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Guest Post 31: Robert Dannin on Eugene Richards’s “the day I was born” (a)

In my opinion, Eugene Richards stands out as the most important photojournalist of his generation. Often imitated, yet seldom surpassed, his work embodies the values he defends. In early 2019 Richards returned to the Delta where he reconnected with old acquaintances and met others willing to discuss the impact of the Civil Rights movement on their lives. […]

Cabin Fever: Bits & Pieces 2021 (1)

Astonishing to watch Q-Anon’s bizarre reprise of the Salem witch trials writ large (satanism, pedophilia, Bill and Hillary Clinton as ruler of the vast coven) combined with a lightly veiled version of a classic anti-Semitic trope, the blood libel of Democrats (for which read leftists, for which read Jews). To cite Richard Kirstel yet again, “Scratch a good American and you’ll find a good German.” […]

Dog Day Afternoons: Bits & Pieces (13)

Aside from the fact that we liked and respected each other, I never figured out exactly why Cynthia decided to put her imprint a book of my essays, Tarnished Silver: After the Photo Boom, in 1996. […]

On Roy DeCarava’s “The Sweet Flypaper of Life”

I would propose that what Langston Hughes achieved in The Sweet Flypaper of Life, though radically different in kind, constitutes an editorial accomplishment that bears comparison with what Robert Frank did with his own pictures in The Americans, published in 1958-59. To use a distinction from general systems theory, Hughes took a heap and made of it a whole. […]

John Szarkowski: “Photography Until Now” at MoMA (1990)

What we’re offered instead is merely a set of pictures John Szarkowski likes — a comparative bagatelle … Such a misuse of power, prestige and influence is an effective if lamentable indication of why the Modern’s credibility and influence on the medium have waned so dramatically during the last decade of his tenure. […]