In short, photographs carry an implicit documentary value and evidentiary function that lens culture everywhere certifies. Which is why what the VII Foundation, the Associated Press, and World Press Photo have achieved in their collective efforts on the making of “Napalm Girl” matters, deeply, regardless of their flaws. […]
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This is a variously evasive and duplicitous account of a slipshod experiment on Timothy Floyd’s part, laughably inept in comparison with the strictly controlled tests conducted by Tristan da Cunha, whose protocols and documentation Floyd’s effort doesn’t come close to matching. […] We should hold neither Mark Osterman nor Robert Shanebrook responsible for Floyd’s sly, deceptive elisions and misdirections in this inept effort to validate the “darkroom disaster” myth and rebut our dismantling thereof. Surely they had no say in the matter. […] During the Covid pandemic many people were calling for a “New WPA” to help alleviate the cultural crisis while, in fact, CETA was a more viable model. It had received bipartisan support in 1973, and was actually signed into law by Richard Nixon! […] It seems paradoxical to say that gentleness and joy are contained in Beuford Smith’s work, even at its fiercest, but the truth of that is perhaps his greatest accomplishment and the firmest possible foundation for the major body of work he has just begun — and, indeed, can at this stage hardly avoid — creating. […] |
 SPJ Research Award 2014 |