[Reminded by a news story that we’ve reached the 20th anniversary of the death of Princess Diana, I recalled that I’d written something about it a few years later, which I published in August 2000 in a bi-weekly column I then ran in a local giveaway newspaper, the Star-Reporter chain, which had a circulation of […]
|
Follow me on Mastodon:
@adcoleman@hcommons.social
 |
The death of Princess Diana has so far had one potentially beneficial consequence: it has foregrounded, brought to international attention, and sparked serious and widespread public debate over the question of the right to privacy in relation to the behavior of photographers in public places. […] Chinese poet, dissident, and 2010 Nobel Peace Prize recipient Liu Xiaobo died of acute liver cancer on Thursday, July 13, 2017 while in police custody. Liu Xiaobo’s wife, the noted poet and photographer Liu Xia, has been under extralegal house arrest since Liu Xiaobo received the Nobel prize. Liu Xia’s whereabouts are currently unknown. With her husband now dead, she has become de facto the most internationally recognized symbol of opposition to the oligarchy that rules mainland China. […] For a lad still a tad, who had passed through and adapted himself to three linguistic environments — Manhattan, southern France, London, and then back to Manhattan — in three years, this came as music to the ears. That Joycean play with language, in a form accessible even to a sprat like me, heightened my consciousness in relation to the spoken and written word by making the very act of reading — not the experience of following a story line, but the savoring of language itself, its slipperiness and mutabiity, its multivalent possibilities — fun. […] |
 SPJ Research Award 2014All content of this publication is © copyright 2009, 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013, 2014, 2015, 2016, 2017 by A. D. Coleman unless otherwise noted. All materials contained on this site are protected by United States copyright law and may not be reproduced for commercial purposes without prior written permission. All photos copyright by the individual photographers. "Fair use" allows quotation of excerpts of textual material from this site for educational and other noncommercial purposes.
Published by Flying Dragon LLC.
|
Diana’s Death, Revisited (3)
Photographers have rights, which must be identified and protected. They also enjoy privileges that can be withdrawn at any time by widespread public agreement and legislation. The subjects of photographs also have rights, which also must be identified and protected. And some of those rights of subjects absolutely supersede the rights of photographers. […]