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The Photographer and the Painting (2)

What doesn’t get talked about during the periodic uproars over a painter’s appropriation of a photographer’s work are the numerous situations in which the shoe’s on the other foot. So photographers’ commonplace practice of basing photographs on works of graphic art, often in detail and faithful to the originals, is celebrated, not condemned, by the very same community that objects, vociferously, when painters and other graphic artists imitate or derive iconography from photographic images. What inexplicable double standard operates here? […]

The Photographer and the Painting (1)

If it’s acceptable (or not) for painters to work from photographs, and to replicate closely or paraphrase broadly the iconography of photos, do photographers get to do (or not do) the same with paintings? And, if they do, why do all the complaints about image appropriation seem to come from the photography side of the spectrum? […]

Dog Day Afternoons: Bits & Pieces (5)

Those who reviled me as “misogynistic” in early 2012 for my opposition to such tendencies as cut-rate breast and buttock augmentation will doubtless find further proof of my woman-hating attitude in my celebration of a grass-roots movement known as “The Mom Stays in the Picture,” which arose spontaneously in response to an op-ed piece by Allison Tate at The Huffington Post. […]

There Will Be Ink (3)

The compulsory worldwide education for which Malala Yousafzai called in her U.N. speech, though it will surely involve physical books and paper and pens, will rely increasingly on digital tools: computers, the internet, digitized books and periodicals accessed through digital libraries. And I’m convinced that the future of the illustrated book lies in the ebook or some other form of electronic delivery. […]

Dog Day Afternoons: Bits & Pieces (4)

Janet Reitman’s feature article, “Jahar’s World,” a profile of the surviving suspect in the Boston bombing of April 15, 2013, doesn’t earn its position as the cover story for this issue of Rolling Stone. Nothing in it justifies giving what’s basically a rehash of the material already in circulation pride of place in this issue of the magazine. Which makes designating this as the cover story, with the use of Jahar’s selfie on the cover, a cheap trick. That offends me. […]