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Guest Post 24: Robert Dannin on the “Day in the Life” Projects (c)

“A Day in the Life of America” was a classic bait-and-switch maneuver, directing the public gaze toward nonsense images while the Reagan administration savagely attacked ordinary working people. Lacking spontaneity, decontextualized, and bordering on puffery, the artless Day in the Life of America remains arguably the most embarrassing collection of images in the annals of photography. […]

Guest Post 23: Robert Dannin on Magnum Photos (4)

Magnum’s biography is not just a narrative of funny anecdotes, personal heroism, or critical interventions aimed at the cognoscenti. To me there’s a real narrative, a true set of values behind the myth. It’s a frat-house given to sophomoric antics with members sometimes capable of making extraordinary pictures. […]

Guest Post 23: Robert Dannin on Steve McCurry

I am uncomfortable watching an interrogation that is misguided if related to some elusive standard of photojournalism. … Pressing Steve McCurry for explanations when one already knows the reasons he used Photoshop — to create a more saleable, viewable image — evades more serious issues about who controls photography, and when and how to liberate it. […]