NYTimes
Sadly, this is not shocking news.
For the entire 20th Century, Kodak owned photography, but as digital came onto the scene in the early 90's, they seemed to have lost their ability to remain competitive. What is perhaps most ironic - since the inception of photography it was, and is, a technology race - How did they lose that winning edge?
Photo Credit: Picnic - Kodak No. 2 (ca. 1916). One of a set of 12 early Kodak No., Found on Flickriver
This is an amazing viddie on a new software that enables you to insert objects into photographs, make them move, and light them properly. I heart technology.
h/t to Hector
The Long Beach Police are now in the position of determining whether or not a photographer's images have any aesthetic value....
"If an officer sees someone taking pictures of something like a refinery," says McDonnell, "it is incumbent upon the officer to make contact with the individual." McDonnell went on to say that whether said contact becomes detainment depends on the circumstances the officer encounters.
McDonnell says that while there is no police training specific to determining whether a photographer's subject has "apparent esthetic value," officers make such judgments "based on their overall training and experience" and will generally approach photographers not engaging in "regular tourist behavior."
I don't even know where to begin....
Photo Credit: A photograph shot by Sander Roscoe Wolff on June 30 before he was detained by Long Beach Police
This is a beautiful image, and IMHO most snapshots lack any aesthetic value. But I only have 7 years of art school and 15 years of teaching experience in aesthetics, the officer on the beat has zero, so what do I know.
And one parting shot - since when is a photographer's role in society strictly limited to aesthetic value?
A great compilation of 30 photographs that changed the world. Some are really grim, but the one on the left has always been a personal favorite for a variety of reasons. The couple had remained anonymous for many years, but their idenity was recently discovered.
How many do you know? How have they shaped your worldview?
Photo Credit: Alfred Eisenstaedt, V-J Day in Times Square, 1945
I would be remiss not to show a site of at least one oatmeal box camera. This is the first camera most people make. Once I taught pinhole to 5 year olds and had to eat 10 boxes of oatmeal to have enough boxes, I thought I would never run out of oatmeal. And yeah I know I could have just dumped it out, but that would be wasteful, and besides oatmeal is good for you. Perhaps the best part of an oatmeal box camera is that the film plane is curved and so there is this really wacky perspective that happens!
A fun little story about the future Queen of England and the paparazzi who stalk her every move. With the wedding now less than two weeks away demand for images of Kate are soaring.
"The demand is massive", says Joe Sene, who works at the picture agency, Splash UK. "The financial reward for pictures is huge. Think of a number. Add a zero and double it at the moment".
Photography and power have always had an uneasy, yet symbiotic relationship... they need each other... but that doesn't mean we are free to do as we please.
One of my students just sent me a link to this amazing story. Wow. How did this slip by me? This is another one of those stories about an amazing unknown artist that is discovered after death. Her photographs are beautiful, and the guy who found the negatives in a garage sale is beyond dedicated, he seems obsessed (in a good way).
Lens blog at NYTimes writes about it also, and provides a slide show of 19 images.
This September marks the 10th anniversary of 911. Joel Meyerowitz was the only photographer allowed on the scene at Ground Zero on a daily basis, and he photographed the site for 9 months. Recently, I have started researching this event, and have complied some articles and viddies about his project.
National September 11 Memorial and Museum: Clifford Chanin (Senior Program Advisor) interviews Joel Meyerowitz - Part One (embedded above),two, three, four, five, six, and seven - a remarkable one on one interview.
I first discovered Joel Meyerowitz' work in my Color Photography class, his Cape Cod project was shown for its use of mixed light and out of balance light on daylight balanced film. I fell in love with the images and have followed his career ever since then. (Thanks Dr. Dik)
Joel was one of the first photographers to embrace color photography as a medium. His use of color transforms his photographs of Ground Zero from merely documents to works of art. This juxtaposition between beauty and disaster makes the project compelling.
When researching his work at Ground Zero, I found it ironic that he was on Cape Cod when the attack happened and it took him almost a week to return to NYC. When he finally got back to town, he went to the WTC and had a strange encounter with the police that pushed him to gain access to the site and start making images:
. . . Early the next morning I went down to the site, only to find that the whole area had been cordoned off with cyclone fencing draped with tarpaulins, above which one could see smoke rising in the distance. There wasn’t much to look at as I stood in a crowd on the corner of Chambers and Greenwich, about four blocks north of Ground Zero, but out of a lifetime of habit I raised my Leica to my eye, simply to get the feel of what was there. Whack! Someone behind me poked me sharply in the shoulder. “No photographs buddy, this is a crime scene!” I whipped around and found myself face to face with a belligerent female police officer. I was furious — both at being hit and at the absurdity of the command. “Listen, this is a public space,” I replied. “Don’t tell me I can’t look through my camera!” But she came right back at me with “You give me trouble and I’ll take that camera away from you!” “No you won’t,” I said. “Suppose I was the press?” “The press? There’s the press,” she said, imperiously jerking a thumb over her shoulder at about a dozen TV cameramen and reporters, roped off by yellow police tape, halfway up the block.“When are they going in?” I asked. “Never,” she said. “I told you, this is a crime scene. No photography!”
Another short article about the project is from Photo District News; this article talks about the lack of funding for the project and how Joel had to borrow money and eventually sell his apartment in Greenwich Village just to keep working. The article also talks about his relationship to the people on the site, his struggle to maintain access, and the reverence of the workers when they would find the remains of a person.
Thursday, January 19, 2012 at 3:27PM 
