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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. […]

APAG Seminar 2017

The first thing I want from you, as the person in charge of materials that you hope to place in an archive or as the person managing an archive, is to to do no harm — to think long and hard before you throw anything away. And, preferably, to consult with people who understand and work with archives before you discard anything. Because you can’t possibly know, or anticipate, what I will find important when I get there. […]

Birthday Musings 12/19/14

Professionally speaking, this past year proved unusually uneventful, even by recent standards. Travel no longer holds much attraction for me (been there, done that), so I welcomed the chance to spend most of the year here at home, enjoying the changes of the seasons and our daily routines. […]

The CCP and I

In my 42 years as a critic, historian, and cultural journalist concentrating on photography, I’ve felt it necessary only twice to call publicly for the resignation of major functionaries in this field: John Szarkowski of the Museum of Modern Art (1978) and William Turnage of the Ansel Adams Publishing Rights Trust. Not the least of the intriguing connections here is the substantial amount of money that flowed from the latter to the former. […]